Rachel Barkey is Home.

Rachel Barkey went home to her Lord on July 2, 2009 at 37 years of age.

I wrote about her before, in a posted entitled “55 minutes.” I linked to her testimony.

I challenge you, I encourage you, I beg you – to take 55 minutes out of the busyness and redundancy of daily life and think on these things.

Here’s minute 48:

“I am dying.

But so are you.

Neither of us knows if we will even see tomorrow. And perhaps the reason that I am suffering now, the reason that God is waiting to bring judgment against all the evil in this world is because he is waiting for you. For you to acknowledge your sin and to turn to him for forgiveness.

Maybe YOU are the one we are waiting for.

Jesus suffered. God did not spare him. Why would he spare me? If my suffering would result in good for you? If my suffering is the means that God would use to bring even one person to himself, it is an honor for me to suffer.

Does that seem strange?

I suppose it does.

But really, it is the only way that all of this makes any sense at all.

A God who sees my suffering but is is unable, or worse, unwilling to spare me? A God who sees my suffering but allows it? With no greater purpose or hope? My God is able to save me and he will. But save me from what?

From a life without him.“

In the end, she stated that her goal was to “finish well.”

If you watch her testimony and it impacts your life as it did mine, it will be even more evidence that she achieved her goal.

Her funeral service will be held on Wednesday, July 8, at 1 p.m. at St. John’s Shaughnessy Church in Vancouver, BC. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Child of Mine (www.childofmine.ca) or World Vision (www.worldvision.ca).