In The Garden

Hello Dear Friends,

Jody has been with Jesus for a little more than two months. Can you imagine it?

When I visit the grave - where her body awaits it's resurrection at the second coming of our Lord - I find that I really enjoy picking the flowers from our garden, just as she would. I am not talented in this area, but it is so good to grab her little basket, the clippers, a glove - and make the rounds about the house clipping the best of the blooms. (She would do this almost every week.) Then, with tears, I arrange them all in a vase, making a futile attempt to create something any where near as nice as the way she might do it.

Preparing this way makes my time at her grave more meaningful. I feel a simple connection to her, and her special way of doing things. How I miss you my, darling!

Please pray for me as I share a brief testimony with an "Adult Fellowship Group" (Sunday School) on the 10th of December. I simply want to say what God would have me say, particularly to the husbands. Thank you in advance for your sweet concern for me. It gives me so much strength to know others are faithful to pray.

Phil. 3:8-10 More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.

1Th. 4:13-18 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words.