Birth, Life, & Death

Can you really ever put yourself in someone else’s shoes?

I am heading to a funeral for a friend’s mother today and I just can’t stop thinking about my friend.  I knew her mother too – our mothers have been friends for years – and of course, I am thinking about her as well.  But really, it is my friend who is most on my mind.  Her mother is in heaven and not even thinking a thing about all of us down here on earth.  How can she when she is in paradise?

I once took a Beth Moore Bible Study that likened dying, leaving the earth, and entering heaven to being an infant safe and secure in a mother’s womb.  When it is time for that baby to be born, he fights and cries to stay in – after all it is warm and secure and it is the world he knows.  But just think how much better and richer his life is once he is born.  Heaven is like that for us.  Too many wonders to imagine.

We fight so hard to hang on to this world because we think this place is it.

It’s not.

But that doesn’t mean that we don’t need to make it the best place we can make it while we’re here. 

We are working hard to help children at Community Partners of Dallas who really do need help.  Most of you know we finished our big Christmas Toy Drive in December and I want to share just one of the thank yous we received.  A fabulous Dallas County CPS caseworker named Cortney sent us a nice thank you card with a sweet message of thanks and she had many of the kids on her caseload sign it.  The note is sitting here on my desk.  Some of the older kids even wrote us a little something.  A boy named Hal wrote this:

I thank you for the gift cards you gave me today and I will always remember you guys.  Love you.

I can’t put myself in Hal’s shoes, but I sure am glad that I played a part in making him happy here on earth right now.  The best is yet to come, Hal.