Immanuel-
Our God is with us!
And if God is with us
Who could stand against us?
Our God is with us-
Immanuel!
For all those who live in the shadow of death
A glorious light has dawned.
For all those who stumble in the darkness,
Behold, your light has come!
7:30 AM here in the northwest- and I think I might be waiting in vain
for the sun to rise! With the fog and dark clouds, it seemed yesterday it just
never really “rose”! Michael Card’s song Immanuel has both run thru my
mind as well as belted out from my Ipod these weeks here. The message of hope-
God with us, our Light has come!
We can’t hear “Immanuel” without thinking of 2 significant stories from
our time in Honduras. It is not an uncommon name here, but was meaningfully
given to 2 special babies. The first was the very tiny son of Kaylin, a young
lady we’d ministered to during her pregnancy, knowing full well she would not
survive the pregnancy. She had a fatal heart defect, and it seemed unlikely her
baby would come to term. But unlike most mothers here, she named her in-utero
baby before birth, Immanuel. Kaylin died within hours of Immanuel's birth, and
her sister Delmy has raised him. He will
celebrate his 4th birthday soon, truly a sign that God is with us.
The other Immanuel just turned 3, and is the son of 2 radiologists in La
Ceiba. They themselves discovered while she was pregnant that their baby had a
spina bifida. They came to John, begging him to find them good options in the
US. He did, thru a sequence of miracles, and their Immanuel was born in Houston
with the best of prenatal care and postnatal surgery. Today, Immanuel walks with
braces, and is developing normally, with a shunt for his hydrocephaly. To see
his sparkly eyes, one knows for certain that God is with us.
God delights in making Himself known to us in very personal ways.
“Behold, your Light has come”. We pray
that in the midst of whatever you are going through in your journey right now,
this Christmas message of an unchanging God that is “with us” will ring clearly.
John and I will be in our home in WA thru the Christmas season,
finishing up needed remodeling. We have
made 2 trips to see friends and family here, but think the snow will keep us
closer to home now until we return to Honduras.
We are sensing more and more of a need to return to our children and
grandchildren in the Tulsa area, so more on those plans in the future. We covet
your prayers as we seek wisdom and direction for God’s perfect timing. For
those that are scholarshiping students, both nursing and highschool, we will be
in touch about how those arrangements will continue. May you have a blessed
Christmas! Thanks for all your
incredible encouragement of us. John and Penny
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