Sorry I haven’t blogged in awhile. We’ve been living in a whirlwind.

I MC’d the funeral of a long time member of DCC. The family took it pretty hard. Some close friends recently had a freaky experience during the birth of their third child resulting in a crack in the husband’s skull. Another couple we’re close to are still in extreme crisis mode, but even more severe – their son’s antibodies are killing all his platelets. The platelet count should be between 150-400. The other day, it hit bottom at ZERO. It’s now at 2. Saturday night at 6pm God told me to scrap the sermon I’d prepared and start over, just before we spent two precious hours with those dear friends in the hospital. There was nowhere I’d rather have been, but you get the idea. I had important lunches to invest in. And oh yeah, I got two anonymous, critical notes in my mailbox on the same day as the funeral (I refuse to read them, by the way). I lost a quarter of my NEW sermon ten minutes before the service started. I gotta tell you, the pastoral weight and stress has been astronomical in the past week.

So imagine my surprise when my seven year old son Joel slides into my bed this morning and says, “I had four dreams last night, Dad.” Do tell! The first dream was about someone stealing something dear to him. The second, about a pet rattlesnake that bit him. The third, about a tornado that we narrowly escaped by diving into the basement. And the fourth, about a hurricane. We ran to the basement again, and Jesus appeared, raising his hands, clenching his fists, and calming the storm. Joel said the hurricane melted like snow before the power of God.

Encouragement is a lame way to describe it. It’s AWESOME! Notice the escalation and Jesus stepping up at the last moment to stop the onslaught…

I’m not sure if we’re at dream 1, 2, 3, or 4 yet. But that’s less important than how it will all end. Thanks, Jesus – for your presence, for your power. Please give me courage and strength to love my friends. They’re suffering, and that hurts me so deeply. Stretch out your hands, Lord. Stop the hurricane! Thanks that the end is coming. I just pray that it applies to my friends even more than to me.