Another kind of healing and a note of clarification
Those of you on our mailing list received a flier from me recently offering the book, The Healing Code (300 pgs., $20 ppd.). Accompanying his order for the book, one gentleman wrote me a letter with which my spirit immediately resonated in truth. His suggestion is so simple, but yet I believe it is so important that I wanted to share it with you immediately. Perhaps it will benefit you also when a time of great sorrow and grief enters your life. He wrote:
Dear Dr. James,
Your promotion for The Healing Code is so intriguing that I must order a copy to see for myself what this is about.
There is another kind of healing which is important to appreciate and that is the soothing and refreshing and the calming of a grieving heart. Having read your comments to your congregation about the loss of your wife/partner, Roxanne, I can tell you from experience that the antidote to grief is gratitude.
What I mean by that is that as the days, weeks and months roll on, whenever the memory of your beloved blooms in your mind—whether joyful or sorrowful—summon up all the love and gratitude in your being and offer it up unreservedly to God, silently saying “thank you” again and again and sincerely reflect on how different your life would have been without her [meaning, never having known her]. Practice love and gratitude at every opportunity and before long His grace will descend upon you, warming your heart, relieving your pain and lightening your burden. Before long you will feel the peace and contentment of knowing that all is well and in His loving care.
In the meantime, keep up the good work, enjoy your service, stay the course and smile whenever possible.
Yours in truth, /signed by a Feed My Sheep subscriber in New York state.
My closing comments: Thank you, my friend! I am going print out this letter and tape it on the wall in my office and in my home so that I can be reminded of it often and practice it until it becomes second nature—scratch that—I mean until it becomes my first nature!
He enjoined me to “enjoy my service.” I appreciate that encouragement and I shall continue to do so because I have always been grateful to our Father in that He has given me a love for this work…which reminds me…
There is something I have wanted to clarify for some time. And a phone call yesterday from a dear lady in Nebraska reminded me once again that I needed to clarify this because the confusion has arisen in the minds of a number of you who have asked me—which means that there are many others with the same question or assumption who have not voiced it to me. I caused the confusion so let me clarify.
At our Tabernacles Bible Conference in Kansas City last September I announced that I was not planning to sponsor any more Bible conferences for a while—for at least a year, but that I would consider invitations to speak if anyone else was holding conferences.
During the course of that announcement—and subsequently I may have said something to that effect on our monthly Bible lectures on CD and perhaps in print, but, in any event, I used the term “sabbatical.” That was a poor choice of words on my part because especially in the academic community, but also in society at large when a person says he is “going to take a sabbatical” it often means he is going to take off for some extended period of time—even up to a whole year.
To clarify, I did not mean “sabbatical” in that sense. I do love my work and I have no desire to take off from this work for any extended period, and I certainly cannot afford to do so! I used the word “sabbatical” in the sense that I would be “taking off a period of time” from my practice of holding conferences once or twice a year—that is all I meant. I apologize for giving some of you the impression that I would be taking off and shutting down for months or even a year! I have no intention of closing at all as long as the Lord wills!