Category: Devotions

Feeling at home… sometimes we do. Sometimes we sit down at another’s home and we forget it’s their place: we feel like we have been there for years. Then there are other times when in the most familiar of circumstances we feel out of place. Psalms 64:3 reminds us: “Blessed are the chosen.” Not everyone will be your best friend. Sometimes that hard for me. I really want people to like me. And as hard as I try it just flops on the floor in a pile of attempted friendship gestures. And then there are times when you sit with others and laugh till your sides hurt… you laugh and feel as if it’s been a part of your life since time began. It’s one of those moments that God has chosen. He chooses both. We need the moments of awkward and the blessings of comfortable. We need to feel like we don’t fit In and we need to feel like it’s home. For the moments we don’t feel we fit in we are reminded this world is not our home. We are just a passing through to the perfect place of feeling at home. And when God gives you those blessed chosen moments, thank Him that he has created laughter and love. Sometimes in life those moments come too few. Praise him for the moments whatever they may be and let both draw you close to his side… either in desperation or thankfulness. We have been in a foreign world, and yet feel so at home. Thankful and blessed.

I am enjoying a different world, and tomorrow will travel to a new place. We will go over an imaginary boundary. That boundary will tell us we are now in Germany. We have discovered boundaries here that have been very carefully planned, designed and developed. They are called canals, or dikes. Because Amsterdam, well most of Holland, is under sea level, there has to be a plan to keep the sea from the land. It has been very well thought out and implemented. If only the boundaries in all of life were that thought out.

Boundaries give us limits. It helps us define what is our area. There are boundaries everywhere. The tram lines here have boundaries. When you reach the end of the boundary, you have to get off and take a different tram. We have lot lines, streets, state lines, the continental divide, and when we were kids there was an imaginary line in the back of the green station wagon that we did not cross… that was the line.

In the Bible there were lines. Psalms 104 God set boundaries for the land and the sea. Ezekiel he divides us the land and sets boundaries so each tribe knew what land was theirs. Exodus 19 , God posted a boundary around the mountain.

We all seem to struggle with boundaries, as there are books written on helping set limits. How do we not allow people to come inside our protected places? Where are our limits? How do we determine how close is too close? When do we say, no you don’t step on my shoes? We need to have boundaries around our heart to protect us. We need to respect the boundaries placed by others. We need not be a bull in a china shop. When we do what we want regardless of where we are, we are weed whipping. If you have never weed whipped you won’t understand. You don’t weed whip without getting stuff all over you. Weed shipping doesn’t respect boundaries. Grass, weeds, or whatever you are whipping flies everywhere. It doesn’t care that you have clean pants or shoes on; if you weed whip you will have crud everywhere. It has no respect or of boundaries.

There are people like that. They do not respect other people’s boundaries. They determine what’s best for others and don’t care if you have other ideas set in place where you have drawn your boundary line. We call those people, well we call them lots of names, but we call them disrespectful, arrogant and dictators. When we don’t respect boundaries, we walk through on people’s hearts. When we don’t respect Gods boundaries we sin. Boundaries help us keep an eye on where we should and should not be. They help us stay in line, just as a queue helps us stay in the boundaries, in our lives lived with people in our community. Stand in queue. Stand in line. Live so that other people see you loving them by respecting the boundaries they have established. And look to be sure that you are living within the boundaries God has set. And to know boundaries, you need to read the map. You need to know the rules. You need to see the big picture. To live, one needs to read the Word, to know what Gods boundaries are and to live by them.

Think about that when you see a boundary, or someones broken heart. How will I live to respect boundaries and other people’s hearts? And how will I place the right kind of boundaries around my life to protect my integrity and build my faith?

It’s early in the a.m. and we are over the ocean..somewhere. According to the map it’s somewhere in between England and Orlando. I have no clue. I have nothing to see outside my window but clouds. I have to trust that the pilot and his instruments know where they are going… I can’t figure it out. Even if I knew all the coordinates, I can’t fly the plane and they won’t let us up to first class much less get inside the cockpit. I have to trust someone else is totally in control and I can just sit and eat granola bars and try not to drink too much so I have to go to the bathroom.

It’s like that in my life. I made plans, people tell me what they are doing, we decide the best things to do, pray about it and put the spiritual car in gear. The trouble is, I really have no clue if it will work. I have to trust God that he knows the latitudes and longitudes in my life and even though it is something I can’t see. I have to trust..and thats hard to do especially when it seems I am going north when in reality I am going south… my grandmother loved to go driving and often would ask what direction we were going. When we would point to the compass on the front of the car, and tell her we were going south she would say, “well, I am going east but I will go south with you.” That’s what I need to tell God. God says I am going north. It I feel like it’s south. All I can say is “Lord, I feel like I am going south but I will go north with you.” Trying to trust but there are days when it’s hard to do…

I don’t have clue about stuff: yes it took me 60 years to figure that out. We are in a foreign country, learning about stuff. Yesterday it was the windmills, before that castles and before that the architecture of Amsterdam. Our history, or the past, is full of reasons. Reasons why became the propelling force behind change. The Netherlands were being invaded by groups burning their cities therefore they hurt up a castle as a stronghold and made dikes so the foreigners struggled. Some of their ideas backfired, but then again I have had a few of those. Like when they flooded the land to keep people out…in winter…so they just walked on frozen lakes. Yup, I have had a few of those ideas too. But, then again they had some very good ones..like there are no fences here to keep livestock in. Cows, I can see but I have a feeling some of our horses would think that a simple jump over since these dikes were the only 3 feet wide.

The past can teach us if we will learn. We watched working windmills grind spaces and saw wood. Slowly, but using the wind energy and getting the job done. Windmills that pump the water out of the soil, which was their original purpose, to keep the swamp lands drained so they could be used. Reclaimed land from the sea; that might be a good idea for the cabin since the marsh is now totally under water.

The past is what I treasure and read in a bound book called the Bible. I read of people who had good ideas, great ideas and some of them worked and others failed. What they had in common was a desire to serve the God who created them and set eternity in their hearts. I sat and listened to Psalms 90-94 this morning while the tram rattled by and people went about their morning. “Sing to God a brand new song” it told me. How do I sing a new song when all the songs seemingly sing the same thing. Our modern music is so poorly written both in lyric and tune, that I keep going back to the music that holds my heart. Songs that hold the attention intellectually and musically. Music that is singable and rememberable. ( I think I just made up a word.). I will go to the museum today where Rembrandt’s work is, “Night watch”. What we have discovered by listening to the past explained, is that the night watch was not during the night, it was actually in the day and in a castle or tower that the original pose was made and taken from there. So even the past can be deceiving. I am thankful that God holds the past and His word is always faithful and true. There is nothing new under the sun, and if I have a brilliant idea, someone probably thought of it before. However, when I get caught In places I am concerned about, it’s nice to know that in the past, this happened to someone else. And they either waddled through it or God rescued them… either way, we learn from the past. So how do I sing to the lord a new song, when there is nothing new.? And yet, God’s grace is new every morning? The new song comes from my renewed faith when I see what God has done for me. My new song comes from my new day, with a fresh perspective on God, with a confidence that God will do a new thing in me…today….and tomorrow today will be the past and I can thank Him, and praise Him for a new day…and the circle of faith goes on….past, present, future, repeat….

I do. Listen that is. That’s what I am doing now: listening. The tram as it rumbles by and prepares to stop at the leidesplein stop. The other tram as it rumbles by only to brake a few more hundred feet down the road. I listen to the sound of clanking from the cafe below. My, they seem to drop a lot of things. I hear the flanking or broken glass and bouncing silverware more than I think I should. I hear the fountain gurgling. The past few days it’s been almost 100 degrees here so children were in the fountain splashing. This morning I don’t hear much splashing, just the gurgling of the fountain. It’s over 20 degrees cooler today. I hear voices but cannot not discern words. I probably wouldn’t understand them anyways once I don’t speak Dutch. A plane goes overhead, mopeds buzz by and every once in awhile the tinkling of a bikers bell. I hear laughter, a gut sounding laugh, and know something was funny to someone.

Listening is a lost art in our world. We hear but we don’t listen. We talk but we don’t say much. We sing but we are off tune using words that don’t make sense. We argue with no point. We dance, well they call it dancing, but it looks like there is a squirrel in their britches. We d things but we often don’t do them with excellence. Listening is hearing at its excellence..we don’t take the time to listen for many reasons but mostly because we are in a hurry. I sat and read a book to a young child a couple weeks ago. I am sure he has heard that story enough that though he can’t read he could tell me. Yet, I sat and read. He listened. We need to sit and listen to each other more. I did lunch awhile back with friends. We talked. We listened. We spoke. We heard. It was a 3 hour lunch and it didn’t take us that long to eat; it was the listening. Go listen to someone today… really take the needs time to listen. It’s amazing what you may hear.