LEAD. June 2020 | Page 23

Listen, my soul was definitely “in the dumps” that
day. My reserves were running low. I was tired. I
was discouraged. My arms felt almost pulled out of
their sockets, sore from reaching up for hope and
reaching down to help.
is tinged with an ache, of course, because it so
vividly captures a time when we still had hope that
the exact miracle we wanted was out there in front
of us, that this was what God was leading us toward
with each new evidence of His goodness.
But the writer said that “when my soul is in the
dumps,” I should do what?
“Rehearse.” Rehearse what?
“Everything I know of you.”
And that’s exactly what I did. If I hadn’t had a
ready-made way of doing it, I don’t know where
I would have started. But on that cold morning, I
picked up our well-worn Miracle Book* and started
rehearsing. Rehearsing His praises. Remembering
the goodness of the Lord.
All I can tell you with certainty as I sit here flipping
through Jude’s Miracle Book today is that in
rereading and remembering, I am never not amazed
at how good our God is. I can recall instantly the
place where I was sitting when I wrote each entry
and from there remember the place where each
occurrence actually happened. Reading this book
But now that I see it from my current vantage
point, I can understand something else: it was all
a miracle. Every little thing was a miracle. Every
single day. And so is this day that is waiting in front
of me now. You and I are surrounded by God’s
goodness, whether we know it or not.
*The Miracle Book is the Shook’s personal journal of
loss, longing and love and record of how God showed
up in the midst of their grandson’s Jude’s brief life and
passing.
Excerpted from The Gift of One
Day: How to Find Hope When
Life Gets Hard. Copyright ©
2020 by Kerry Shook & Chris
Shook. Used by permission
of WaterBrook, an imprint of
Penguin Random House LLC.
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Kerry Shook and his wife, Chris Shook, founded Woodlands Church
in Houston, Texas, in 1993, and it has since grown to be one of the
largest churches in America and is recognized for its ministries to the
poor and powerless. Kerry and Chris are the authors of five books
including the New York Times bestseller One Month to Live and the
ECPA bestseller The Gift of One Day. They have four married children
and five grandchildren.
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