Isaiah 25: 1.
	O Lord, thou art my God; I will exalt thee, I will praise thy name; for thou hast done wonderful things; thy counsels of old are faithfulness and truth.

	"He is exalted, the King is exalted on high! I will praise Him!"

	I remember singing this song by Leah's hospital bed not too long ago. Laura and the others were in the cafeteria eating, and I was sitting with Leah, praising the Lord and thanking Him because she had just been released from ICU that morning. I was rejoicing in our glorious Lord and trying to get a response from Leah. The nurse walked in, smiled at me and went about her duties. I don't know what her thoughts were, but mine were filled with joyous exaltation to our Lord for His great Love and tender mercy. This song of worship to our most deserving Lord has taken much deeper meaning over the course of the last weeks. It has become an anthem of praise to our God sung with all sincerity as Leah joins in the refrain with all her heart, knowing that she has accepted Him as her Lord and Savior. Maybe it took this to awaken a father's responsibility in me, to bring all that I have to the Lord in praise and adoration including each member of my family for whom I have been given stewardship unto Him. He has done such excellent things in our family in His truth and counsel.
	This evening, I would like to share some of the joy of the past few weeks as an encouragement to each of us to give God ever increasing exaltation for being our Lord, our Savior, our Creator and our Comfort. He is deserving of all the praise that is within us, and yet, many times, I have been slack in any effort to truly glorify Him. Yes, I have been able to join in the worship, at least on Sunday mornings. Yes, I have fulfilled my duty unto Him in preparation for the Tuesday Night meetings with the young people. But have I been filled with the desire to bring to Him my best exaltation of His name, or merely a few moments of praise as time permitted. In looking back over the course of the past weeks, it is shamefully apparent that I was distracted from giving unto God that which He fully deserved in my life. I was involved in things at work, with the family and in seeking after my wants, rather than seeking after the desired adoration of the Lord. I allowed this earth to capture my attention, and to detract from my concentration upon the glory of my God, my Savior, my First-Love. It is so easy to get caught up in the issues of the day, and to lose sight of the only true issue of life, Our Lord Jesus Christ, and mine was a part of that trap. It took a seemingly calamitous situation to awaken the devotion in my heart that the Lord merited. That heart-felt provision of glory to our God was resulting from the recent events surrounding our daughter, Leah.
	During the prayer meeting, the week before her difficulty, the fellowship prayed for Leah's health. Laura and Rebekka had remained at home due to the severe flu that was going around, and we knew how Leah could be affected by any illness. The year before, she had lost various functions of her neurological system, including her ability to walk, all when she had come down with a simple cold. It had taken over five months for her to regain what was considered to be her baseline abilities of daily operation. So we knew what something like the flu could do to her. Under normal condition, she requires all of her energy to simply carry on a daily routine such as walking and other activities most of us simply take for granted. However, when her body has to fight any kind of an illness, all her other functions become decreased or nonexistent as her energies are geared toward warding off the germs that are attacking her system. Her neurological system seems to be most affected by illness, and therefore most noticeably decreased. This is why we requested that the fellowship keep her in prayer in the midst of the flu that was spreading through our family, through her school, and through the fellowship. We knew that she was in the Lord's hand, and that whatever He chose to do in her physical body, we would see it through, but we were hopeful that she would be spared the problems of the previous year.
	That was not the Lord's design for the week. On Wednesday, she became ill, and spent most of the day in bed.