Hi Sarah! I just finished reading your article and, wow, it really hit me hard. I've been wrestling with my faith for a while now.. I'm not giving up, but doubts do creep in every now and then.
I know this might not be the comment you were expecting, but I needed to get it off my chest. Right now, I'm feeling pretty low and uncertain.
Let me share a bit about my background. I was born in '96 in a refugee camp in Congo (DRC), and that same year, my parents moved back to Rwanda to start fresh after the genocide and wars in the region.
It was tough for my mom; she lost a son during that horrific time and soon after lost another, leaving me with one brother and one sister.
Things took a turn when I was around 12. My mom found out my dad had another woman, and by the time I was 14, he left us.
I found faith at 15, right before I finished high school. That year was a game changer, though.. it was also when my mom told me she had been living with HIV, along with my older brother (born with it) and my dad. It finally made sense why they had been so unhealthy.
My mom did her best to take care of us, even when my brother struggled with depression (he once left me a goodbye note.)
By God's grace, I graduated high school and got into medical school, but sadly, I didn't receive gvt sponsorship. My mom took a huge risk, sold some property, and sent me to med school. I was determined to study hard, thinking this was my opportunity to gain skills to take care of my family one day.
But every year, tuition kept going up, and by my final year (2019), my mom couldn’t support me anymore. I searched for other sponsorships but had no luck.
This sudden stop hit me hard, I fell into depression and questioned God. During my time of faith, from 2012 until that moment, I was involved in church, prayed a lot, dedicating myself.. I was a model for many of my peers.
When my studies ended, I felt betrayed by God and stopped going to church and reading the Bible. I used to think, “How can I follow a God who seems so uncaring?”
It wasn’t until after a failed suicide attempt that I started to process everything that had happened, and then COVID hit. My siblings also faced their struggles, my brother dropped out of uni (due to his illness), and my sis couldn’t finish high school for various reasons, including tuition.
Fast forward to today, I’ve accepted that my career was cut short before it really even started. In 2021, I moved to a rough area to try to start anew. I prayed about it and thought it was the best move for my family. I got a job, but it only lasted a couple of months.
Life has been incredibly tough since then. There have been countless days where I went two, three, or four days without eating, and I often faced eviction threats. But somehow, I endured.
Lately, though, I’m feeling really worn out. Nothing seems to improve. I had hoped that accepting I couldn’t go back to medicine meant God had a different plan for me, but my life feels stagnant, and things seem to be getting worse. I can barely support myself, let alone my family, who are also struggling.
My sister abandoned her faith after seeing what I went through, and my brother never believed in God, he thinks if God exists, He must be cruel.
I’ve tried so many things, but nothing is working out. I just turned 30 this month, and my mom hopes for grandkids from me. But with my current situation, how could I even think about dating? I don’t want to bring anyone into this mess.
Sometimes I feel hopeless and I ask God why this is happening. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve foolishly wished and prayed I could just be taken away.
Yet, in the midst of all this, I still cling to my faith. I truly believe in Jesus. There have been moments when I've felt like God doesn’t love me anymore, or that He doesn’t care about my struggles.
You might wonder why I still follow God despite everything. It's simple, deep down, I know He is real. I’ve read some apologetics that really helped reinforce my faith.
I’m not asking for pity here, I just wanted to share that your words really resonated with me.
Even if I can’t understand why things are as they are, I’ll hold onto my belief. I know there’s goodness ahead, and it surpasses the pain I’m experiencing now.
I say this knowing I could lose my mom and brother at any time, and that I feel trapped in my current situation. But still, I will die a believer.
So, my sister in Christ, I get it, it’s really hard. You might have a ton of questions about why things happen, but keep believing. The goodness that lies ahead far outweighs our current struggles.
First of all, praying for your recovery! Thanks for sharing & being vulnerable with your struggle. If nothing else, it’s a testimony of your faith. I know many are praying for you already!
Prov 3:5-6 has been a bedrock go-to for me & my wife for 54 years. It IS childlike faith that we need when we don’t understand the “why” or know “how” to move forward.
I’ve found that faith is simply moving forward in trust even when things are unclear, uncertain, or plain confusing.
Doc, you have a solid testimony already, you know your eternal destiny & you’ve suffered a lot & continue to press forward by faith.
Your life is a testimony all its own. May you know God’s peace & healing, amen!
I pray for you and a successful surgery. The 2 certainties a catholic has is that we will be born to eternal life when we leave this world, and everything is in his Hands. Nada te turbe, nada te espante, quien a Dios tiene, nada le falta, as Sta Teresa of Jesus said (Let nothing disturb you, nothing scare you, he who has God lacks nothing). God bless you.
I’m holding you in my thoughts and prayers as you recover from surgery.
Thank you for your insights. My husband (and Methodist Minister of 40 years, we’ve been married nearly 4 years) is 9 weeks post triple heart bypass surgery and I will be showing him this post.
Sarah, I met you online in a Reasonable Faith Zoom interview with you for a group out of Chicago on Nov 12, 2020. You may remember me as the guy who asked if you thought Dark Energy could be Jesus sustaining the universe. I got my love of apologetics under Mark Mittelberg and Lee Strobel at Willow Creek Community Church in a Chicago suburb. I passed your post on to Mark to pass to Lee.
I was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease two years ago on the basis of a 18-FL PET/CT scan (though as symptoms have progressed it seems to be some other or mixture of different dementias.) It was a shock, of course, but I remembered a message possibly from Dr David Jeremiah about him asking God concerning his cancer 'what do you want me to do'? rather than 'why have you allowed this in my life?' Shortly after that, my Christian retirement account manager sent me the book "Out of the Blue, the unexpected adventure of life interrupted", by Greg Murtha. Murtha follows the same guidance in describing the path he took with his cancer through over 75 rounds of chemotherapy. He saw God opening up a whole new ministry for him in the area of cancer patients. The book is wonderful - encouraging and confirming what I felt God was saying to me. My diagnosis took me and my wife of 58 years back to be in close proximity with a daughter with a neuropsychological practice as the best family support for us as this disease progressed.
The move has uncovered a serious relationship issue which needed to be addressed. And then coincidently, today the sermon we heard on Acts 8:1ff about how the early believers were scattered from their homes in Jerusalem after the martyrdom of Stephen. The pastor talked about how God's disruption of their lives could be seen as a God-directed plan to move the early church out of the comfort of Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria to carry the Gospel as commanded in Acts 1:8 - "...you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth." So the disruption became not an interruption but an invitation by God for a change in their plans. As it was a snow day today with all in-person church services canceled, we watched online from our apartment with a couple whose husband was experiencing a similar medical condition to mine and a new 96 year old believer. The discussion of the "disruptions" in our lives and how they evidenced the direction of God was a wonderful discussion topic after the service.
We will be praying for your "disruption" - that the surgery was very successful and the directional change your life may be taking as a result. Thank you for sharing your situation. I had been missing your weekly SubStack posts and was thankful to find out what was happening with you. God bless you and your family!
King David was alone and was taught to write these words “ when I am afraid I will trust in You. In God I trust when I am afraid. In God whose word I praise in God I trust. I will not be afraid.” 🤠 peace🙏
Hello Sarah - your references to the Book of Job reminded me of a devotional that may comfort you and any of your readers who face difficult times. I have read thru it twice over the years.
The Book of Job - is an ancient writing, but clearly on of the very great documents from all of history - however, it can be ‘daunting’, especially when we need it most.
Therefore I would like to recommend Mike Mason’s yearlong devotional titled: “The Gospel According to Job: An Honest Look at Pain and Doubt from the Life of One Who Lost Everything.” You will be challenged and blessed by it. - William
Sarah, grace to you and peace through Jesus the Christ. You are one of my favorite authors here. I don't really wrestle with doubt. I have grown comfortable with the tension that exists between what I believe and apparent contradictions. Obviously, faith is not knowing objectively, but it is subjectively. Many times in my life when things were difficult, I always felt that I could hear "GOD" say, will you trust me? I recognize the limits of my intelligence and faith. I press on based upon my experiences, the Bible and grace. I'm praying for your recovery and health
Paul could have healed Trophimus and Timothy but did not, he himself resigned to the thorn in his side, whatever that may have been. Many have speculated that this later ministry was based on the Spirit's healing of the deep and inner things. I am so sorry this awful disease has returned, Sarah. I hate to see the suffering of the beloved, but I also realize that the Lord has often plumbed my depths for healing in times of intense suffering. Here's more good news: if He keeps you with us on this beautiful planet, He will use this to heal others. He never wastes a hurt.
The perfect life we're promised comes after the end of this one—which feels like small comfort, but it's THAT promise which counts. God never promised that we wouldn't suffer in this life. It feels unfair, but this life isn't the reward for faithfulness through suffering. I just have to believe that God IS, and always will be, despite the death and misfortune in the world and in my own walk through it. He will walk with me through it. He provides the tools for overcoming what I can overcome, and courage that comes from the fact (the promise) that he'll catch me in the end. My family and other close loved ones (and maybe others I don't know are watching) are hopefully blessed by that courage and peace in faith.
Not that that makes it any easier, of course. He's there, though, and He knows you're suffering. I don't know if that helps or makes it worse, but it's all I have to cling to when it feels like I'm at the end of the rope and swinging by my fingertips. ❤️ Praying for you!!
I made up an expression years ago: The more certain you are that you are right, the more likely you are to be wrong. Once you are certain, you stop evaluating.
I think too may people are too insecure, so they grab at anything that gives them a sense of assurance, even if there is little to no basis for it. A worthwhile life is full of uncertainty. We need to learn to live with it.
I am coming off hearing last night, for the second time, the testimony of a woman who has volunteered and cooked for our Celebrate Recovery group for 12 years, in addition to doing other good works with children & driving meals on wheels. Outwardly a shy quiet person, she’s blessed many women by her testimony including admitting her rape at age 4 by an alcoholic animal of a father, after his fight with her alcoholic mother, when he lied and told our speaker he was going to take her out for ice cream…
This leading to years of ongoing abuse by him, culminating in the horror of her Mom, (whom she’d gratefully finally gotten together with after her parents split), telling her (the secret of the incest finally known) that this poor lady must “want to go live with her father.” And being sent to live with him by the lawyers.
Periods of grateful church attendance were punctuated by more disfunction, including rape on the first day of school (school, which she had loved) by a new step-father, who lied to her, and kept her home to do this, when she was excitedly waiting for the bus on the first day of school—over time impregnating her, twice, until wise church people helped her escape. You can never know what a seemingly well-adjusted quiet person has in their background!
This Job-like testimony last night , heard just in time for me to have read yesterday afternoon in the book “Miracles” (highly recommended, & quotes Hugh Ross extensively) by Eric Metaxas, something about disability activist Joni Eareckson Tada I’d not heard: re: scores of prayers for her healing “unanswered.”
Metaxas after an interview with Joni, heard more of her story: YES, she was energetic, sporty, & with “life ahead of her” when she broke her neck. Yes, she was so depressed for two years she would shake her head in the bed hoping to die by completing the damage to her spine. BUT: God’s hand was shown even the day she hit a sand bar, diving into brown water, from a raft, and was trapped underwater, unable to move: her sister, climbing back onto the raft, was pinched by a crab as she climbed from the water and turned to warn her sister of crabs in a pinching mood: when she saw the newly-peroxide blond hair of her sister on the bottom of water that was the precise brown color of Joni’s hair the day before, —prior to Joni’s quirky decision the very night before, to bleach her hair peroxide blonde…
Metaxas points to the type of statistical impossibility of even one parameter related to the universe existing, ref: just one of the values of strong, weak, gravity, and electromagnetic forces, 1/10 to the 40th power, to say that a healing is nothing to such a God, as was placing a Godly sperm cell into Mary, —and he points out elsewhere some of the extremes of Christianity (and the New Age, equally) thinking we can push God around and that a victim of misfortune is to blame, for their lack of faith, either in God or the New Age unified “consciousness” à la Christian Science & the mind cults.
You have a destiny and a ministry and even if it bears some resemblance to Job’s, recall that Job got to see God, and to minister to his legalistic and shallow-thinking friends. Be blessed, and I look forward to your testimony, no matter what happens, and hearing of your interactions with the medical establishment, & with your daughter, whom I was privileged to meet, at one of your talks.
I invited someone to the testimony last night, who declined to come, saying “why would I want to hear a sad story? —I felt bad, since it is a testimony of God interacting with an unfair world, to do Godly things … I hope I have not been a “miserable comforter” here, by bringing up the misfortune of others, when YOU are in need of good news;
But, I’m trusting the statistical improbability of seeing your push notification, this morning, less than 24 hours after thinking deeply about these same issues… to decide to pass them along to you.
Be blessed! I’m not “sending thoughts and prayers to you” as Metaxas decries, in the modern Godless way: I’m praying to the God outside our time and space who is unlimited and told us to pray, for his intervention no matter what that intervention might be. And He is able to do anything, in a universe he maintains perfectly on a razor’s edge of impossibility, & keeping all his promises while doing so.
(Someone more encouraging to me, whose story I’m inclined to believe, has a YouTube or three, “44 Hours in Heaven,” who was clinically dead after a botched intubation, —which I found just two days prior to a pet tragedy this Thanksgiving: speaking of family & even of our pets, ready to meet us at our upcoming mansions, etc.) —you may want to search this 1 hour testimony, from 2024.
Hi Sarah! I just finished reading your article and, wow, it really hit me hard. I've been wrestling with my faith for a while now.. I'm not giving up, but doubts do creep in every now and then.
I know this might not be the comment you were expecting, but I needed to get it off my chest. Right now, I'm feeling pretty low and uncertain.
Let me share a bit about my background. I was born in '96 in a refugee camp in Congo (DRC), and that same year, my parents moved back to Rwanda to start fresh after the genocide and wars in the region.
It was tough for my mom; she lost a son during that horrific time and soon after lost another, leaving me with one brother and one sister.
Things took a turn when I was around 12. My mom found out my dad had another woman, and by the time I was 14, he left us.
I found faith at 15, right before I finished high school. That year was a game changer, though.. it was also when my mom told me she had been living with HIV, along with my older brother (born with it) and my dad. It finally made sense why they had been so unhealthy.
My mom did her best to take care of us, even when my brother struggled with depression (he once left me a goodbye note.)
By God's grace, I graduated high school and got into medical school, but sadly, I didn't receive gvt sponsorship. My mom took a huge risk, sold some property, and sent me to med school. I was determined to study hard, thinking this was my opportunity to gain skills to take care of my family one day.
But every year, tuition kept going up, and by my final year (2019), my mom couldn’t support me anymore. I searched for other sponsorships but had no luck.
This sudden stop hit me hard, I fell into depression and questioned God. During my time of faith, from 2012 until that moment, I was involved in church, prayed a lot, dedicating myself.. I was a model for many of my peers.
When my studies ended, I felt betrayed by God and stopped going to church and reading the Bible. I used to think, “How can I follow a God who seems so uncaring?”
It wasn’t until after a failed suicide attempt that I started to process everything that had happened, and then COVID hit. My siblings also faced their struggles, my brother dropped out of uni (due to his illness), and my sis couldn’t finish high school for various reasons, including tuition.
Fast forward to today, I’ve accepted that my career was cut short before it really even started. In 2021, I moved to a rough area to try to start anew. I prayed about it and thought it was the best move for my family. I got a job, but it only lasted a couple of months.
Life has been incredibly tough since then. There have been countless days where I went two, three, or four days without eating, and I often faced eviction threats. But somehow, I endured.
Lately, though, I’m feeling really worn out. Nothing seems to improve. I had hoped that accepting I couldn’t go back to medicine meant God had a different plan for me, but my life feels stagnant, and things seem to be getting worse. I can barely support myself, let alone my family, who are also struggling.
My sister abandoned her faith after seeing what I went through, and my brother never believed in God, he thinks if God exists, He must be cruel.
I’ve tried so many things, but nothing is working out. I just turned 30 this month, and my mom hopes for grandkids from me. But with my current situation, how could I even think about dating? I don’t want to bring anyone into this mess.
Sometimes I feel hopeless and I ask God why this is happening. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve foolishly wished and prayed I could just be taken away.
Yet, in the midst of all this, I still cling to my faith. I truly believe in Jesus. There have been moments when I've felt like God doesn’t love me anymore, or that He doesn’t care about my struggles.
You might wonder why I still follow God despite everything. It's simple, deep down, I know He is real. I’ve read some apologetics that really helped reinforce my faith.
I’m not asking for pity here, I just wanted to share that your words really resonated with me.
Even if I can’t understand why things are as they are, I’ll hold onto my belief. I know there’s goodness ahead, and it surpasses the pain I’m experiencing now.
I say this knowing I could lose my mom and brother at any time, and that I feel trapped in my current situation. But still, I will die a believer.
So, my sister in Christ, I get it, it’s really hard. You might have a ton of questions about why things happen, but keep believing. The goodness that lies ahead far outweighs our current struggles.
I’ll be praying for you. Take care!
First of all, praying for your recovery! Thanks for sharing & being vulnerable with your struggle. If nothing else, it’s a testimony of your faith. I know many are praying for you already!
Prov 3:5-6 has been a bedrock go-to for me & my wife for 54 years. It IS childlike faith that we need when we don’t understand the “why” or know “how” to move forward.
I’ve found that faith is simply moving forward in trust even when things are unclear, uncertain, or plain confusing.
Doc, you have a solid testimony already, you know your eternal destiny & you’ve suffered a lot & continue to press forward by faith.
Your life is a testimony all its own. May you know God’s peace & healing, amen!
May the Lord bless you and bring his healing grace upon you. 🙏🥰
I pray for you and a successful surgery. The 2 certainties a catholic has is that we will be born to eternal life when we leave this world, and everything is in his Hands. Nada te turbe, nada te espante, quien a Dios tiene, nada le falta, as Sta Teresa of Jesus said (Let nothing disturb you, nothing scare you, he who has God lacks nothing). God bless you.
Get well. And rest well. You're on the right path. Those you love will always be with you, where ever you are.
I’m holding you in my thoughts and prayers as you recover from surgery.
Thank you for your insights. My husband (and Methodist Minister of 40 years, we’ve been married nearly 4 years) is 9 weeks post triple heart bypass surgery and I will be showing him this post.
Big hugs.
Dee
x
Sarah, I met you online in a Reasonable Faith Zoom interview with you for a group out of Chicago on Nov 12, 2020. You may remember me as the guy who asked if you thought Dark Energy could be Jesus sustaining the universe. I got my love of apologetics under Mark Mittelberg and Lee Strobel at Willow Creek Community Church in a Chicago suburb. I passed your post on to Mark to pass to Lee.
I was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease two years ago on the basis of a 18-FL PET/CT scan (though as symptoms have progressed it seems to be some other or mixture of different dementias.) It was a shock, of course, but I remembered a message possibly from Dr David Jeremiah about him asking God concerning his cancer 'what do you want me to do'? rather than 'why have you allowed this in my life?' Shortly after that, my Christian retirement account manager sent me the book "Out of the Blue, the unexpected adventure of life interrupted", by Greg Murtha. Murtha follows the same guidance in describing the path he took with his cancer through over 75 rounds of chemotherapy. He saw God opening up a whole new ministry for him in the area of cancer patients. The book is wonderful - encouraging and confirming what I felt God was saying to me. My diagnosis took me and my wife of 58 years back to be in close proximity with a daughter with a neuropsychological practice as the best family support for us as this disease progressed.
The move has uncovered a serious relationship issue which needed to be addressed. And then coincidently, today the sermon we heard on Acts 8:1ff about how the early believers were scattered from their homes in Jerusalem after the martyrdom of Stephen. The pastor talked about how God's disruption of their lives could be seen as a God-directed plan to move the early church out of the comfort of Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria to carry the Gospel as commanded in Acts 1:8 - "...you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth." So the disruption became not an interruption but an invitation by God for a change in their plans. As it was a snow day today with all in-person church services canceled, we watched online from our apartment with a couple whose husband was experiencing a similar medical condition to mine and a new 96 year old believer. The discussion of the "disruptions" in our lives and how they evidenced the direction of God was a wonderful discussion topic after the service.
We will be praying for your "disruption" - that the surgery was very successful and the directional change your life may be taking as a result. Thank you for sharing your situation. I had been missing your weekly SubStack posts and was thankful to find out what was happening with you. God bless you and your family!
Rick
King David was alone and was taught to write these words “ when I am afraid I will trust in You. In God I trust when I am afraid. In God whose word I praise in God I trust. I will not be afraid.” 🤠 peace🙏
Hello Sarah - your references to the Book of Job reminded me of a devotional that may comfort you and any of your readers who face difficult times. I have read thru it twice over the years.
The Book of Job - is an ancient writing, but clearly on of the very great documents from all of history - however, it can be ‘daunting’, especially when we need it most.
Therefore I would like to recommend Mike Mason’s yearlong devotional titled: “The Gospel According to Job: An Honest Look at Pain and Doubt from the Life of One Who Lost Everything.” You will be challenged and blessed by it. - William
You are in my prayers.
Sarah, grace to you and peace through Jesus the Christ. You are one of my favorite authors here. I don't really wrestle with doubt. I have grown comfortable with the tension that exists between what I believe and apparent contradictions. Obviously, faith is not knowing objectively, but it is subjectively. Many times in my life when things were difficult, I always felt that I could hear "GOD" say, will you trust me? I recognize the limits of my intelligence and faith. I press on based upon my experiences, the Bible and grace. I'm praying for your recovery and health
Paul could have healed Trophimus and Timothy but did not, he himself resigned to the thorn in his side, whatever that may have been. Many have speculated that this later ministry was based on the Spirit's healing of the deep and inner things. I am so sorry this awful disease has returned, Sarah. I hate to see the suffering of the beloved, but I also realize that the Lord has often plumbed my depths for healing in times of intense suffering. Here's more good news: if He keeps you with us on this beautiful planet, He will use this to heal others. He never wastes a hurt.
Well said. Walking by faith means living with uncertainty, even when it's uncomfortable.
Praying for your quick and full recovery, for peace and provision.
I'll be praying for you, Sarah!! 🫂🙏
The perfect life we're promised comes after the end of this one—which feels like small comfort, but it's THAT promise which counts. God never promised that we wouldn't suffer in this life. It feels unfair, but this life isn't the reward for faithfulness through suffering. I just have to believe that God IS, and always will be, despite the death and misfortune in the world and in my own walk through it. He will walk with me through it. He provides the tools for overcoming what I can overcome, and courage that comes from the fact (the promise) that he'll catch me in the end. My family and other close loved ones (and maybe others I don't know are watching) are hopefully blessed by that courage and peace in faith.
Not that that makes it any easier, of course. He's there, though, and He knows you're suffering. I don't know if that helps or makes it worse, but it's all I have to cling to when it feels like I'm at the end of the rope and swinging by my fingertips. ❤️ Praying for you!!
I made up an expression years ago: The more certain you are that you are right, the more likely you are to be wrong. Once you are certain, you stop evaluating.
I think too may people are too insecure, so they grab at anything that gives them a sense of assurance, even if there is little to no basis for it. A worthwhile life is full of uncertainty. We need to learn to live with it.
I am coming off hearing last night, for the second time, the testimony of a woman who has volunteered and cooked for our Celebrate Recovery group for 12 years, in addition to doing other good works with children & driving meals on wheels. Outwardly a shy quiet person, she’s blessed many women by her testimony including admitting her rape at age 4 by an alcoholic animal of a father, after his fight with her alcoholic mother, when he lied and told our speaker he was going to take her out for ice cream…
This leading to years of ongoing abuse by him, culminating in the horror of her Mom, (whom she’d gratefully finally gotten together with after her parents split), telling her (the secret of the incest finally known) that this poor lady must “want to go live with her father.” And being sent to live with him by the lawyers.
Periods of grateful church attendance were punctuated by more disfunction, including rape on the first day of school (school, which she had loved) by a new step-father, who lied to her, and kept her home to do this, when she was excitedly waiting for the bus on the first day of school—over time impregnating her, twice, until wise church people helped her escape. You can never know what a seemingly well-adjusted quiet person has in their background!
This Job-like testimony last night , heard just in time for me to have read yesterday afternoon in the book “Miracles” (highly recommended, & quotes Hugh Ross extensively) by Eric Metaxas, something about disability activist Joni Eareckson Tada I’d not heard: re: scores of prayers for her healing “unanswered.”
Metaxas after an interview with Joni, heard more of her story: YES, she was energetic, sporty, & with “life ahead of her” when she broke her neck. Yes, she was so depressed for two years she would shake her head in the bed hoping to die by completing the damage to her spine. BUT: God’s hand was shown even the day she hit a sand bar, diving into brown water, from a raft, and was trapped underwater, unable to move: her sister, climbing back onto the raft, was pinched by a crab as she climbed from the water and turned to warn her sister of crabs in a pinching mood: when she saw the newly-peroxide blond hair of her sister on the bottom of water that was the precise brown color of Joni’s hair the day before, —prior to Joni’s quirky decision the very night before, to bleach her hair peroxide blonde…
Metaxas points to the type of statistical impossibility of even one parameter related to the universe existing, ref: just one of the values of strong, weak, gravity, and electromagnetic forces, 1/10 to the 40th power, to say that a healing is nothing to such a God, as was placing a Godly sperm cell into Mary, —and he points out elsewhere some of the extremes of Christianity (and the New Age, equally) thinking we can push God around and that a victim of misfortune is to blame, for their lack of faith, either in God or the New Age unified “consciousness” à la Christian Science & the mind cults.
You have a destiny and a ministry and even if it bears some resemblance to Job’s, recall that Job got to see God, and to minister to his legalistic and shallow-thinking friends. Be blessed, and I look forward to your testimony, no matter what happens, and hearing of your interactions with the medical establishment, & with your daughter, whom I was privileged to meet, at one of your talks.
I invited someone to the testimony last night, who declined to come, saying “why would I want to hear a sad story? —I felt bad, since it is a testimony of God interacting with an unfair world, to do Godly things … I hope I have not been a “miserable comforter” here, by bringing up the misfortune of others, when YOU are in need of good news;
But, I’m trusting the statistical improbability of seeing your push notification, this morning, less than 24 hours after thinking deeply about these same issues… to decide to pass them along to you.
Be blessed! I’m not “sending thoughts and prayers to you” as Metaxas decries, in the modern Godless way: I’m praying to the God outside our time and space who is unlimited and told us to pray, for his intervention no matter what that intervention might be. And He is able to do anything, in a universe he maintains perfectly on a razor’s edge of impossibility, & keeping all his promises while doing so.
(Someone more encouraging to me, whose story I’m inclined to believe, has a YouTube or three, “44 Hours in Heaven,” who was clinically dead after a botched intubation, —which I found just two days prior to a pet tragedy this Thanksgiving: speaking of family & even of our pets, ready to meet us at our upcoming mansions, etc.) —you may want to search this 1 hour testimony, from 2024.