Dear Friends, I realized the last devotion I published on my blog had no reference to my childhood in Nigeria. So, I rewrote it. Mainly I wanted to post something—anything—on this day, August 12, 2021, my 62^nd birthday! Let me know what you think of the additions. Warmly, Debbie

At a yard sale this summer, I bought a Bible for young children for fifty cents. What a bargain! When I flipped through the heavy cardboard pages depicting thirteen short stories with brightly colored pictures, I fell in love with Jesus once again.

As a child on our mission station in southern Nigeria, I enjoyed sitting on our living room couch each night, listening to Mom and Dad read children’s books for family devotions. Yes, my siblings, Larry, Mark, Grant, Cindy, and I sometimes got bored and poked at each other. But my early impression of God was of a loving Father caring for his children.

When I turned six, I flew four hundred miles to boarding school. After that, I spent ten of the next twelve years away from home, except for one month each Christmas and three months each summer. I began to doubt God’s love, thinking, he seemed nice at first, but then I ended up separated from my family.

In elementary school, I began to learn the hard stories in the Bible. I didn’t understand all the fighting people got into and the punishments God meted out. I learned God banished the first humans from the beautiful garden. Each time I read about the Garden of Eden, I felt sad because the beauty didn’t last very long. Even now, when reading the first few chapters of Genesis, my enjoyment is tainted by thinking, but then, they ended up getting kicked out.

In the first pages of my yard sale find, I read how the Creator made beautiful plants, amazing animals, and special people to be his friends. That’s it. The story didn’t say, “Then sin entered the world, the garden was ruined, and suffering began.”

The last story in this happy book is about Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem and shows how the people loved and honored him by waving palm branches and placing their coats on the road. That’s it. The book doesn’t tell how everyone turned on him and crucified him at the end of the week. However, when reading the Bible about Palm Sunday, my thoughts usually turn to, but the crowd ended up rejecting Jesus.

Today, I want to revel in the joy that God created a beautiful world for you and me to enjoy with him as friends and remember he has written a beautiful ending. I need to soak in the moment of Jesus being honored on earth while riding on a humble colt and remember he will be honored by all in the end.

I spent ten challenging years in two different boarding schools separated from my parents and siblings. Sometimes the coping mechanisms I learned to survive the loneliness still trip me up in my relationships with family. On many days, my journey feels arduous, finances are a struggle, friendships are strained, and healing doesn’t come.

But I must remind myself again that Jesus loves me; he is the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, and will care for me all my life. Because I’ve entrusted my soul to him, I will live with him eternally.

I know sin and suffering aren’t the end of the story. With this new perspective, I can enjoy the memories of the end of each boarding school semester when I got to fly home and spend happy weeks reunited with my family. And I have a close relationship now with my mom, my siblings, and their families.

And in this life, we know the end is still to come. The world gets renewed. God’s people reunite with him and live in a loving relationship with him forever. No more tears. No more toiling. Pain, loneliness, and death will be completely abolished. We know how it will truly end!

Father, thank you that you’re with us throughout all of our suffering and trials as well as our joys and triumphs. Help me to feel your presence and rest in the knowledge you’ll make everything right in the end.

He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty, I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life.” Revelation 21:6 NIV