Keep praying

You know when something tragic happens - not to you, but to people around you, and you feel the pain for a while, pray for awhile, but then something else takes its place?  I hope to not do that with the recent tragedy of a girl, Laura Geske, I went to college with.  While driving from Kansas City to Salina, Kansas, she was killed along with two of her three children. Her husband and their son were saved.  I didn't know her, not really, but I don't think you have to know a family, to try and put yourself in the shoes of what their loved ones must be going through.  It's devastating - and it's so real.  It could have happened to my family or your family.  Laura's husband Jeff is a Lutheran pastor and I have been delighted to hear so many Lutheran (and probably others) congregations who have them on their prayer list.  I hope their family is not taken off the prayer list any time soon because our prayers, even from people who don't know the Geske family, are the one way we have to communicate to our Father how we pray His will be done even when we don't understand it, how we know that the moment Laura was ushered into heaven with her two beautiful children by her side that God welcomed them with a peace that passes all understanding, and how we pray that her family who is left behind finds joy in the midst of what must be a flood, a hurricane of emotions. I pray for them and in doing so, pray God changes me as well to be more appreciative, more aware of this life and my love for my family, and to recognize the short breath I have and what I must do with it.