WHAT A YEAR 2011 WAS

1-2-2011

What A Year 2011 Was

I have great intentions to blog on a regular bases.

Where do the intentions go?

I have great intentions to teach the Gospel to many people.

I have great intentions to visit the sick.

Where have those intentions gone.

I have many good intentions to get more done to our home.

Where do the intentions go?

I look back over 2011 and I realize that many good intentions have gone undone.

However, It's A Wonderful Life.

Rather than focusing on the intentions that never got done, I must say I did get somethings done and I will strive to do more for the year 2012.

It has started out to be a great year.

We had great friends in our home for a nice meal and a blessed visit on Thursday and Friday night.

Saturday night we had good food and fellowship with some of our church family.

Then as we were preparing to return home, Tommy received a call from his cousin's wife to tell us that his Aunt had been moved to Hospice.

They were nearly to the hospital.

We gathered our things and headed to the hospital at 9:30 p.m. instead of going home to bed.

We asked the nurse which room Tommy's aunt was in.

She replied "7103".  

My heart sank and my eyes grew big and round.

I swallowed hard as we walked down the hall past the elevators.

I had a flood of memories fly through my mind. I could see the look on my Mom's face as she was rolled into that very same room on the 3rd day of April 2007.

Hospice!! What kind of word is that?

It sounds like death to me.

It feels like death to me.

It means death to me.

Just a month earlier we had been to the same hospital, on the same floor but fortunately not the same room.

Tommy's cousin's wife's father was there.

A different cousin and a different wife. But from the same blood line.

Good intentions, what does that mean.

It means you do what you have to do when you have to do it.

This particular night, six people came home with us at 12:30 A.M

We scrambled to make beds for each of them.

Tommy pulled the travel trailer in the yard and I gathered bedding to accommodate the young family with three small children.

Yes, we had to rearrange our life somewhat. The family whose Mom, Grandmother and Great Grandmother was just placed in Hospice had to rearrange their life a great lot.

Instead of celebrating a late Christmas, they loaded up in two cars and drove 6 hours to say Good-Bye the the Matriarch of the family.

She died exactly a week after she went to Hospice. Ironically at 12:30 A.M.

Yes Hospice means death but it does not mean the Victor.

Only Jesus Christ is the Victor and Victory over death.

I Corinthians 15:55

O DEATH, WHERE IS YOUR VICTORY? O DEATH, WHERE IS YOUR STING?

Verse 56  

The sting  of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law;

Verse 57

but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Verse 58

Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord.