One of the reasons I’m standing here tonight, beyond Craig being ill, is because today is May 29th. Twenty-two years ago at 7:18 Eastern Daylight Time, we were sitting in Trinity Missionary Church in Petoskey, Michigan, having just gotten the call. About 12 hours before that, our son had died. Craig wanted me to talk a little bit about that, this being the anniversary. I want to talk about three things related to this: prayer, providence, and comfort.

I know a lot of you have never seen a picture of him. We don’t have many pictures of John, but we do have one that has been enhanced a little for us and made clear. You can see it on the TVs. That was not too long before he died. He was 19 when he died. I won’t go into the story about how all the things led up to the prayer that I prayed, where I prayed, “God, if you need to break me to use me, break me.” Well, a month later, John died.