We are confident....

Over the past few weeks the girls and I have written to many of you to thank you for your support and care during the time of Wayman's illness and when he died.

I am so humbled by the goodness of people who cared enough to contact us. Many of you had stories to tell us, and memories that you shared, giving us an insight into your relationships with Wayman.

I will apologise now for my atrocious handwriting. It seems that the harder I try to write with fluency, the worse it gets! It slopes off the page, has funny little loops and is very uneven.

Being left handed, and growing up in the country when penmanship was not valued, has left me with a cruel legacy.

If you are interested, here is a sample!

The slope is so bad you feel you are going to be sea-sick reading it!

I wanted so desperately to write something meaningful and personal to each person.

I found myself coming back to this sentence time and time again.

We are confident that Wayman is now at home

We are confident.....

We are confident.....

Many of you would have said YES we know, and would have praised God with us for the confidence we have.

But others of you I know would have said something like, "Well isn't that nice for Ruth and the girls to have that comfort at this difficult time."

Friends, I want to tell you that this confidence is not just some hopeless wishing that we are clinging to in our grief.

You see, if we believe in a life after death, the best person to trust to know about it, is one who has died and has come back to tell us about it!

And that is Jesus. The real, historical Jesus. And there is clear evidence to support his ressurrection. He took the time to tell us about what life after death is like, where Wayman is now.

I have put some of his words in the Bible verse today.

So we join christians through the ages in saying.........

I am convinced [confident] that neither death nor life........nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.