A true Gem

As many of you probably know, Amy Welborn lost her husband Micheal last week. I don't know either of them personally, but have been following their blogs for years. The suddenness of this death shook me to my core; reading about a wife living through my greatest fear brought me to tears a number of times.

Today, Amy has the most beautiful post about the Consolation of Christ at times such as these. I highly recommend reading it, because we all need consoling, for a million different reasons. To see Christ's promises being realized through the tragedy in another family is helping me grow in faith, trust, and love. For Amy to use her talent so beautifully at a time like this is such a gift to all who read her. The post is titled "Euthus".

Here is a short excerpt. Truly, go read the rest!

Without thinking much about it, I told her to start reading from the Gospel of Mark. Why? There was a consciousness about it - both Michael and I love the Gospel of Mark. We liked talking about it. He was fascinated by what it reveals about Jesus and his disciples, especially in contrast to the popular view that what we have in the Twelve and the Master is a merry band of fellows completely in sync at all times. Well, when you read the Gospel of Mark, you see how false that image is. The apostles, besides being generally clueless, were also generally confused and intimidated by Jesus most of the time.

So I had her read aloud and after a couple of chapters, I stopped her, to see if she was paying attention to what she was reading.

“What word,” I asked, “are you reading over and over?”

She thought about it, and studied the pages.

“Immediately?”

A+.

Euthus. The Gospel of Mark is infused with a sense of urgency. Immediately he got up. Immediately they went out. Immediately.