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Compassion

http://www.lettersforlydia.blogspot.com/   Read 12/21 post "Christmas Wish"

This is my dear cousin's latest blog post.  Thank you, Ashleigh, for 'letting' us grieve.  Thank you to all of you who have entered into our pain and understood that there is no bandaid... no pretending that things are ok... and especially to those who have been brave enough to realize that our God is not smaller because He allows and in fact promises pain in this broken world.  It is broken because of our bad choice to let evil in and no, God is not in full control (here).  He has chosen to hold back and allow free will until the end of this world... in hope that we will choose Him... choose to partner with Him.  That is why we must pray for His will to be done here as it is in heaven (because it is not always so).  That is why even though "He is willing that none should perish..." without Him,  many still do.

Our hope, and that of all those who have suffered horribly at the hands of men or sickness or death, is not for wholeness now, but for wholeness on the day when Jesus returns and "all has been put right again" (CS Lewis).  In the last book of the Chronicles of Narnia, CS Lewis captures this beautifully.  Aslan, a lion representing Jesus, is speaking to the children who are unaware they have just died and left our earth...

"Their (the children's) hearts leapt, and a wild hope rose within them....  In Aslan’s words, “The term is over: the holidays have begun.  The dream is ended: this is the morning.”

“And as he spoke he no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. . . . And we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world . . . had only been the cover and title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read, which goes on forever, in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

 That is my hope... that one day the dream, with the wonderful parts and the nightmares, will be over, and the morning will begin!

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