Category: Devotions

The signs are everywhere right now. “Put down your phones and drive. Don’t drive and text. August 1, hands free.  Hands free and live.”

For a total stranger coming from another world this would make no sense.  In a foreign country where they don’t drive as we do, it would make no sense.  They don’t have phones, they don’t see people walking into poles while texting and hurting others because they had their phone in their hand while driving.  There is no previous experience to solidify in their hearts and minds what it means. That’s what we call pretext. The content of the statement without understanding the background means there is no understanding.

We as people, humans, adults, seemingly intelligent people, jump into the lake before we reach the waters edge. We read. read into or think we know and so we share with the world our ignorance. Had we stopped, before our emotions were off the wall, and said, “Hmmm, this doesn’t make sense. Perhaps there is something I don’t know and could understand before I get all heated up and out of control demanding things of people,”

However, we are people and we jump. We jump to conclusions, we jump to make statements and we jump to accuse before we have the pretext as to what is happening. It’s so much easier to keep a train from rolling when it’s stopped and the brakes are on.  It’s like that in our minds. Once we begin running down the rabbit trail of think or assume, it’s really hard to come back to the path and just keep walking.

I judged a fair yesterday in Freeborn County, which is about an hour from home.  Most of the kids who presented their projects knew what was happening and how things went. One little cute girl had done a  very good project on Spruce Trees. She had her pictures of the spruce trees surrounding her house as a windbreak, had the cutting of the tree, had pine cones, had facts. As we talked I casually asked her what the pine cones are for. She didn’t know. She kind of began making things up on the spot! So Human. If we don’t know we begin to pretend we know and before long we have created a whole new species of tree because we didn’t know the pretext… didn’t know what came first.
I did what any good judge would do. I said, “let’s google it.” I let her read that pine cones are where the seeds are for the tree. The Pine cone protects the seed.

She went on her way feeling very smart. I went on with the judging glad we had stopped a potential train from running down hill. When we don’t understand things we begin making up answers to the questions that were never asked!

So, if you don’t understand what someone says, there could be a pretext waiting for you to discover. Once you have the pretext, the context will probably make a lot more sense!

Why did you do that Lord? Why did you choose the water to be blue and the trees to be green. Why did you choose the glorious yellows, reds and pinks to be what creates a stunning sunset? Why did you make fresh mown grass to smell so sweet and after the rain the air is beyond delicious. Why did you make puppies to be adorable and babies unresistably kissable? Why did you make the dew in the morning grass wet and the sap from a tree so sticky? Why did you create chemicals that linked together would be a beautiful array of color in the sky that pulls the oohs and ahs from all who look into the dark night sky? Why? Why do I cry? Why do I laugh? And why sometimes at things that seem so foolish to my heart? Why is there peace in my world and raging wars in another’s? Why me? Why them? Why? Why not? How come? Who’s fault? What now? Why here? When if not now? I have questions. I know God has answers but the answer without understanding are just words on a page. My prayer focus for the day says, ” thou art worthy of an adoration greater than my dull heart can yield. ” Why? Why can’t my worship be so incredible that we both take a step back? Why can’t I understand when you say ‘not now’ and say, ” I get it Lord” And I will sit here a spell till it’s time. I want to have worship worthy of the incredible beauty I see around me. I want to get it. I want to sense the answer as I ask the question not years later finally go “duh”. But till then my whys and feeble attempts to worship will be encircled by the beauty of God everywhere I look. And why did God allow men to create saws and wood and windows that combined together make an awesome sunroom that I can be in the midst of so I don’t get bit by mosquitos while I ponder Gods creation… and why God? Why mosquitos?

Psalm 92:2. ” to declare Your loving kindness in the morning and Your faithfulness every night.” Certainly this doesn’t mean our life. Most certainly this doesn’t mean today, and definitely not yesterday. I was awoken yesterday to someone calling my name with the words following , “there is water everywhere in the basement,” That defined our day. Semis full of corn were still hauling and I had to go judge a 4H event, but our day was defined. Boxes that we jut carried down as a young lady who needed a place to live for a few months moved in . Wet boxes, soggy rugs, water running everywhere and shoes totally drenched within the first few steps. Talk about a wake up call; that was a unique one. It colored the day. Not the color I would have chosen but it colored the day. As we ended the day driving around checking fields ( that’s what farmers do after a bad storm), we had it pretty good. We jut had a wet basement. Our cattle didn’t get washed away down the river to walk out on someone else’s front yard. Our trees are still standing. We don’t have large 50 pound rocks and logs washed on our lawn from the torrents and power of the water bringing them from miles away. Our road isn’t closed and the dam is visible. As I drove through southern Minnesota I saw many fields still under water, many more not planted and still more the corn looking weak and yellow. Our corn stands almost waist tall and deeply green and growing, with the rain and the heat coming it will grow two inches a day.

How do we define loving kindness and faithfulness. How do we declare? The news declared yesterday all day the disaster all around us. It almost gets to where you don’t want to watch the news; the declaring of it just way too much to hear.

Do we declare the loving kindness of God in overkill mode like our radio and television stations do the bad news? I sat down this morning to watch the haze on the fields and the sun slowly come up Psalm 92 was on my heart. So, I drew it. Rather boring that first attempt at the letters. Basic, uneventful, simple and boring if I may say so. And yet, God is far from boring in our lives, we just perceive it that way. Our anticipation of what God will do in our life this day: we have no clue, and then, he starts to color. Isn’t it amazing how just a bit of color changes the page? I did not think about the man who opened the door for me yesterday as loving kindness. I sometimes overlook the phone call, the pat on the back, the simple things someone does as loving kindness from God. Yet, all those things color my life with his loving kindness. I sat at lunch with two dear friends talking about what God is doing in our lives. I stood hand in hand with a friend and a total stranger praying: her life overcome with grief with the death of her husband a year ago and picking up the pieces of her life seemingly a burden almost unbearable. I listened to a young girl give her demonstration and my heart had all these other things come to mind of the past, of fun moments when I was her age, of the thrill of a blue ribbon, of the anticipation and nerves and I said to myself, God is so faithful and I am not even looking.

What will the colors look like by evening. No clue, but I can tell you he will have faithfully walked me through the mud, the garden, the smiles, the laughs and the tears…. that’s the promise this verse gives me and I will cling to it.

When I was a kid, I heard things that probably weren’t not meant to be heard. I don’t mean stuff a kid shouldn’t hear, I mean lines said that didn’t make sense to sense to a child so it was interpreted logical in my mind. Father, Son and Holy Spirit had a pecking order. The Holy Spirit came last. So in my mind, it was the least rather than a triune of blessings, the Holy Spirit was just hanging around at the end of the line.

The Spirit is an odd word. We have been teased with spirits, demonic, cartoonish creatures that are mystical and scary. I have come to understand that the spirit of something is a gift. I have the spirit of hospitality within me, I love to be with people and make them feel loved. I know others who have the spirit of peace. They just seem to have peace in the oddest times. Others the spirit of kindness; it’s just a part of them. Having a spirit of something isn’t like having a talent, it’s deeper and more a part of your inner heart. Spirit is compassion, spirit of tenderness, spirit of logic, spirit of understanding or the spirit of giving.

Think of it as the glass that holds our abilities. We have many abilities but we all have ways to hold those abilities and keep them in safe, collected and usable. If we don’t have our glass, stuff falls all over. The spirit of Jesus is different. We have Jesus. We have his spirit. It’s the glass that holds the rest of our life together in one place so we can make the other parts of our life work together. Having his spirit is like the type on a stamp whose sticky refuses to stay. It’s the glue when bonding wood together even if we see using nails. The spirit of Jesus is a deeper part of giving Jesus control of my life. I can give my energy to my job but not embrace my job. Think about a baseball game. There are fans and then there are fans who have the spirit. A fan sits and cheers and has a foam finger and maybe a jersey. A fan who has the spirit of the game, has his face painted, hat backwards, matches the team in every aspect of his apparel, dances to every song, knows the chants and it usually on the big screen because of the spirit of his behavior. He has his glass full and there is no mistaking who or what he is living for at that moment.

So if we got up each day and picked a cup out of the cupboard and instead of pouring in coffee, we asked good to fill our cup with His spirit and kept that spirit collected so it could be an effective part of our life that day, what would it look like in our day? The prayer at the top of the page may be the end result. I love this prayer from the Valley of Vision prayer book.

“Fill me with the spirit of Jesus, that I may be occupied with his presence…

May his comforts cheer me in my sorrows

His strength sustain me in my trials

His blessings revive me in my weariness

His presence render me me A fruitful tree of holiness

His might establish me in leave and joy

His incitement’s make me ceaseless in prayer

His animation kindle one me undying devotion.”

The prayer then goes on to pack the final punch.

“Send him As the searcher if my heart, to show me more of my corruptions and helplessness that I may flee to thee, cling to thee, rest on thee as the beginning and end of my salvation.”

That’s what we get when we have the spirit of something. It’s so much a part of us we can’t separate it from ourselves. The water is no good without the glass to hold it in so we may drink. Our lives without the spirit are not effective… we need the glass of the spirit to hold the rest of what God has blessed us with to be able to pour out on others while not just splashing on the floor and giving no one a blessing.

It’s one of those nights. Fishing, grilled chicken and salad, s’mores and campfire and no expectations. Can that really happen? To have no expectations in life? We live in a world where we are expected to drive in the right lane, put our turning signals on, have our lights on when it’s raining, take out the garbage on Tuesday night, mow the lawn alternating patterns so it grows right and send a card on every birthday. We have expectations whether or not we admit them or we ignore them.

We get disappointed when others don’t meet up to our expectations. Oh we say it’s ok but when it comes down to it, they blew it; we expected more. Someone one told me if I expect nothing I will never be disappointed. That’s true to some degree but I want to believe I can expect some things in life.

I expect you to answer my phone call or at least call me back to find out why I called you. I expect you to smile back at me. I expect you to come stand by me and put your arm around me when I am hurting. I expect you to come when I invite you for supper. I expect you to eat my fresh hot chocolate chip cookies. I expect you to hand me over the baby so I get a baby fix. I expect you to ask Jim where I am if we are not together and vise versa. I expect church to be full of Bible verses. I expect music to be joyful and dance worthy even at funerals. I expect joy to be found in flowers, friends and baseball games. And yet, I realize often I will be left with disappointment , empty hearts and moments of “really?” And then days like today; there were no expectations. Today we slept late, laughed at rainy weather, laughter again, went shopping, found surprise bargains, went fishing and catching, played card games and had moments of simply being in a beautiful place in Gods world and saying “this is beautiful.” There are days when expectations are standard. There are days when they will be met and days we will say, “oh well maybe tomorrow.” And then there are days God just gives you what you expect; being blessed and being loved just because you are his child… tomorrow may not be quite as beautiful as today, but we will always remember the days when God simply loves on us and we giggle in return and say, “thank you for letting me expect you to show up.”