Good News. Jesus loves me. Say that out loud with me with the emphasis on the “me.”  Jesus loves ME! Some of us learned to sing Jesus love me this I know when we were children. Perhaps we sung it to our children when they were small. Chris Tomlin wrote a modern version of it … Jesus, He loves me, He loves me, He is for me. Jesus, how can it be, He loves me, He is for me. 

That, church, is the Good News we must share with the world. I can’t explain how it can be, but I know that Jesus loves me and is for me. That knowledge allows me to face each day with hope. It enables me to be like the prophet Habakkuk … to have strength and the feet of deer to climb the mountains in front of me. And yes, there are still mountains for this old lady to climb. [Hab 3:19]

I was thinking recently of my friend Nella who has gone to be with the Lord. Just a few years younger than my own mother, Nella came into my life when I was in my early 30’s. Nella was a wonderful mom and she modeled that before me for many, many years. My own mother with her mental illness was unable to do that, but God gave me Nella. I learned from her.

Nella was over 6-feet tall, but as she aged her back curved, and she became very bent over. Still her smile never left. She would say (or eventually email when I moved to Idaho), “Sweetie, growing old ain’t for sissies.”

No, it certainly is not. Mountains. We all have mountains to climb. But Jesus loves me and is for me. He will give me strength and the feet of deer to conquer every mountain in front of me.