In God's Timing
Matthew’s Uncle Tim read this for us at the memorial service. Matthew wrote this four days before he died.
Tuesday, December 14, 2004 1:00 Memorial Service:
We want to thank you all for coming and for the love and prayers you have extended to our family. Our grief seems almost unbearable, but have seen over the past few days how you have come at just the right time, to give us a hug or just let us know you care. We will greatly miss Matthew. There will always be a void in our home. But we know without a doubt he is with Jesus that he took into His life at an early age. He cared about his friends and neighbors and prayed for many of you by name, and spoke with several of you because of his deep burden to know that you knew Jesus personally like he did. We know without a doubt his death was accidental, and know that he was looking forward to a great future. But God’s ways are not ours, and His timing not ours.
As you know, we not only had the privilege of leading Matthew to the Lord, we also had the privilege of homeschooling him. He was a typical boy that hated writing, and we kept trying to encourage him. Last week he started a new highschool writing book. The first story in the book was about a young boy who thought he was going to die because he did not understand about his temperature, so he was just "waiting" to die. Matthew was assigned to read this story, and then had several choices at the end of the story to write about it. One of his choices was to rewrite the story as though he was the child. The story that was originally written was not from a Christian view point. We would like to share Matthew’s version of the story. He wrote this last Tuesday, December 7th (2004).
In God’s Timing
By Matthew Norman Vander Stel
12-7-04
As I was sitting on my bed I thought how it would be before I’d die. The boys at school said "you can’t live with a 45-degree temperature." So if I have a hundred and two, I should die at any second.
I started to think of what heaven would look like cause I knew I would go to heaven because I asked Jesus in my heart several years ago. Would it be as far as the eye could see or would it be just the right amount of space for everyone. Would it be all bright with white lights or would it be all different colors that all match perfectly. Would there be all animals, even dinosaurs that have been extinct for a couple of thousand years. Would there be good kind of food like pizza and potato chips or will there just be fruit.
My dad came into my room to give me my medicine. I told him it wouldn’t do any good but he looked like it would. Later after he read to himself, I asked him when I was going to die and he said I wasn’t going to die and wanted to know why I thought that. So, I told him what the boys at school told me and he just started to laugh and said that they were meaning in a different type of degrees and that normal is 98 degrees.
So after I knew I wasn’t going to die I felt a whole lot better but still bad from my fever and runny nose. After a whole day thinking about what heaven would be like, I find out I am not going to die was disappointing and reliving at the same time.
I guess I will never get an answer to my questions, til the day that I do die, in God’s own timing.
Copyright © 2004
Matthew Norman Vander Stel
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His legacy
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