Moments

 Got a letter from Joan ..taking some heavy hitting pain meds for her pain....she seems so ....I don't know what to say...remember her in your prayers. I thought of this while reading my Bible commentary this morning.  Mark 1:40-42 In this scripture a man with leoprosy came and "If you will, you can makee me clean."   Leprosy in those days is a horrible disease and it disfigures one to a great extent...sore everywhere,  limbs rotting off.  If you had it you were quarantined from everyone...sound familiar. >?  You had to give warning of your "uncleaness" by saying "unclean" all the time you were in public.  No one touched you and most did not get near...you had to keep your upper lip covered walking about. The leper had to dwell alone outside of town.  The disease was one that slowly coroded a persons body until he died but the worst was the social isolation they had to endure until then.  Mentally and personally, they were as diseased...

  Those of us that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak and not to please ourselves.    And there are so many needy souls.   So many, in fact, that one cannot bear all infirmities for all of them without self-destruction and the destruction of the infirmity bearing vehicle.   It is as if we are little boats and we take people with their burdens aboard, but we can’t take everybody.   If we keep loading the boat with the needy, the boat will sink and everyone will drown; the burden-bearers and the needy.   Christian growth like a snake shedding its skin periodically and taking on a new one. The snake skin analogy:   How many times do we shed our skin on   our journey to grow as Christians.   Still Be still and know that I am God……Be still ourselves to receive His stillness.   He still cares, still consoles, still heals, still delivers, and He still saves.   In our empty vanities it really doesn’t matter what w...

Moments: Christian Credibility :  Go into the world and spread the good news.  As a Christian, it would appear I should be going and preaching all the time at whatever stati...

 Go into the world and spread the good news.  As a Christian, it would appear I should be going and preaching all the time at whatever station in life I find myself.  Is that totally correct?  Yes and no, I might suppose.   The thought:  No matter how much talking ABOUT Jesus I do.  No matter how I might think someone needs to accept Him as their Lord and Savior, do I have the Christian credibility to convey this message in truth to others?  There is a quote and not sure who said it but it goes, "What your are doing screams so loudly in my ear that I can't hear a word you are saying."  Given that, it would seem my first evangelic action should be not to preach  but to highly monitor what I am doing.  Am I a fit medium to convey the Word of God to others.  Do others see Jesus in me and want that for themselves?   It settles down into all areas of life.  How do I treat other people?  How do I treat my fam...

  My wife a bought a 50 lb sack of bird seed   and it was in the back of the car. I had the opportunity so I went outside and opened the trunk, and without thinking, put the bag of seed on my shoulder and walked  in the house and right up the stairs.  It wasn't  until I was putting the seed in the storage container  that I realized what I had done.  Without thinking, I just assumed and walked up the stairs with a bag of feed on my shoulder - the same stairs that. Not many days ago,  empty-handed it was a struggle on an injured knee one  step at a time,   just  get up those stairs.  Amazing how quickly I can start taking God's healing, God's blessing for granted so quickly.  How human I find myself.

  Taken for what they are, many things don’t make any sense.   Custom, habit, and consistent use, and exposure have given many traditions a reality they do not possess-a sort of illusion of reality.   There is so much not really understood but taken for reality and knowledge left wanting about something we take for granted daily.   For instance, we take the ability to love for granted.   We can care deeply about the welfare of someone besides ourselves.   That is quite unnatural and when you think about that, it doesn’t make any sense.   Why should we care?   Their pain is not our pain.   Why should we care about someone else’s pain?   Why does a beautiful sight stir us so?   We travel all over the world to see sights.   Why?   We can’t eat it, drink it, or live there.   Why should we care? I propose that the ability to deeply love, appreciate, and care so much about things is a gift from God coming as part of the...

  The world can seem so cold.   People seem so cold and unconcerned about each other.   God’s love seems to   go on unimpressed and underrepresented in this hurting world.   It can get you down and you wonder why doesn’t God show up and do something. The other day it was hot and I was out running on a dirt road.   I had already covered a lot of miles and was dusty,   tired, and on my way home.   There is a   lot of pipeline and oil exploration activity in this area and I was not surprised to see a large tanker truck coming my way.    He was nice; slowed down so as to not cover me in dust.   After he passed, I stopped , bent over with my hands   on my knees, getting a little rest and trying to cool down a bit.    A few minutes later I heard another truck coming from the direction the first truck had gone.    I could hear it grinding up the hill behind me and when it got alongside of me, it stopped. ...

  Christianity seems to be the faith of  the common person.  But, once we have Jesus we are no longer common.   We became special because He is.  We become uncommon people  filled with: Uncommon commitment Uncommon courage Uncommon service Uncommon sacrifice Worship of an uncommon Savior May we all go forth in living lives of uncommon worship of the One who has called us out to be an uncommon p eople.

  A nd there are weeds in the garden of our lives.  And I must confess, I do not hoe weeds in that garden nearly enough.  Hoeing our weeds can be uncomfortable.  What deep rooted competing weed do I have in my life that I need to pull out by the roots.  What are the weeds I need to remove that my spiritual growth may prosper and bear fruit in due season?   Are the weeds in my life crowding out the Light?  Am I growing toward the Son?  Or, have I resigned to living out a fruitless life in the shadow of the weeds that I have allowed to grow up around and over me? 

 My father was dying - cancer.  My mother and my two sisters and I were in the hospital room with him. He was in a coma.  For days we kept our vigil. My sisters and mother slept in the chairs in the room.  I slept on the floor by his bed.  My oldest sister lost it a few times and would sob loudly.  My younger sister was just as hurt, I am sure, and often she whimpered softly.  Mother was just sort of numbed by it all and show no real response to much of anything.   At one time my oldest sister completely lost it and went into a sobbing tirade. In the midst of of the sobbing, my father roused unexpectedly only for a moment and shook his head side to side as if to say no to the sobbing remorse.    Then he fell back into the coma - a gift from God - my sister calmed down.   A day or so later we all gathered around his bedside and I prayed and begged out loud that the Lord would just go on and take him.  We can let him go...

  WHY I RUN   I run to : Purge yourself of   the falsehoods I have had about my limits; to enlarge and redefine the   world within myself; to explore new worlds and stake a claim there—forever changed and forever changing .     A new world; a new me, to be discovered in the miles.   The world appears wider, larger than before and I seem bigger, taller, peering from the mountain through the haze of pleasant fatigue, soothed in the balm of that glimpse of glory which can be found in humble, trivial and otherwise meaningless   pursuit.   I run to: Shake off the cobwebs, the dust , the  mold, the habits and traditions that encumber the realization of the possibility of becoming.  In lesser times to hold close to my heart the feeling; the memory, of this dynamic world that is near to the splendid spirit of God and the best of humankind

  Visit now this soul of mine and tarry there.   Inspire all my thoughts.   Pervade all my imaginings.   Suggest all my decisions.   Lodge in my heart’s innermost room and order all my doings.   Be with me in my silence and in my speech; in my haste and in my leisure, in company and in solitude, in the freshness of morning and in the weariness of the evening; and give me grace at all time to rejoice in your mysterious companionship.

  Morning Prayer   Let me now go forth, O Lord my God, to the work of another day, still surrounded by your wonderful loving kindnesses, still pledged to thy loyal service, still standing Your strength and not my own.   Lord empty me of me, so I can be filled with You.  

 A wasp was caught between the window and the screen, looking for an escape to freedom. In his fitful meanderings about the screen wire, a couple of small spides began stalking him.  A piece of web here and there and over time the wasp was not completely free.  The spiders closed in spinning more and more snaring, imprisoning webs until movement was becoming quite restricted for the wasp.  The future would contain only more struggle and death by having the life sucked out of him.   With the virus and the restrictions and the loss of this and loss of that, I feel like that wasp sometimes. I want outside.  I want the freedom to fly unrestricted.  Trapped inside the screen seems like only struggle until all freedom is gone unto a kind of death of who and what I am.    But wait!  Who and what I am was decided a long time ago for me.   I am a child of God, beloved of my father.  And--I will pray to the Father to bring me o...

S tephen, full of wisdom and spirit… They couldn’t dispute his  message so they had to destroy the messenger thinking that would silence the  message.  However,  his “face of an angel” death of  Stephen at their hands, made the whole thing  backfire on them.  It was like they had thrown  gasoline on a fire. They killed the messenger, sure,  but they exploded and expanded the messenge into  the world  through the conversion of Saul to Paul----   God still wins. Why would we not expect persecution as messegers of God's love?  Do we have the"face of an angel" in doing so?  Perhaps our messenger will explode and spread through its attempted surpression.   God still wins. Romans 8:28

A closer walk these last few days with God has brought a deeper sensitivity within my own mind and heart.   Reading the Word has convicted me of my own lack   of sensitivity to His will and His way    that He would have for my life be in response to, seemingly, a world that just does not care.   Too long, I have been lead and manipulated by the offenses of others.   Burning embers of anger have seared my soul too long.   I have failed to fully realize that these offenders are Your children too, and whatever   their pitiful personal   state, they are still Y our children. And, I come to realize the insensitivity that I often exhibit toward God,   in isolating myself from others , physically, emotionally, and spiritually.   In many ways, I have allowed others to make me “leave my genie in the bottle.” So, at the end of things, I am the biggest offender.

A few years ago I put this old cross together from posts from our old corral - long torn down.  This stands among weeds mostly unnoticed but being unnoticed does not diminish the power of what this old cross  means. It is held together by barbed wire, a sort of crown of thorns.  At the base is another old post for a place to bring our burdens and lay them there.  In the ground the cross is upon is buried a lot of my memories:  scrapbooks, trophies, books, fishing equipment, articles belong to my deceased mother and father.   It makes sense to me -the cross in the weeds - to bring all of your life and bury it with the cross. My life is hid there is Jesus; it is not just a few old corral posts, some barbed wire in a weedy field - it the emblem of hope for me and others for all eternity.

Can you see the cross through the underbrush?  Can you see the cross in the underbrush the world tries to cover it up with. Here in the photo there is the cross in the open cool water with a  fresh breeze upon.  We are surrounded by the underbrush of life and sometimes it is hard to escape from.  But know that it is there;  always.  For God so loved -- and God still loves and the cross says it best.

This old Bible I have had for many years.  Years ago people asked why I carry that old ragged Bible around when there are other new, neater Bibles to be had.  And, it is King James, allegedly so hard to understand.  Why don't I modern-up on my Bible choice? The Bible is an old friend.  It's wear is much like the scars on my body from a life of activity. The Bible has scars that show me that over the years, it has had a lot of activity as well. So many times when things seemed to be coming apart; so many times when I needed a place to find peace; so many times when I felt apart from God and needed a word to come closer; so many times.  This beat up Bible shows the tracks of my faith; sort of spiritual scars from past battles fought.   It hasn't always been easy; most often it is  not easy,  but me and that old Bible have survived to honor God with what worn and weary have left to give. Yeah, I still carry that old Bible and touching it ...

Ma tthew 28:5 And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus who was crucified. The words "fear not," occurs many times told in the Word - I think it is 365 times.    On this occasion,  the angel seems to say that your motives are pure - ye seek Jesus -so  there is no need to fear.  It is often difficult to realize and act upon but our fear can be overcome when we fully realize who and whose we are and what we seek.  It would appear that the first step to overcoming our fear is to search out our hearts and     remove bad motives for our thoughts and actions.  Our life can be lived less fearfully by keeping as pure and obedient to worthy purposes as possible before God.  And for the women at the tomb was  there anything more worthy than to seek Jesus?  Fear not.

What's This Day Several years ago when my grandchildren were very young, we had this conversation and I wrote it down.  My prayer today would be that as they grow older and enter into this world as adults, the knowledge and hope of the Gospel "will follow them and they will dwell in the house of the Lord, Forever." It was calendar training time for my granddaughter: day of the week, the months, and then, the  holidays.  She couldn’t read yet so she asked----- “What’s this day?" “Palm Sunday, and "  "And that’s when Jesus came, “riding a donkey,” she interrupted, “and the peoples put branches in His road when He came to town. "What’s  this day?” She pointed. This is Good Friday.  That’s when they took Jesus to the cross and---" “They nailed His hands and hurt Him and put him up on a cross.   And He died."  What’s  this day?” She pointed to Sunday. “This is Easter.  That’s when --- “ “I know about Easter....

Moments: A Resurrection Experience : A Resurrection Experience With all the frenzy and fear in our lives this Easter, our hope might seem off in the distance at the ...

A Resurrection Experience With all the frenzy and fear in our lives this Easter, our hope might seem off in the distance at the other end of the pond, with a chop on the water; like the old cross in this photo. But at the  the end our day, this seemingly far away cross and the empty tomb is our only hope in this life and the world to come.  We can make medicines and vaccines and take all precautionary measures to stall our departure,  but our appointed time will come, nonetheless.  "Our only Hope; God's only Son." Today I built an old cross out of some old lumber.  It still had nails in it and I thought how appropriate for a cross. It had turned dark while I was building the cross and when I went down to my pond, a few pimples of rain fell up on the slick surface of the water.  It was still, foreboding, and then I saw the flash and a few seconds later the sound of thunder, and again.  I waded into pond as the storm sounded louder; a wi...