Who'duhthunkit?

Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles ... I got a comment on my blog. It's pretty fun. I mentioned to one of my dear friends that I had a blog and she commented that what reading a blog is like is reading someone else's diary but with their permission. I know that I really enjoy reading my friend Kathleen's blog because she lives 3 hours away and getting to read the details she chooses to share about her life makes it seem like she's not so far away, and it blunts the disappointment of not getting to spend more time with her.

Today is a spectacularly beautiful day with totally blue skies, and bright sunshine, but temperatures in the mid-70s. It isn't my totally favorite kind of weather which is these same conditions but with temperatures in the mid-60s. My body has always seemed to have it's thermostat set higher than other peoples so it seems like I'm always too warm where others are loving the warmer temperatures. Go figure. [With a comment like "go figure" you'd think I was was born and raised in Jersey, eh? Of course, adding "eh" to the end makes it seem like I'm Canadian.]

On another topic ... I have felt physically better for the last 5 or 6 days than I have in a very long time. When people ask how I am I practically giggle when I tell them that I am fine and feeling good. And, of course, the astonished look on people's faces is really fun too, which prompts me to want to giggle some more. It's really encouraging to have some time of feeling "well" rather than just tolerating how I feel. Praise God for His many blessings.

Praising God makes me feel remiss in not sharing a thought that I had when I was first diagnosed with diabetes. My thought was that becoming diabetic was sort of a "tender mercy" from God in that it would force me to take better care of myself. I have forgotten that for a while but I believe it is true. [As an aside, the reason I put "tender mercy" in quotation marks is that it reminded me of the book "A Severe Mercy" by Sheldon Vanauken who was a professor at Lynchburg College in Lynchburg, Virginia. He was a friend and protégé of C.S. Lewis. His book tells a re-life love story, full of wonder and hope. It also demonstrates how something really hard, really sad, and really painful can end up being God's blessing and tender mercy toward us.]

God is so very good to me and blesses me so much beyond what I deserve, that rather than ask God "why did you let me become diabetic?" the reality is, "why not me?" Grace is my getting what I don't deserve, and mercy is me not getting what I do deserve. If God were really "fair" with me, I would have died and gone to hell long, long ago for all of my sins. [As another aside, I readily acknowledge that my trying to judge God's choices to determine what is "fair" between God and me is a really absurd thing to say or think. God is the author, finisher, and definer of fair. Who am I with my puny thoughts and pathetic self-interest to determine what is "fair" with God? God decides what is fair, "not I," said the duck.]

God says that the penalty for sin is death, which is to say eternal separation from God, and I was a sinner, I am a sinner, and I will be a sinner, but I am a sinner who is saved by the utterly indescribable, and amazing grace of a God who is especially fond of me, a God who loves me, and a God who loves me enough to let His one and only beloved Son, in whom He was "well pleased" suffer and die an utterly humiliating, painful death on a Roman cross, not for any sin of His own, but for my sin. So the reality is that I need to know and recall all the time that if I had gotten what I deserved I would have been condemned. "But now there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death." Romans 8:1-2 Now that is another thing to praise God for.

Well ... I suspect that is enough of a sermon for today. Now, if you will all turn to page 280 in your blue hymnals, we'll all sing Amazing Grace together, and I look forward to hearing all of your beautiful harmonies! You altos, sing out ladies, sing out!