On April 12, 2023, this blog introduced JoJo Walker. You can read about her here: https://thecolleyhouse.org/we-can-add-a-little-blessing. She’s suffered for a long time from cerebellar ataxia. It’s taken much of the normalcy from her life for many years and it seems that it’s soon to reposition her to a place where she will never suffer with it again. She’s a digger and the local sisters in the dig made JoJo feel connected during a time in which Covid made many, including JoJo, feel very isolated and disconnected. Two years ago, she rededicated her life, one that had become somewhat distant and discouraged. Since that rededication, she has been digging and preparing for eternal life. Her husband has been encouraged, too.
Earlier this week, JoJo had a relatively good day. She was responsive and alert. She listened to the hymns she had requested: “The Greatest Commands” and “Someday.” Best of all, she and her husband requested that she be sent a copy of this month’s Digging Deep study. This was quickly done and Mrs. JoJo and company studied through the passage about that very sick woman being loosed from that eighteen-years of being bowed over.
All of the faithful will be loosed one day from every malady, every disease, every heartache and every enemy. The alternative to living in pain looks very good to the Christian. I think it is interesting that the description of the woman’s loosing is used in regard to our Lord in Acts 2:24:
Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain: Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible that he should be holden of it.
On that Sunday morning following the crucifixion, our Lord was loosed from the pangs of death. The resurrection loosed our Lord. His resurrection looses us, too, from the pangs of death and all its attendant afflictions. Because of it, we are, ultimately delivered from the trials of this life.
Will you be loosed from the pangs? Raised in corruption, glory and power?
So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power (I Cor. 15:42, 43).
When I first wrote about JoJo, I was given permission to share her address. I do so again now. I think cards will be a blessing now, especially to Mr. Roger. May He richly bless us all as we prepare to be loosed!
I hope you can take a minute today to read the following letter I received from my dear old friend Nancy Cooper (on the left the photo), of Mount Sterling, Kentucky. Nancy lived across the hall from me in Scott Hall on the FHU campus back in some really fun and preparatory days of our lives. I plan to love her for all of eternity (if there could ever be an “all” in an “eternity” modifier.) Nancy is now an avid digger, encourager and kingdom worker. In fact, there’d be a great hole in lots of hearts, families, and in the church in Mount Sterling, if Nancy were not present in these entities.