"Through the Veil....."

Beth and I went to a wedding this weekend. It was one of three all scheduled for the same day, those “tying the knot” all associated with our church family; but, for us, this particular one special for us. The bride was my buddy Tony’s oldest daughter. I liked the simplicity of it: the groom and his bunch of “merry men” wearing no jackets, grey suspenders holding up their trousers and a bow tie giving it an air of formality; bridesmaids were dressed in purple, the bride in white, of course, but no one nor no thing so fancy as to suggest being in competition with others. The ceremony was short and those in attendance were already seated at tables in a reception hall. My kind of gathering; but to each their own. The one sadness to the whole affair was the groom’s father whose back pain was diagnosed just diagnosed a few months ago as terminal cancer. In his mid-fifties, he refused to dismiss the occasion, arriving in a wheelchair with his once large frame drastically reduced to almost beyond recognition. It was, for me, just one more evidence of theology preached to me over the last forty-three years that falls short of truth, the reason why Bible study and the next step is the recipe for following Him, not merely a sermon half-consumed and then abandoned, Christ no more than a mental image created out of our own reasoning and sealed in concrete. Whatever the future holds for each of us, our journey is not secured out of a faith anchored in “our faith”. Health, wealth, and prosperity are not conditions we can arrogantly claim through some confession of chapter and verse. What IS gained through our conversion is a connection, an inner well where we can know assurance of His grace, His wisdom, and His peace, His resurrected reality enabling us to meet and survive whatever tomorrow brings to us. We do not conquer “all things” out of our own strength other than investing it in a surrender unto He who holds it all in His hands. The Word does inform us that “hope” is an integral part of salvation as we go; but, always, it needs to rest in “Thy will, not mine be done”……….