HAPPY NEW YEAR! Welcome to the year of 2025. As light is just beginning to show the out of doors, I see the ground is covered with snow. We didn’t have a white Christmas, but we are having a white New Years. The rain and snow are blessed gifts to our area. We need it all each year to fill our reservoirs for the coming year of irrigation.

I was asked during the time our kids and grandkids were here, what I’d want sung and said at my funeral? I told them I wanted that service to be put together with things they wanted. I’d be dead and I’ve always wondered why people don’t put together a service that makes them feel better. As I have pondered this since being asked I’m realizing that a last remembrance is the purpose for the funeral. I’ve never liked the focus being on me for fear the ugliness of my life would be brought out and that’s what people would remember.

Getting to use the ugliness of a past as a tool in God’s toolbox to help others makes one’s past a Light, is nothing less than a miracle. Yesterday I met with a young man who had asked for counsel. I didn’t know him, but I know his wife rather well and all of his wife’s family. As he told me why he was seeking counsel I couldn’t help but identify with it. When he was mid-stream in telling me his story, he asked what the counseling sessions would do for him? I then said I’d like to give him some background on the person he is talking to once he’d finished giving me his background. When he was done I gave him a piece of my own story and what God has done for me. I concluded that this is what God wants to do with his past during the counseling sessions. He smiled big and said that he was really glad to be here.

When my time comes I want my service to glorify the God who brings such incredible healing and purpose to one’s life no matter what story it has attached to it. This is what I want people to remember as they leave my funeral service one day. Our God is faithful to the end!