Category: Devotions

As many times as I have flown, it never gets old and I always clap.

I grew up having a father as a pilot. We thought everyone had a Cessna airplane tied by grandmas house. We thought everyone taxi’d across the highway to the landing strip and took off. For us that was normal. And somehow along the way we clapped when daddy landed each time. Somehow that always stayed with me. I might be the only one on the plane clapping but I always do. One time after a rather rough flight in bad weather when I started most of the plane joined in. We were thankful to be on the ground safe.

Does it matter that the pilots have no clue I clapped? No, but it matters to me. It never gets old that thrill of feeling the wheels hit, watching the flaps go up and feeling the power engines thrust backwards to slow the plane. And I always clap to show respect and appreciation for someone more knowledgeable than I being willing to take my life in a tin can and move at amazing speeds through space…. and safely put the wheels down thousands of miles away….

It was a bumpy flight. In fact, They didn’t push around the food cart that’s how bumpy it was. They came around and asked if we wanted something but there was what they called turbulence. Turbulence is another word for let’s shake around in a tin can at 30,000 feet and see if we can scare people. It works. It’s a very expensive adventure park ride that doesn’t get off the same place you got on.

The beauty of flying is right outside the window. I marvel that one can get in a can, so to speak that’s what an airplane is, and get off hours away in one piece, still breathing and hug loved ones. That amazes me. The beauty is watching the world go by. There have been times when I could see the ground and follow where we were flying down to knowing that towns we were passing over. There have been times at sunrise or sunset that I marvel at the intense beauty that I can’t explain, in a tin can I can’t figure out and marvel all this to a God I don’t see but feel his presence. Those are a lot of intangible things in one sentence but so very real. Then there are clouds. Yesterday we rode in clouds most of the way. What is a cloud? It is a visible mass of condensed water vapor floating in the air. Yup- that’s Webster definition. Mine would be more like, whitish, cleanish, floaty stuff that resembles cotton balls but are transparent and when you are looking at them they look so cool and when you are flying through them you just go “ahhh”.

God takes a moment in life to wow me with clouds. He does that with babies, snowstorms, Flowers, puppies and the moment a friend calls me. God wows me with things that cannot be explained. I want to understand clouds. I want to touch a cloud. I can’t. God doesn’t seem to think I need to figure things out nearly as much as I do.

I walked on board a tin can. They shut the door held together by screws made by men, I sat in a seat and buckled a seatbelt. Thats probably the second thing I find silly about flying. I am putting my faith in a tin can and yet think the seatbelt will be my safety latch. The other thing I think is foolish is the instructions they give if the plane has an emergency. I struggle to remember my shopping list on a good day on the ground. On a bad day 30,000 feet, when the emergency happens, I will not remember what they told me because I may be slightly freaking out in my tin can with my seat belt on. And in case of a water landing, don’t think I will remember my seat can be used as a flotation device. But I got on the plane made of tin, and got off in a small town and a mountain man picked me up in another tin can with four tired and we drove off into the sunset, or rather the rain. Where is my faith? I trust tin and screws but question the inventor of the clouds and atmosphere? I buckle the seat belt that will do so little to protect me and question my creator if he actually thinks the road he has me walking down is a good idea? I put my faith In Such goofy things,,,and think I am ok. When we pulled out of the clouds I could see Bristol/Johnson city so clearly. It was always there, I just couldn’t see through the condensed vapor. I need to realign my faith in the cloud maker. The creator of condensed vapor knows a lot more about my life then I want to accept some days. I would rather trust in a tin can out together with bolts. How foolish we are….

There it was. Kind of hidden, almost unseen, but still there. I had almost missed it in my quiet time sitting on the deck. It’s a quiet morning. Chores done, trash burning and the dogs are eating. I am home alone, a rarity, but sweet one. The gator is sitting waiting for me to jump on and check horses one more time. Still in sweats and sweatshirt from doing chores and hay still hanging on the edge of my pant legs. My cereal is now rather smushy from sitting in the milk too long but it doesn’t really seem to matter. For today, I have blossoms on my peace lily. I pulled the short end of the straw and ended up with plants after mother’s funeral. I don’t do plants. I kill them. I felt guilty this spring because I hadn’t paid any attention to them and put them on the deck and figured they would finish croaking and I would be relieved of my duties. Last week I cast a glance in their direction and noticed several of them were much taller. Well, with all the rain and heat we have had, God has pretty much made southern Minnesota a greenhouse. But I wasn’t prepared for yesterday which led to today. That’s usually how it goes but let me explain. In the past 2 years I have had people steal my peace. I know some of you will say we have control of our choice of having peace or being in strife, and as much as we have within us to live at peace, but there are people who have gone out of their way to put enmity and strife in my way. It’s hard to drive around barricades when Christians are the ones slashing your tires and draining your gas tank. Outwardly I have held most of it like sand in my fingers but inwardly, well, peace has been a constant beckoning from God. Yesterday I did not cry. Yesterday’s was a day of music and laughter. Yesterday was a quiet day with friends, music and Chinese leftovers. I walked the perimeter of the farm and thanked God for the day of peace.. I sat was on the deck and laughed at the dogs. I lay in the hammock and listened to the wind. I watched the Vikings lose and marveled that such things could happen; the Packers losing helped.

Peace… God came to give us peace but it seems people exist to steal it. Christ lived a peaceful life and when we try to emulate him we are tossed under the bus and have tire marks all over our faces. What is there about peace that seems to evade our outstretched hand? And then there are days when God simply reminds us that He is peace regardless of what others do to us. We can have peace even when darts are flying our way and tomatoes they are throwing are rotten. And then when we have tossed all our hopes on the deck to be pummeled by life, God puts a bloom in our hearts. Our peace Lilly blooms amid the chaos and heat. And just when we thought there was no hope with winter coming on. I am glad God speaks in little things in life because it seems that’s where I hear him the loudest. If that peace lily can survive and bloom on the deck in the midst of this summer, then perhaps I will bring it in and try it for one more year just to remind me that God isn’t done with me or flowers I seem to relish killing…. and by the way, not one bloom but two… God delights in making it obvious he knows how to grow what he created…and he created my life also…better work on raising the trust-o-meter arrow a bit higher…

I am at a horse show… the arena has people who help out the events by assisting the judge. Basically, they pick up poles. If there are 20 kids in a class, more than half knock the poles down. It seems that all this lady did was pick up poles and line them up…. just to have the next rider knock them down again.

I feel like that some days, and if I were honest maybe more than some days. When the kids were little it seemed all I did was change diapers, wash clothes, make food, clean the food off the faces, floors and cupboard doors. But, that was my job. To raise children one spends time doing stuff over and over and over again.

As a Christian I probably make God feel like the lady in the arena. I knock over poles, crush barrels and flip the jump figure 8 pole and the jump. God just walks over and puts them back up. He doesn’t say anything, just calmly does what he does best; picks up what I tip over… a good father does stuff like that….

I have one. I have more than one. I have several. I have my grandmothers, with her writings still in the margins and papers still flapping when I turn the pages. I underline, highlight, circle, copy and color code. I have it on my phone, in my car, by my bed and in the living room on the bookshelf. There is a blue one, one with no cover and several black leather bound ones. I have one from my grandmother when I was quite young and it’s a big print New Testament. It’s about time in my life when I need to use it to read the print.

I go to it when I am angry. I know the chapters that I read when my friend died. I keep it near me when I am working on studies I am writing. Now days I can google it and push a button and I listen as I drive.

We sing songs about it, put tunes to the passages and write more songs and poems about its meaning. There are moments it bothers me because it convicts me. There are moments it frustrates me as it seems like God is answering the promises in others lives and not my own. There are moments when something happens and a verse from it’s chapters leaps into my heart. There are moments when someone starts reciting a passage and I can finish it without even thinking . As hard as it is to memorize as I am older, it quickly comes back the verses I learned as a child.

The Bible. I can’t imagine not having it in my life and yet in the early days of the church they had nothing but what we call the creeds. They learned what they believed and recited it. They couldn’t have bible drills or memorize or underline their favorite passage. If they had a copy of the early scriptures they would be much coveted. Bibles in the early churches were chained and guarded as they were so rare…. I can’t imagine being without it…. would my faith be more defined if it were not as easily accessible? Would I anxiously wait for Sunday just to hear a passage read? Would I sit quietly in uncomfortable chairs quietly as it was read, almost afraid to breath?

I wish we read the scripture more in worship. I wish we would stop what we were doing more often and just read to each other….not Dr Suess, not Shel Silverstein but God. Just God who made me, who created the atom and molecules and babies and puppies and apple trees. The one who spoke the world into being but took a special moment to breath human life. And made us in his image…read about that God….

The B I B L E. Yes that’s the book for me

I stand alone on the word of God

The B I B L E