Embers...

   Life has been so crazy this week! I have been up and back from Seattle to help my parents out with some stuff and during that time Parker spiked a fever and had trouble breathing, Doug has gotten sick and yesterday Georgia had a fever of 105.3 and just as I got home broke out into hives....phew it has been a trying time. Now, all three kids are cozied up with various degrees of fevers and crud while eating pancakes and watching a movie....it is a cozy kind of day and I am just so thrilled to be home loving and caring for them, kissing their sweet cheeks as much as they will let me :)
    I read this while in the midst of the crazies and it keeps speaking to my heart:
Streams in the Desert...

" Just and true are Thy ways, thou King of saints"

Revelation 15:3

     The following incident is related by Mrs. Charles Spurgeon, who was a great sufferer for more than a quarter of a century: "At the close of a dark and gloomy day, I lay resting on my couch as the deeper night drew on; and though all was bright within my cozy room, some of the external darkness seemed to have entered into my soul and obscured it's spiritual vision. Vainly I tried to see the hand which I knew held mine, and guided my fog-enveloped feet along a steep and slippery path of suffering. In sorrow of heart I asked,

     " Why does my Lord thus deal with His child? Why does He so often send sharp and bitter pain to visit me? Why does He permit lingering weakness to hinder the sweet service I long to render to His poor servants?"

     These fretful questions were quickly answered, and through a strange language; no interpreter was needed save the concious whisper of my heart.

     For while a silence reigned in the little room, broken only by the crackling of the oak log burning in the fireplace. Suddenly I heard a sweet, soft sound, a little, clear, musical note, like the tender trill of a robin beneath my window.

     "What can it be? Surely no bird can be singing out there at this time of year and night."

     Again came the faint, plaintive notes, so sweet, so melodious, yet mysterious enough to provoke our wonder. My friend exclaimed, "It comes from the log on the fire!"

     The fire was leting loose the imprisoned music from the old oak's inmost heart! Perchance he had garnered up this song in the days when all was well with him, when birds twittered merrily on his branches, and the soft sunlight flecked his tender leaves with gold. But he had grown old since then, and hardened; ring after ring of knotty growth had sealed up the long-forgotten melody, until the fierce tongues of the flames came to consume his callousness, and the vehement heart of the fire wrung him at once a song and a sacrifice. "Ah," thought I, "when the fire of affliction draws songs of praise from us, then indeed we are purified, and our God is glorified!"

     Perhaps some of us are like this old oak log, cold, hard, insensible; we should give forth no melodious sounds, were it not for the fire which kindles around us, and releases notes of trust in Him, and cheerful compliance with His will.

     As I mused the fire burned, and my soul found sweet comfort in the parable so strangely set before me. Singing in the fire! Yes, God helping us, if that is the only way to get harmony out of these hard apathetic hearts, let the furnace be heated seven times hotter than before.

                                                                     ***

Then I also read this....

    " As Dr. C. stood on a high peak of the Rocky Mountains watching a storm raging below him, an eagle came up through the clouds and soared away towards the sun, and the water upon him glistened in the sunlight like diamonds. Had it not been for the storm he might have remained in the valley. The sorrows of life cause us to rise toward God.

                                                                     ***

Be blessed today knowing that no storm can ever take you out of His loving, all capable hands....

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,  neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:38-39

Now I'm off to kiss some more cheeks!