Dear everyone,

Warm greetings. I am truly staggered and humbled by the fact that virtually every time I go out on the street or round and about the city in which I live and surrounding countryside people tell me they are reading my blog - letter on the net. And, amazingly, it has slipped out across the world, too. Thank you all for your interest, prayers and concern and the continuing motivating, kindly, well wishing mail I am receiving.

It is good to report that last Tuesday(June 23rd), as I received a check-up on my condition at the hospital, I was told that the medical team are pleased with my progress. I even heard the word ‘great’ being used. I am grateful, believe me. My blood counts have remained stable following the daily injections of the ‘new’ chemo drug over five days -I am suffering from acute myeloid leukemia. The next round of injections begins on July 20th, God willing. I am being brought in as an outpatient every Tuesday to have my blood counts taken which monitors my reaction to the drug.

My heart is, in a way, in my mouth on Tuesdays but I do try to keep 2Chronicles 16; 12 in mind. Really? Really. It says:
‘In the thirty-ninth year of his reign Asa was afflicted with a disease in his feet. Though his disease was severe, even in his illness he did not seek help from the Lord’.

Asa had a history of not relying on the Lord and once when visited by a seer; the seer had pointed out to him that:
‘The eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him’.
The seer told Asa how foolish he had been and Asa promptly put the seer in prison!

Notice that the Lord did not hold Asa’s seeking help from physicians against him. What the Lord objected to was that he had sought help only from that corner. I am in huge debt to the physicians and nursing staff who have cared for me over the past 122 days. Their skills, patience, and counsel have been deeply appreciated. As a disciple of the Lord Jesus, though, I try to keep in mind that ultimately my help comes from the Lord who uses physicians. I also try to keep in mind that the Lord who is my Healer is also my Master. He who gives also has the right to take away. I submit to what he wants.

Two helpful women have touched my life across recent weeks. One of them, a hospital chaplain, the Rev Muriel Cromie, approached my bedside one day and read to me the words of Ps 31:8b.It is the verse where David tells the Lord that he has set his feet in a ‘spacious place’. Muriel felt that it was a promise from God to me in my life at this time. A few weeks later the gifted American writer Billie Cash (see billiecash.com) sent me a message in which she pointed out ‘Your suffering has become a “spacious place” in the Spirit (Ps 31b)’. One woman lives in Northern Ireland and the other lives in Tennessee and do not know each other to my knowledge. They both reckoned that the Lord had put my feet in a ‘spacious place’. What does it mean? I sat down by the Lagan river in Belfast in a little coffee shop with my ever - nurturing friend Sir Nigel Hamilton this week and we discussed the phrase from David’s psalm in depth in the context of my present circumstances. I came home and the following meditation emerged.

David was in narrow place to all intents and purposes when he wrote Psalm 31b, was he not? In the very same Psalm he wrote that:

1) A trap had been set for him.
2) He was in anguish of soul.
3) His eyes were weak with sorrow, his soul and body with grief.
4) His life was consumed by anguish, his years with groaning.
5) His strength was failing because of affliction.
6) His bones had grown weak.
7) He was held in utter contempt of his neighbours.
8) He was a dread to his friends.
9) When his friends saw him on the street they fled.
10) His friends forgot him as though he were dead.
11) Terror lay on every side of him.
12) He was being slandered.

Is it not fascinating that despite his narrow circumstances David maintained that the Lord had planted his feet in a ‘spacious place’?
My place at the moment is a narrow circumstance. My medical Professor tells me that I have a 30% chance of living 3-5 years; some weeks back it was said I had a 5% chance of living at all. But the Bible is not into percentages, is it? The Lord knows the day of his coming or our death and as for life the same Psalm says ‘but I trust in you, O Lord: I say you are my God. My times are in your hands’.

So what have I learned? I have learned that a narrow circumstance can become a spacious place. David lifted his pen, despite his circumstances, and nurtured millions? Really? Of course. He is now published in virtually every language on the face of the eath. In his Psalms there is every variety of human experience and incredible hope. When you are filled with ecstasy or stricken by depression there is a Psalm for you. When you gain and when you lose there is a Psalm to pick up your mood. Here is ethics, history and prophecy. Here is talk of the stars and the forbidding desert. Here is sheer delight in God. Here is a mirror into your very soul.

When you think about it, looking across biblical history, Abraham was in a very narrow circumstance when he left Lot to the well-watered plains. Yet the Lord took his childless servant outside one night and said ‘Look up at the heavens and count the stars-if indeed you can count them. So shall your offspring be’. A spacious place, or what!!

Joseph was in narrow circumstance when put in a hole in the ground by his downright wicked brothers and then sold into slavery. As he headed down to Egypt as a slave what were his thoughts? It sure didn’t seem to be a path to the governor ship of Egypt, the saving of North Africa from starvation and the preservation of the line of the Messiah, but that is just what it was. The narrow was in fact incredibly spacious.

Moses was in very narrow circumstance. He was in an ark of bulrushes surrounded by crocodiles that were and are, the second largest in the world. On the throne was Pharaoh, just as vicious, who would have had Moses slaughtered on the spot if discovered. ‘If it is a boy’, he had ordered midwives in Egypt dealing with any Hebrew births, ‘kill him’.

The ark of bulrushes in fact turned out to be a very spacious place because Pharaoh’s daughter saw it and had it opened. The future of Israel hung upon a babies tear. Moses could not have been in a more spacious place and was raised as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter and was schooled in one of the greatest civilizations on earth. He later led two and a half million people out of slavery.
Was not Ruth in a narrow circumstance as she turned into a field near Bethlehem as a gleaner?

It was just about the narrowest place she could have been; yet, it could not have been more spacious. The field belonged to Boaz and Boaz belonged to the Lord. They married and their grandson was king David whose greater son was Christ. He was laid in a manager in the very same town century’s later -the Saviour of the world, and me too!!! Not any sign of all this when Ruth headed out to glean on that far –off morning.
Jonah was in truly narrow place in terms of future survival-the stomach of a whale. ‘The engulfing waters threatened me,’ he wrote, ‘the deep surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head. To the roots of the mountains I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever. But you brought up my life up from the pit, O lord my God’. Jonah was out of the will of God, stubborn and a racist yet he was to see the repentance of the entire city of Nineveh under his preaching. Not much sign of it when the seaweed was wrapped around his head, was there?

And what shall we say about Elijah? He had run away from a scolding woman’s tongue and was hiding from his ministry in a cave. But the Lord had set his feet in a spacious place and restored him to his ministry. Elijah’s successor who was given a double portion of his spirit got up one morning early and ‘an army with horses and chariots surrounded the city.”Oh, my Lord, what shall we do?’ his servant asked. ‘Don’t be afraid’, the prophet answered and asked the Lord to open the young man’ eyes. The young fellow soon discovered that while his feet were in a narrow place ‘the hills were full of horses and chariots of fire all round Elisha’.

As for Job, very ill with sores from the soles of his feet to the top of his head, bereaved and listening to his wife suggesting he was in such a narrow place he would be better to curse God and die, absolutely refused to do so. And the result? He wrote a book, reckoned by some to be the oldest in the Bible that resolutely soars above that narrowest of places, the fear of the grave, and states that should worms destroy his body he would in his flesh see God! Job became one of the greatest examples of perseverance through suffering in history. Now that is what I call spaciousness.
As for me, though in a narrow place, I have actually found myself, as Muriel and Billie pointed out, in a spacious place. Pray for me across the next few weeks, as I am deeply involved in writing and publishing a new free booklet for the TBF and KL Thompson Trust to be placed, hopefully, in an extremely strategic place in a great city, abroad. Of all the work I have been privileged to do, I consider the little booklets I have been graciously allowed to write and place for this Trust the most important work in which I have ever been involved. Their reach is awesome in the hand of God. A taxi driver in Dublin recently asked for 1,000 copies of the booklet A Guinness with a Difference; the Story of the Whistling Ploughboy of Ecclefechan (available free through tbft.tv). He had been a plumber in the Guinness brewery in Dublin (the mind boggles!) and had come to faith in Christ. He has now found a new ministry in giving the booklet to each of his passengers! God bless him, richly.

When I began to recover recently the Trust graciously asked me if there was anything I ever wished to write then they would support me in writing it at this time. This present booklet on which I am currently working is what I have wished to write for years but the way did not open. I can’t say more at present but just this- pray for the placing of this booklet in a very historic place. I’ll let you know in time what it’s all about as the Lord leads. I humbly believe I have never been privileged to write a more strategic piece in evangelism.

Onward!

Derick