Remembering 9/11 and planting a seed in Uganda

I am sure all who live in America have memories of the 9/11/01 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York.  Here are mine: It was my mother who called me on the morning of 9/11/01 to tell me to turn on the TV. I watched as the planes crashed into the North and South towers, killing nearly 3,000 people. It was shocking and a devastating blow to those of us who live in the United States as well as to the world. It was unthinkable, unbelievable at first. Certainly we want to remember and give thanks to all those whose lives were taken by this act of evil.

However, I was already suffering with the news I had heard only one month earlier. The man I loved, who had been sent by God to be my husband, was told he had only 6 months to live. He was fighting for his life. He would fight the diagnosis and God would give him victory to live 3½  more years. But on March 7, 2005, at the age of 56, God took him home. At that time I realized heaven was real and God has a purpose for my life. The Tabernacle for a Shadow book is God’s gift to His people. It is to remind them that He is the Comforter. It is meant to show them His love for them in these end time trials.  

I am grateful to live in the United States. God has shed His beauty and grace as well as His glory on us. God has given each of his children gifts and talents and abilities to be used for His glory. We are not the only country to suffer devastating problems. Today I am looking beyond the United States into the world that needs to know the love of God that we, as Christians, know. That is why God is seeing to it that His book of His word and His creation, Tabernacle for a Shadow, is going around the world by the hands of those who love Him. These books are His seeds. That is why I look even further than the United States and the world to the next realm: eternal life. Not everybody knows the comfort of God. That is why what Dellnot, an educator who lives in the African country of Liberia, wrote yesterday is such a blessing to me today:

Dear Joseph and Susan,

Thank you very kindly for your kind sentiments and for spreading the word of our need for prayer as we battle against Ebola. As a result of the outbreak our institutions are closed - including schools.

However, I am sure that when the time is right, we will continue our work to bring a mobile laboratory to schools in Paynesville who so desperately need it….

Susan, I just met a young lady from Uganda who I believe could use the Tabernacle for a Shadow.  She works here and is unable to go home right now so she is very frightened for her family.  I know the Tabernacle for a Shadow will lift her spirits.  So that's one more Country added…

A couple of days ago I discovered a commentary about the Bible verse from which the title of the book is taken, Isaiah 4:6.  John Gill* (who preached in the same church as C. H. Spurgeon over one hundred years earlier) explains it this way: “And there shall be a tabernacle
Christ, who tabernacled in our nature, and is the minister of the true tabernacle, which God pitched, and not man; who will be spiritually present in the word and ordinances, where the shepherds pitch their tents; and who will be that to his people as shepherds' tents are to them, to which the allusion is: for a shadow in the day time from the heat:
from the heat of a fiery law, which works wrath; from the flaming sword of justice, which calls for vengeance; from the wrath of God, which is poured forth like fire; from Satan's temptations, compared to fiery darts; and from the violence of persecution; for there will be no more after the last struggle of the beast, and the slaying of the witnesses: and for a place of refuge;
until the indignation be over and past: as Christ is a refuge for sensible sinners to flee unto for safety, from avenging justice, and the wrath of God; so he is a place of security, and has his chambers of safety for saints, from all dangers, and from every enemy, (Isaiah 26:20, Isaiah 26:21): and for a covert from storm and from rain;
from the blast of the terrible ones, the antichristian powers, which will be as a storm against a wall, (Isaiah 25:4) this will be the hour of temptation, which will come upon and try them that dwell upon the earth, from which Christ will preserve his faithful ones, (Revelation 3:10) (Isaiah 32:2).”

And this commentary from Matthew Henry** says: “…Their tabernacle shall be a defense to them, Isa. 4:6. God’s tabernacle was a pavilion to the saints (Ps. 27:5); but, when that is taken down, they shall not want a covert (cover): the divine power and goodness shall be a tabernacle to all the saints. God himself will be their hiding-place (Ps. 32:7); they shall be at home in him, Ps. 91:9. He will himself be to them as the shadow of a great rock (Isa. 32:2) and his name a strong tower, Prov. 18:10. He will be not only a shadow from the heat in the daytime, but a covert from storm and rain. Note, In this world we must expect change of weather and all the inconveniences that attend it; we shall meet with storm and rain in this lower region, and at other times the heat of the day no less burdensome but God is a refuge to his people in all weathers.

Note also that each of these commentaries refer to Isaiah 32:2 which is also found on the back inside jacket cover of the Tabernacle for a Shadow book.

So no matter what is going on in the world, let us put our trust in Jesus Christ.

*John Gill's Exposition of the Bible - public domain                                                                                    **Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible (1712) – public domain