Letters from Roscoe

In the Eye of the Storm

Howdy everyone.  Roscoe here.  This may not speak well of my own personal character, but I thought I would tell you anyway.

I have often wondered why my life (and that of my sisters!) has been so blessed by God over the years. I do not boast when I say that!  It is not my doing!  It is all God.

I was listening to the lyrics of the song ‘In the Eye of the Storm’ the other day and it got to the part where the doctor tells him he has only a few months to live.  The man in the song then places his trust in God because there is nothing else that he can do.  He turns it over to the only one who has complete control.

And then this thought occurred to me.

As I listened to those lyrics I could picture my own father in his last days.  It was the spring of 1963, he was in the base hospital at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama.  He was in his fourth year of a fight against liver & pancreatic cancer.  It was a battle that he was losing.

He knew he was about to leave a wife and four small children behind.  He knew his death would end a happy marriage that had lasted just thirteen years and could have lasted a hundred more if he could have had it his way.  He had just relocated his family from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California back to my mother’s hometown in lower Alabama.  It was a move that was meant to provide her (us) with some support by her own family after he was gone.

I know as those days sped by he was spending time with the hospital chaplain because I’ve found scriptural references and notes in his belongings.  In those last days he was doing his best to get closer to God than he ever had before in his life.  He was reading scripture.  He was praying.  On his passes home on the weekends, he would read the Bible to us as a family.

I can see him praying and placing his trust in God to take care of us.  To provide for us.  To keep us out of harm’s way.  To guide us by safe paths.  With desperate and painful tears, he turned us over to God.

He prayed for us.  He prayed for our spiritual well-being as well as our physical needs.

As my sisters read this, I know that they will agree.  We have been blessed our whole lives.

We owe it all to God.  There is nothing in my life that I can take credit for.  Anything I believe that I earned was because God opened the doors to make it possible.  The family I have was not made by me.  I was brought to them by God in a 1 minute phone call and a ‘spur of the moment decision’.  The home I live in, the retirement pension I collect, my medical care.  The knowledge I have to run my business, to write these letters.  All are gifts from God and the results of prayer and unshakeable faith by my wife Cindy.

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves:  it is the gift of God. – Ephesians 2:8 KJV

Now I know why I have been so blessed, thank you Dad for praying for us.

It was one earthly father praying to the Heavenly Father out of love for his family.

Thank you Lord for listening and answering his prayers so well!  I am forever thankful and so sorry it has taken me 55 years to put this together.