Psalm 140
The past week might have been the most life altering week of our lives. Kathie and I have experienced the high point of celebrating my 60th birthday with dear friends to the low of having a heart attack on Tuesday. We are still trying to process everything that occurred and even today it is surreal to us. But we have been asking God to teach us each step of the journey. Here are a few lessons we have learned.
1. Give glory to God for his mercy and grace. We can come up with a 100 different scenarios where the ending to the story is drastically different. All we can say is that God is good, and He is good all the time.
2. God's presence makes a huge difference when we go through the storms of life. We don't get to select the storm but we do get to select our guide through the storm. God's presence at each step of this journey has brought us peace, comfort and even joy.
3. Every day is precious. There are no guarantees for tomorrow. So live life intentionally today. When I was on the operating table I didn't think about my house, my car, my bank account, my upcoming Triathlon; what I thought about was Jesus, my wife, my family and my incredible friends. Those are the things that really count.
4. Simple acts of kindness make a huge difference. (These two stories illustrate the first point of Kenny's sermon today about doing the little things. They had already been written before hearing the sermon.)
Kathie was in the hallway at the hospital composing herself after getting choked up during a phone call. A staff physical therapist who was walking by stopped and hugged her and talked with her for several minutes to make sure she was okay.
When I was at the Tully Immediate Care Center I was very close to losing consciousness. By that time I knew I was having a heart attack and I was in grave danger. The pain of the attack was a "9" on the 1-10 scale, I selected 9 because I didn't want to run out of options for numbers. But in the process of being treated, a single little tear formed at the side of my right eye. As I was being wheeled out of the room on the stretcher, a kind doctor took her hospital gown and dabbed that tear.
These were such simple acts yet they touched us deeply.
The Psalmist says that righteous people praise God and live their lives with the reality of his presence. May our experience encourage you to do the same.
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