When Faith Meets Grief

This is the Truth Network. Welcome to Truth Talk Live. All right, let's talk. A daily program powered by the Truth Network. This is kind of a great thing.

I'll tell you what: where pop culture, current events, and theology all come together. Speak your mind. And now, here's today's Truth Talk Live host. Welcome to Truth Talk Live. This is Peter Rosenberg.

Glad to be with you. Eight six six thirty four Truth. Eight six six three four eight. Seventy eight, eighty four. There's a lot of stuff going on in the world right now.

You got things in Iran. You got an election. You've got crime. You've got just name it. Just look at the headlines.

But there was one yesterday that stuck out at me, and I wanted to spend some time with this today, if that's okay with you. You're welcome to certainly call in if there's anything else on your mind. But there's one that really stuck out. And it was about Billy Crystal. I don't know if you saw this or not.

Billy Crystal, the actor, comedian, certainly have been a mainstay in American entertainment for fifty plus years. And he recently said he stopped talking to God. To God, his words were, "I don't trust him." You know, and it was there was some real anguish there. His home burned in the Palisades fire. And he was dear friends with Rob and Michelle Reiner, who were murdered by their son.

And so this is his response. And so my question is this: Suppose you were sitting across the table from him when he said that, what would you say? You know, I, and I'm not trying to just. You know, expose him or call him out. He made it public.

He came out and said it, and it made, you know, the news. But there are a lot of people that that share what he is expressing. I heard there was one account from the Holocaust, and one. They were asking. There was something about came up with faith on some of the prisoners.

They were talking. One of them just hollow-eyed, it was emaciated, and just no hope in anything. And they said the only person they trusted was Hitler because Hitler does what he said he's going to do, which is to kill them. And and I thought that was um, you know, pretty bleak. But at the same time, you're in the you're in the Holocaust.

You're in you're in the concentration camp, and and so I ask you, what would you say? It was somebody you know, somebody who just buried a child, a neighbor whose life has has come apart, someone who finally trusted you enough to say, "I don't trust God anymore." What would you say? Eight six six thirty four truth eight six six three four eight seventy eight eighty four. I'm reminded of a. A story a friend of mine told me about a pastor he knew whose wife and son were killed in a in a terrible terrible accident, and the pastor had a nervous breakdown.

I mean, he just psychiatric episode. It just overwhelmed him to that point, and and you can imagine it would. I mean, it's it's a horrific event. And in his regular meetings with the psychiatrist in this facility, he the he was sitting there in the chair, and the psychiatrist says, "What do you what do you suppose is keeping you here in this place? As as horrific as this was, you are in a place now where you're you're detached from reality here, and you're struggling with this.

What's keeping you here? And the pastor." Kind of with his head looking down, he said, "I've lost my faith." And he put his head in his hands and he said, "I don't believe in God anymore." And the psychiatrist was a wonderful man and a very wise individual. And he waited for a few moments and he said, "I don't think you've stopped believing in God." He said, "I I think you've stopped believing in a God that you manufactured." What do you think about that? John Calvin said that the human heart is an idol factory. We must make idols all the time.

We create God in our image. Man, man was created in God's image, and man's been returning the favor ever since. And and we we create this God that we manufacture, and so when you have somebody that has had crushing losses, you don't want to just come on real strong and just you know argue them with apologetics and beat them over the head, do you? I mean, is that is that the effective way to do it? You know, I look at Jesus going to raise Lazarus, and he he knew what was about to happen, and yet he wept.

Do you want that to shape how you approach someone in anguish? I've had people come to us and tell us what we should do and shouldn't do and shouldn't believe and should believe and all that kind of stuff, and never once acknowledge the weight of what we carry in our daily life. Do are we willing to walk into people's sorrow and just sit there with them? Maybe we don't need to say anything. Maybe there is no answer.

"Quote unquote," but maybe there is just presence. Maybe to listen to them, talk about the person they miss, let them get it out, tell them what, tell what to weep with them. Romans twelve fifteen, weep with those who weep. That can be difficult.

Some people's grief can leave us feeling pretty helpless, and we want to button it up. We want to make things better, but some things aren't going to be made better.

Sometimes we need to sit down and listen. Is that something you struggle with? Is that something you do? Is that something you've had experience with? Is that something that somebody's done for you?

You know, Scripture gives room for anguish. Have you noticed that? Have you noticed that in the Scriptures? Psalm thirteen: How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever? I mean, that's David writing this.

How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever? And there's some people that would say, "Oh, David, God's not going to forget. He doesn't forget anything. He would just come on strong." But, but Scripture lets David process it out. How long will you hide your face from me?

How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? Consider and answer me, O Lord, my God. Light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death. Lest my enemies say I have prevailed over him, lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.

But I have trusted in your steadfast love. My heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me. David gave his grief room to to to get out, and then reminded himself of what he's doing. Do we do that for folks?

Do we give their grief room? Do we acknowledge that their grief is what it is, and how painful it is?

So you got somebody like Billy Crystal, famous celebrity worldwide, and he's in anguish to the point where he goes out publicly and says, "I don't trust God." Do we want to correct him? Do we want to smack him around, or do we want to just sit with him? Those words that David said, those are in our Bibles. How long, O Lord?

Someone listening today may recognize those words immediately. Maybe you've asked those questions. You may still be asking those questions. And if someone entrusts those questions to us, how do we receive them? Do we come on real strong and overbearing, or do we just groan with them and just sit with them for a while?

Do we receive them with care? They've let they've let us into a wounded place, and as we sit beside them, can we point to the one who wept? As we give their grief room, could we point to the one who came into our suffering? Could we say to Billy Crystal? He knew grief, he knew betrayal, he knew cruelty, he knew death, and at the cross, Jesus Himself cried out, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" He bore our sin there, and He rose from the dead.

So, when I speak of Christ as someone in anguish, I want them to hear about a Savior who came near to our anguish, the one who stood at a grave and wept, the one who entered the suffering of this world. To redeem us, I really don't have an explanation for why Billy Crystal's home burned, or why his friends were murdered. But hearing his words made me want to pull up a chair and say, "Tell me, tell me about your friend. Tell me about this," and just sit with it. And as we talk, as we grieve, I would hope to be able to share.

Why Jesus, the one I turn to in my own grief, and that's Truth Talk Live. We'll be right back. You're listening to the Truth Network and TruthNetwork.com. Welcome back to Truth Talk Live. This is Peter Rosenberg, eight six six thirty four Truth, eight six six three four eight.

Seventy-eight, eighty-four. Remember, I talked about reading a proverb a day in the month of October, or any month with thirty-one days, or any month period. But sometimes with thirty-one days, you can do it.

Well, Proverbs fourteen, which is today's, the fourteenth, verse ten says, "The heart knows its own bitterness, and no stranger shares its joy." What do you think that means, there? The the heart knows its own bitterness, and no stranger shares its joy. There's an inward part of someone's sorrow that we can't fully know. We may hear their story, but we haven't lived it, and that ought to give us a little bit of humility when we speak.

So when Billy Crystal, as we're talking about in the last block, says, "I don't trust God," do we listen carefully before we assume we understand everything behind those words? Buxman wants to weigh in on this. Buxman in Dayton, Ohio. Buxman, what do you think? David or Peter, I was thinking King David and and his son Solomon with the wisdom that you just espoused from the 14th chapter of Proverbs.

And thank you so much, Peter, for challenging me on September 30th. I have been doing that challenge, Peter, ever since we made that. And I'm telling you, I'm learning so much. And I've been following the Lord forever. To get to your question about Billy Crystal.

That's really heartbreaking, and this is what I do, Peter. When I hear someone say, "Hey, Busman, you know, if God's so good, why did my baby die?" In Billy's case, why did my friends die in such a horrific manner, Busman? Why did my my house get burned down in those Palisades fire? And all I can say is this, Peter, is Like you said, you have to sit and listen to them first. I am so amazed with that first section of Truth Talk Live today.

That was brilliant. It's from the Lord. You have to just sit with these folks when they're grieving, mourn with those who are mourning. I believe it was James that said that, Brother Peter. But this is what I would say to Billy.

I would first try to get his trust to let him know that I truly care about what he's going through.

So I would spend time either talking and asking questions, and then I would say, "Look, Peter, or Billy, I am going through a lot myself, and all I know is, with each challenge and trial, I look for an answer from someone, and the person that has been been able to help me and answer them to the best is God. I go to His Word." And I find people that's gone through things just like I have, Billy. I go to friends who's been walking with God even longer than me, Billy, and says, "Busman, this is the way I got through it." And I listen to their their advice, and I listen to their heart, and I I would treat that person, whoever it was, whether it be Billy Crystal, the the famous, or Joe the nobody, next to me in you know a hotel room. And I would say, listen, God loves you, Billy. God loves you, sir.

You have to give Him a an opportunity to speak to you personally. I will help you, but let me give you some verses out of His Bible that has been enriching men and women's spirit for eons, sir. Give Him a try. Call me later. Here's my number.

And that I have done that, Peter. I've done that, brother Peter, with strangers, friends, family, and that has been done unto me. I mean, I I went through a very deep depression in 24, 25, and in between those years, Peter. And I'm telling you, if it wasn't for my friends that come alongside me, as if I was Job, I may not be talking to you on the phone right now, Peter. That's the truth.

So I understand a human's depravity of why God, this I don't want nothing to do with you. Then, and you must come alongside that person and tell them, give him a chance, let him continue speaking, Busman. He's not done speaking to you yet. He has so much that he wants to tell you, and you have resisted him all this time. Which I think is Billy Crystal's demeanor.

I don't know how close he got to the Lord. I don't know if he read his Bible at all. If he ever attended a church. If he's ever had a loving hand, Peter, come around him from a loving brother in Christ to share Christ with with Billy Crystal. That I don't know.

But that's something that we can do as Christians. You know, I and I appreciate that, Bucks, but I really do. I remember AARP. I was doing an interview with them one time about caregivers, and because that's the world I live in is somebody who takes care of somebody. And they said, "What do you?

How do you? How do you talk to a caregiver? What do you say?" Because people want to. People have kind of. I call them.

Rush Limbaugh used to call. the the the media the drive by media they just lower the window look and see what's going on ride by it move on they didn't really investigate it I remember that such wise words yeah well we have a lot of drive by theologians and drive by ministers. And they just lower the window and announce a thing that, like, like you quoted James earlier, said, "You know, be warm and filled with the Spirit." And then they do nothing for the body. They just, you know, we'll bless you, brother, and go trust in Jesus. And then they they drive off.

and And that we can't do that because because God didn't do that to us. He didn't just casually look at our suffering. He came into it. And I think that's where it starts. And when I look at my fellow caregivers and what to say, now this is what I told the interviewer there at AARP.

I said, sometimes it starts with just saying, "Hey, look, I see you, and I see the magnitude of what you carry, and I hurt with you, and just stop, stop there." One of my favorite verses in scripture is Job two thirteen, and they sat there silently with him for seven days because they saw his suffering was great. I mean, these guys didn't speak for seven days. I mean, how many of us can go without speaking to somebody and they're suffering for seven minutes? And and that takes an enormous amount of humility, and and it takes it costs you to sit with somebody in their agony. It does.

It it truly costs you, and and Jesus Himself bore that cost. Because he himself came into our agony, our hopeless estate, and so if that is foremost on our mind, I think, I think that's going to guide the conversation, wouldn't you say? Absolutely, Peter. And you hit a right topic. What we don't do, even as Christians, Peter, in this day of Doordash and Amazon next day and next hour delivery is we don't spend quality time with our fellow human being, brother.

We don't whether it be among ourselves as the family of Christ or the family of Christ reaching to the non-family of Christ. We just like you said, Peter. We will drive by, minister to them, and then drive off because we've got to get to church or whatever the case may be. Instead of saying, "You know what? I'm parking the car." This man, this woman needs me.

You know, Franklin Graham said this about Samaritan's Purse one time. I don't remember the exact context of it, but he said it's not a ministry that you can run from behind a desk. You have to get out there and smell it. He said, "Suffering and anguish has its own smell," and I thought, "Well, that's a pretty visceral comment, isn't it? You know, you really you think about that because it does, and it costs you something to go into people's agony." And I am going to talk about that when we come back from the break, because I got a particular story on this of of my own journey and.

Because it does, it and it it was an illuminating moment for me because I've been guilty of just you know pronouncing what I thought, and God in His mercy has allowed me to sit in something that doesn't get resolved, that doesn't change. Every day it's relentless, and with the intent of understanding Him in this more, going back to Psalm thirteen. Which I love that Psalm, by the way, and if you are going through things right now, as to all the listeners out here, Psalm thirteen is a great place to start. the The Psalms give room for anguish, and your anguish is is important. It's important to God.

Your pain is important to God. It's okay to hurt. It really is. It's okay to be in anguish. Our Savior was in anguish so much so that he sweated blood, and and if we can't keep that foremost in our conversations, in our thought processes, in in when we go into minister to people, as like Buckman you just said, we we we don't want to drive by and do this.

You know, we want to we want to be able to touch them. This same way, he came into ours to touch ours, and that's Truth Talk Live. Thank you, Buxman. We'll be right back. You're listening to the Truth Network and TruthNetwork.com.

Welcome back to Truth Talk Live. This is Peter Rosenberg. Glad to be with you. Eight six six three four eight. Seventy eight, eighty four, eight six six, thirty four.

Truth. I know this is kind of an odd thing to talk about necessarily on the way home, but I I I look at what's going on around us and I think, okay, how do we as Christians respond? And we've got so many people talking about Iran, so many people talking about the election, so many people talking about Minnesota and their fraud, so many people. But a major voice in the entertainment world, someone we've grown up seeing as movies. You know, City Slickers.

You know, name it. We've all the movies that he's been in. Billy Crystal, and publicly expressed his own anguish, and and talked about you know when when Rob and Michelle were murdered by their son, who was just a hot mess with mental illness and drugs and everything else, and then that was on top of his home being burned down in the fire. You know, and there's a point where he just said, "I'm I'm done with this. I don't trust God.

I don't want to talk to him anymore." And I again, I don't know what his background was. I think he's Jewish, but I'm not sure. I I don't know what his background was. But I I recognize pain when I see it. And I think.

We can get easily pulled into all kinds of arguments and things online in in in this world. It's it's so easy to do, and and I'm I'm guilty of it. We're all guilty of it.

Well, I don't know if we're all guilty of it, but a lot of people are. I know I am. But I I couldn't get past it. I when I every time I saw the headline, I was just like, oh man, I wish I could just buy him a cup of coffee and just sit with him. And not try to convince him of anything, but other than the fact that he's not alone, that someone is willing to come into his his agony.

And and I think about my own life with this. And I told you before the break, I'd tell you a story. I, I, I was over there with our. We have a prosthetic limb ministry that we've been doing prosthetic limbs now for more than twenty years, and we've been doing this in the West African country of Ghana. We've treated patients from all over the place in that area, in that region, in other countries, and as far away as even Kenya.

But most of it's there. And and what happens is the patient comes in. We get an evaluation, see what's going on. We've trained the workers there to do this. I've taken teams over there, and then I send regular supplies.

I just sent over a bunch of supplies last month, and then I'm sending over our little church out here in Montana where we live. After 40 something years, bought new Bibles and new books. I mean, new hymnals. And I said, let me have the old ones. And so we're sending those over there.

I've already shipped them; they're on their way. And each patient that gets a prosthetic leg will get one of these Bibles that has been used by so many people here in this little valley here in Montana. And then there's a local church that's going to get all the hymnals. And and this is through the ministry that Gracie envisioned after giving up her own legs when when she became a double amputee. My wife did back in the nineties.

She wanted to be able to put legs on people and tell them about Jesus. And we've been doing this for a long time. And and I remember one of the earlier trips we made. I took a pretty good sized team, and I was. Going around, you know, there's a lot of administrative stuff to do, and I'm not a prosthetist, but we took prosthetists with us.

That's what we do, and physical therapists and so forth. And when the patient comes in, we'll evaluate, see what's going on, and it's not first responder stuff.

Okay, so they they they they didn't just lose their limb last week, and so but we want to get them up and going and and see what's going on and provide a good quality prosthetic limb. And this guy comes in, and he was from Nigeria, which is you know a good ways away. But he had made his way down there, and he was wearing a leg. He looked like he's about twenty five years old, and he was wearing a leg. And I thought, well, he's already got a leg, and he was walking okay.

wasn't great, but it was okay. A lot of people that were coming in were being carried in, wheeled in, coming in on crutches or whatever. Didn't didn't have a leg. And none of my team was available to evaluate him to see what was going on, and so I said, "Okay, I'll just I'll just do it myself." And I know enough about prosthetics. I've been married to a double amputee for a long time now, and and so I I sat down and I sat in a chair right in front of him, and a friend of ours was on the trip with us.

His name was Bill. And he's an older man. He was actually a roommate of Gracie's dad in college, and he wanted to come with us. It was great to have him there. And he's sitting over there beside me, you know, a couple feet away.

And everybody else is in the other part of the clinic, and you hear all kinds of tools and everything going. It's pretty loud. It gets pretty boisterous. It's a workshop. You're building legs, and this guy is sitting there.

Well, he doesn't speak English, and I couldn't find an interpreter. And so I thought, well, all right, we're just going to make do.

So I kind of motioned for him to pull up his pant leg a little bit. It was a below the knee leg, and to take off his prosthesis, which he did. And he's wearing a kind of a a gel type liner, which we provide over there, and they're really great. Gracie wears them herself, and he was wearing one that looked a little bit old, but still functional. And then wanted him to take off the the liner.

So we can see the stump, the residual limb, and he took off that liner, and the smell of this thing hit me. I mean, like it had reached out and slapped me. It was the most putrid smell. And I mean, I mean, my eyes were just watering. And Bill was sitting over there beside me.

He kind of backed away. He was several feet away. I mean, it was bad. And I'm, I'm just. Getting a face full of this, and I thought this guy must have an infection.

He must have an abscess here, and I kind of punched through it to try to figure out what's going on here, and it wasn't. It was just body odor. You remember that Seinfeld episode when when. That guy had body odor and left it the smell in Jerry's car, and he couldn't get it out. He was beyond; it was not just bio; it was BBO, beyond bio.

He said he needed to call a priest. It had a chain on it; it was so bad, and and that's what it felt like. And I'm thinking about this, and and this putrid smell. And as I was able to examine, if there was no wound, nothing. It was it was just he had not properly.

Taking care of the hygiene of this leg, and see, when you've got it in a enclosed environment like a a silicone sleeve or liner, you know you're not getting any air in there.

So you got to keep it washed. We when we give out liners and sleeve, we give bars of soap and everything, and show them how to wash it. And I knew there was no salvaging this thing, and so I I I there was nobody around, so I got a a basin of water, and I was trying to explain to this guy how to do this. And he just looked at me clueless. And this guy was, from what I understand, he was a Muslim, and so here I am with this Muslim guy in front of me from another country.

Who, you know, for all I know, he's an enemy of my faith. He's, he's maybe an enemy of my country. I have no idea. Um, but I just knew he showed up. He's missing a leg, and he came to our clinic.

So I. In vain, tried to explain things, and so I went and found a basin of clean water and a towel and some soap, and I washed this guy's stump. And if you told me after 9/11 that I'd be doing that, and this was not terribly long after that, I'd have never believed it. I never would have believed it. But here I was in a dusty clinic in Africa, washing this guy's stump.

And it smelled. I mean, it reeked. But after a while, the tears in my eyes from the smell of it changed because I realized this is what this is what Christ did for me, and my stench was far worse than this. And it wasn't going to come come out with the soap and water. It needed something a whole lot more.

It was only going to come out through blood, His. And I couldn't get that picture out of my mind. And I'm sitting there just having a moment while I'm watching this guy stop, and I'm just sobbing while I'm doing it because I'm thinking I I couldn't hardly get it out. I mean I just this is what this guy did for me. I mean I mean this is what what Jesus did for me.

What I'm doing for this guy here, and I and and which is such a picture, and it it was a for forever life altering moment for me on approaching ministry of any kind. That I am reminded of how much he came into my stench, how much it cost him to come into my mess, my anguish, my sorrow, my sin. And I think, as I think about this thing with Billy Crystal, I hope that there are Christians around who are cognizant of that, who can maybe. Just get him a cup of coffee. I know he's a big celebrity.

I know he's a big star, but he's still a grieving friend. He's still a guy who is hurting so much, so that he's processing this out in front of the nation. It made it made news everywhere, and I hope somebody will be able to intersect him. And others who are like that, and that we can foster this type of of ministry. We have the other kind, where we got basically pep rallies at our churches.

We got plenty of those. Y'all seen those, right? And we got everybody shows up, and they're all just kind of, you know. We're all laughing and cutting up and and cheering on and and hooping and hollering or whatever else, but but the reality is that every one of those seats, every one of those pews, are filled with people going through all kinds of stuff. Thoreau said that all men lead lives of quiet desperation.

It's everywhere. It is everywhere. It is the human condition. And so the question is, what? How do we approach that?

And for me, I think over my years of this, I think it has just been incredibly helpful to keep in mind how much God condescended to me, how much He came into my stuff, knowing that I couldn't go to hit on my own. There's a wonderful author; she's dealt with trauma. And she's a psychologist. Her name is Diane Langberg, and she's brilliant, brilliant thinker. And she's been dealing with trauma, particularly sexual trauma, for most of her fifty-plus year career.

And she says one of the words that we we ought to get a get away from is saying the word they in our culture. They well, if they wouldn't do this, or if they didn't do this, if they they you know as somehow as if our choices are better than theirs. We're somehow giving ourselves a little bit more moral superiority than theirs.

Well, they—it's their fault. They're the ones that. And she said, "There is no they. There's only us. The only one who could say they.

Became like us, so that we could go to him. That's that's worth remembering, isn't it? There is no they. There is only us." The only one who could say they became like us, so that we could be reunited with Him. Because the sin gulf that that that span of that huge chasm could not be breached by anything we could do, so He came to us in our anguish and suffering.

Tends to bring these things out sometimes. Of when we see these great sufferings and great moments of pain and sorrow, suffering erupts.

Some of these things at the bottom of our soul. You see this even in the Psalms, but David did something different, didn't he? He reminded himself, and that is Truth Talk Live. This is Peter Rosenberg, eight six six thirty four Truth. We'll be right back.

You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. Welcome back to Truth Talk Live. This is Peter Rosenberg. Glad to be with you. Eight six six thirty four.

Truth. Eight six six three four eight. Seventy-eight, eighty-four. If you want to be a part of the program, I want to switch gears for just a moment, if you don't mind. We had something over the weekend that would may surprise some of you, particularly those of you in the South and the listening audience there.

I was sitting at the piano on Sunday. I played the piano at church, and I was bowing my head as the usher led us in prayer. And his first sentence, he thanked God for the snow. We had a lot of snow here this past weekend. I'm up here in Montana in the Rockies, so snow.

We usually get a pretty big October storm, then warm back up a little bit, and then by the first of November or so, then we have snow on the ground. Usually until April, up where we are, we're up pretty high. And people say, "Don't you get tired of it?" Well, I haven't yet. I've been doing this for a while, and I love coming out here and and. It's different because in Montana, you you know you prepare for it.

You you people know how to drive in it, and we don't have as many people on the road. And then, excuse me, you know, it's just it's a different kind of snow than what I grew up back in the South with, you know, which was ice and so forth. This is powder for the most part. But he thanked God for the snow. There are a lot of people wouldn't necessarily do that.

They get, oh, I don't like the snow, whatever. And growing up in the south, snow was a a rare occurrence. That usually sent everyone rushing to the grocery store for bread, milk, eggs, and toilet paper. I'm not sure why French toast and snowfall were so closely related to the bathroom, but I'll do a deep dive on that subject maybe a little later. But as after the prayer, I started the music, but his words stayed with me.

And see, this is an agricultural community out here. Snow means something different. We had a pretty rough fire season this year. Too little rain. Last we had a pretty sparse winter last year, so the first decent snowfall is is really a welcome sight, and it it's it recognizes this is a time of healing for the land.

There's still work to do, you know. Livestock needs to be fed regardless of what falls out of the sky, and particularly the wintertime. You do a lot of feeding in the summertime. You you turn them loose, but we have horses out here, and I'll be feeding them. And when it gets, I'll start off with a side by side first with hay in the back of it, and then when the snow gets too deep, I pull a sled behind my snowmobile, and I'll take hay out there and feed the horses with it.

I have to do that even if it's twenty five thirty below, because I've done that. And people say, "Oh, I don't want to do that." Well, you know, it has its moments. It can be a little bit daunting at times, but it's still deeply meaningful time in winter because I don't know. It there's something about this season of winter, at least out here, where I see it differently than I used to. And and the prayer this usher gave.

Help me see it as really a season of mercy, and Gracie has always loved snow. I mean, always. She grew up on Florida's Gulf Coast. In fact, a lot of her family is right there where the hurricane just hit. Her dad had to be evacuated, and family members they took some damage and so forth.

But they're okay here. But he's all right. But it's it's you know, she Christmas growing up for her as a child involved air conditioning and people wearing shorts. And she absolutely hated that. And somewhere along the way, she just determined she was going to live one day where there was real winter.

Well, mission accomplished because there is real winter out here, and it sometimes it looks like Narnia before Aslan, you know. came It's very, very beautiful out here, and you know, we have been long term. Um, in in the in a while, the long term residents here refer to it as a as a real Montana winter, but we haven't had that in a while, and and it's still more winter than Florida ever offered. There, I remember going through a winter here where it it was, you know, twenty below for a stretch. And you weren't getting out.

There was one time. This was so funny. Went back before we had a lot of the streaming services now, and and fiber optics and everything else we have. We had Direct TV on our television, and it was the local affiliate for ABC on cable was Channel Two News out of Nashville, where we lived. And we would come out here at Christmas time and stay through New Year's and so forth, but we would be able to watch local news from Nashville while we're here because that was the channel to affiliate.

Turns out it was that way, and like a cruise ships and everything else, it was kind of odd. And so, one day, Nashville was going to get some snow, and there was going to be like. One inch of snow was coming to Nashville. I mean, you got to shut down the rhinestone mines. I mean, this is this was just mass panic again.

French toast and going to the bathroom—that was pretty much on everybody's mind as they flooded the grocery stores. And so, at the Nashville affiliate there, WKRN Channel Two in Nashville, they had a reporter go out to one of the local grocery stores, a Kroger grocery store, and. See it from the grocery stores perspective. One guy even put the camera in the cart and pushed it around to see the the mass chaos that is happening as one inch of snow comes to Nashville. And the next morning, it's about ten degrees and there's two feet of snow.

And a local rancher down below, real good friend of ours, and he was going to go up snowmobiling with us. He was older fella and he groomed the trails for the national forest behind us in the this forest. And so he comes putting up on his snowmobile. Probably at the time I'm about 75 or so, and he gets off a sled. We're getting ready to go out, and he looked at me.

He said, "I saw the news last night. You guys are about ready to have some weather in Nashville." And I thought, as if he haul wasn't embarrassing enough for Nashville, that we had that. But but we have real winter out here. But the reason why Gracie is particularly fond of of winter. And it goes much deeper than Christmas weather.

She looks out at the the pristine beauty, and all the scars of the land are covered. When you live with a lot of scars like she does, she's had ninety eight surgeries that I can count. A moment like that is really hard to describe. She knows what injury leaves behind, even after a wound closes. And when a fresh snow blankets the rough places outside the windows and in the fields, even where there were forest fires, she sees a reminder of God's grace, and the promise of redemption and healing.

The scars are still there beneath the snow. She knows that. But for a little while, they're not the first things she sees. And I've spent enough years beside her to understand why that matters. You know, and after a summer of watching smoke rising and wondering where the next fire is going to be, the first substantial snowfall snowfall out here it feels like permission to take a deeper breath.

And the the work continues, and so does the vigilance. The firefighters don't just take off for the next six months, but the land enters another season, a season of rest. And on Sunday, an usher. Thank God for that snow, and what it meant, because it's going to build up the snowpack up in the high country, and we'll be feeling the effects of all that snow accumulating for the next several months.

Well, really, about next seven months, and then it'll start melting off and fill up all the creeks and the irrigation ditches for the livestock and everything else. We'll feel the effects of this next July.

So we thank God for it. And that prayer stayed with me, you know, long after the music ended, and I was I was really quite moved by that. Do we thank God for these things? And how many times you see in Scripture references to snow, whiter than snow? Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.

You know, that's the promise that God makes to His people. That's what redemption is all about. And if I don't know who needed to hear that today. I needed to hear it myself. I'm gonna let you in on a secret.

I preach to me. Y'all just get to listen because I got to hear this. I have gospel amnesia, and I got to remind myself of these things. You know that old hymn. Sing them over and over again.

Wonderful words of life. You know that. Yeah, beautiful words, wonderful words. I love that hymn. Seen them over and over again.

Philip Bliss wrote that, and just just an amazing hymn. And and I love that hymn, and I love so many of these great hymns that remind us of these things, remind ourselves. And this is what I opened up with was Psalm 13, with David talking about how difficult he was feeling that the things that were weighing on him. He said, "But then I." I remembered this. Jeremiah does this in Lamentations three, but then I recall to my mind, great is thy faithfulness.

So, that's that's where my headspace is right now. I hope that's been helpful and meaningful to you. By the way, I wrote that out as an article. If you want to go and get that, you can go out to my Substack. Caregiver dot Substack dot com.

Caregiver dot Substack dot com. If you want to know what Substack is, it's like an online newsletter, and I put things out there all the time that are free. After a couple weeks, they go behind into the archives, and that's a paywall. But everything I put out new, that just it's all there. Just you could get the app and download it; it'll push it right to your phone.

And I put out sometimes video, sometimes audio, sometimes print, sometimes all the above. And I hope you'll take advantage of that. It's it's out there for you. And a lot of this is my journey as a caregiver, because that's where I'm so passionate on on on this network on Saturday. Might show hope for the caregiver heirs, and so if you're a caregiver and you're struggling with these things, you're taking care of somebody who has dementia or a child with special needs, or you're in relationship with somebody who's an alcoholic or an addict.

Whatever the chronic impairment, there's always a caregiver. Please know that you're not alone. Please know that someone is out there speaking to those places from a place of credibility. I've spent 40 years in this particular lane, and I try to stay in my lane. And but but when I see things like when I saw with Billy Crystal and all that kind of stuff, I that's why I recognize I recognize pain when I see it.

I recognize heartache when I see it, and I would make myself available to speak to that heartache. As best as I possibly can, and I would hope to help others do the same, and encourage you to do the same, because ultimately, the reason we do that is He did it for us, and that's He did it for us. That's Truth Talk Live. This is Peter Rosenberg. We'll see you next time.

Truth Talk Live.