Tuesday, March 5, 2019
Today at 2 pm marks three months complete of my 36-month sentence. In a way, the time has moved quickly; in a way, very slowly, if that makes any sense. Everyone here says three years will go by very fast. I found out yesterday William Olson is initiating either a pardon application or clemency, I am not sure which. This, I believe, will be through the traditional Department of Justice channels.
Both “C” and “J” may be leaving for a camp at the end of April, and they are the two that have claimed I am in prison for them. So I pray if they do leave for a camp, the Lord will allow me to go home to Kathie, who remains too sick to come to visit me.
A friend asked me what insights through my trials I have learned from God that I might share. Well, today I read something by Dietrich Bonheoffer, who ended up as a martyr for Christ, who put it very well:
“The test of whether we have truly found the peace of God will be in how we face the sufferings which befall us. There are many Christians who bend their knees before the cross of Jesus Christ well enough, but who do nothing but resist and struggle against every affliction in their own lives. They believe that they love Christ’s cross, but they hate the cross in their own lives. In reality, therefore, they hate the cross of Jesus Christ as well; in reality, they are despisers of the cross, who for their part, seek to flee the cross by whatever means they can. Whoever regards suffering and trouble in their own life as something wholly hostile, wholly evil, can know by this that they have not found peace with God at all. Actually, they have only sought peace with the world, thinking perhaps that they could cope with themselves and all their questions with the cross of Jesus Christ; in other words, that they could find inner peace of mind. This, they needed the cross but did not love it. They sought peace only for their own sake. When suffering comes, however, this peace quickly disappears. It was no peace with God because they hated the suffering God sends…Whoever loves the cross of Jesus Christ, however, has found peace in Him, they begin to love even the sufferings in their life, and in the end, they will be able to say with Scripture, ‘We also rejoice in our sufferings.’”
These are hard words, but very true.
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