Today it was hard to see dad struggle to talk, but it was encouraging to hear what he was trying to say. I mentioned that Pastor Ormiston had stopped over and had hoped to share some encouragement from thinking through the sovereignty of God (but mom and dad were asleep). Dad talked to me all through his brunch.

First he asked me what we got from the sovereignty of God and I said right now, comfort is about all I can think of (this isn’t dumb, random chance) and he agreed. Then he alluded to our conversation on Paul’s prayer in 1 Corinthians and how we so often we don’t pray rightly. He said the most encouraging thing after that: “when I get out of here, I’m going to find 2 or 3 people and we’re going to learn how to pray”. We talked through how differently we see prayer in the New Testament, and he was talking how he wanted to go through the examples as a group.

He mentioned how we pray for jobs and to get through hard times, but miss the point (the spiritual side of what God is doing).

He acknowledged that times like these are where we struggle with the sovereignty of God, but I think I was supposed to connect that to the conversation on prayer (he nods off to sleep mid sentence, then 45 sec. later continues with the conversation as if he was awake the whole time… Thoughts don’t always flow clearly)

It seems he’s been working through how to pray through all this and has decided he wants to learn to pray better, because praying for healing and simple resolution seems to miss the whole point of what our Sovereign God is doing.

It was also encouraging to hear him say things like:

– When I get out of here, and get the family room done, the first thing I want to do is get a Lego set to build together with Benjamin.

He is still planning on recovering and focusing on wanting to grow closer to God. Not sure what more I could hope for right now, besides miraculous healing.