I had a wonderful anniversary.  It was made special by the surprise birth of my sister’s twin girls, Aubrey Grey and Emma Collins, who were not scheduled to arrive until June 19.  Welcome beautiful girls, and congratulations Steph and Brent!

The fact that AG and EC graced us with their presence on the day of mine and Drew’s wedding anniversary has great significance for a reason that I’ll explain in another post.  For now, I will just say that it was a special gift from God that had a lot to do with Drew and prayer.

I’ve hit a gloomy spell here in the last few days.  The heartache of simply missing Drew comes in unpredictable waves.  One thing that I have found always makes me feel better is to flip through pictures of Drew.  His sweet smile leaps from the photo paper (or computer screen), and by looking at him, it seems more obvious that he is alive, real and happy.  He just doesn’t seem so far away when I can focus on his dimples.

Going to digress:  God works in mysterious ways.  Luck would have it that I am currently enrolled in an online Technology for Teachers course, via FSU.  Snore, I know?  Who would guess that I would have so much fun with these web tools that I’m supposed to be implementing into the classroom?!  (For those of you who don’t know, I’m taking a sabbatical from teaching to stay at home.)  The first tool I learned about was Animoto.  Some of you are probably familiar with Animoto, but for those of you who are not, I would describe it as an automatic video creator.  Click “create”, select a song, add your pictures and Voila! you have a home video!  And it’s free…unless you want to make a video lasting longer than 30 seconds.  I have a lot of pictures.  It was a good investment.  Here’s one of my final products.  Happy Anniversary!

The video will relate. A fellow hopeful-griever was having a difficult day as well, and we were talking about how we hoped Jesus would come back ASAP.  The word hope triggered something I had forgotten that I knew: But the greatest is love.  “Now these three remain: faith, hope, and love.  But the greatest of these is love.”

Do you know why love is the greatest?

It remains.  Love transcends this life.  We will never have reason or cause to stop loving or being loved. 

Faith and hope are tools that the Christian should use on his earthly journey.  They guide us and strengthen us; and sometimes even give us a reason to breathe when all seems lost.  But a day is coming when we can leave them at the door!  We won’t have a need for faith or hope.  Faith, the promise of things unseen, will no longer be a prerequisite to belief, for we will see with our own eyes!  And with all of God’s promises fulfilled, how could we hope for anything?  For what would we hope?  Therefore, faith and hope will cease to exist, but our God (who is Love) offers us an entire eternity of love.

I’m thankful to Debbie Bradford for sharing that nugget of truth in my 7^th grade Sunday School Class.

*and thanks to SWAK and Chris Barr Photography for the amazing wedding photos!