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Daniel of Doulogos Name:Daniel
Home: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
About Me: I used to believe that evolution was reasonable, that homosexuality was genetic, and that people became Christians because they couldn't deal with the 'reality' that this life was all there was. I used to believe, that if there was a heaven - I could get there by being good - and I used to think I was more or less a good person. I was wrong on all counts. One day I finally had my eyes opened and I saw that I was not going to go to heaven, but that I was certainly going to suffer the wrath of God for all my sin. I saw myself as a treasonous rebel at heart - I hated God for creating me just to send me to Hell - and I was wretched beyond my own comprehension. Into this spiritual vacuum Jesus Christ came and he opened my understanding - delivering me from God's wrath into God's grace. I was "saved" as an adult, and now my life is hid in Christ. I am by no means sinless, but by God's grace I am a repenting believer - a born again Christian.
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Daniel's posts are almost always pastoral and God centered. I appreciate and am challenged by them frequently. He has a great sense of humor as well.
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His posts are either funny or challenging. He is very friendly and nice.
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[He has] good posts, both the serious like this one, and the humorous like yesterday. [He is] the reason that I have restrained myself from making Canadian jokes in my posts.
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This post contains nothing that is of any use to me. What were you thinking? Anyway, it's probably the best I've read all day.
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Daniel, nicely done and much more original than Frank the Turk.
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There are some people who are smart, deep, or funny. There are not very many people that are all 3. Daniel is one of those people. His opinion, insight and humor have kept me coming back to his blog since I first visited earlier this year.
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Wednesday, October 05, 2005
Why me Lord?
Sometimes unpleasant things happen to us in order for God to grow someone else. Our suffering, sometimes at least, is entirely for the edification and instruction of another.

Always there is a lesson for us as well, but many times we are afflicted on account of someone else needing to grow in some way.

In our fellowship we know a couple who is notorious. Narry a week can pass without some calamity befalling them. Bizarre and rare illness, unfortunate happenstance, every sickness under the rainbow, etc. Were we living in first century Palestine I am certain we would be asking, who sinned Lord? Them or their parents??

We do well if we begin to understand that it isn't always about us.
posted by Daniel @ 2:11 PM  
3 Comments:
  • At 5:45 PM, October 05, 2005, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    In my life, I have found that such things come and go...maybe the others turn has not yet arrived in your congregation...but I agree with you...watching those in deep valleys can grow the others nearby as well.

    When the 2 drunks hit my family one night almost 31 years ago...the first one just disabled the wheels so my dad had to go pick up my brother and his fiancee in another nearby city...using his scout and a low boy trailer to bring it back home...well, none of those vehicles made it home then...because another drunk hit them and that time it killed my brother, injuring his fiancee, and almost killing my dad...less than a year later, another drunk hit my grandparents, totalling their car, and putting my grandmother into the hospital for awhile, but my grandpa walked away. Then about 6 months later, my dad was up in the mountains hunting and again was hit by a drunk, though with less damages. I do not know anyone else with that sort of history, though by no means the worst of events that can befall anyone. Strangely enough, both my husband's sister and we were hit about a month after the accident that took my brother's life. It was just our time I guess for such things....long story. I think most families go through tragedies though, and some of them several in a row...and then it falls on another family sometime later. These events forever change the future of the family when they occur though, as there is no other way it can be...you never can replace someone lost! NEVER EVER!!

    I hope you can find ways to at least go weep with these people...we need those who will bascially listen when we are in the furnace...and hopefully find some practical ways to help too. Such as making the tastiest food you can and taking it over. Or helping with extra expenses if you can possibly...for with illness no one has FULL coverage of all extra expenses!!
    Elizabeth

     
  • At 9:32 AM, October 06, 2005, Blogger Daniel said…

    Wow - short of Job, you don't hear too many people having to experience calamity upon calamity like that.

    Praise the Lord that you don't seem bitter or unable to forgive. Many a ship has been wrecked on such a reef.

     
  • At 11:49 AM, October 06, 2005, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I have had a lot of years to work through this too, and other hard places to make it through. But I can tell you, when you cannot stand on your own...then the LORD holds you up! It is all...HE IS ALL we really really need!! And my sorrows were shared...bonding happens when we weep or laugh together, you know.

    My grandpa was one of the funniest men that lived...we were priviledged to have him in our family. But a lot of his fun and joy left, never to return, after we lost my brother, who was SO LIKE him in the fun department. But we know we will see him again...that is the greatest joy!! WE have a future NO MAN can take away from us!! The other brothers are kind of funny guys in their own ways, and that has helped, but yes, we have a hole in our family that will never be filled. And now my grandparents and my mom have all gone on...and are with the LORD. I am the matriarch of my family...not a place I expected to be at age 48, several years ago. Nor wanted. But I so have identified with Job in that even if HE chooses to take my life...STILL WILL I TRUST IN HIM!!! It really is where we all must get to eventually, you know. I think so often we loose sight of why we are here in the first place. Helps to keep that focus.

    Thanks for the kind remarks. Soon after our calamity fell I happened across the book called Song for Sarah by Paula d'Arcy. (I just discovered the other day she has gone on to write a lot of other books). I wrote and thanked her for writing her story and she wrote back and said that she hoped we would agree that "it is love that has the final say"! That thought has hung in my mind ever since. You see the man who hit us actually told my dad he was better off financially after the wreck (because it caused him to quit drinking for a time anyway...due to night lockup in jail). The insurance company never even covered the vehicle losses, much less paid for the cost of the physical damages or that my dad was never able again to work as much (this was even with a lawyer, who was somehow buddies with the lawyer from the Insurance company...my dad never wanted to go to court but needed to provide some money for the fiancee who was injured...so only sued the company because they would not pay, even though given till the last day before the statute of limitations ran out, not the drunk)...though yet today he still does a little bit in his shop, at age 78. He was also denied social security disability by the doctor employed for social security to check him out. (We encouraged him to go ahead and keep that appointment as any idiot could see his injuries!) Well, that doctor has long been dead and my dad is still here! There is a price to be paid by evil doers too...I think God shortened that man's life. So it came down to being GOD ALONE who kept my parents with food and their needs supplied. NO MAN did so! One other interesting and comforting thing to us was that God somehow told my brother of his death...even 2 weeks prior he told some friends that he doubted he would live to see his wedding, 8 weeks away. God was merciful to us in spite of man's cruelties to us! (Yes, we had many reasons to be bitter, tis true!) My dad occupies his time now helping men get out of drugs and alcohol and into following God.

    I encourage you to go be with these suffering people and help how you can! You will likely be blessed in the process.
    Blessings, Elizabeth

     
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