Anniversaries are great. They are opportunities to celebrate – special occasions or great people. But sometimes an anniversary comes and it causes you to be sad. For instance, this week marks two years since my husband’s brother passed away. This was a very sad and untimely event in our family’s history. It was so sudden and followed so soon after my husband’s father had passed away that it was almost unbearable. His health was even affected because of the stress and a fear that he too would die prematurely.
So here we are two years after that very sad time. And we have a good life. God has been very kind to place us in “green pastures” and has “restored [the] soul” and health of my husband in many ways. But at times like these, on these anniversaries, we are all taken back in memory to that hardest of times and it both saddens and encourages us. The memory still hurts but at the same time, we see God’s amazing faithfulness and care.
My husband is preaching this Sunday so he’s preparing his message in the midst of grieving. Even after two years, he still picks up the phone to call his Dad and brother. Tough times. I’ve been praying for him. To add to his disquiet, there was a fifth anniversary celebration of the church he helped plant and led in New York for four years, but we didn’t know about it until after the fact. No one’s fault. Church planting is a busy business and it’s easy to overlook things. We’re not discouraged by that. It’s a different church now and it was never “ours” to begin with. It is and has always been “God’s church”. But their anniversary coinciding this week hits a chord and is just one more thing occupying my husband’s thoughts. Though he did his best, he’ll always focus more on his shortfalls than on how God used him there.
My prayer is that even though his heart is heavy and his thoughts are occupied, God would fill his gaze and give him grace to not only preach a message that affects the hearers but one that ministers to his own soul. I know God wants to meet him powerfully this week.
If you think about it, you can pray for him too.
