Our confidence is STILL in Him!

It's Thursday here at the office on this September 18th day of 2008, the very birthday of our little Alexander Benjamin who is three today. He was born the week of Rita and we had to scramble to keep him healthy with a borrowed generator. What a memory of that horrendous week and now here he is three years later and its more of the same. It's good that he is young enough to not pay much attention because he might have a complex already. At any rate, he is a one of a kind and regardless of the problems and circumstances we are thanking God for him on his birthday! This is my blog from last Friday written just prior to the calamitous events that came with this latest hurricane. I thought it was appropriate to repeat much of it because it's still true even while we work our way through getting things put back together.

We now do know what happened and it turned out the warnings were true in that Ike became very destructive many hundreds of miles inland. We have one fellow here at our workplace whose house was completely destroyed and several others have significant damage to their homes and cars but for those of us who are able to get up and go and make contact with our family each day, well, we have much to be thankful for. Here's what I wrote (bolded) leading up to last week's events: I prefer to speak to God about my concerns. I've done that often in the run up to this storm watch. I've already had a season of prayer with my wife before leaving the house at 4:30 a.m. this morning. And, I just completed praying back Psalms 145 through 150. Those are all songs that praise God for His Person, His Being, and His Greatness. Last Wednesday evening I continued a many lesson series on God's sovereignty and will now work our way through the writing of Job. Job endured some personal storms that perhaps were as gut wrenching as any ever faced but somewhere deep down inside he persevered in his faith and belief that God and God alone was his answer.

We don't know what Ike will leave us with. We pray for the protection of people everywhere including the foolish who remain directly in the path to party and surf on the beaches. May God be merciful and may we all look to Him in this time of need and in every storm we face. I'll not be here at work all day and we have already and will continue to prepare as best we can. Many of the folks who read my blog are prayer warriors. Some are even closer to the path of this storm than we are. We cannot know about all that we will experience this day and that goes for every day when you think about it. But we can know that our God knows, understands, and CARES for each of us. Now is the time for us all to abandon ourselves into His loving arms or to use the example of our Savior, to run to the protection of His wings in our time of need! May God keep us all safe and sound and may He bless one and all this very day.

Obviously, it's been a rough several days but days that have been blessed in how people have reached out to help each other. My wife's sister's husband brought us over a generator, 20 bags of ice, and 20 gallons of gasoline. A co-worker of my wife and her son, as well as some of our neighbors helped us clear the huge amount of debris from our yard. Her brother also came with him and left some cash with us. The generator has been used at our eldest son's house where we have stayed at night and he was able to share it with his neighbor as well as distribute some of the ice. When it comes down to it, writing a blog about trusting God is much different than living out your life in a manner that demonstrates this to be a core value and a near and present reality. Thanks for all the expressions of concern and continue to pray for all those who have a huge recovery in their immediate future. Amen. .....More later.