Ever-present

It's 6:16 in the morning, and I should be tying up the fabric of my day's lessons plans.

But, my throat feels rawed by sand paper, and I'm in a tired-sick stupor.

If I can't focus now with these minor symptoms, I wonder how someone can who is really sick, who is chronically sick.  Yesterday I read an article about Ed Dobson, a once (well-known) pastor who's now chronically ill. He said that he found it hard to pray at all, to access that common devotional life which girds us during the day. Yet he's managed somehow to weakly walk the path (and to write a book about it with the help of his son!).

I, rawed-throat-only, believe in the challenge.

In so many aspects, it must be a difficult thing to have one's health taken away. I pray that those sick today can be, even if vaguely cognizant, aware of the following oft-repeated biblical promise:

"God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble." Psalm 46:1

Ever-present sounds like a feathertop mattress we can ride upon the turbulence.

Grateful.