He is before all things, and in him all things hold together (Colossians 1:17 NIV).

When my father developed a serious brain tumor in 1983, fears plagued me. What would happen to my mother who had always depended on him? My father himself had told me, “I always thought I’d be around for a long time to hold your mother together.”

One Sunday morning after my husband and I had done a gospel music concert in the Springs Mennonite Church, a retired minister came up to talk. He said when my father was in Japan after World War II , they delivered a Christmas basket to my mother and her two young children. “We had gone to speak words of comfort to her,” he told me. “But when your brother opened the door, we heard her voice, so like yours, soaring up and over all the loneliness that we knew she must be feeling. We knew God had been there before us bringing her comfort and peace.”

This glimpse of my mother’s past comforted me. It reminded me that the same God who had watched over her during my father’s absence many years before, would take care of her during any years of absence or illness that lay ahead.

Thank you, Father, that you alone are the One who holds us together.  Amen

Featured Photo: My mother, my oldest brother, Ron, and my oldest sister, Lucy.

(Devotional from Homespun Faith, Reflections from the Seasons of Life, copyright 2014 Daisy Beiler Townsend. Available as paperback or ebook: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Xulon Press. There are Links on this website on the Where to Buy Homespun Faith and Sarah’s Legacy page.  Locally at Fresh Grounds, M & M Grocery, Leanna’s Books, Penn Alps in Grantsville, Maryland, or from me 724-373-8445 or donaisy@neo.rr.com.)