Tuesday I met evil.  Humans who proclaim they know God, attend church on Sundays and then harm and mistreat other human beings and lie and cheat are more difficult for me to deal with than criminals.  I had a friend that was a convicted murderer.  My students always love to hear me talk about him.  He did commit a murder and serve time, but during that time he fell in love with Jesus and God transformed him.  The Holy Spirit just poured out of him.  We met when we served the homeless people late on Friday nights in Berkeley, California.  Now, we met many people who didn't know Jesus and some who did very bad things.  Yet, I would much prefer to spend days with sinners than the evil people who double-speak.

Enough about the bad things this week and how they greatly impacted my family.

Now on to the good and God.  I mentioned to an acquaintance what the financial repercussion would be from this evil person.  She went out on a limb and looked for work for me.  I was speechless.  I had gone from the situation with the evil person nearly begging for work to having someone go and help me. 

Truly amazed.  A few times in the past 9 years I feel like I have understood what the paralytic must have felt like when his friends opened up the roof and dropped him in to see Jesus.  The people who have carried my stretcher were people that I could always see the Holy Spirit working in, but humanly I never expected that they would choose to come, pick up my stretcher and help me.

One of the reasons that we continue to homeschool day after day is that I find more stretcher bearers in the homeschooling community.

So, openly I would like to praise God tonight.  Thank you for my stretcher-bearers.  Help me to practice my faith when I meet evil again tomorrow.  Comfort my child while I am away.

Amen.

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