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Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father, from our Lord and our Savior Jesus

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Christ.

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I want to have an image in your mind that comes from Acts chapter 3, but from the verses

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preceding what was just read.

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And to give you that action, that scene, I'm going to invite Logan to come up here, and

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he is going to pretend that he has been working in the garden or that it is the end of a football

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play or that he has tripped and fallen.

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All right.

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I'm going to reach down with my hand and take his right hand and help him up.

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But I want you to notice, when we are done, he is now close to me.

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I have pulled him up, I have helped him, and we are close.

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Thanks, Logan.

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All right.

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That's the scene I want you to have in mind because our reading began with verse 11, and

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it talked about how this man clung to Peter and John, and you may wonder, why is he doing

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this?

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What happened?

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It's like turning into a television show at 7:09 that began at 7 o'clock, and you're not

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So I want to go back to the first 10 verses because, in a way, that's the text that sets

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up Peter's message.

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What happened is Peter and John walk to the temple, and as they are about to go in at

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gate called Beautiful, a man is there on the ground.

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He has never walked.

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From birth, his legs and his ankles did not work.

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Friends or family members, they carry him, and every day, he is sitting there asking

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for money, begging for alms, whatever.

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Day after day, he simply looks at the people going by, but he really doesn't see them.

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He asks for money, and some may actually give him some alms, but they really don't look

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at him or talk to him until Peter and John arrive.

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And Peter looks at them after the man has asked for some money, and Peter looks at them,

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and he says to them, look at me.

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Whoa.

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Now he has the man's attention.

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Here is somebody that is actually looking at him and sees him and is talking to him,

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and the man is looking and listening.

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Peter says, I don't have silver or gold to give to you, but what I do have, I give to

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you.

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In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk.

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And with that, Luke includes a little detail that you may just miss, and it says Peter

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reached down with his hand and took the right hand of the man and lifted him up.

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And the man was close to Peter, and then he began to walk and jump and praise, and the

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people around were amazed.

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They walk into the temple, and everyone is amazed.

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They know who this man is, and they see him walking and jumping and dancing and leaping.

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And now verse 11 comes, and the man clung to Peter and John.

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Peter had reached down with his hand, pulled him up, drew him closer.

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That's the image.

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But what Peter does next catches your attention.

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Listen carefully, because he does not talk about the miracle.

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He does not draw attention to himself.

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It may have been his hand, but he wants everyone there to look beyond and under to something

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more, to something ultimate.

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He wants them to look to Jesus, to the one who brought the gift, who gave the man what

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he said was perfect healing.

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So Peter begins that message simply by saying, whoa, you know what you did?

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You delivered Jesus up.

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You denied him.

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You asked for a murderer to be released instead, and you killed the author of life.

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But God raised him from the dead.

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Jesus is alive.

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He is the one that worked through my hand and pulled the man close to him.

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And so he calls for the people to repent and to believe, to hold on to Jesus, because Jesus

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is the one that will annihilate, blot out sins and the punishment and the payment, erase

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it right out.

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Jesus is the one that will give rest and refreshment and strength for the life of faith to be lived.

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And there is a word of promise, a day will come where all will be restored and perfect

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health will last forever.

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Now, as you think about that, think about how through a hand a man was pulled up and

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healed, but a day will come when that man will get sick again and will die.

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And think about that scene in front of the temple.

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He was not the only one there.

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There were others who needed help as well.

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And so you may ask, why him and not others?

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With that in mind, I'm going to tell you two stories from my life.

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The first one has to do with my daughter Beth.

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About 20 years ago, she got sick, really sick.

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My wife, Sue, is a nurse.

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She recognized what was happening and we took Beth to the emergency room at Cardinal Glennon.

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My wife as a nurse had worked at the emergency room at Cardinal Glennon and she knew the

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doctors there.

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They did a test on her for meningitis.

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It wasn't that.

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They did more tests.

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They put her in a transitional unit to watch her vital signs.

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Well, Sue went home to get a couple hours rest and she came back up again and when she

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saw those vital signs as a nurse, she did not like what she saw.

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She checked with the resident on the floor who seemed to just poo-poo it away, but the

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doctor who was there when Beth came into the emergency room because he knew Sue, called

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her up.

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Tony Scalza was his name and asked how Beth was doing.

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And Sue said she didn't like what she saw.

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Well, it was only a few minutes later.

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The doctor from the ICU, the doctor from the Renal Department were there.

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They looked at her and the next thing Beth was in ICU.

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And when I came to visit her, she had tubes and wires and a central line all attached

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to her.

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I can tell you when I went home, I knelt before my bed and I prayed like I'd never prayed

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before.

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She had a kidney infection and was going into septic shock.

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A matter of hours would have made a horrible difference.

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But today Beth now lives outside of Nashville.

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She trains dogs and I look at how Jesus worked through the hands of those doctors and nurses

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and medical personnel, including Dr. Tony Scalza and my wife.

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And I can go and visit my daughter.

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The second story happened six and a half years ago.

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My oldest son Matthew, who was 33 at the time, got sick, really sick.

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And my wife took him to the emergency room, this time Mercy.

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And they admitted him for observation at the Heart Hospital at Mercy.

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And later that evening while she was talking to him, he simply said, I can't breathe, and

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collapsed.

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He coded.

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I was up in north Wisconsin in Antico visiting a vicar in a motel that evening.

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My other son Tim called and said, Dad, Matthew has coded.

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I checked out of that hotel and I started driving home and I was praying like I had

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never prayed since my daughter was in the hospital.

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Forty-five minutes later my son called back and said, Dad, Matthew didn't make it.

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The doctors tried everything they could, but he's gone.

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Now let me ask you, as a dad, I can ask the question, why does one child live and one

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child die?

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And the answer I've come up to that is this.

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There is something hidden there and I do not want to go there.

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I want to run from that why question of the hiddenness and run instead to where Peter

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has directed me in his message.

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Directed me to where Jesus has been revealed and see the hands he has worked through.

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It is wonderful when doctors and nurses can bring somebody back to health, but sooner

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or later they won't be able to.

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And what Peter does is he directs our gaze and our ears and our minds and our hearts

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to what is more, what is ultimate, what is beneath, what is beyond anything that's going

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on, and that's to Jesus.

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And so watch these hands of Jesus as he reaches down to pick Peter out of the water as he's

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sinking, or when he grabs the hand of a 12 year old girl and brings her back to life

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again and gives her to Jairus, or the widow at Nain, he touches the funeral procession

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and she gets her son back again.

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All wonderful gifts, wonderful gifts of life.

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But what's beyond and more and ultimate is when Jesus' hands are nailed to the cross

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and their sin is obliterated.

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The punishment is blotted out, the payment annihilated.

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And in the upper room on Easter, He comes and He shows his hands.

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He says, peace to the disciples.

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And when he's in the room one time, He eats a piece of fish so He can show them he is

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truly alive to give them rest and refreshment for their lives to live.

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And a promise comes that there will be one day a restoration to perfect health when He returns.

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And now Jesus works through hands with Peter's message.

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As a pastor, I was privileged to baptize both Beth and Matthew.

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I dipped my hand in the water, I spoke the words, but Jesus is the one that scooped them up.

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He's the one that obliterated their sin and blotted out the punishment due to them.

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When I go visit my daughter Beth, we go to church and we walk up for communion together.

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A pastor's hand places the bread in our hands.

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But through his hand comes rest and refreshment and strength for the living of our faith.

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During Matthew's funeral sermon, Pastor Bill Wilson, who's the RFE director, pastor at Timothy when Matthew died,

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said in his funeral sermon for Matthew that when Matthew came up for the Lord's Supper,

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he did not want the way for the bread to be placed into his hand.

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He wanted it to be placed directly into his mouth.

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It might have been your hand, Bill, but Jesus is the one that gave him himself,

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his very presence for strength and rest and refreshment.

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And after Matthew's death, we had a visitation and the weeks and the months that followed,

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people would come up and they would put a hand on my shoulder or a hug or hold my hand.

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And those times of consolation and comfort from brothers and sisters in the faith brought rest and hope and refreshment

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in the midst of incredible grief.

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A former professor here by the name of Bill Carr, used to be the registrar, lost a son just a few years before we lost Matthew.

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And he came up to me and he simply said, Glenn, you now belong to a club you never wanted to belong to.

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Now that doesn't sound super spiritual or biblical, but he knew we could look at each other,

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I could listen to him and hear as a brother in Christ, bringing comfort and consolation.

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And we heard that word, there will come a day, there will come a day when Jesus returns and all will be restored

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and the perfect health we so seek now will come true.

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In that day of resurrection, complete healing for all eternity.

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Do you hear what Peter does? It might have been his hand, but he's pulling him close to Jesus in the same way today.

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It may be my voice, it may be my eyes, it may be my hands here, but what is beyond or under or more or ultimate is Jesus of Nazareth.

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He is the one who blots out your sins and erases the penalty.

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He is the one who gives you rest and strength and refreshment for the living of our lives and He will come back and restore all of creation.

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And so like the man who walked in with Peter and John into the temple, cling, not to the disciples, but cling to Jesus.

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Hold on to Him. Amen.

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Now may the peace of God that surpasses all our understanding fill our hearts and our minds with all that Jesus does to us and for us through the hands around us. Amen.