Chapter 11: God’s Eternal Character

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Part of me wants to now rearrange the chapters of this book and just start talking about how awesome God was during the last ninety days of Jackie’s life or about healing from His perspective. And especially about

how His Holy presence consumed the atmosphere in our bedroom during Jackie’s last days. Even now, tears come to my eyes and my throat swells up just thinking of how much I miss her. God has told me that all of this will be discussed in this book at some point, even some of it now. However, God has ordained this chapter to be focused on His eternal character.

Perfect conditions have never existed in my life and God has again reminded me to get on with life. The verse in Ecclesiastes is a literal view of the farmer and the issues with weather that he is up against when it comes to

planting and harvesting his crops. Quite literally, “He that observes the wind won’t plant [sow] his seeds for fear they will be scattered and he that regards the clouds won’t harvest [reap] for fear that rain will damage the crop before he completes the harvest.”

Sooner or later you need to get on with living. If you are waiting for events in the family to calm down before you quit smoking, drinking, take counseling or whatever else you have on hold—God’s message is that you

will never have those perfect conditions. You need to get on with living while you still can. In the thirty-nine years that Jackie and I were married, we had many times of relative calm. They always occurred in between life’s stormy periods. We certainly never experienced any “perfect conditions.”

Today, God called me back to this book in a way that “I knew” it was He who was talking. Take Solomon’s advice and get on with your own life, in line with God’s biblical instructions and not your own selfish human ways.

Before I get deeper into God’s eternal character, you should know I

am not just talking about the God of the Christians. I am talking about the God of the Jews, Christians and Muslims. Yes, these three major world religions claim to worship the same God who I describe in this chapter. How could this be since there has and continues to be so much theological

conflict between these religions? The quick answer is that few people in any of these world religions really know God’s eternal character. At least from a numerical perspective of those who claim they know God.