I don’t know if our earthly birthdays are still celebrated in Heaven, but if they are,

Happy Birthday, Brady.

My first of many nephews.

You are still loved, missed and remembered.

When we wake up in the morning, we may not know what grief that day might hold.

And for that, I am thankful.

Yet, in the same way, we don’t know what JOY awaits us either.

May we choose joy.  May we choose hope.  May we choose faith and love and life.  May we live every day giving thanks, trusting that God is good.  May we wake up each morning and live each moment with grateful hearts to God from whom all BLESSINGS flow.

Brady’s life was a blessing.

We thank the Lord for each day he had.  486 days of life after birth.

We give thanks for his big smile, his contagious laugh, his sparkling blue eyes.

And we give thanks for the blessed hope that we will see him again one day in the glory of Heaven that awaits us.

¹³ But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. ¹⁴ For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. ¹⁵ For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. ¹⁶ For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. ¹⁷ Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. ¹⁸ Therefore encourage one another with these words.