Moments

    Self-sufficiency comes with a price.   Several people we have had to come work on the place say that we have what everyone wants; a quiet place in the country.  However, nothing stops anyone from having it except a deep down "want it."  Out here in the country, you have to put out a lot of work and be able to figure things out. There is a lot to be done on your own and there are a lot of downsides to it. Most want the benefits of country living without paying the full price.  It is like the story of the husband listening to his wife playing the piano.  He remarks how beautifully she plays and he says he wished he could play like that.  She replies. "well obviously, not enough to practice at it." Most people don't truly pursue what they say they wish for. Most don't even try. I say all that to say this:  I count myself among those "I wishers." I say I am a triathlete but I haven't done one in years.  I say I want to do an ironman...

  The world seems in such a mess. People are so lost.  They are often sterile and uncaring, barely noticing those around them or anyone else's pain. What happened to humanity that caused her to sink so low? How can I love these people like God says I am supposed to?  These folks are not easy to love. How do I look aside at who they are and what they do and love them?   Then John 3:16 hits me;  "For God so loved----."   The world that Jesus came into was no Sunday School picnic either.  People were just people then too and that's why He came.  He came for those who crucified Him.  He came for the empty hearts of today.  We have all sinned and fall short of the Glory of God.  We have all disappointed God.  In some way, we have all betrayed Him.  And the Bible is full of people who did those things during those times when Jesus walked on the earth.  These times are not much different than the world Jesus came i...

  We often use a location app that helps us follow family follows when they travel. Often when the app is first accessed, the view is close up.  It is hard to determine where the family member is, where they are going, or where they have been.  Consequently, we have to zoom out to take in the full map.  Then we can see how our family member fits into the full map, the big picture, not the small little circle we first saw them in. I find  this true in the Christian experience as well.  We can lose the sense of our true place and time and feel our little circle is the world and sometimes we think we are the center of it.  Our problems, our responsibilities, and our little issues and our importance become all there is.   There doesn't seem to be any big picture. We get so lost in ourselves and our little worlds that, like the blown-up locator view, we don't really know where we are, where we are going, or where we have been.  And to make it...

    There was not a breath of air.   The humid stillness hanging in the silence of the forest   tense in its breathlessness. Amplified by the quiet, a loudness suddenly crashed about in the limbs of a large tree.   A large dead branch was tumbling noisily through the other branches to end its days above the earth.     What made the limb fall at this one moment.   Surely, not wind or gust or freeze.   Perhaps, it was just time, that’s all: just a time, the moment, the breaking point when decay had mitigated the limb’s strength that it could not support its own weight-----Yes, perhaps, it was time.   And in life there just sometimes comes a time, to shed off the dead and rotting in life and let it crash to the ground.   Sometimes it is time to give more wholly to God and the things rotting fall.  

        As a child I once got lost in the woods.    It is hard to remember it now but I do remember the fear upon realization that I was indeed lost.    Things looked differently.   Nothing seemed familiar.    Finally I came to a gate that I had never found before in my other adventures in these woods.   When I looked across the pasture past the gate, there was a strange old house.   In my young mind I wondered if it were a witches house.   Then the conflict:   I was lost and this was the only sign of civilization that   I had found in seemingly hours of wandering around in the woods.    I had to take the chance, but I would be ready to run back to the woods if things got bad at all.     As I left the gate and the woods and walked cautiously toward the old house.   Little by little it begin to come to me as.   As I began to come to myself I realized that the gate th...

 Jesus did some amazing things with storms.  He calmed the storm once and another time He came to His disciples walking on water at night "when the winds were contrary."   He wasn't intimidated by storms or bad weather.    Today, things just sort of piled on in life and I felt sort of overwhelmed by the storms and bad weather.  I could sense the tenseness in my body, mind, and soul.  I felt so tired from it all.   I went into the other room and after sitting in a recliner, I closed my eyes and tried to pray.   The words never started.  What did start was an awareness of supernatural realities, that I never expected.  Prayer became communion as I thought of how it will be when all this is over when I am in heaven with Jesus.   There was a sort of picture in my mind of that reality and with that vision came a peace washing over me.  I will be with Jesus soon.  This all will be over soon.  No mor...

 Luke 17:12-19 Ten lepers were desperate for healing.  All were healed but only one came back to praise and worship God for this miracle.  Sound familiar?  I knew a man with really bad cancer.  He was prayed over and prayed over and he knew it.  Miraculously, he went into remission.  In a celebratory dinner for this miracle, the man took credit for it, talking as if as if he had done it all himself out of his macho personal strength.  Cancer came back with a vengeance in short order and all the personal bravado couldn't save him.   The body is just the body and it is finite.  No matter how many times we have healing miracles, we will all die.  But healing  physically will not necessarily make  you whole.  Real healing is infinite. The leper who turned back, glorified God "with a loud voice."  He fell on his face and gave thanks. His life had been given back to him and He had been made whole.  He wasn't...