A Holiday Tradition...

Christmas is a time for memories...for traditions carried on from generations past....for baking of cookies, wrapping of gifts, and acts of kindness and generosity toward others.  As we find ourselves celebrating in different ways this year, often unable to do the things we would typically do in this season of togetherness, I find myself thinking back on my many wonderful memories of Christmases past.

My dear grandmother Ruth had a wonderful Christmas tradition with her grandchildren every year.  Thinking back now, I'm not quite sure how she managed it.  We would all arrive at her house in the morning one day and pile into her car to drive down to the train station.  Eagerly, we'd wait for the arrival of the High Speed Line that would take us, across the grand Ben Franklin Bridge, into Philadelphia.  Upon arriving in the city, we would walk to Wanamaker's Department Store.  This was not the typical big box department store  you see at the mall today.  No, Wanamaker's (now Macy's) was legendary.  In the grand atrium area of the store, where the ceiling seemed to tower miles over our heads, we would stand and wait....

The lights would dim, the crowds would grow hushed, and the music of the grand pipe organ would begin to play, synchronized to a beautiful light display unlike any I had ever seen before.

Tonight as I sit here at home, reliving this childhood memory, it almost seems like something out of a dream.  I'm thankful for the wonders of Christmas, for the beauty, the majesty of this season of LIGHT when the world around me sometimes feels so dark and dismal.  I'm thankful that Christmas has not been cancelled or spoiled in any way by our present circumstances, and it never will be.  

I hope that you can find some wonder still in this holiday season.  I hope you can pause from the stress and strain of life to make memories with the ones you love most, to catch a snowflake on your tongue, to revel in the beauty of the season that seems to focus so much on getting when what brings us the most joy is giving.  I hope you can take some time to ponder the arrival of one tiny baby, who came, so humbly, to save the entire world.

Macy's Holiday Light Show link

And here is a video of the full show

Where Does My Help Come From?

I sat at my kitchen table, next to my mom yesterday....and I let my mind wander...

I longed for the conversation I knew we should have been having...about life with six kids, homeschooling, the approaching holidays, a new recipe I tried for dinner...about anything at all.  But conversation was missing.  It's been like this for some time now.  And I knew that it would be, yet it is still so incredibly hard.

These past few months, dealing with sick family members, a newborn, and a global pandemic have certainly been difficult, to say the least.  Last week on a particularly busy day, I felt lost, broken and very discouraged.  And it was then that God reached down and gave me a hug.  

Have you ever received a hug from God?  No, I don't mean a literal hug, but just something that came about that you knew came from Him, at a moment you really needed it?   Last week my "hug" came in the form of an invitation to hear a cellist play in a dear friend's backyard.  It was a gorgeous warm, sunny afternoon and as I sat there, the leaves were falling all around her while she played beautiful hymns, I knew God was near and that He cared.

Again and again in the past two weeks, He has brought verses from Psalm 121 to my attention.  Again and again I have read that chapter, absorbing the words, letting them soak in when I feel like I have reached the end of my rope.

Where does my help come from?  

A few days later, on a Sunday morning, I drove out to visit a dear friend of mine, a widow who is mostly housebound.  We had a lovely visit, and as I was driving home, enjoying the spectacular fall colors, it struck me that even though I was not physically in a church building that morning, that I had experienced "church."  My sorrow of not being able to worship in the way we once had was replaced with a new kind of joy in this revelation that, indeed, where two or more are gathered, He is present with them.  God reminded me, ever so gently, that sometimes, many times, my perceptions of things and how they should look are not in line with His will and His way.

Today was another day when I reached my physical limit, I was cleaning up broken glass while the baby cried, on the phone with my dad asking him to look for a Thanksgiving turkey at the store.  I hung up my phone and saw a text that had just come in from a neighbor who asked if I needed a turkey. She had a free one from work that she wasn't going to use.  

While some cello music and a free turkey may seem insignificant, they remind me of an ever-present Father Who cares about me so much more than I even realize.  He knows my pains, my trials and my sorrows.  He knows my physical and emotional limits, and He provides the help I need, ever single day.

God, I surrender my will to You.  I seem to get so bogged down by my circumstances every day and I overlook all that you are doing for me so often.  Help me to see things through Your eyes.  Help me to courageously press on in the difficult times and trust You to guide my steps.  Thank you for reaching down to remind me, again and again, where my help comes from.

Psalm 121: 1-2

I lift up my eyes to the hills.
From where does my help come?
My help comes from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth.

Waiting for Rain...

What are you sure about?

That is a question I seem to be asking myself more and more these days.  This year has certainly caused me to question many things, to seek out the truth, to ponder what really matters in my life more than ever before.  Are you finding yourself longing for something you can really put your trust in during uncertain times?

As I was reading several chapters of Hosea, I came across these two passages.  

Hosea 6:3 Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord; 

his going out is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers,
as the spring rains that water the earth.”

Hosea 10:12 Sow righteousness for yourselves, reap the fruit of unfailing love, 

and break up your unplowed ground; for it is time to seek the Lord, 
until he comes and showers his righteousness on you.

 

Has God been working on your "unplowed ground"?  Is He asking you to trust Him...to implicitly trust Him even in your greatest struggles?  Perhaps in the past you have not given Him a second thought.  Will you today?  Has there ever been a time when more of the things we thought we were sure about were challenged?  As "sure as the dawn" God is near, and He is waiting to pour out His love on us.  

One morning last week, I awoke to a crying baby...and a heavy frost.  After so many months of a productive garden and colorful flowers abounding in our yard, it was a dismal sight to see everything drooping and withered from the cold.  With this first frost come many mixed emotions about the coming winter and what lies in store in this uncertain year we have been going through.  We spent that day tearing out all the dead plants from our yard and garden.  For months now it will sit, barren and empty, but in the spring, we will turn the soil and plant...and life will begin again.  I know this with surety, and it brings me comfort to endure the winter.

I stop to think about my life.  What are my areas of "unplowed ground?"  What are the things I hang onto, place my hope in, rely on to make my days go smoothly, outside of Him? He's asking you that same question.  He's asking you to consider what a life filled with Him looks like.  In many ways, it feels as if He demands everything of me...and He does.  But that is the beauty of it, my friend.  No area of your life will remain unchanged.  The path He will take you down will never be one that you would have chosen for yourself.  It will be far better...

Churn up my unplowed ground today, dear God.  Take that hard, untouched soil and apply the plow to it.  Don't hold back and don't allow me to hold back.  That is the hardest thing about a life that truly serves You...there is no area that is safe.  But I'd rather entrust everything to You than rely on the ever shifting circumstances of this world.  So churn me up, break up my soil, and then rain down Your righteousness on me.  I'm waiting...waiting on You with eager anticipation, to see what a work You will do in me.

Loud, Messy, and Dangerous...

It's the end of another day...a long, long day.  I'm tired, beaten down a bit perhaps...  My greatest accomplishments, by 8:45 pm, include putting away two loads of laundry that have been sitting on my bedroom floor for the last two days, and collecting more laundry to wash tomorrow.  I think back on my day and sigh...

Why is it that the kids seem to gravitate toward things that are loud....screaming at each other every single time I get on the phone, interrupting me every time I try to talk to Derrick, screaming as they run wildly around the house during the few minutes the baby is actually asleep...

...toward things that are messy...making "forts" in the family room, dumping out all their toys, all over the floor, every. single. day., that one muddy puddle...

...toward things that are dangerous...jumping off tables, couches, crossing the road without looking both ways, doing back-flips on the trampoline....

Parenting is hard...life is hard...and what I crave is comfort.  What this all comes down to is Comfort from the pains and trials of this world.  Comfort from all the noise, the chaos, the disagreements and squabbles and little fires I feel like I'm always trying to put out.  

My comfort...my well-being...my well-deserved rest.  Isn't that a noble pursuit?? Don't I, after all, deserve these things after all I do day in and day out?  A verse I read the other day lingers in the back of my mind but keeps resurfacing...

1 John 2:6 (ESV)

whoever says he abides in him

 ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.

Walk in the way Jesus walked...but what does that mean?  Did He ever seek after His own comfort...a man without money or a roof over His head.  A man who went from meal to meal depending on the kindness and graciousness of others and the provision from His heavenly Father.  Do I stop to consider these things as I'm grumbling my way through another day, feeling shortchanged and irritated that my life is so inconvenient and messy and chaotic?

Life, beyond the microcosm of my little world of parenting, is loud...messy...and dangerous.  Just look around you for about 3 seconds and it's so easy to see.  But how I respond to it as someone who professes faith in Jesus should be radically different.  Jesus didn't shy away from the messy and diseased, the unpopular,the outcasts, the people who were shouting curses at Him.  He slept on the ground, went hungry at times, got His feet covered in dirt from walking everywhere.  He gravitated to the messy places it would seem.  And He didn't seek after His own comfort.  The times He made to be alone seem to always be those He spent in prayer with God.  

I've been thinking about this a lot in the last week.  If I'm supposed to be walking in the same way that He walked, am I even on the right road?  And if not, what needs to change?  Perhaps it's in all the messiness, the chaos, that true holiness surfaces.  It takes a total surrender of self to finally catch a glimpse of His glory.  It takes an emptying of my strength to finally relinquish control and ask Him to be my daily Bread, my Rock to stand on.  If I'm walking in the way He walked, I'm not thinking about me and what I deserve...I'm thinking about others.  This is all so counter-culture, so far from what my life looks like most days, but that doesn't mean we should ignore it.  Today, I want to challenge you as I have been challenged, to strive to walk in the way He walked. Ask Him to take your messy and make it a miracle, to take whatever situation or situations you find yourself in that just seem hopeless, too hard, irreconcilable, and bring beauty out of them.  He can do that you know!  Ask Him to open your eyes to needs around you, perhaps right in your own neighborhood, that you may never have noticed before.  Let us never forget that we shouldn't be assessing situations according to our human limitations, but trusting in God to help us, each step of the way.

God, I often claim to believe in and follow You...but I KNOW I've fallen so short of truly walking like You.  I want comfort.  I don't gravitate toward the difficult.  You challenge me to look at life in a different way.  To consider others who are suffering and seek to do something about it....to dive right into the messes and trust You to get me through.  Please give me courage to fully trust You with my life and to believe that You will never lead me astray.  Please help me to relinquish my stubborn will and selfish desires so that You can work in my heart and use me wherever I might be most useful.  Thank you for forgiving me, over and over again, for straying off the path.  Help me to trust You, each day, to meet all of my needs in the best way possible.  Help me to love as You loved and still love...to live as You lived...to care for the needs of others as You did so well.  Thank You, for showing me the way and for being the kind of God who was humble enough to do so. 

Amen

How We Spend Our Lives...

 "How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives."  Annie Dillard

How are you spending your life?  I've been pondering this a lot lately as we go through one of the most unusual years in history.  This week, I have been reading and rereading 1 Peter in The Message version, meditating on how my life looks and how it is supposed to look.  I hope as you read it, you will be encouraged as I was.  

How do you spend your days, each passing minute...each hour...each day.  Are you living as if it might be your last day?  Shouldn't we all be...with purpose, intention, drive, excitement, appreciation, love, humility, focus....?

1 Peter 1:13-16 (The Message) So roll up your sleeves, put your mind in gear, be totally ready to receive the gift that’s coming when Jesus arrives. Don’t lazily slip back into those old grooves of evil, doing just what you feel like doing. You didn’t know any better then; you do now. As obedient children, let yourselves be pulled into a way of life shaped by God’s life, a life energetic and blazing with holiness. God said, “I am holy; you be holy.”

1 Peter 1:18-19 (The Message) Your life is a journey you must travel with a deep consciousness of God. It cost God plenty to get you out of that dead-end, empty-headed life you grew up in. He paid with Christ’s sacred blood, you know. He died like an unblemished, sacrificial lamb. And this was no afterthought.

1 Peter 3:13-18 (The Message)  If with heart and soul you’re doing good, do you think you can be stopped? Even if you suffer for it, you’re still better off. Don’t give the opposition a second thought. Through thick and thin, keep your hearts at attention, in adoration before Christ, your Master. Be ready to speak up and tell anyone who asks why you’re living the way you are, and always with the utmost courtesy. Keep a clear conscience before God so that when people throw mud at you, none of it will stick. They’ll end up realizing that they’re the ones who need a bath. It’s better to suffer for doing good, if that’s what God wants, than to be punished for doing bad. That’s what Christ did definitively: suffered because of others’ sins, the Righteous One for the unrighteous ones. He went through it all—was put to death and then made alive—to bring us to God.

1 Peter 4:7-13  (The Message)  take nothing for granted. Stay wide-awake in prayer. Most of all, love each other as if your life depended on it. Love makes up for practically anything. Be quick to give a meal to the hungry, a bed to the homeless—cheerfully. Be generous with the different things God gave you, passing them around so all get in on it: if words, let it be God’s words; if help, let it be God’s hearty help. That way, God’s bright presence will be evident in everything through Jesus, and he’ll get all the credit as the One mighty in everything—encores to the end of time. Oh, yes! Friends, when life gets really difficult, don’t jump to the conclusion that God isn’t on the job. Instead, be glad that you are in the very thick of what Christ experienced. This is a spiritual refining process, with glory just around the corner.

Closeness...

"Mama, Mama, you have to come see this butterfly we caught!  We're about to let it go."  

"Oh, that's OK, you can let it go without me," I said unthinkingly.  I was tired...we've caught literally hundreds of butterflies over the course of the summer...I was sitting on the couch with a sleeping baby on my shoulder.  This one could return to the wild without me.  But no...

"Mama, you really have to see this one.  It's so pretty.  We've never caught one like this before.  PLEASE?"

"OK, OK, I'm coming."  Begrudgingly I lift myself carefully off the couch so as not to wake the baby, exit my comfortable air-conditioned living room to walk out into the sweltering heat and humidity of the afternoon.  There in their little butterfly cage is a single black butterfly.  I try to discern what is so special about this specimen, why they had to drag me outside to see it...but then I catch a flash of blue on the wings.  

"Do you see how the wings are bright blue when the sun hits them?" As the sunlight reaches the dull black wings on this butterfly, my eyes are met with iridescent flashes of blue coloration.  It is truly spectacular.  How can it be that something so ordinary and so similar to other black swallowtail butterflies, can suddenly become so extraordinary?

As I sat in the baby's room in the early morning hours today, thinking back on this episode from yesterday afternoon, a thought struck me....this butterfly is the perfect picture of our lives when we live in close proximity to Christ.  Without Him, we are just like everyone else...but when we draw near to him, when we bask in the Light of the Son, we reflect Him to a dying world around us.  We have no power to do this on our own.  Only when we are living in obedience to Him, allowing Him to dwell in us and submitting our hearts to His will, we reflect His attributes...His love, His goodness, His awesome power, His forgiveness, His grace and mercy...out for all to see. And Oh! what a marvelous sight it is to behold. 

At a time when everything is socially distanced, we crave closeness more than ever before.  We yearn to be near to others, for the normalcy of the life we once knew, just a matter of months ago.  I would challenge and implore you to consider that God is never far away, and we never need distance ourselves from Him.  Draw near to Him, invite Him to be a part of your life this very day.  Step into the beautiful light of the Son, and see how He will transform your life in a way you never thought possible.

John 15:5 (AMPC)  I am the Vine; you are the branches. Whoever lives in Me and I in him bears much (abundant) fruit. However, apart from Me [cut off from vital union with Me] you can do nothing.

Beauty...

I haven't been able to blog much lately...I can't believe it's been two months since my last post.  So much has changed around here in those two months too!  Tessa Grace was born on July 6th and has been a wonderful new addition to our family.  The days have been long and exhausting to be sure!

A couple of weeks ago, I was watching a program about Creation with the kids. The premise of the episode we were watching was that the world we live in can be attributed to an intelligent designer, a Creator, because we can see a purpose in it, namely, it is beautiful.  How could a world formed by chance have such form and structure and perfection and delicate beauty as we see all around us?  As I walk around the yard every day, this statement keeps echoing in my mind.  Look around you, look at all the beauty....how could it be that this is just chance?  Does it not SHOUT to you, day in and day out of a loving, inspired, creative designer?  Why did He put so much care into even the most minute details around us? 

 Just tonight I was walking around the yard again watering and I snapped a few photos of the flowers I'm growing.  I think of the words of Luke 12:28 which say,

"If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will he clothe you—you of little faith!"

So many are quick to deny God's existence, and perhaps others will consent to agree that there might be a God, but they want nothing to do with Him.  Just looking at a few flowers, butterflies and bugs brings me to a place of awe.  And this is only scratching the surface of this magnificent world that surrounds us.

What do you do with BEAUTY?  How do you explain it and what purpose does it serve?    I believe beauty is a window into the heart of God...because He didn't just make a world for us to exist in, but He made a world that would inspire awe, that would proclaim His love for us everywhere we looked.  Beauty gives us joy in our hearts because it points us back to a God who loves us.

Another favorite verse of mine is Psalm 19:1 "The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands."

Creation declares God's glory....I think of this as I watch the tiny bees collecting pollen from our giant sunflowers.  The work of His hands is evident everywhere I look.  I look closer at another sunflower that has already died, and even in this dead flower I'm amazed when I examine the perfect spiral pattern of the seeds which will soon be a meal for hungry goldfinches in the yard.

Night after night, I've sat awake with my new baby in the wee hours of the morning, and just gazed down at her sweet face.  This tiny baby, the most miraculous of miracles, a perfect example yet again of God's goodness, His design, His care for me.  

I am literally surrounded by beauty.  I hope that this thought will inspire you also as so many right now are struggling with all the anxiety and fear and hatred rippling through our country and world.  Beauty reminds me of something much deeper, much greater than the struggles we have gone through so far in 2020.  Beauty points me back to God and reminds me that He should be my focus, my desire, the source of my happiness and peace.  Beauty gives me great hope...a hope that others will stop chasing after the empty things of this world and instead turn and run toward the God that loves them unconditionally.

 

Thank you God for the beauty you have made all around me.  Thank you for the daily reminders of Your love and care for me that is proclaimed in Your creation.  Help me not take for granted, all that You have done for me.  Help me to chase after you with my whole heart, and abandon the things of this world that are constantly clamoring for my attention.  

A Desolate Place...

And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed. (Mark 1:35 ESV)

But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.
(Luke 5:16 NIV)

How do I find a desolate place?

I am trying so hard to make more time for prayer, and trying to understand the right way to pray.  I try early in the morning, and one of the kids always seems to wake up.  I try at night, and I can't seem to keep focused because of the fatigue.  

I know that God doesn't necessarily expect me to go out on a deserted mountain every morning to pray, but how can I make time and give myself that kind of quiet to really focus on Him?

Today I felt like He was reminding me that there are seasons in our lives for everything...and right now my season does not allow for very much alone time.  But can't I still have "moments" of desolation, even amidst the craziness of the days?  Even if but for a few seconds, I can quickly transport myself to that quiet and peaceful place and be in communion with my Heavenly Father.

I see flashes of His glory throughout my days, and need only acknowledge and thank Him for them.  I see evidence of His care and creativity in creation over and over again, like tonight as I stood at a window to draw the curtains and saw wispy pink clouds shooting across the darkening sky.  

How often do you take the time and make the time to pray?  When was the last time you blocked out all the noise and distractions to really listen to what the Lord might be saying to you?  And when He does speak, do you really pay attention to what He is saying or calling you to do, or do you brush it aside and continue on your way?  Jesus Himself made time to pray.  God's very own Son clearly made prayer a priority and sacrificed much so that His prayers were meaningful and empowering.  If He needed prayer that much, how much more is it a vital necessity for me?

Give me moments and places of desolation throughout my days, dear God, that I might be in regular communion with You.  There are competing forces constantly clamoring for my attention and devotion, but I know that none deserves the place in my life that You do.  

Love One Another...

John 13:34 (NIV)

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.

I cannot help but think of love over the course of this past week.  Daily we hear more and more news of the sadness and destruction caused by hatred which has been embedded in our country for centuries now.  I long for a solution, for an end to this kind of evil, for hope...

And whenever I am looking for hope, there is one place I can always find it, in the precious, timeless, limitless, perfect Word of God.  I think of those who wrote the words that are forever recorded in the Holy Bible and why they wrote them.  And it's not very hard to see, that the problems we face now, are not new...they were the same kinds of issues that they faced back in those days that the Bible was being recorded.

This week, my kids have had the wonderful opportunity to take care of some baby ducks.  It has been a joy to see them caring for the ducks' needs, playing with them, holding them, building their trust so they are no longer afraid when little hands come reaching for them.  I love it when, after playing for the ducks for a little while, they become so tired that they curl up and fall asleep right in the kids' hands.  

We just finished watching the first season of the series The Chosen (which I highly recommend).  In it, I felt like I was transported back to the times when Jesus walked the earth and it helped me to envision what living in those times and having a face to face encounter with Him might have been like.  As He chose His disciples, one by one, you could see that He was not choosing the elite, the beautiful, the well-respected...but those who were poor, dirty, hated and broken.  He looked for ordinary people, those that anyone could relate to.  And He never saw one group of people as better than another.  As people came to Him, asking for healing from their sicknesses, you could see a kind of sorrow in His eyes, because He knew the depth of their pain and brokenness and that they needed not only physical healing, but also healing of a much deeper nature, healing of the heart and soul.  

I hope that I might remember the love that Jesus demonstrated for us, for me, in my day to day living.  I hope that I might remember how He sought out those who were shunned by society, did not shrink away from those who were hated and unclean, but embraced them with immediate acceptance and love. Christ came for the ungodly, the unworthy, sacrificially, willingly, and lovingly.  He came, in person, so that we would have the perfect example to follow...and example of how to treat each other and how to live life together on this earth. He came to show us what it looks like to love our fellow man and woman, unconditionally and without judgment.

Give me love like Jesus, dear God.  Help me to see needs the way You see them, to see people the way You see them, (including myself!), and to love like You love.  While we were still rotten, unworthy, unsightly sinners, He came and loved and died for us.  That is an example worth following.

1 Corinthians 16:14 (ESV)

Let all that you do be done in love.

1 John 4:11

Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 

Take Notice...

In the last week, I feel like God has been literally shouting a message to me, over and over again. 

First I heard it in our sermon on Sunday, which was about how men and women, God's creation, went so quickly from being "good" to greatly grieving God.  Men took their "freedom" to choose their own path, and choose they did...a path that quickly led them away from God an into corruption and all kinds of sin.

Next I listened to the message of Gideon, who was a fearful  and unlikely warrior but won a great battle because he allowed God to use him.  But in the wake of this battle, we saw him become conceited and turn away from God, which ultimately led to his destruction.

And finally tonight, I read the story of Elijah and Ahab on Mt. Carmel, and what happened to Elijah, right after he totally embarrassed Ahab and the prophets of Baal in front of all the people.  Jezebel threatened Elijah and he became very fearful and ran for his life.

The message I kept hearing in these stories was that sometimes God needs to make us weak in order to work through us...like in Gideon's case at the beginning of his story, God had to make it very apparent that the battle was won not by Gideon's strength or valor but by simply letting God work through him.

And a second message in common in these stories was that many times after a great "victory" we experience our greatest time of testing.  We go so quickly from the mountaintop, to a very deep valley.  The times we should be most wary of are not our times of trial, but our times of victory.  In those, we get caught up in our feelings of control and confidence and feel that we don't need God anymore...and that couldn't be any farther from the truth.

I appreciate all of these reminders, and as I have watched the kids playing together outside over the past week...I kept pondering how they apply to me.  When I stop to compare these stories, I can see that this is not a one-time decision we must make, but a daily, conscious effort, to put our trust in God, to surrender our stubborn wills over to Him, and to allow Him to work in and through us...and then take no credit for whatever happens!!

Take Notice! I can hear the Lord reminding me, over and over again.  Just when you start to become confident, when times are calm, when things start to go your way again...those are the moments when you are most likely to turn away from Me.

Take Notice!  Of all the things that I have done for you, that I do for you, day in and day out.  Just as my kids were enthralled by a tiny ladybug whose colors were "backwards" today, or by a snake a neighbor found in their backyard....I am reminded to stop from my constant pattern of blowing through the hours of the day without stopping to really notice the things that God is doing or the areas He may be calling to my attention.

God, forgive me please for not taking notice more often of the things you have done, and are still doing daily for me.  Keep me in a place of testing for as long as need be, so that I do not grow overly confident and turn my back on You.  I need you, desperately, every single day. 

Proverbs 30:7-9

“Two things I ask of you, Lord; do not refuse me before I die:

Keep falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches,

but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you

and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God.

A snake from a neighbor's yard

Black Ladybug!

Treasure...

Matthew 6:19-21 (NLT)
“Don’t store up treasures here on earth, where moths eat them and rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal. Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.

Where is your treasure?

I've been thinking about this a lot over the past week.  On Monday, we spent a good part of the day working on and planting seedlings in our garden.  Carter excitedly ran over to me to show me something he had found in one of our pots, a large clump of sprouting sunflowers.  Some little chipmunk must have gathered sunflower seeds from our bird feeders and buried them in the pot, hoping to enjoy them at a later time.  But he will never have the opportunity since they all sprouted into tiny sunflower plants!

I laughed to myself as we continued to work in the garden, thinking how often we too try to store up so many "treasures" here on earth only to be disappointed when they break or get lost or are taken away from us.  This also reminded me of a parable that Jesus taught about a rich but foolish man, who had much yet didn't share it with anyone else... 

Luke 12:15-21

Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.”  And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest.  He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’  “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain.  And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’  “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’  “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”

We spent many hours outdoors on this gorgeous day, enjoying the sights of spring.  A dear family friend treated the kids to a long walk around his lake where we saw fish, ducks, turtles, glorious patches of buttercups, huge bullfrogs, and minnows.  This reminded me again of these two passages, about storing up our treasures in heaven, investing in our relationship with God and being rich toward Him.  These friends of ours have built a legacy of love by giving freely of their time (like today), and resources, and their treasures.  They have not hoarded for themselves, but give openly so that others might experience God more fully.

Invest in what will last...

I think about how that little chipmunk will feel when he returns to that flower pot with a rumbling belly, only to find, nothing.  I think about how many times I've treasured a possession, a relationship, something here on earth, only to have it taken away from me, and then realized the folly of cherishing it in the first place.

Help me, dear God, to cherish things that will truly last.  Help me to store up Your precious Word in my heart, to invest in my relationship with You, and to give freely of the blessings you pour out on me now, knowing that it is folly to worry about gathering up treasures anywhere besides Heaven...

God's Kaleidoscope...

 But may all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you;

may those who love your salvation say continually, “Great is the Lord!”

Psalm 40:16 (ESV)

While it is tempting to focus on the bad things going on in our world right now, I believe this time affords us such an amazing opportunity.  The absence of so many of our "usual distractions" gives us time to focus more on the small things we overlook every single day.  As my family enjoyed the warm sunshine over the weekend, I was struck by the kaleidoscope of colors I was witnessing in the birds, right in my own backyard.  Red, orange, yellow, green and blue...these aren't colors I would typically think of seeing in a tropical rain forest, not here in Western PA!  I did have to steal a hummingbird photo from last summer because I wasn't fast enough to capture that little guy but he started coming to our feeder yesterday and was back again today, despite the chilly weather!  And yes, the turkey, not wanting to be left out, has made multiple appearances over the last week also.

Great is the Lord!  

Do I need any more reasons to say this, continually?  And yet I am given new ones day after day.  God has saved me indeed from a life devoid of beauty and meaning and hope, and flooded my world with endless examples of His creativity, His love, and His purpose for me. 

I pray that wherever you find yourself today, no matter how bleak things may seem in your life, that you will still find opportunities to say, "Great is the Lord!"  Remember that His goodness supersedes all of our problems and pain.  The hope He offers us is not limited to the confines of this world.  What He gives us here are glimpses....reminders of all that is in store for those who trust in Him.

Great is the Lord!

Cardinal

Robin

Goldfinch

Baltimore Oriole

Ruby Throated Hummingbird

Goldfinch

Tree Swallow

TURKEY!!