I am finished editing the Talbot DVD and have moved into production! By tomorrow or Tuesday, everything will be assembled. Delivery will follow. Aren’t you tired of hearing this same old “song”? You can’t imagine my relief from being finished!

Yesterday (Saturday), I read these verses from 2 Corinthians with Jack Arbuckle.

“For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this [body] we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed without habitation which is from heaven. If indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked. For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life. Now He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who also has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. So we are always confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord. For we walk by faith, not by sight. We are confident, yes, well please rather to be present with the Lord.”

We know (what God has promised). We groan (at what is and even [somewhat] at what is in heaven until the resurrection of our eternal body). We are confident (by faith).

I was not able to finish the DVD project last week. God directed differently. This is the final week of instruction or testing at Talbot. While the plan was to have the DVD in the student’s hands before they left for the summer, we’ll also need to make alternate plans.

There are a few words I would like to say about the life God gave to Wayne Fritch and Phil Swartzlander and the influence they both had in our church and with me. But not just now. I will limit what I say at this time to what is said above in the prayer section.

Tomorrow, Monday, May 21, I have a graveside service for a family I do not know. There is one difference with this one. When I met with the family, they immediately directed the conversation to their faith in Jesus Christ and that of their sister. About the last ten years she had been ill. Her friends have all moved or have also died and the church fellowship she had attended ceased to exist. The encouraging note is, based on their testimony, this dear lady is in heaven. Usually when I am called, it is because a family has no pastor or church, but wants one for the funeral. I go because the gospel of Jesus Christ can be proclaimed.

These lines from James’ letter crossed my mind a few times this past week.

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”

Warren Wiersbe drives the point home. “Life is short and the future unknown, so do the will of God today.”