This morning an interesting thing happened as I was waiting for the bus with my kids.  My daughter is currently studying The Protestant Reformation and The Renaissance Era in her Global History class.  They had been talking about Henry VIII so she started singing this little song that they had learned from a Horrible Histories video in elementary school. You can watch by clicking if you are interested.  Anyway…one of the lines in the song talks about how Henry ruined the lives of his wives.  For some reason this morning, my daughter thought it would be funny to replace Henry’s name with her father’s name at the part about ruining the lives of his wives.  Well since I was/am his only wife thus far, I said.  How do you think that he ruined my life?  I asked if that was really how they felt.  They both said no, and said that actually in a lot of ways they felt like things are better this way.  Now I personally feel that way, but it surprised me that they said that.  My husband and I never fought, literally, I can probably count just a few times in our entire 13 years of marriage that we ever actually got into a fight. We got along great and we did everything as a family.  I honestly thought that they would love nothing more than their father to be back home.  So it was a bit surprising to me that they would feel that way.

However all of this brought about an opportunity to speak some much-needed truth to them as well as myself.   The truth that we were experiencing without really realizing it.  That is the truth of Romans 8:28

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who^[ have been called according to his purpose.”

Often I think we miss the “ALL THINGS” portion of that.  It doesn’t say, good things will happen to bring about your good, it says that in “ALL THINGS” God works for our good. That means even in the bad things that happen to us, God is working for our good.  So as they walked out the door, I said, that is why the bible says .”..ALL things work for our good…” we are seeing that biblical promise in action in our lives.  What a great way to send my kids off to their last day of school before Christmas break.  What a great way to head into Christmas, knowing that just as God kept his promise to send  a savior all those years ago in Bethlehem, He is the same God today and He keeps his promises!  All of them!