Thankful as always for the kindness of friends (2 April)

 All sorts of people have phoned or sent messages, some expected friends, some unexpected friends, some with memories from long ago. Here is a song for you, an old song that you may have heard before and I hope will hear again.

I'm feeling a lot better. The nausea has been whipped into shape and is now wishing its mother had never met its father. The BRAFTOVI treatment is working, as in, I have physical evidence that tumours are shrinking. Saw my oncologist Prof Clarke and he was pleased with progress, or in the case of tumours, regress. During the week of nausea I lost four kilos, I've put three back on and am eating lots. This weekend or soon after Matilda our eldest moves out to a room (that is larger than two of ours back here in our house) in the inner city; two other daughters have scored part-time jobs, and our dogs are happy thanks for asking. I walked up the steps at Meadowbank station two at a time and made it to the train, the hamstrings remain intact today. So many good things, or new things, or both.

Here are some thoughts that friends have shared, not necessarily with me in mind. 

The first friend was considering COVID isolation and how, as many know say, it is not as bad as being a refugee from Ukraine or a flood victim in Lismore. Truth! But, said the friend, we are not necessarily helped by comparing suffering of one with another, and it is not how the Bible teaches us to think. Your stubbed toe is not as bad as Freda's amputation, but in the moment of pain and even after we are not competing with each other to see who is worse off. 

And what if (as said friend said) the specific suffering we are going through is actually the means of God's blessing?

William Cowper wrote: 

Ye fearful saints fresh courage take, The clouds you so much dread,
Are big with mercy, and shall break, With blessings on your head.

In other news, it's coming up to Easter, so here is a song about Easter. 

The crucifixion itself was the lowest moment of all, yet through it the Lord Jesus' glory was revealed. 

[as we learn in Acts 4:24-28] 

And when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God and said, “Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit,

“‘Why did the Gentiles rage,
    and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
    and the rulers were gathered together,
    against the Lord and against his Anointed’—

for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.