Are you tired of hearing about Handing it Down: Teaching your Children the Basic Truths of Faith? Well, hang in there for just a bit more!

1. If you have gotten the book and like it, would you PLEASE consider writing a review on Amazon? The link is here: http://www.amazon.com/Handing-It-Down-Tim-Thurber/dp/0982577370/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335537574&sr=8-1 (that is a long link!).  Under “customer review” please rate the book and write something. I obviously believe God can use this book in people’s lives, but it needs to get into their hands first (which obviously God can do – perhaps he would like to use your review to accomplish that)! Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, for writing a review.

2. We now have another website – you can purchase the book there (or on Amazon.com_) or if you know us personally you can contact us – we have copies here at home to sell. Our website is www.tthurber.com There is a guestbook there, and we would LOVE for you to say hi and write anything about the book there as well!

Thank you so much for being a part of this journey we have been on as we wrote, talked with the publisher, got a contract, met deadlines, proofed, and now are selling. I so appreciate all of your prayers as we have walked together!

I will have more information soon – but I just wanted to let you know that today I received an email from Sonfire Media, the publishers who are publishing our book. They said that people can preorder Handing it Down from Amazon.com.  I went to Amazon and it was so fun to see there! In the next week or so we should have it so we can sell it as well. I will keep you posted! Currently I am celebrating the actual publication of this by drinking a McDonald’s Caramel Frappe. Yumm!

“Then I said to you, ‘Do not be terrified; do not be afraid of them. The LORD your God, who is going before you, will fight for you, as he did for you in Egypt, before your very eyes, and in the wilderness. There you saw how the LORD your God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place.’”    Deuteronomy 1:29-31 NIV

My stomach was doing some weird knots before the Good Friday Service, but I didn’t think much of it. The itching that began during the service did catch my attention a bit, but it wasn’t until I got home and discovered I was covered with huge red welt-splotches that I realized there was something more going on than just a casual stomach-upset.

Thus last week was filled with not only our family vacation to Washington, D.C., but also my system’s flooding of Benadryl and Zyrtec. Three anaphylactic reactions later, I was put on prednisone, and I now carry an EpiPen with me wherever I go. What is going on??

Today is my last day of prednisone, and I’ll admit that I am nervous about going off of it. We’ll see what my body does. For most of the week I handled these stresses very calmly. However, it was during one of my rare “What is happening to my body? What will happen to my family if something actually happens to me?” moments when I sat down for my devotions and read the above passage in Deuteronomy.

Here Moses is reminding the Israelites, just before they enter the Promised Land, of how God has been with them every since they left Egypt. He reminds them of how God is powerful, mighty, and can conquer not only other armies, but even the desolation of the wilderness. Great reminder that, no matter what our situation is, God can conquer it. But it was the next phrase that really caught my attention.

“There you saw how the LORD your God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you went…” (v. 31). God carries us – and not just because he is the all-powerful, Uncreated Creator. God carries us as a loving father carries his son.

Why does a father typically carry his son? His son may be too small to walk yet – the father carries him so the son gets where he needs to go and learns what he needs to learn. His son may just be too tired and sore to take another step – the strong father picks up the weary son to help him on his journey. His son my just be begging for some “playing rough” (as we call it in our family), and the father will laughingly carry his son into the airplane position or even down onto the floor to wrestle.

Our loving Father carries us too. When we are too weary to go on, when there may be lessons we must learn but we are too weak to persist, even when we are having a good time.

And so, today I take the last of the medication. I will seek strength from the creator of my body while gaining comfort from knowing that he is my loving Father. I would covet your prayers as well as we try to figure out what it is that I am so severely allergic to so suddenly. I would also love to have you pray for my family. They are all handling it very well (and I have tried not to stress them out about it), but they know that I had these reactions.

As always, please let me know of your own situations where you need prayer. We are under the care of a loving father who will carry us in his all-powerful arms.