Normally when I speak at a church, it’s been scheduled weeks or months in advance. That wasn’t the case last week.
On Tuesday I received a request to preach on the upcoming Sunday at Woodside Bible Fellowship in Elmira. I would be filling in for one of their pastors whose wife had been diagnosed with cancer the day before.
The news brought back a flood of memories when I received the cancer diagnosis from my doctor.
Life has ways of knocking us down and laying us low. It’s not just cancer, it can be an interpersonal conflict, a job loss, a wayward child. Or a hundred other things. Rich Mullins has it right when he sings, “We are not as strong as we think we are.”
The pastors at Woodside had been preaching from the Psalms this summer, so I chose to preach from Psalm 116. It’s a psalm I love because it tells you what to do when life knocks you down. And what to do when God picks you up again.
Rick and Linda Reed 