Tuesday February 22 8:00pm

We reached another milestone in our marathon. Garren graduated from ICU. It's a little nerve-racking in that we've been watching a monitor telling us what all of his vital signs were. We could keep an eye on blood pressure, heart rate, breathing rate, along with several other numbers. Now we have heart rate, and oxygen saturation level - that's it. It's a little weird not knowing what his numbers are.

Oswald Chambers wrote a devotional booklet called "My Utmost for His Highest." It's one of my favorites. Today's entry was haunting and intriguing to me:

Be still, and know that I am God . . . —Psalm 46:10

Perseverance is more than endurance. It is endurance combined with absolute assurance and certainty that what we are looking for is going to happen. Perseverance means more than just hanging on, which may be only exposing our fear of letting go and falling. Perseverance is our supreme effort of refusing to believe that our hero is going to be conquered. Our greatest fear is not that we will be damned, but that somehow Jesus Christ will be defeated. Also, our fear is that the very things our Lord stood for— love, justice, forgiveness, and kindness among men— will not win out in the end and will represent an unattainable goal for us. Then there is the call to spiritual perseverance. A call not to hang on and do nothing, but to work deliberately, knowing with certainty that God will never be defeated.

If our hopes seem to be experiencing disappointment right now, it simply means that they are being purified. Every hope or dream of the human mind will be fulfilled if it is noble and of God. But one of the greatest stresses in life is the stress of waiting for God. He brings fulfillment, “because you have kept My command to persevere . . .” (Revelation 3:10).

Continue to persevere spiritually.

May we all persevere, rather than endure, this trying time.