musings for this week.

I am reading (amongst others) Matthew's Henry's "Experiencing the presence of God" and can thorougly recommend this book both for its applicability to every day life, and for its ease of reading. (Not Brain of Britain you know!) But the theme that has been heavy on my heart and relevant, of late, as to how or where we put our dependance. I was talking to my closest Christian friend this week by telephone, a man of God, and he had had some what turned out to be minor family trouble, but at the time he felt under attack and bought low. And he has been aware of all the attacks and struggles over the last three years since I became sick, probably better than anyone else here. And I said to Him, how often, when we are low, and have nothing else that is holding us, that will often be when God becomes most visible. He has said himself, that over the last three years, with the dipping and diving my health is continually taking and the crises that happen almost on a weekly basis, that seeing as up until now, (tho this may soon change) symptom management is all there is, that God knows what i need better than the doctors do. And I was skeptical at first. i mean who likes to be sick, and just basically tossed aside to get on with it? Which of us if we had cancer, would be happy about treatment being witheld for no good reason? And I know from first hand knowledge of other people i've met online with the condtion that death is all too often a reality for people with this condition. So, the question. The doctors have done naff all to actually help apart from pain mangement and other symptom management. I struggle on alone here (or as good as) day after day, and if a medial emergency happens, no one is around who would get help. I lay in bed for a week not too long ago, without food being bought to me but I was too sick to get it myself. And cos I do have someone else in the house, people assume he sees to my needs, rather more than they should. But it seems at least twice a month but more often once a week, things get so rough that it seems like at any time I could be staring death in the face. So, given the above circumstances over almost three years of continuity now, who else but God, has kept me.

When people hear of my past, they wonder i aint' a fruit cake. (tho i insist on being 'Crazy') and none of this surviving even intact as weak and hopless as i am, is down to me. Who kept me thru the wilderness years when I've seen others end there life thru less traumatic circumstances? When illness for years should have taken every bit of brain power that survived. One can't have a major grand mal seizure every 10-12 mins, 24/7 for weeks on end, and not lose humongous amounts of brain capacity through it. Can they? Well, as I said, its nothing i have done. i was living life day by day, angry at the creator for the hand life had dealt me, and not realizing that if not but FOR the creator, I would not have a life at all.

And days at a time sometimes, I can be shut in one room, throwing up, in ubearable pain in my body, and all that time alone. isn't that a recipe for madness? No! God will reveal Himself at these times, and He manifests Himself into reality. Its obvious where our help comes from. I sometimes feel so alone in coping with this sickness. And yet, in other ways i never feel alone. I can have hours and hours of silence, but as long as my God is there, something good is happening. We can put our hope in people who at some point will lose the plot, let us down, and then that can make us distrustful and maybe some of that distrust will extend towards God. We can put our trust in the god of this world. Money, riches and/or pleasure. But will they get us through even the most hardest times, and keep us from danger and harm? will they sustain us in any real way thru the storms of life. No, we can say along with the sweet singer of Israel. "my help comes from the LORD."

My Help Comes from the LORD

A Song of Ascents.

1I lift up my eyes to the hills.
From where does my help come?
2My help comes from the LORD,
who made heaven and earth.
3He will not let your foot be moved;
he who keeps you will not slumber.
4Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.
5The LORD is your keeper;
the LORD is your shade on your right hand.
6The sun shall not strike you by day,
nor the moon by night.
7The LORD will keep you from all evil;
he will keep your life.
8The LORD will keep your going out
and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore. [Psalm 121]

11/26/2004 11:27:00 pm :: ::
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