When I get to the gates of heaven and St Peter asks me “What was the best time of your life?” I very much doubt that I will pick the last 6 months. It’s been dominated by the disappointment of Frank’s cancer’s quick return and the grief of watching him struggle through another course of treatment. And yet….

And yet in this time, I’ve been privileged to realise far more clearly just how sure my(our) hope is and just what an incredible difference that makes. So what is this hope? Is it an expectation of the fantastic party described in Isaiah 25:6-8 or the beautiful new city in Revelations 21? I have no idea what our eventual eternal life will be like but I do suspect it will be way better than anything we can imagine now.

What I do know is that God is here now and that I can trust him completely. He’s not going anywhere and I can just lean back and rely on him. That has to be heaven on earth!

That’s not to say that this last 6 months has been a breeze – with my spiritual life in order and wholly centred on God. You’ve watched as I’ve had good days and bad days. There have been days when I’ve been so weary that I couldn’t pray and I’ve been oh so glad that I’ve known people have been praying for us. Thank you for that!

There have been days when I’ve been heavy laden and haven’t known what to pray. When all I could do was tell God that and leave him to deal with it.

But through it all I have never lost the rock-bottom certainty of God being in this with me/us. That he is good and that all will be well – whatever is to come.

That is our hope in action.