• Alzheimer’s
• Cancer
• Heart Disease
• Diabetes
• Leukemia
• Hypertension
• Diabetes
• Kidney Failure
• COVID19 – Delta Variant
• Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis
• And countless other debilitating and deadly diseases

• Economic uncertainty
• Inflation
• Family disharmony
• Aging parents
• Raising young children
• Having adolescents at home
• Being an adolescent
• Children leaving home
• Political division
• Racial tension
• Societal unrest
• Wars
• Drugs and alcohol
• Violence
• Marital problems
• Facing unemployment or forced reitrement

The lists could go on but listing these is enough to bring my spirit down. You and I face any one (or more) of these and we know face others. Any given Sunday as I stand up to preach there are Christians among those gathered facing the hard issues of life. Like me, they come to assembly for respite. We all come seeking a place of refuge. We need a hand to lift us up from the miry mess that pulls us down and places us on dry ground. We seek someone to understand and walk hand in hand with us as we journey on.

You and I can be there for each other. We can “bear one another’s burdens.” (Gal 6:2, 10). As Christians we love to and long to help each other. Yet in our own weakness we sometimes fail. But there is One who is always there. One who hears and understands our pain and sorrows. Peter tells us we can toss “all (our) anxieties on Him, because He cares for (us).” (1Pe 5:7). As much as that care is for our life now imagine the care when we are with Him in heaven where there is no more pain, no more death, and no more tears.

In the words of a song from Casting Crowns that I have listened to over and over this week,

“The only scars in heaven, won’t belong to me and you

There’ll be no such thing as broken, and all the old will be made new.

And the thought that makes me smile now, even as the tears flow down.

Is the only scars in heaven are on the hands that hold you now.”

Words by John Mark Hall and Matthew West

– Scott