There are many stories I could share, but the one I am thinking of right now came to my mind as we were discussing the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives at the care group meeting we were attending last week.
This situation took place shortly after Renee died. By shortly, I mean less than a year, maybe four months or six months. Something like that. I can't remember. It is now three years and nine months ago.
I was feeling very overwhelmed with the grief that day, which is quite normal. I was in a certain spot passing from one room into another and all of a sudden the words of a hymn came to my mind, but just as suddenly as I was crossing into the next room it was gone.
(Apparently leaving one room, to go to another does that to our brains. I recently read an article about somebody that studied this effect.)
Anyway, I was very upset that it had left my memory as soon as it had come. If this was a message from God, why did it escape me so soon. Wasn't it a message that I needed?
The very next day, at the very same spot and maybe even the very same time of day, the message came again.
It was the lines from a hymn that go like this:
"Ask the Saviour to help you,
Comfort, strengthen and keep you,
He is willing to aid you,
He will carry you through."
So many times when I feel that I can't go on, that life is too hard, I have to remind myself again that I need to keep focusing on God, and believe that he will do that if I ask, to believe that he wants to help me, carry me, comfort me, strengthen me.
Last week Friday was a hard day as we finally got the gravestone done. The awful, gut wrenching reality hit me again. That morning the Girlfriends in God devotional was based on Zeph.3:17
“The LORD your God is with you, He is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing.” (Zephaniah 3:17, NIV)
This morning in church a soloist sang a song she wrote based on that verse.
Often when God needs to reinforce a truth, it comes in packages of two or three.