A prayer

"Watch therefore, for ye know not the day nor the hour..."

I have been thinking of that verse this week, in connection with friends of ours experiencing otherwise. As hard a truth it is that our lives will end--or our loved ones be taken from us--at an unknowable moment, yet how much worse to know the hour in advance. Today we are holding in the light friends who have been been facing this date with a courage that most of us, by God's grace, will never need to summon. We offer prayers for strength, comfort, and gentle mercy on C. and T. in saying farewell to their adopted baby daughter, as the court gives her into the custody of her biological father. And we pray for little E. she continues her life journey in a new home and family.

And we remember never, ever, to take our own children for granted.