"...Uncertain Days..."

I mentioned in my Daybook post that one of my favorite things is "Singing a hymn I've sung all my life and suddenly being hit in a whole new way by old familiar words."  It happened again Sunday morning.   Sitting in the pew singing "Because He Lives", I was reminded as always of sitting in  church with first one and then another tiny baby snuggled on my shoulder as we sang "How sweet to hold a newborn baby, and feel the pride and joy he gives..." and basking in the truth of His blessing. 

I thought back to the first time we sang that after Ammah Grace was home from NICU and able to go to church...and not being able to sing because of the tears. :)

But Sunday morning, it wasn't the first part of that verse, but the last that jumped out at me as we sang...

"But greater still the calm assurance, 

This child can face uncertain days because He lives."

Our children have faced some very uncertain days already.  Ammah Grace's weeks in NICU and the days that followed as we wondered what kind of damage had been done to her brain were the most obvious and public days of uncertainty.  But there have been other much less visible, but no less frightening, uncertainties faced.  There are major uncertainties looming even now.  And, of course, there are all manner of future, as-of-yet-unseen uncertainties.  

We have already seen the truth of those words in so many ways.  We have seen God work massive miracles in the life of a tiny little girl.  We have experienced God carrying us through deep grief in the loss of my dad, our children's much-loved "Papaw".  We have walked a road we would never have taken on our own when God in His perfect plan chose to show us His power not by protecting us "from" the storms of life, but by sustaining us "in" them.  

What a tremendous blessing to realize that our children (and we!) *can* face the "known" uncertainties that loom as well as the "unknown" uncertainties of the future "just because He lives".  And how I often need the reminder to "fret not", as my grandmother used to say, but to *rest* in the calm assurance He has already provided.