PF sucks...

...but God is good. I stumbled upon a passage in Job tonight that caught me. After Job has lost his entire family, all of his belongings, his health and wellbeing, he is still clinging to God and even arguing with his friends about God's goodness and sovereignty. Even though he hates his life and curses the day he was born, he continues to proclaim God as king. Even as he wonders why God has allowed all of this pain, he tells his friends:

"I know that my Redeemer lives,

and that in the end he will stand upon the earth.

And after my skin has een destroyed,

yet in my flesh I will see God;

I myself will see him with my own eyes -

I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!"

Probably everyone who reads my blog knows about the recent death of my uncle Dan, which came all too quickly after Aunt Peggy's last March. These two have been added to a long list of people in our extended family who have died as a result of pulmonary fibrosis - a progressive, fatal lung disease with no known treatment at this time.

Over these past couple years I have felt that my family has been stricken... with a terrible disease, as well as with pain and suffering and loss. And through all of it I have struggled to cling to God. My faith has been shaken; I have doubted God and questioned Him... His authority, His perfect love, His very being. And here is Job, having lost everything, holding fast to his belief -- claiming it as undeniable truth -- that God reigns, that He is alive, and that He is coming back to rule the earth. And he knows that he will be alive to see it. Everlasting life... that is the promise we have in Jesus Christ. Praise him!