Getting the right start

7:11 p.m. Today's project was to get my research and notes started for Thursday's Bible study on I Samuel 23. Today was pretty relaxed compared to last weekend, for example, when we got up at 5:00 and 5:30 a.m. Friday and Saturday.

Mondays generally are stay-at-home days, for making or cancelling medical appointments, paying bills, and filling my business planner with new ladies to see and pamper with facials. Steve also handles projects at home, like today, dusting and scrubbing window sills and painting the room-for rent. (I was very involved in keeping the project clean and orderly, but he finished the job!). He also filed down the hardened foam gap-filler that was sticking out of the hole it filled--now it's flush with the wall!

While he proceeded with his work, I jotted my notes for the chapter in which fugitive David rescues the Judean city of Keilah from the Philistines, only to have those ingrates report his whereabouts to his pursuer King Saul! Sometimes it seems that "Good guys finish last!" Since the people of Keilah were more afraid of Saul than David, David became expendable.

Doesn't the way the world treats God's people give you a longing for the next life in eternity with Jesus? Daniel 12:2-3 describes the way our choices will determine our eternity:

And many of those who sleep in

the dust of the earth shall awake,

Some to everlasting life,

Some to shame and everlasting contempt.

Those who are wise shall shine

Like the brightness of the firmament.

And those who turn many to

righteousness

Like the stars forever and ever.

But God brought comfort, encouragement and belief to David as he hid with his 600 men, in the form of his best friend Jonathan, who slipped away to speak with him in the forest of the Wilderness of Ziph. Verse 16 of the chapter says, "Then Jonathan, Saul's son, arose and went to David in the woods and strengthened his hand in God."

"Strengthened his hand in God!" Is there anything better than to have a friend renew your belief in God's care and calling? Just as Jonathan assured David that Saul would not find him, and he would be king one day--even Saul knew it--my friend Pati offered me such great encouragement this afternoon when I was indeed blessed to be able to immerse myself in the word of God, but also stressed by helping Steve do very basic tasks like putting paint on a roller or cutting his meat. I was so very refreshed as we shared about our families' trials and pledged, like David and Jonathan, to pray for one another and support one another.

Pati told me that she thinks about me every day and always keeps me in prayer for our trial with Steve's Alzheimer's. How humbling, how amazing, what a God-thing it is when a sister in the Lord loves me that much! And I am able to love her in Jesus' name as well.

Just know, believer, that Jesus loves you, and has support for you in your discouraging times, perhaps with a quiet word just for you from the Holy Spirit; or with a good audible word or visible act of loving support from a friend!!