Category: Devotions

It’s one of the three trees that I wait for to turn. They are beautiful flowering crab apple trees. Two are pink and the other white. For just a moment in time they are breathtaking. The rest of the summer they are pretty but I never forget those breathtaking, world changing breaths of sweet smell and beautiful blossoms.

There are days when I have to go back and remember those times in life. Right now it’s just not there, but there was a time when it was breathtaking and brilliant. God gives us memories so we’ll have roses in December. I love that saying more because if you know what December is like in Minnesota there isn’t much but brown or white everywhere.

Memories and remembrances are Gods way of reminding us hat he has blessed us. And if he blessed us once he will do it again. I look out my window and I know those trees will burst forth with color. They do every May… and I am waiting and hoping it doesn’t rain and knock off the blooms before we have time to take in their smell and their beauty.

At first it was leaving Salt Lake City that I began to marvel. Perhaps because the other flight I was in a middle seat and could not see what was below. I watched the world slowly become small images and then nothing but bland brown, circles or green which probably meant irrigation and large cliffs, dunes and miles of seemingly flat nothing. But nothing prepares you for being amazed as much as the boring. If we see amazing every minute we are pulled into its spectacular intensity but when you have boring, boring, Boeing and then wham… it stays with you a bit longer and stronger. Hence, from Boring to Mt Hood. From brown to white. From dirt to snow. From rainy cloudy Minnesota to sunny Oregon.

Life has the ability to slowly amaze us or like fireworks during the finale, each blast woes and teases us that more is coming and they will be even better….

I have a feeling those who live in the shadow of the amazing perhaps are Dulled to its wow ability. Then again maybe not. I never want to get to where I feel God move and sense his leading and don’t go wow. I want to feel the pit of my stomach churn, my heart rate accelerate and my face go face first to where I sense God might be. I want to feel it over and over again… I want to be amazed over and over and over again.

 Oh it was a fun time. It always is. We know Jesus rose from the dead so we don’t mind celebrating Easter on Saturday. It has been a tradition of our family for many years now. We gather not on Thanksgiving or Christmas, as those holidays are busy with extended family- we hold out and have a party on Easter Saturday. It’s some of the same tradition and some new. Like, we have games and pizza usually on Friday night for whoever is there early. Saturday morning we show up. This year we had a brunch. Some years it’s an all out Easter dinner with ham, potatoes and green beans. After lunch we have the egg hunt for the kids. You do age out, so the young ones totally enjoy until they are too old. You have a colored basket and you only pick up those color of eggs. This year we had two stints since some kids had to leave early. Then we have the candy bar hunt for the old folks, and the kids who aged out of the egg hunt. This year because of the ridiculous rain in Indiana, we let that tradition die also lest we all get soggy candy.  The tradition that never changes is the Resurrection Egg carton that comes out. The eggs and the papers are passed around and one by one the grandkids take turns reading and telling the story.  The innocence of children is priceless. From mispronounced words to the one opening the egg (the one with the piece of rope that was to resemble the whip) and declared it’s a broken hair band which brought all hysterical giggles out. Once we composed ourselves we kept on going. It seem so easy for us to recognize the things that we know are coming. But to Adian, it did look like a broken hair band. I couldn’t agree more.

We aren’t the only one to mistake something for what it isn’t. I think about Mary coming to the tomb. Her mind was filled with lots of questions, fears, tears and probably she didn’t get much sleep since Friday night.  She couldn’t wait. She had to come to see the tomb. The Sabbath laws would have probably kept her from coming on Saturday. Sunday morning she was not to be denied. You know how you think, or perhaps don’t think, when you haven’t slept well. Simple little things just kind of go right over your head. So Mary, we are giving her the benefit of the doubt. But thinking about it I’m not sure I would have recognized Jesus. Just as Adian wasn’t sure about the rope cuz it did look like a hair band, Mary probably saw the person there and made some automatic assumptions. We make assumptions well. Person in garden, people tend the gardens, mind a bit foggy from lack of sleep and a troubled heart; I can see how she would mistake Jesus for a gardener. And when I am crying, I don’t see well and  I don’t probably listen well either.

“John 20: 11 Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb 12and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. 13They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?” “They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” 14At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. 15He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.” 16Jesus said to her, “Mary.” “

We all have those “Thinking he was a gardener” moments in life. Jesus is right there and we just miss him. We in our fears and struggles look right past Jesus and see a gardener. It’s those times that Jesus just stands there. We make our speeches. We usually have our speeches all written out just waiting to give. Jesus, just stands there  waiting  for us to finish and then says our name.

I just need to remember that Jesus is standing waiting as I stumble through the “Thinking he was a gardener” moments and ready to call my name when I get done with my weeping and my dumb questions.  Jesus is always there; sometimes it does look like he is someone else, but that’s just probably more in my eyes than in my heart.  He’s just waiting for me to see Him for who He really is. Risen!

Another one of those texts came today that kind of shook my little world.   It’s exactly that- my world is quite little. I have flown over the world and looked down and can’t see anything or anyone except white clouds and perhaps some blue color that is supposed to be the ocean. When they tell me to make sure I understand how to pull my cushion of my seat out so I can use it for a floatation device, I kind of tune them out. If we are going down in water, I am not worried about floating. I will be fish bait. The world I live in looks pretty small from up there. So when something happens in my world, I realize that it’s my little world that gets shaken.  The text was rather expected just not today.  The text reminded me that life is short and we are only here for a little while.

I totally loved this women. I remember her from way back when I was a kid. Her son was in my class, and so I knew her as Kevin’s mom, but in later years she had become a good friend. We were in  a small group with another son of hers and got to be very close. Through cancer, and walking Randy home, Ramona got to be a special friend.  Her quiet unassuming spirit was a bit different than mine. She always had a kind word, a spirit of Jesus serving others and I enjoyed talking with and being with her.
Probably one of the special moments were when I mailed her a card. I would send her cards on her son’s birthday after Randy went home to be with the Lord. You bury your parents, not your children. He was young, in his 30’s and with four kids. You bury old people; it’s just so unnatural to bury the young. I sent her valentines, cards of remembering and although I knew it was special, when she would thank me, I knew it was more than just thanks; it was from the heart.

Tonight at Cowboy Church I sang a song dedicated to her, ” Just inside the Pearly Gates”. It’s times like this, and there have been way too many this year, that the tears come and begin running down the cheeks, (I say the eyes spring a leak) and singing is a challenge. , In my hearts imagination,  I can see her hugging her big lug of a son and Haven, her husband throwing his arms around her tiny little frame. Well, we don’t know what we will look like, so I just pretend they will be what I am thinking at the moment.   The song begins, “I will meet you in the morning, just inside the Pearly gates” . That’s a promise I made as I sang that song. A promise that I will be faithful. It probably won’t be Ramona I search for first in heaven, as I have a son and several other babies waiting for me. But it’s the Ramona’s in life that kept me focused on what’s important.  And as I grow up, or rather age, I pray that somewhere along the line, I can be a Ramona to someone else.

It’s an odd saying we say, “rest in peace”. I don’t know it’s history but I know what I understand it to mean. Ramona was always working and always serving. Now is her time to rest at Jesus feet and just smile. And smile, she could and did do a lot of.

It bothers me when people ask questions they really don’t want to know the answers to. So don’t stop and say to me, “How are you” when you really don’t want to know.  And don’t tell me, “Whatever you want to do” when you know that you don’t really want to do what I want to do.  So we go through life with the “Don’t ask I won’t tell” mind-set. What if, we just all said what was honestly the way it was and avoid the conflict when we all know we didn’t mean it in the first place? Did I lose you anywhere along that little rant?