"HOPE"
Psa 130 in the Message states: Help, God--the bottom has fallen out of my life! Master, hear my cry for help! Listen hard! Open your ears! Listen to my cries for mercy. If you, God, kept records on wrongdoings, who would stand a chance? As it turns out, forgiveness is your habit, and that's why you're worshiped. I pray to God--my life a prayer--and wait for what he'll say and do. My life's on the line before God, my Lord, waiting and watching till morning. Oh Israel (Gregory and Vernie), wait and watch for God--with God's arrival comes love, with God's arrival comes generous redemption. No doubt about it--he'll redeem Israel (Gregory), buy back Israel (Gregory) from captivity to sin (sickness). (Eugene Peterson--A Long Obedience In The Same Direction)

Hope is a projection of the imagination; so is despair. Despair all too readily embraces the ills it foresees; hope is an energy and arouses the mind to explore every possibility to combat them...In response to hope the imagination is aroused to picture every possible issue, to try every door, to fit together even the most heterogeneous pieces in the puzzle. After the solution has been found it is difficult to recall the steps taken--so many of them are just below the level of consciousness.--By Thornton Wilder

A Christian is a person who decides to face and live through suffering. If we do not make that decision, we are endangered on every side. A man or woman of faith who fails to acknowledge and deal with suffering becomes, at last, either a cynic or a melancholic or a suicide. Psalm 130 grapples mightily with suffering, sings its way through it (hope), and provides usable experience for those who are committed to traveling the way of faith to God through Jesus Christ.

P.T. Forsyth said it well when he wrote: The depth is simply the height inverted, as sin is the index of moral grandeur. The cry is not only truly human, but divine as well. God is deeper than the deepest depth in man. He is holier than our deepest sin is deep. There is no depth so deep to us as when God reveals his holiness in dealing with our sin...(And so) think more of the depth of God than the depth of your cry. The worst thing that can happen to a man is to have no God to cry to out of the depth.

I read the above quotes and scripture with great fervency this past week. This week has been one of recognizing what sufferings really are and knowing that the battle is not ours, but the Lord's. In the natural, Greg is becoming weaker and losing more weight. It is difficult, when you love someone so much and see them suffer so. I am learning in this valley I've been in. Greg continues to carry a countenance of graciousness and kindness even through this very difficult journey. In our weakness is His strength. I pray the Lord prepares the way for both of us. I pray, worship to our Lord would be our sustenance. We are to become worship. This, with our fellowship with the Lord, was the reason we were created.

Thank you for your unending prayers and support for us during this season. We pray the Lord gives back to you, but more than that....that you share in the reward of praying for those who are sick... that you would see with your own eyes His delivering healing power in your midst.

We hold you close within our hearts always...

In His healing Love--Vernie (for Greg too)