When I was a young boy, I used to envy the amount of mail my parents received each morning. All those brown, white and sometimes blue envelopes of different sizes looked like so much fun. The next best thing for me was to race my sister and become the first to grab the mail from the letter-box (to those of you in the US, we don’t have mailboxes; why walk all that distance outside when the mailman can put it right through the front door of your home!?) Just to be the first to behold all those paper parcels and to hold them in my hands was the next best thing to having one with my name on it.

Then I got older and married and a home and realised that the brown ones usually demand your money; and in recent days, those white ones, usually come from the hospital and remind us of our own frail mortality in some way or another.

But…

…one of the blessings about our present circumstances is that personal news can hardly get worse. I think we’ve already had the most difficult news we can receive and so when I hear the letters drop through the door, I almost run to it with the same joyful anticipation as I did as a boy! And yes, each morning, Annie and I race one another to it with either olympian competitiveness or ninja-like stealth if the letterbox fails to clap with great volume.

This morning there was an impressive white pile of mail and among it a good number of cards! We always like to guess who the card is from before we open it. We do the same with bills to help soften the blow before reading! This one had bubbly handwriting which narrowed it down to a teenage girl; possibly a girl in the Manor Park youth ministry! Sure enough, we were right! A lovely message of encouragement from E.M. What a blessing to have those you minister among, minister back to you – thank You, Lord that as Your labourers, we too can taste and enjoy the fruits of Your work!

In this card she had hand-made two little memory verse cards. The one I will draw your attention to is this one:

The eternal God is your refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms – Deuteronomy 33:27

And this is the reason why I draw that one out. The next card we opened gives us more clues to the sender. The Liberty Bell stamp in one corner tells us it’s from family in Philadelphia. But before you call me Columbo…the name and address stamp in the adjacent corner deflates any sense of mystery: it informs us that it is specifically from Grammy and Grandpop! But we’re still really excited to hear from them, of course! It was a lovely card and on the front was written:

To encourage you today: the Lord loves you very much and is holding you close to His heart

We opened the card up and then came that real supernatural encouragement. The scripture verse at the foot of the card?

The eternal God is your refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms – Deuteronomy 33:27

We just love moments like that when it seems God so desperately wants you to know something that He creatively goes the great distance to perfectly time and orchestrate events so that you can hear Him say it twice! Annie and I will certainly be meditating on that verse at some point today.

Following the nurse’s recommendation, last night Annie took a little bit of prescribed liquid morphine medicine and it really helped with the coughing. She probably had two bouts of coughing in the night, but for the most part slept well. I am still cold-ridden but feel like it’s beginning to thaw out just a little.

This morning Annie is well enough to pop out with Mom Ruth to visit the hospice and have a chat about palliative care options available to her. This may include anything from massages to medicines. We are hoping that they will have some recommendations to deal with a few aches and pains she is experiencing in her left-side ribs.

A good friend, doctor and sister in Christ will be popping round for lunch and so we will tie this journal entry up here.

In His Everlasting Arms,

R&A