I love asking questions. I love having answers and yet in this life I often feel like I have more questions than answers. Here's a question........today is 10-10-10 and I wonder what are you going to be doing at 10:10 on 10-10-10?
I have been wrestling with a few more serious questions that I am not able to get answers for until I get to Heaven. The people who could answer my questions have already passed away. In the past year I have repeatably heard the verse John 10:10 and I have been trying to figure out how I am to "live out" this 10-10 life.
John 10:10 reads.....
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. (NASB)
A thief is only there to steal and kill and destroy. I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of. (The Message)
Obviously the thief is Satan and the person bringing us the abundant life is Jesus, Gods son. I believe that both are hard at work. I think that a lot of people would agree that the enemy is busy trying to steal our peace & joy and that he is trying to destroy churches, marriages and things; But at times when death occurs people say things like.."it was his time to go-it must have been Gods will and Gods perfect timing". I tend to disagree;But rather I believe that sometimes people are taken long before their time and that the enemy accomplished the killing part.
My maternal grandpa; Henry B. Yoder lived his own hellish experience of this first hand. When my grandpa was 16 years old he found his dad murdered. Someone had shot him and then set it up to look like a suicide. The way I remember the story was that my grandpa and his sister were sent to go tell their dad it was time to eat dinner and they couldn't find him so together they went looking for him. A big white bird flew down at the spot where they discovered his body. (I wonder if it was an angel or a bird?) His hat was across his face, his hands were folded and a gun was at his side with a suicide note. My grandpa never believed that his dad had taken his own life.
But obviously the church did. As if this wasn't enough grief and pain for one family...what the church did next was one of the most hurtful stories of rejection that I've ever heard of happening at a funeral.
The grave site for my Great grandpa was located in the beautiful Holmes County, Ohio hills. I wonder what my grandpa thought when they arrived at the gravesite.Someone had decided that his dad wasn't worthy of being buried inside the graveyard fence and instead dug his gravesite outside the fence and added a new fence around his grave.
Rejection-not good enough.
Rejection to who? the dead guy?
Was their intent to hurt the family? I am sure it cut to the bone.
Who was the information for? Were they wanting to remind God that the inside of the fence people- Heaven and the ones outside the fence-hell?
What were they thinking?
Were they thinking?
I wish I could have been at the funeral gravesite service that day. I wish I could have walked up to his mom and lift her head & say....I am so sorry about the loss of your husband but I am even more devastated at these peoples actions. I would have wanted to breath life into her despair. They added shame, judgment by their outward actions. I wonder what they spoke to her. With in a year she also died. Of a broken heart.
I am a great grand daughter of a woman that life didn't appear to be so abundant. My life is a constant mix of the good, the hard, the fun, the painful. My goal in life is to be real. I don't want to live my life pretending its easy.
I want to spend my life looking for the people who's heads I can still lift & say to them....no matter what the enemy has stolen, killed & destroyed in your life....Jesus came to give your life a purpose.
Who's head is God asking you to lift and speak life into today??
Corina Yoder
I am dedicating this first blog to my niece Riane Hope. You beat the rest of us in the race to get across the finish line to Jesus. You never had to live in the real world because you lived for 9 months inside my gentle & sweet sister Lori & went to be with Jesus an hour before you entered this world. I can't wait to meet you.
