No, But...
Taken from Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone
No, But…
Deuteronomy 1:46- 3: 29
I noted at the beginning of this commentary that my wife, Ann, died just before I started writing it. She had multiple sclerosis for forty-three years. The Sunday after her death, the set Scripture readings included Paul’s account in 2 Corinthians 12 of begging God to take away a handicap he lived with (we don’t know what it was). God wouldn’t do so, but God promised, “My grace is enough for you. My power is made perfect in weakness.” In the early years, the illness did not affect Ann too much, but later she gradually lost her physical capacities and her capacity for remembering things and so on, so that for most people in California she was a silent figure in a wheelchair. Three times and more we and other people begged God to remove this handicap, but God said the same thing to us. I know from things people said during her life and after her death that she ministered silently to hundreds of people. God declined to grant the prayers we prayed for her, as God did for Paul, but God did not simply do nothing...