Gathering

Hubby is in NYC for job training and flying home tonight. A big storm is forecast. Praying it holds off, or it will be just me and my currently sick daughter eating our twenty pound turkey. I enjoyed watching all the facebook posts of anxious mothers counting down the hours till their college kids arrived home. Family is so important. I wish my boys were coming home, but it becomes difficult with jobs and other obligations of adult children. I wish all my extended family was near. It is the great tragedy of the industrial revolution that families began to move apart. I just don't feel that is the way it was meant to be.

It does make me long for heaven for a reason other than the constant presence of God and the absence of pain and sorrow. All my loved ones who have accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior will be there. No more saying goodbye. No more aching hole for those who are absent, and distant. No more empty places around the table.

But for all you families that are able to gather with loved ones, bless you. Enjoy. I am happy for you. Love each other. And for all my family that is scattered in distant places, I am thinking of you and dreaming of a day when we will all be together again.
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Proverbs 15:17 

Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a fattened ox and hatred with it.

Hebrews 10:24-25 

And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

Matthew 18:20 

For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”

Colossians 3:16 

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

Hebrews 10:25 

Not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.