My wife Gretchen and I came from families of three children. When we got married, having three kids, was what we had in mind. Then we began having children and we had two boys. Now it was time for us to have a third child. What we didn't know was that we would try for that third child for about seven years. But it did not happen. During that time in our church there were about a dozen babies who were born and as Pastor and wife we would visit each of these newborns and their parents to celebrate with them in the hospital. We did this gladly. But you can imagine that our trip home after each visit might be difficult. We were happy for them but we were sad for us. We longed for a third child. We experienced brokenness.
​But what we discovered in our situation is that there is a relationship between brokenness and blessing. A few years after this Gretchen found out she had cancer. What we learned about that cancer was that it was estrogen and progesterone fed. If you are pregnant you get a lot of that in your body. Which means that if she had become pregnant with a third child if would have fed the cancer in her body and made it much worse. It was a blessing not to have a third child. 
Sometimes we see blessing right away. Sometimes we don't see blessings for years. Sometimes we may not see the blessing we think we need at all. Blessing is not necessarily that I get what I want from God. Sometimes blessing is having a greater understanding through the brokenness of who God is. That is the greater blessing. And in our situation, if we had not experienced the brokeness, we would not have seen the blessing of understanding in a greater way who our God is. There is a relationship between brokenness and blessing.

 A few weeks ago a sudden storm knocked a tree onto the power line that runs to our house. We lost all of our power, tv, phone, and internet. The resulting power surge destroyed our dishwasher, air conditioner, water cooler, numberour lights and powerstrips as well as the rust filtering water system for our house. With the many needs that our special needs son has, our house became uninhabitable and we spent 9 days in a motel. Although the motel was very nice, the stay in that small room also soon became very hard with our son.
During that week the power, tv and phone came back on but the water system was another story. The water in our area is so horrible that running water without it can do great damage to the pipes. We needed to get back into the house with the system running again. We were originally told that one of the tanks was ruined. So they ordered another tank but it never came and they didn't know when it would come. There were also no technicians available to come out and even look at our system to see if there was anything else they could do temporarily.
Finally by day 8 my wife and I decided it was time to go home, water or not. So on that ninth day we packed out bags. As we did we got a call that one of the techncians was coming to our house. We were excited. I met him at the house. What he discovered was that it was not the tank after all but simply a burned out power cord which he promptly replaced. On his way out I asked him how he happened to come that morning when he was not supposed to be available. He said he showed up at an appointment but no one was there. He called the owner and he said he had just gotten back from vacation and couldn't make it. The technician's first thought was, I am going to the Fernlunds. Before we moved back into our house everything was fixed.
​Some might call that a coincidence. On the day we had decided we needed to go back home, the technician's scheduled appointment was cancelled so he could fix our problem. When you follow Christ you will see a lot of those kinds of coicidences. In fact, a pattern will develop which shows that they are more than coincidences. They are simply God supplying our needs. They are God taking care of His people. God took care of us. He will take care of you too.

My family and I took a trip out to Connecticutt last fall to attend a wedding. While we were there we spend an evening with a friend of my wife. As we left a restaurant to head back to our motel, my wife hopped in her friend's car. I was to follow in my van. There were two issues with this. First, I had no idea how to get back to our motel and so I was dependent on the GPS in my van. The second issue was that the GPS had been acting up on the trip. As my wife and her friend pulled out of the parking lot suddenly my GPS began to malfunction. I panicked. I was about to lose the people who knew how to get to the Motel and the guide I was depending on wasn't working. I was lost. Fortunately for me the GPS came back on just in the nick of time. But it reminded me that using a GPS as my guide is only good if it works.
Do you have a good guide for your life? What are you using for your life's GPS? God tells us that we have a guide for life in His Word, the Bible. Psalm 119:105 says: "Your Word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path." God gives us direction for our lives as we read the Bible. So what is your guide for life? We have such a guide in God's Word and it is much more effective than my GPS.

It snowed last evening, again! You have to understand that this is the first day of spring. You have to understand that since the beginning of the year it has done nothing but snow. And it has been especially cold. We have all grown so tired of winter and probably never looked forward to spring so much. And then on the first day of spring, after all the snow on the ground had melted, rather than feeling like spring it snowed. No!!!
But there was something different about this snow. This time, rather than just being the sign of a continuing harsh winter, I knew it wouldn't stay around. You see I have seen the weather forecast. It is supposed to be sixty degrees on Sunday. This snow wll be gone quickly and with it all the memories of it. It's not going to last. Spring really is coming and it is not far off.
With that in mind my perspective on the snow changed. As I watched it fall, I realized how beautiful it was. It was a light, gently falling snow. When I knew there was something better coming, I was able to appreciate the good in all the parts of the now, even the bad parts. As a believer in Christ, there is something better coming that helps me appreciate the good in all the parts of the now. Yes, even the bad parts. In the struggles of this life I can look forward to eternal life and I can see the beauty of the good that God is doing in me through them now.
​In heaven all these struggles will be gone. They will not last. Yes, it is snowing now, but I have seen the forecast. Spring is coming!

Jesus said that as Christians we are the salt of earth. What does that mean? Let's look at some of the qualities of salt. Salt flavors. We are to bring the flavor of Jesus into the lives of people around us. We are to act like Jesus around them. They will see what Jesus is like through us. Salt heals. We are to bring a healing element into people's lives. The Gospel will bring health and wholeness into their relationships and even their bodies. When I was nine I fell off my bike and scraped my thumb. The doctor gave me a prescription of dunking my injured thumb into a container of warm water each day. Added to that water was epsom salt. Now, sticking my thumb into that mixture was really painful, but soon the healing began. Salt heals. And salt preserves. Before refrigeration, salt was used to keep meat from going bad. When I was in seventh grade my family took a vacation for a week at Christmas. Before we left our apartment my Dad asked me to go around our apartment and unplug everything electrical. He had heard of electrical fires starting when people were away from home for a while. So being an obedient child I went from room to room unplugging everything. And yes, I went into the kitchen. Lo and behold, behind the refrigertor was a really big plug which I of course unplugged. A week later we came back from our vacation. You can imagine what we found. The mess. The smell. I was in big trouble. The preservation had not taken place. As salt, we are to preserve. When we live like Jesus we have the ability to preserve the good in our world. The world is a better place when we do this. Salt flavors. Salt heals. Salt preserves. And all of this lived out in us, His people, points people to Jesus. Be the salt of the earth.

I listened to a news broadcast this week about the upcoming closing of a General Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio. This is devastating news for a town that had relied on the plant for more than 50 years. 1,500 workers are going to lose their jobs on March 31st and are facing uncertainty for the new year. It is calculated that with every job lost at the plant, 7 more jobs are affected outside the plant. As one person said: "This community is going to go down". 
And yet as you listen to this broadcast you hear a word spoken over and over again. It is the word hope. People say they are hopeful for some good news about the plant and their jobs. I think I counted the word hope used 7 times in the broadcast. These people are looking for hope. They are hoping things will get better. But no one has come to tell them how things will work out for them.
For God's people, God has told us how things will work out for us. God says He will supply our needs. He doesn't tell us just exactly how that will take place, only that it will. And that is reason for something each of us are looking for in the uncertainty of the new year. That is reason for hope.

In New York City there is a clock. It is not a clock that tells time. It is a clock that counts debt. It is the national debt clock. The sum of all the money each day that is overspent by our government is added to that clock. The clock was created in 1989 because of the concern for how much money our government was spending. At that time the debt was $2.7 trillion. Since then the debt has exploded each year and now stands at over $21 trillion. Each person's share of that debt is $65 thousand.  Although some could pay that debt, most could not.
There is an even greater debt that each of us has that none of us could pay.  It is the debt of our sin. The Bible actually uses the word debt to refer to our sin. And the countless ways we have offended a holy God have created that debt. Debt eventually must always be paid. So who will pay our debt? Can we pay it? We have nothing worthy to offer. So who does? God does. What does He have to offer to pay our debt? He can offer His sinless self, which he did. 
Romans 5:8 - But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
In His love God paid our unpayable debt for us by becoming one of us and giving His life on the cross. All we have to do is believe to have that payment finalized for us.
Acts 16:31 - Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.
​What love He has shown to us. Our debt has been paid.

We lived in New York City when I was in second grade. Outside our apartment building one day some friends and I decided to take a walk. Only we didn't tell anyone we were doing it. And we were gone for a couple hours. In New York City. And we were in second grade. And we had a great time. But when I eventually walked up the stairs to our apartment I could sense something was not right. My entrance into the apartment confirmed by suspicions. My Dad was upset and on the phone. My Mom was in tears. I quickly discovered that they thought I was lost and maybe worse. I was lost and I didn't even know it.
God says in His Word that all people are lost. The Bible says that all of us like sheep have gone astray. We have each turned to our own way. Because of our sin we have strayed away from God. We have lost our way. But God has gone after us. He has provided the way for us to be found. God laid our sin on His Son, Jesus. Through belief in the death and resurrection of Jesus we can be restored. We can have our sin forgiven. We can be found. We can have life as it was meant to be. Sometimes we are lost and we don't even know it. But we can be found.

What is hope? It is a desire for a certain thing to happen. It is something that people really, really want. But their hope is for things that there is no guarantee they will take place. They just hope things will line up in the right way. But there is so much that is beyond their control. And since this is the case, so many people live without any hope. Things are not getting better and only seem to get worse. 
So is there any hope in this world? The answer is yes, if you use the Bible's definition of hope. As opposed to a strong desire for something, the Bible defines hope as a strong and confident expectation. In God's Word, hope doesn't just desire, it expects. In God's Word, hope isn't uncertain, it is confident. It isn't what we can see and can't get. It is what we can't yet see but know we will get.
Hope is connected to a promise. It is focusing on the promise and the one who made the promise no matter what our situation might be. The Bible is filled with promises that are made by the creator of the universe and are guaranteed by Him no matter what our situation might be. Knowing that brings hope!

When we take on ourselves whatever difficulty someone else is dealing with, their difficulty becomes our difficulty. In doing so their burden becomes easier for them to overcome.  I was on the receiving end of this one winter day in Grand Rapids. We had a recent heavy snowfall and many of the side streets had hardly been plowed at all. I made a right turn onto one of those side streets to access my doctor's building for an appointment. The curve of the street dipped down as I turned into 10 inches of slush and immediately my car stuck. For a few minutes I tried gunning through the slush but went nowhere. What was I doing to do? 

Just then a woman walked out of my doctor's building and seeing my predicament came over and asked to help. She offered to get in and drive while I pushed, but my pushing wasn't enough. What are we going to do? Just then a man walked up the sidewalk and seeing our predicament came up and offered to help push. Between her driving and our pushing the car came right out and I make my appointment. 
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Those two people had carried my burden. My trouble became their trouble. They had reached out and helped and my burden was overcome. As Christians we need to operate like that. Perhaps we can send a card, or make a meal, or pray with them on the phone, or give them some money, or share our experiences with the burden, or watch their kids while they go to an appointment or give them a ride. The list goes on. Make someone's trouble easier to deal with. Carry each other's burdens.