For the second time this autumn, I'm in Barcelona. This time the city is the venue for our all-Europe King's Kids gathering, attended by KKI leaders, staff, friends and families from West, East, North and Central Europe. Around 200 people have been arriving today from places as diverse as Azerbaijan and Armenia, Belgium and Belarus, Ireland and Italy, Poland and Portugal….. In fact they're coming from more than twenty countries, and we'll be running the conference with translation into multiple languages. Over the past three days, we've had leadership meetings with the national coordinators of KKI youth and family ministries in those nations, and today the larger group arrives for the start of our regional conference. We're holding it in a big conference centre near the airport (yes, those pictures on the left are two sides of the same building) and we're trusting for a special sense of God's presence over these next days of worship, prayer and strategising, teaching, workshops, etc. Thanks for your prayers over these next four days.
This weekend, in my daily Bible reading, I was struck by Jeremiah chapter 31, verse 4. It says, “I will build you up again.... and you will be rebuilt.” In its context, God is promising to rebuild the nation of Israel after a time of exile.... but the verse stood out to me this weekend because it brought back such a vivid memory of a day three years ago when my Dad was dying in the intensive care unit of the hospital. Although doctors said there was no hope he would ever come out of hospital alive, I felt that God was speaking through this verse in Jeremiah, promising that my Dad would not die, but would be built up again.
I looked out my old journal and read what I’d written on 4th November 2011. From verse 13 in that same chapter of Jeremiah, I felt that God was saying our mourning and sadness would be turned into joy. I felt a sense of God’s assurance that we weren’t going to lose my Dad to death, but that He would still be alive fifteen months later to celebrate his 60th wedding anniversary. I guess Father God knew how important that assurance would be... because the very next day the doctors called us into a little room and broke the news that my Dad was fading and there seemed to be very little chance that he would survive much longer.
But he did survive... and fifteen months later he was alive to celebrate his Diamond Wedding. You can read the whole story here, in a blog post that I wrote in March 2013. Not only was Dad alive and well for that special anniversary, He even got up and danced an anniversary waltz with my Mum. See the video by clicking here.
And so that’s why Jeremiah 31:4 stood out to me in a new light this weekend. I read the second half of the verse too, and it says this, “I will build you up again, and you will be rebuilt... and you will go out to dance with the joyful.”
I turned the page to verse 13 and found the same thing there: “Then maidens will dance and be glad; young men and the old as well. I will turn their mourning into rejoicing.”
How weird! It sounded like a description of my parents’ sixtieth wedding celebration: young people and old people rejoicing together... and even the old man himself getting up to dance. How could I possibly have missed, back in 2011, that these two verses not only promised life and healing; they also promised a dance?
Of course, at the time, we’d been told that Dad would never walk again; perhaps would never even breathe again on his own. We weren’t particularly thinking about whether or not he would dance. But I saw God’s faithfulness, and His sense of humour, this weekend, on re-reading those “promise verses” and realising that they spoke about a time of dancing to come.
My Dad doesn’t do much dancing nowadays... but three years after his near-death experience, I’m pleased to report that He’s doing amazingly well and enjoys working in the garden. He’s going to celebrate his 86th birthday on the first of December.
