My Hope is in You

Make 2014 a year of Sharing

“My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, and they come to an end without hope.” – Job 7:6

The home phone rings, which is pretty rare since the era of electronic devices is upon us and most people aren’t using home phones anymore.  As he picks up the phone with a grumpy, “Hellllloo”  On the other end he hears the voice of a police office, “Joe, It’s about your daughter, Amanda.”  Suddenly his heart was beating faster and there was a lump in his throat.  It was a small town and he knew everyone, and everyone knew him.  The Police officer was a close friend of the family, and if he called the home phone, it meant official business.  Immediately, he started evaluating the tones of the officer’s voice, and feared for the worst.  “Yes, what about her? “  “There’s been an accident and she was involved.  We’re going to need you to come down here.” said the Police officer quietly.  “Is she okay?” he asked. “No Joe. No she’s not.  You and Debbie need to me at the emergency room.”

A call that a parent never wants to get.  We try to protect them, we try to teach them, and we try to hold onto them.  Letting go is hard and scary.  We know what is in the world and we know the dangers that wait around every corner.  For years we hold their hand, we walk alongside of their bike, we run to their side when the fall down or get hit by a pitch.  Countless booboos are healed with a gentle mother’s kiss.  Hundreds of times we are telling them to put on your seatbelt, wear your helmet, don’t run out into the street, look both ways, don’t jump off that, get down out of that tree, be careful it’s hot and so on and so on.  Then comes the days when they borrow the keys to run to the store.  Sitting on pins and needles for the 20 minutes it takes them to get there and back.  Then a longer trip to the mall, and then to the movies and then a friends house, and then the beach.  They become more comfortable behind the wheel and we become less stressed each time they walk out the door.  A gentle transition takes place as their confidence grows and a parents grip loosens, until one day they have left for college.  Then it hits home that our work is nearly complete.

When that call comes in though, every thought, every emotion, every memory rushes through your brain.  Your biggest fears surface and begin to haunt you with the possibilities.  Your ability to control the hysteria and anxiety go right out the window and your sense of control is suddenly vanquished.  In that moment, in the presence of the unknown and fears, who are you going to reach to?  Will you pray?  Will you plead with God for your child’s life to be spared?  Will you barter your life for theirs?  What will you do when you have no control over a desperate situation?  Many of us would reach out to God Almighty in this type of a circumstance.  We would reach out to Him because we know, deep inside, that He is there, He is sovereign and ultimately in control of life and death.

We hear stories of people who have passed over, and then came back.  A book came out just a few years ago, Heaven is for Real, about a small boy from Nebraska, Colton Burpo, and his visit to heaven during an emergency surgery,   It has been scoffed at, ridiculed and claimed to be fantasy.  Why?  Why is it so hard to accept that there is a heaven and a hell, just as the Bible states?  How can people reach out to a God on their death bed, or the death bed of a loved one, yet at the same time make statements that these books, movies and stories are completely fabricated?

God is in control, He is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End of every life.  We reach to Him because we are hopeless without Him.  For those that do not believe in Him, where is their hope?  Where will they turn in the event of a tragedy in their life?  For that matter what value does life even represent?  It could be gone tomorrow and if there is no heaven, no hell and their assertions are correct that there is no God, then what, it’s over, it’s for naught?  Sixty, seventy, eighty years of waking, working, loving and sleeping are gone and that’s it.  What hope does that person have, how do they put a value on life and death?  If there is no value on life and death, than why live?

I have hit my knees so many times and pleading with God for the safety of my children and for the well-being of my loved ones.  Sometimes it doesn’t go the way I would like it to, but my faith in God is not shaken.  I realize that there are bigger purposes to life’s events than I will ever know.  A death to a loved one might indeed bring someone else to the realization that God is in control and that they are outside of His plan.  It’s painful none the less, but falling back on the hope and trust in God the Father, heaven and His eternal presence ensures me that this life is but a very short phase, and my life with Him and with my lost loved ones, that likewise believed, will last for an eternity.  My life is filled with hope and I press on to help others find the same.

© Sondove Enterprises, 2014
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