Today, I’m over at Leanne Penny’s blog, sharing my story, focusing upon loss and redemption.
Leanne has quite a story herself. She writes about loss, grief, grace, and hope. I know you’ll find her to be a source of strength along your own journey, so go ahead, check her out!
But here’s the question I pose today on Leanne’s blog:
Can Jesus really redeem our losses?
It’s an appropriate question, I think, one that I struggled with for quite some time. And I hope you’ll join me as I attempt to answer this question in my post titled Can Jesus Really Redeem Our Losses?
If you’re joining me from Leanne’s blog, I’m happy you’re here. Welcome! I hope you’ll take a moment and stay a while.
One More Thing
Okay, I have only one more thing to share, so stick with me!
Since writing my post for Leanne, God has given me one more example of how He has used my dad’s murder for good. It’s an example of Jesus’ redemption, and I feel compelled to share it with you.
Last Friday, I wrote a guest blog for Renee Fisher on her blog Devotional Diva. The next morning, I woke up to an email from Renee with the subject reading, “You helped save a life,” which is the second time I’ve read those words since beginning my forgiveness journey (read about the first time here).
Later, Renee explained what happened in a newsletter she sends to her subscribers. She said,
I’m not sure how many of you are following the blog, but I had someone share their story on Forgiving A Murderer. Laurie Coombs shared about the tragedy about her father’s death and coming to grips with forgiving the person who murdered her father. Because of her powerful story, someone emailed me and asked me how can I forgive my rapist?
Immediately, I let this person know that I already had Forgiving My Rapist scheduled to post, but instead of making this person wait I went ahead and forwarded it on.
In the middle of the night I received an email from this person saying they were going to take their life, but didn’t go through with it. I AM JUST IN AWE that God can use powerful, personal, and yet–very painful stories of forgiveness to help others who aren’t yet quite there.
To be clear, none of this happened because of me. Simply put, this is just what God does with our tragedies when we allow Him to use us.
God is good. He does redeem. And He uses our losses for good.
Praying for you to be encouraged today, and for you to believe that we serve a God who creates beauty out of our losses.
