My friend Mike Schmid, Navigator staff with NavMilitary and former B-52 pilot, said this at a workshop presentation we shared on disciple-making:

I like things simple. I’m a B-52 pilot: you pull up on the yoke, and the buildings get smaller. You push down on the yoke, and the buildings get larger. You push the little red button, and the buildings go away!

Mike has been battling cancer for about a year now, and via his CaringBridge site he reports his progress and asks for prayer as he goes through chemo.

Mike never complains. I present without further comment his latest newsletter, sent June 24, 2021:

“God has made me fruitful in the land of my sufferings.” – Gen 41:52.

We may be experiencing showers of sufferings and even a deluge of difficulties, but God can bring from it the flowering fruitfulness of transformed character in our lives by His Holy Spirit.  Springing up beneath the pounding rain of hardships are spiritual flowers and the fruit of the Spirit.  They are more beautiful and fragrant than those that ever grew before in our storm-less and suffering-free lives.

No, it is not raining afflictions on us, God is raining into our lives new tenderness, love, compassion, patience and a thousand other flowers and fruits of His Holy Spirit, transforming us into greater Christ-likeness.

This season of the showers of suffering can bring to your life and mine a spiritual enrichment that all the ease of this world could never produce in us.  It can produce in our lives a fruitfulness even in the “land of our sufferings” as we surrender to and trust in Christ Jesus.  Join me, as you may be suffering showers in your life,  in choosing to trust God to bring an abundant flowering of spiritual fruitfulness in and through our lives.

Thanks so much for the blessing of your love, your encouragement and prayers for both Lorelei and me during this season in our lives.  

Rejoicing in the Resurrection, 

Michael and Lorelei