Exercise As Effective As Drugs For Treating Heart Disease, Diabetes

By Alexandra Sifferlin, TIME, Oct. 01, 2013

Forget the pills—there’s new evidence that exercise may be as effective as medications in treating heart disease and diabetes.

Doctors now advise everyone, from young children to older adults, to become more physically active. It’s the best way to maintain a healthy weight, keep the heart muscle strong, and improve your mental outlook. But can exercise be as good as drugs in actually preventing disease and treating serious chronic illnesses?

That’s what researchers from the London School of Economics, Harvard Medical School and Stanford University School of Medicine wanted to find out. They compared the effect of exercise to that of drug therapy on four different health outcomes: heart disease, recovery from stroke, heart failure treatment and preventing diabetes.

The scientists pooled the results of 305 trials involving 339,274 people who were randomly assigned to either an exercise program or a drug-based therapy and found that there were no detectable differences between the two groups when it came to preventing diabetes and keeping additional events at bay for heart patients. And the physical activity was most powerful for participants who experienced a stroke. The only group that didn’t benefit from the exercise over drugs were patients with heart failure, likely because the strain of the physical activity wasn’t recommended for their condition.

The findings involving diabetes patients confirmed previous trials that documented how effective physical activity can be in bringing blood sugar levels down.

Currently, to maintain optimum health, federal experts recommend that people exercise at a moderate intensity for about 2.5 hours a week. But fewer than half of Americans meet that recommendation, and a third of Americans don’t get any exercise at all. The latest findings should encourage even those who aren’t active, however, since research shows even just talking a brisk walk can help lower the risk for high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes, and be as powerful as medications in keeping the body healthy.

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Poll Shows Major Shift in Identity of U.S. Jews

By Laurie Goodstein, NY Times, October 1, 2013

The first major survey of American Jews in more than 10 years finds a significant rise in those who are not religious, marry outside the faith and are not raising their children Jewish—resulting in rapid assimilation that is sweeping through every branch of Judaism except the Orthodox.

The intermarriage rate, a bellwether statistic, has reached a high of 58 percent for all Jews, and 71 percent for non-Orthodox Jews—a huge change from before 1970 when only 17 percent of Jews married outside the faith. Two-thirds of Jews do not belong to a synagogue, one-fourth do not believe in God and one-third had a Christmas tree in their home last year.

"It’s a very grim portrait of the health of the American Jewish population in terms of their Jewish identification," said Jack Wertheimer, a professor of American Jewish history at the Jewish Theological Seminary, in New York.

The survey, by the Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project, found that despite the declines in religious identity and participation, American Jews say they are proud to be Jewish and have a “strong sense of belonging to the Jewish people.”

While 69 percent say they feel an emotional attachment to Israel, and 40 percent believe that the land that is now Israel was “given to the Jewish people by God,” only 17 percent think that the continued building of settlements in the West Bank is helpful to Israel’s security.

Jews make up 2.2 percent of the American population, a percentage that has held steady for the past two decades. The survey estimates there are 5.3 million Jewish adults as well as 1.3 million children being raised at least partly Jewish.

The survey uses a wide definition of who is a Jew, a much-debated topic. The researchers included the 22 percent of Jews who describe themselves as having “no religion,” but who identify as Jewish because they have a Jewish parent or were raised Jewish, and feel Jewish by culture or ethnicity.

However, the percentage of “Jews of no religion” has grown with each successive generation, peaking with the millennials (those born after 1980), of whom 32 percent say they have no religion.

"It’s very stark," Alan Cooperman, deputy director of the Pew religion project, said in an interview. "Older Jews are Jews by religion. Younger Jews are Jews of no religion."

The trend toward secularism is also happening in the American population in general, with increasing proportions of each generation claiming no religious affiliation.

But Jews without religion tend not to raise their children Jewish, so this secular trend has serious consequences for what Jewish leaders call “Jewish continuity.” Of the “Jews of no religion” who have children at home, two-thirds are not raising their children Jewish in any way. This is in contrast to the “Jews with religion,” of whom 93 percent said they are raising their children to have a Jewish identity.

Reform Judaism remains the largest American Jewish movement, at 35 percent. Conservative Jews are 18 percent, Orthodox 10 percent, and groups such as Reconstructionist and Jewish Renewal make up 6 percent combined. Thirty percent of Jews do not identify with any denomination.

In a surprising finding, 34 percent said you could still be Jewish if you believe that Jesus was the Messiah.

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Pope, in New Interview, Vows to Change Vatican Mentality

By Philip Pullella, Reuters, October 1, 2013

VATICAN CITY—Pope Francis has promised to do everything in his power to change the Vatican’s mentality, saying in an interview published on Tuesday that it was too focused on its own interests.

In the long interview with the atheist editor of the left-leaning La Repubblica newspaper, he said too many previous popes in the Church’s long history had been “narcissists” who let themselves be flattered by their “courtier” aides.

"The (papal) court is the leprosy of the papacy," said Francis, who has brought a new style of openness, consultation and simplicity to the papacy.

The interview, conducted last week in the pope’s spartan residence in a Vatican guest house, appeared as he began a three-day, closed-door meeting with eight cardinals from around the world to help him reform the Vatican’s troubled administration, known as the Curia.

There are some “courtiers” among the Curia’s administrators, he said, but its main defect is that it is too inward-looking.

"It looks after the interests of the Vatican, which are still, in large part temporal interests. This Vatican-centric vision neglects the world around it and I will do everything to change it," he said.

Speaking of his personal faith, Francis said: “A Catholic God does not exist…

"I believe in Jesus Christ, his incarnation. Jesus is my master and my pastor, but God, the father … is the light and the creator. This is my being."

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Cardinals to Begin Reform Summit With Pope

Reuters, September 30, 2013

VATICAN CITY—Eight cardinals will begin closed-door meetings with Pope Francis on Tuesday to help him reform the Vatican’s troubled administration and map out possible changes in the worldwide Church.

Francis, who has brought a new style of openness, simplicity and a conciliatory tone to the papacy, wants to consult more with Church officials around the world before making decisions affecting the life of the 1.2-billion-member Church.

Some of the topics expected to be discussed are how to give women a greater role in the Church short of the priesthood, financial reform, the position of divorced Catholics, and the continued fallout from the worldwide sexual abuse crisis.

Francis announced the papal advisory board of cardinals, revolutionary for a Church steeped in hierarchical tradition, a month after his election as the first non-European pope in 1,300 years and the first from Latin America.

His decision to take advice from the cardinals from Italy, Chile, India, Germany, Democratic Republic of Congo, the United States, Australia and Honduras, is a clear sign that he intends to take seriously calls from within the Church for de-centralization in a traditionally top-heavy institution.

Each cardinal polled their faithful and bishops about what should be discussed at the meetings, which will be closed to even top officials from the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, which is itself a target of reform.

The group’s chairman, Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, told a Canadian Catholic television network he had 80 pages of suggestions from Latin America alone.

The group’s main task is to suggest changes to a constitution by the late Pope John Paul II called “Pastor Bonus,” which gave the various departments that run the Church their current structure in 1988.

The Curia, as it is known, has been riven by scandals over the years and bishops around the world have deemed it heavy-handed, autocratic, condescending and overly bureaucratic.

Maradiaga said the constitution governing the structure of the Curia would have to be re-written rather than modified.

Former Pope Benedict, who resigned in February, left a secret report for Francis on the problems of the Curia, which were exposed when sensitive documents were stolen from Benedict’s desk by his butler and leaked to the media.

There have been suggestions that some Vatican departments be merged and others closed in order to make the Curia more efficient and to prevent corruption.

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi told reporters on Monday about 80 documents had been prepared for discussion.

"No-one should expect the Curia or the governance of the Church to be reformed in three days," he said, adding Francis had decided to make the council a permanent fixture with an open-ended mandate.

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From grief to grace: Wife of Amish schoolhouse shooter breaks her silence

By Daniel Burke, CNN. Sept. 28, 2013

Lancaster County, Pennsylvania (CNN)—Among the flowers and plants in Marie Monville’s sunny yard sits a rosebush, a gift from her first husband, Charlie.

A few years ago, Monville painstakingly unearthed the roots and transplanted the bush from her old house 10 miles away—a house that Charlie had thrown into tumult and grief.

The bush’s prickles recall the pain she and her family have endured, Monville said, and its peach-colored blossoms offer a yearly reminder that God creates new life from old.

After years of silence, Monville is now telling a story herself.

It’s the story of how a milkman’s daughter became a murderer’s wife, and how she found a divine calling after a devastating tragedy.

"If this wasn’t my life," Monville said during a recent interview in her kitchen, family pictures smiling from the fridge, "I never would have expected it to look this beautiful."

On October 2, 2006, Charlie Roberts—then Monville’s husband—burst into a one-room Amish schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, with a handgun, a 12-gauge shotgun, a rifle, cans of black powder, a stun gun, two knives, a toolbox and restraint devices.

Roberts ordered a teacher, a teacher’s aide and the boys to leave, then bound 10 young schoolgirls and lined them up against the blackboard.

He boarded the windows, apparently preparing for a long siege, but as police surrounded the schoolhouse, Roberts shot all 10 girls before killing himself. Five girls died; the others were severely wounded.

The gentle, quiet man who had shared Monville’s bed, children and life was now a mass murderer, guilty of unfathomable evil.

In mere hours, Monville lost her husband, and her children lost their father. Her close-knit community was terrorized and her family’s name disgraced. Her innocence was despoiled, and her evangelical faith tested.

"I felt deserted, left behind to bear the weight of the world’s judgment and questions alone," Monville writes in "One Light Still Shines," her new book about the shooting and its aftermath, "and I felt that weight pressing me down."

After the shooting, Monville tried to keep her family, especially her three young children, out of the public eye.

But with the release of “One Light,” which goes on sale Monday, Monville is stepping out of the shadows, sharing her story in deeply personal detail.

Zondervan, one of the country’s largest Christian publishing houses, won’t say how many copies it plans to print. But it has launched a “robust” marketing and publicity campaign, with a billboard in New York’s Times Square and interviews with TV networks, including CNN’s Piers Morgan on Monday night at 9.

"It will sell millions of copies," said Donald Kraybill, co-author of "The Amish" and a professor at Elizabethtown College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. "Millions."

Not only is Monville’s story powerful and largely untold, but it also hits a burgeoning market for book publishers, Kraybill said: the cross-section of evangelical spirituality and interest in all things Amish.

Christian fiction best-seller lists brim with Amish romance novels, largely because of their large evangelical readership, which scholars trace to the 2006 shooting and its stunning postlude of Amish forgiveness.

Monville said she kept silent for so long because that story, the grace and compassion the Amish offered her family, was already making headlines around the world.

"There wasn’t much more for me to say," she said.

Even if there had been more to say, the intensely private Monville was reluctant to speak publicly. Shy and quiet, she sometimes joked that the label under her high-school yearbook picture should have read, “Most Likely to be Forgotten.”

But as the shooting’s psychological wounds began to heal, Monville said she heard God calling her to a new mission: to share her message of hope. To tell others that, even after Charlie’s crushing actions, her family not only survived, they thrived.

"I now saw a grand purpose in telling my story," Monville writes, "I wasn’t afraid anymore."

The morning of October 2, 2006, was sunny and warm, Monville recalls, the trees in her rural neighborhood radiant with red and golden leaves.

Monville, then Marie Roberts, was living her deepest childhood dreams. At 28, she had a vibrant church community and spiritual life, a dutiful husband who doted on their three young children and a home next-door to her grandparents in idyllic Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where she was born and raised.

Charlie Roberts, her husband of nearly a decade, drove a truck that delivered milk to nearby dairies, just as Marie’s family had done for generations. He sometimes brooded over the death of their first daughter, who was born three months premature and died after just 20 minutes, but he usually pulled out from these bouts of depression.

On the morning of the shooting, Marie led a prayer group at a local church, where they asked God to keep schoolchildren safe. Then, as usual, she and Charlie walked their two oldest children, then 7 and 5, to the bus stop, kissing them goodbye before Charlie left for work.

At 11 a.m., as Marie was pouring herself a cup of coffee, Charlie called.

"I had never heard Charlie’s voice sound like that before," Monville writes, "not in almost 10 years of marriage. Something was horribly wrong."

Charlie told Marie he was not coming home. He left a note explaining everything, he said. Marie pleaded with him to come home, but he hung up.

"Charlie said a lot of things on the phone or the letter that didn’t make a lot of sense," Monville said in an interview. "His mind was filled with all of the things he was planning to do, so he wasn’t in a place of being OK."

The three-page letter Charlie left for Marie said she was the perfect wife, but the death of their firstborn child made him enraged at God.

"I am sorry to put you and the kids in this position but I feel that this is the best and only way," Charlie wrote. "I love all of you and this is why am I doing this."

Marie called 911. Sirens wailed in the distance. Hanging up the phone, she stood in the living room, staring at her ceiling fan, and prayed.

Monville calls this her “walk on water” moment, recalling when Jesus challenged the disciples to show their faith by following his footsteps across the Sea of Galilee.

"I was faced with two choices, and only two," she said.

"I could choose to believe that everything written about God in the pages of the Word were true, and that he was going to rescue me and my family. Or I could choose to believe that we were going down like the fastest sinking ship."

Monville said she always enjoyed a close relationship with God, hearing his voice call to her, feeling his embrace during prayer and worship.

Even after the death of her firstborn, whom they named Elise, and a later failed pregnancy, Monville said she kept hoping that God held better days in store. But Charlie’s faith faltered, and he shrugged off her pleas to talk to a pastor, counselor or friend about his deepening depression.

"He was angry at God, which I didn’t realize in those days," Monville said. "I just thought he wasn’t connected to the Lord in the ways I was. The harder I pushed, the more he withdrew."

"I did not know the man who went into the schoolhouse and did the things he did there," she said. "I did not know that Charlie."

"There were a lot of things I asked myself," Monville said. "How did I not see this? What are the signs I missed?"

Those questions didn’t yield easy answers, just more difficult questions, she said: How could God allow this to happen? What should she tell her children? Would people hold her responsible for Charlie’s actions? Could she rebuild her life in Lancaster?

The community—including the Amish—showered her family with gifts, meals and love after the shooting, Monville recalls. They said hello on the way to the bus stop, dropped by to see if she needed groceries, encouraged her to stay in Lancaster.

Monville had always been a middle child, shyly hoping she could somehow escape the world’s gaze. Now she was the center of attention, with news vans parked in her neighborhood and reporters prowling around her yard.

With her newfound notoriety came questions from strangers that made her skin crawl. Did Charlie have life insurance? How do you sleep at night knowing what your husband did?

In fact, Monville didn’t sleep at night. She tossed and turned, grieving over her husband and the deaths he caused, and worrying about her children’s future.

But with Scripture and prayer, in reaching out to God and hearing his reply in shouts and whispers, feeling his fatherly care in signs and wonders that people of lesser faith might take for coincidences, Monville said she found healing.

On the day of the shooting, after Charlie’s frightening call, she saw a vision of God’s hand catching a falling flower petal just before it hit the ground, Monville said.

And that’s just what God did for her, she said, every time she faltered.

She saw God’s hand when the Amish attended Charlie’s funeral, when neighbors sent baskets of food, and strangers filled her mailbox with supportive notes.

Most importantly, Monville said, she felt God’s strength when she had to tell her children that their father had made some very bad choices, and some people had died, and he had died, too.

"Over and over again," Monville writes, "(God) broke through my pain, revealed his presence, and restored my hope."

Along with hope restored came another miracle, Monville said: She no longer cared what other people thought.

Marie needed that fearlessness when, just four months after the shooting, she told her family she was engaged to a family friend, Dan Monville.

She and Dan, a divorcé, had bonded after the shooting as they supervised play dates with their young children. She felt a connection with Dan as their families bonded, she said, which ripened into love.

Maybe Dan was the right man, her family said, but it was definitely the wrong time.

Marie had doubts, too. It was so soon after the shooting. But she felt God whispering to her, telling her that Dan was the man she should marry.

Marie said she wrestled with that revelation, fasting and praying for days. Again, one of those signs and wonders—the kind that others might take for happenstance—broke into her life.

Early one morning in December 2006, Marie awoke to hear her Christmas tree tumble with a crackling crash.

Each year, she and Charlie had exchanged Christmas ornaments, their own family tradition. Only two broke when the tree fell, Monville said, the first and last Charlie had given her.

"At the precise moment I noticed this," she writes, "I heard the words ‘It is finished’ echo through my heart and mind."

Dan and Marie were married in May 2007, seven months after the schoolhouse shooting. They now live in the house with Charlie’s rosebush, their five children are healthy and happy, Monville said, the youngest potty-training and the eldest applying for driver’s permits.

Sipping a cup of coffee in her tidy kitchen last week, Monville said she relishes her return to routine, dropping the kids off at school, grocery shopping. “Normal mom” stuff.

She keeps the letter Charlie left and reads it from time to time, even though some parts leave her feeling shaky. Monville also keeps cartons full of letters sent from strangers around the world. She tries not to dread the arrival of October 2, but still finds her eyes fixed to the clock each year, remembering when Charlie left her work, when he called, the day’s devastation.

Monville said she has spent years trying to remove the “the shooter’s wife” label—but in a way, she embraces it now, as long as she gets to tell the rest of the story.

It’s the story of how the milkman’s timid daughter, the murderer’s grieving wife, became of all things a joyful messenger, telling everyone who’d listen about the grace of God’s love.

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I Need You Lord- Julie True

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I’ve Won in the Lotto

By John W. Schmidt

A close friend of my wife told her about a dream she’d had in which I’d won in the lotto—the full, big prize. When I heard about the dream I thought, It’s true! I did win in the lotto.

When we adopted our little Congolese girl who was found on the streets of Kinshasa, in the rain and just a day old, and we took her home as our own daughter, one of our local friends said, “She won in the lotto!” He knew what a big difference this had made in her life. Instead of growing up in horrible poverty in an orphanage, with not much chance to learn and develop, the Lord turned her life around and gave her all that one would want to give a child in this world.

Besides her winning in the lotto through this turn of events in her life, my wife and I feel that we also won in the lotto by taking Anissa into our lives. It’s all in the perspective, isn’t it? We can look at the many problems we face, which never seem to stop coming our way, or we can look on the bright side of life—at all the answers to prayer and miracles that get these problems solved. We can see that we have so many more positive things in life, which we can enjoy, instead of focusing on the bad things.

After I had lost the faith in God and Jesus that I’d had as a child, I wandered around in darkness for ten years, looking for meaning in life and not finding it, literally going through hell, a bottomless pit with no way out. I had no hope for this sad world full of injustice. I saw no possible change or bright future for all the needy people in the world, or for me or my friends. I tried to find meaning and purpose in life, but nobody could tell me a way out. I became a communist for some time, thinking that could bring a change, but it didn’t. I read books from all kinds of philosophers, but I couldn’t find solutions and answers to my questions.

When I finally found Jesus, I won the lotto—big time! I received more than all the money in the world could buy. Then I started to live for Jesus and tell others how they can also get that big prize. There is no greater joy than to help someone else win that prize, to get them hooked up to His love, which makes life worth living. Since that time I haven’t just enjoyed a beautiful life because of God’s love in my heart, and because I could pass it on to countless others, but Jesus has given me so many things in life which no money in the world could buy—like loved ones to share my life with, health, happiness, a purpose in life, a way of changing the world spiritually and physically, even if it’s only a small part of it, by helping others who are more needy than me.

Sometimes we feel as if we need more money, or we wish we would win in the lotto. But I would never want to exchange that for what God gave me since the day He turned my life around. And I’m not even talking about the bright future ahead of us in the next life! Just in looking at this life, God has given us so much. We are billionaires! With Jesus in the center of our lives, we have all won in the lotto!




The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold: sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.—Psalm 19:9–10



Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ.—Philippians 3:8



I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.—Philippians 3:14

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Trials Equal Good

A compilation


Audio length: 11:28
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Because “many are the afflictions of the righteous,”1 it's certainly comforting to know that “all these things work together for good to them that love the Lord, to them who are called according to His purpose.”2 In fact, in order to come through our many trials, difficulties, battles, and temptations victoriously, it is imperative that we make this promise in Romans 8:28 a vital part of our life.

If we don’t send the events of our daily lives through the filter of Romans 8:28, if we don’t constantly view our disappointments, hurts, tests, illnesses, opposition, battles, etc., through the perspective that Romans 8:28 gives us, we will sadly miss many valuable lessons the Lord is trying to teach us. And we will rob ourselves of the peace that comes from absolute trust in this precious promise and principle.

If we learn the simple equation, “Trials equal good,” our lives will be richer, our lessons greater, and our minds more tranquil, and we will more easily recognize the Lord's hand in the events of our lives. It makes all the difference in the world whether we look at a flood of problems, trials, battles and tribulations just waiting to see the worst happen, or if we look at them with the excitement and challenge that comes from waiting to discover all the good we know the Lord will bring out of them.—Maria Fontaine

*

God often does his best work in the darkness. God does not throw trials at us haphazardly … He does not accidentally let trials slip into our lives... Every trial we experience has been handcrafted by God for our good. Trials are God’s kiln. We are the clay, he is the master potter.

What good does God accomplish in the darkness? Here are just a few of the thousands of things God accomplishes.



He forces us to rely on Him.

Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.—2 Corinthians 1:9 ESV

Trials remind us of what is already true: we are desperately dependent on God. We cannot function apart from God. We cannot make it to heaven apart from the sustaining grace of the God who raises dead men. God takes us through trials to decrease our self-confidence and increase our confidence in him.



He produces steadfastness in us.

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.—James 1:2–3 ESV

Without steadfastness … we will be like seed that springs up quickly but has no root. We will have the life choked out of us by the cares of this world. God wants us to have a steadfast, steady faith, which is not easily rocked by trial and hardship. Trials cause our faith to mature and become steadfast.



He prepares us to comfort others.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.—2 Corinthians ­­­1:3–4 ESV

When we experience trials, we also experience God’s comfort in a unique way. As God’s comfort flows into our lives, we are then divinely prepared to comfort others who are enduring trials. We could not adequately comfort others if we didn’t first receive God’s comfort. Trials ready us to comfort others.—Stephen Altrogge3

*

None of us can come to the highest maturity without enduring the summer heat of trials. As the sycamore fig never ripens if it be not bruised, as the corn does not leave the husk without threshing, and as wheat makes no fine flour till it be ground, so are we of little use till we are afflicted. Why should we be so eager to escape such benefits? We shall have to wait with patience, saying, “The will of the Lord be done.” He waited to give grace to us; let us wait to give glory to him.—Charles Spurgeon

*

I will not doubt, though all my ships at sea
Come drifting home with broken mast and sails;
I shall believe the Hand which never fails,
From seeming evil worketh good to me;
And, though I weep because those sails are battered,
Still will I cry, while my best hopes lie shattered,
“I trust in Thee.”

I will not doubt, though sorrows fall like rain,
And troubles swarm like bees about a hive;
I shall believe the heights for which I strive,
Are only reached by anguish and by pain;
And, though I groan and tremble with my crosses,
I yet shall see, through my severest losses,
The greater gain.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox

*

No physician ever weighed out medicine to his patient with half so much care and exactness as God weighs out to us every trial. Not one grain too much does He ever permit to be placed on the scale.—Henry Ward Beecher

*

Difficulties, tests, trials, heartbreaks, suffering and disappointments come from many causes and for many reasons, but regardless of why they have come or what the reason, you can rest assured that all things work together for good to them that love Me. Because you love Me, I can take even these trials and turn them into blessings.

If you could see as I can see—beyond today, beyond this moment, beyond the pain which you are feeling—then you would better be able to understand why trials equal blessings. You would better be able to understand why this loss, this ache in your heart, this time when you are being sorely tempted and tested, can with time become a blessing to you.

The secret to understanding, the key to understanding, is in the phrase "with time." As you believe by faith that My hand is on your life and that all things work together for good, with time, that which you believe by faith you will understand and see, and it will become a reality in your life.—Jesus, speaking in prophecy

*

I have a life preserver, which is my most valued possession.

While sailing on the sea of life, so many times I have looked out to see a storm brewing on the horizon. I grab my life preserver and tie it on securely, then brace myself for the unforgiving blast that approaches.

When the storm hits, my little craft is tossed by the angry waves. They threaten to swamp and drown me, but with my life preserver, I know I will survive. No—more than survive. I will rise again, bruised and beaten perhaps, but victorious.

Sometimes the storms creep up on me from behind. Caught unawares in the raging fury, my boat capsizes, throwing me into the icy waters. I choke, sputter, and gasp for air, but find myself caught in a whirlpool. The more I struggle, the tighter the water holds me in its grip.

Alone, helpless, and defeated, I wait for the end, hope flickering like a melted candle. As I sink under the waters for the last time, a Voice comes over the sound of the storm. “Grab the life preserver! It is your only hope.”

Straining to see in the darkness, I catch sight of something floating on the water. It is my life preserver—always there when I need it most. I tie it on and immediately begin to float.

The darkness still envelops me. The sea still churns and foams and its angry waves threaten to pull me under. The rain continues to sting my cheeks. But I am buoyant once again. With complete trust, secure in my life preserver, I am content to wait out the storm.

What is the secret of my life preserver? It is so simple that you may dismiss it. It is the verse from the Bible: “We know that all things work together for good to those who love God.”4

ALL things—storms, rain, and winds included—are for our GOOD.

Someday, somehow, we will understand.—Stellaris Jade



Published on Anchor October 2013. Read by Jon Marc.
Music by Daniel Sozzi.


1 Psalm 34:19.

2 Romans 8:28.

3 Excerpted from http://blogs.christianpost.com/guest-views/god-often-does-his-best-work-in-the-darkness-15992.

4 Romans 8:28 NKJV.

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