God is good, All the time/ All the time, God is good

My friend's sister is a pastor and she had the hard task once of talking to her congregation after three of their congregants had died, one of them being just a baby. She said:"Back in my Youth Ministry days I took my youth group to a conference. The preacher there was an African American minister who would yell at us, 'God is good!' and we would respond, 'All the time.' and then he would say, 'All the time.' and we would yell back 'God is good.'

She talked about how especially the baby's death "hurts and makes it nearly impossible to say, "God is good all the time.' But that is why it is important that we come together as a fellowship of believers so that we can help one another find the words to praise God. The Apostle Paul in I Corinthians tells us the following: 'Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation, who consoles us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to console those who are in any affliction with the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled by God.'We are here today to both be consoled and to do the consoling. We are here today to build one another back up and remind each other that God is good and the Congregation responded: all the time, and then I said All the time God is good"

I wish I had remembered this long ago email last night. It might have helped. I found last night really hard and really depressing. One of the guys from the common is dying. He knows he's dying. We know he's dying. It's only a matter of time, and not that much time either.

He became a Christian this year and his facing faith testing things that many Christians don't face until far into their walk.

Last night it kind of hit home. He's usually stubborn and pretty good at appearing healthy (he hates for people to see him when he's not at 100%). Last night he kept throwing up from the pain and he could barely walk. He admitted to me that his doctor told one of his concerned friends, "he looks fine on the outside, but on the inside he's really far gone, he's really deteriorated."

He's been talking about Halloween a lot recently. I didn't get why. It's not a major holiday by any stretch of the imagination. But every week he keeps asking if we'll have special muffins, orange muffins for Halloween. I realized last night, it's because that's as long as he thinks he'll live. It's like when my grandfather knew time was short and aimed for just the turn of the century (which sadly he didn't even make).

He already told me that when he goes he wants chocolate muffins and he wants people to know they were from him. I am telling you now, they will be the best damn cupcakes I can afford.

Someone in our group a couple weeks ago asked what we were going to do when he does pass away. We're not grief counselors and it will affect others out there. Our pastor pointed out that he's not the first person out on the common to die, and he's right, but he's the first person out on the common that we've grown close to, that has become an integral part of our Thursday night's, who has joined us in our walk as brothers and sisters in Christ to die.

I know there's the cheezy song from Michael W. Smith about friends are friends forever. But last night all I could think about was a song we sang when I was in college that was called the benediction, here are the lyrics:

My Friends May You Grow In Grace
And In The Knowledge Of Our Lord And Savior.
My Friends May You Grow In Grace And In The
Knowledge Of Jesus Christ
Chorus
To God Be The Glory Now And Forever,
Now And Forever Amen (Repeat)
I Pray Tonight If We Learned From One Another, May We Glorify Him.
And If The Lord Should Bring Us Back Together,
May We Be In His Arms Till Then.

So between chanting God is good All the time/All the time God is good and repeating in my head, If the Lord should bring us back together, may we be in his arms till then, I plan on getting through this -- God willing -- and helping those around me get through it too. In the meantime, it's taken a long time to write this blog with a couple of near misses on tears. So if you could pray for him, for his family, for us out on the common, I'd appreciate it.