WATCHWORD:
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.
Ecclesiastes 3:1
I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble.
But take heart I have overcome the world.
John 16:33.
Meditation:
Sunday morning, what is missing? Oh, yes, we are not IN church, but we are THE church. We are His people, and we worship. Sarah Young brings us today’s message through Jesus Calling:
“STOP TRYING TO WORK THINGS OUT before their times have come. Except the limitations of living one day at a time. When something comes to your attention, ask Me whether or not it is part of today’s agenda. If it isn’t release it into My care and go on about today’s duties. When you follow this practice, there will be a beautiful simplicity about your life: a time for everything, and everything in its time.
A life lived close to me is not complicated or cluttered. When your focus is on My presence, many things that once troubled you lose their power over you. Though the world around you is messy and confusing, remember that I have overcome the world. I have told you these things, so that in Me you may have peace.
Prayer: Lord, may nothing separate me from You today. Teach me how to choose only Your way, so that each step will lead me closer to You. Help me walk by the Word and not my feelings. Help me to keep my heart pure and undivided. Help me to embrace what comes my way as an opportunity…rather than a personal inconvenience. Lord, give me the grace to reach out to others who may be feeling this temporary isolation and lessen its power. All these I pray in the Name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
May the Lord bless us and keep us, may the Lord cause His face to shine upon us and be gracious to us, may the Lord turn His face toward us and give us His peace. Amen.
Build Your Blessings List
How has God blessed your life?
From Maury: In going through a lifetime of pictures to down-size, I was moved to give thanks and praise to God for all the Christian friends and opportunities to serve and to travel that the Lord has allowed an ole farmer to experience. It had to be His doing! The present blessing is the Wednesday morning Bible study. I miss you guys and the blessing of being together in His Word.
How do you answer that question? Give it a thought and let’s post it here.
Keep Your Mind Active: Going through the essays I have written over the years, I can across one that suggests a project for all of us, individuals, with spouses, friends, especially here in isolation. Build your Blessings List. Dig into the deep reaches of your memories and put them down on your Blessings List. You will have to pardon me again, but this is the essay that got me thinking. I call it Taking Inventory:
I never got around to making a Bucket List. I guess I was just too busy living to take the time. What I do have are those things, events, accomplishments, happenings that I actually did that might have appeared on my Bucket List, had I taken the time earlier. What I am left with is a Blessings List, markers that we were there, we left our footprints, now left with memories.
The key here is “Blessings”. When I look over all those pieces that entered my life at various times, I feel privileged by those experiences. By all the characters that filled each day, family and friends, up close and from a distance.
I have heard it said that “what is past is past”, but that is simply not true. The memories linger, just staying in the background, until you are wise enough to call them up, look at the pictures, play the videos, and marvel at how young we looked!
Oh, I could put together a “Blessings List”, it would be a long list. Just a sample would include such events and experiences as:
- Seeing this country first hand with my wife motoring all the way to Malibu and back, checking out National Parks along the way
- Disney World in the rain, with our kids, including the time when our camper filled with rain water and playing cards and game pieces washed right out!
- Family camping trips to Michigan, Wisconsin, Colorado, Florida, etc.
- Pigging out on fresh boiled shrimp on the beach at Pensacola.
- Surfing on the northwest coast of Oahu as an 18-year-old fresh from Korea.
- Spending a month traveling by car in Great Britain and Scotland with friends (keep to the left!) Shepherd’s Pie is not that good, neither is haggis or blood pudding, for that matter! But, oh the times we had, the pubs we visited, the sights we saw and experienced, the fell-walking around Lake Derwentwater and, of course, it rained! So, perfect.
- Another month driving, this time in Italy from Rome, to Assisi, to Tuscany, to Siena, to Florence, to Pisa, to Venus, to Milan, all in three weeks…not enough time! But, oh, the food, the food!
- Building a log cabin with my life-long buddy on an island in Lac Seoul Reservoir, Ontario, hot Memorial Day week, we forgot the beer! Both of us, two years out of Korea.
- Watching our children graduate, and graduate again and seeing them all get married.
- Holding my first grandchild, then the second, then the third, etc. all the way to seven!
- Holding my first great-granddaughter, then the second, then the third! Now waiting to hold my first great-grandson.
- Gathering all my family in reunions on the beach at Oxnard, Heifer Ranch in Arkansas, Crystal Mountain, South Haven, and that tiny cabin at Little Point Sable.
- Celebrating our 16-year-old grandson’s 5-year remission from Leukemia at Disney World and Lake Orange. God is good!
- Most recently, travel with a new love, to the Preserve in Arkansas, the beauty of healthy tigers and the music of lions communicating at night. Awesome!
- The wonder of having written a book, a book, with a 2020 publication date! How could that happen?
I could go on, but isn’t that a great list? Blessings in all shapes and sizes, vivid colors of life, made all the more precious by how they were all shared with those we love. Gifts from God that too often we tuck away in the back of our minds, in the attic, in the albums, on those old tapes, etc., rarely to be reviewed. But you know what? Each is worth a review and a recall of how each represents part of a complete mosaic of how good life is.
The Blessings List is NOT complete. Life goes on and the blessings pile up. Plans will be made and carried out, travel will go from ideas to reality, another family reunion, pictures to be taken, kids grow, and our horizon stretches out with more promise than we can imagine.
As I close this essay, a song comes to mind, a timeless truth — ‘Count your many blessings, name them one by one, And it will surprise you what the Lord hath done’. BUILD YOUR BLESSINGS LIST. Today is a good time to start!
Closing Prayer:
Thank you, Lord. Your graces fill our lives, help us to always have a grateful heart and a prayer on our lips. Amen
