Dad and I watched a biographical film of William Carey on Netflix last Sunday evening. It was really quite good, and made me think again about this incredible man, self-taught, who learned about forty languages over the course of his life, translating not only the Bible into many Indian laanguages, but Indian classics - including religious ones - into English, for his countrymen, and starting, I believe, an Indian Renaissance of learning...He advocated for a change in different laws, successfully, and did groundbreaking horticultural research...Wow!...And he said he succeeded becuase he was a plodder, would never give up...And he didn't...I was talking with young Stephen at work about Carey. He has been to India twice on mission trips, and visited Carey's grave. From the description he gave, it seems that it is very ordinary, and perhaps even run down...It reminded me of an incident I read about in Brother Yun's book (One of the five heads of the underground church in China)...After years of intense suffering and persecution in his country, he eventually escaped to the west - to Germany. He soon went to visit the grave of a woman who had spent years in his part of China - a faithful, (single, I believe) Christian who had laid the foundation for great harvest. She was remembered and revered by the whole church...He found her grave completely unkempt...He gave a Christian tonguelashing to the local body of believers and made sure this was changed. I found this very interesting...A man who knew what it was to be starved, beaten, penniless - and there were many others he knew still in that situation - who still wanted time and money spent on the dust and ashed of a woman who had served the church well...The body of the Christian is never considered inconsequential, is it, either in life or death...

Anyway, today is "1890's" day in Ringgold, so Andrew and I will go over, and meet Fryes and Helms, plus a lovely young Korean coupld attending our church, for the day. Weather should be hot and clear, so should be fun...Plucky iittle Ringgold is just going on with life! And so are we all, right?

I was sorely in need of comfort this morning and got up in the wee hours to spend time with the Lord...I am amazed and so grateful that I don't serve a concept but a true heavenly Father...The way He takes you in his arms, like a parent comforting a small child...Words of love and strength - mind-clearing words of life...Context and truth and reality...Away with the little, man-made world that I create, where all is loss and confusion!...And how, in view of all this, can any parent bring up their child with an Ezzo philosophy?...I am not God's adversary and He is not mine....Emmanuel...God WITH me!

I was thinking about the words of the Twenty-Third Psalm..."Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil"....Until recently, I had thought of these as hypothetical, God will be with us in our worst case scenarios, but have come to see them as a present reality, tying right in with God's own analysis of life as we live it day by day...ALTHOUGH we walk through the valley of the shadow of death... Luke 1:78-79..."...whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who are in darkness and in the shadow of death to guide our feet into the way of peace..."...Nothing easy about this life, about our perpetual calling as soldiers...We LIVE in the valley of the shadow of death, though with peace and even victory because of the One who conquered death...

I am off to work today as took my usual Monday off to be with Rick and Susanna - am making up some of the hours...May God be with me, indeed Emmanuel, as I seek to show sin-ravaged kids that Comfort with which I was comforted this morning.
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