“Mom, Mom, a tornado just ripped through our yard busting out windows and tearing off part of the porch. The worst part is I don’t know where Ginny is. She won’t answer her phone. She may be driving into the storm.”

The weather report had predicted a strong chance of thunder storms with possible tornadoes for our area with good weather following. Such warnings are usually no cause for alarm in our area. We listened for how many days of good weather we could expect that week. At the coast, two and one half hours away from home, there was nothing to alert me to the trouble our home area was experiencing until I answered our son’s phone call. (Read More)

Twenty-six year old Beau Slocumb died midnight April 8, 2011 after a long and courageous battle with cancer. The death of a loved one is never easy, but the death of one so young, so fine, and so loved is inconceivable. Yet it happened in spite of many hopes and prayers. How are we as believers to handle such losses and disappointments?

When Lazarus died, those who saw Jesus’ deep emotions at the grave asked “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying” (John 11:37)? The very confusing answer is “yes,” Jesus could have kept Lazarus — and Beau — from dying. So then the question becomes if Jesus loved Lazarus and his family, and He did (John 11:3), and if Jesus loved Beau and his family, and He does, WHY did He allow these deaths? (Read More)

How do you view setbacks or bad news? A friend let me know that the project we were working on just received some disappointing news. An inspector recommended that the building we had hoped to remodel for some ministry offices needed to be condemned.

Postponed hope can make you feel heart sick, but truth is our friend. To have made the visual aspects beautiful with the hidden parts being unstable and dangerous would have been disastrous. Wishing it were different is wasted energy. Praying for new direction while acknowledging our disappointment is realistic. (Read More)

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. 2 Corinthians 1:3-4.

Two qualities are needed to be a biblical comforter. First, you must know pain. If you have never hurt it is very doubtful that you will be able to empathize with someone in pain. You don’t have to have suffered in the same way but you do have to be acquainted with grief.

A woman freshly bereaved of her child told me that this was the second time she had gone through the death of a child. She told me that this time around her pastor was a comfort to her where he had not been the first time. “He has obviously experienced grief since we lost our first son,” she confided. (Read More)