Category: Devotions

It’s coming. We have known it’s been coming since about Christmas. They don’t let us get done with one holiday before the next one comes out. With Christmas being red and Valentines being red , often we miss the change. It’s nothing like the change from red to green- Valentines day to St Patrick’s Day.

Love- we all look forward to love. We look forward to having love, being loved and loving.  Maybe that’s why babies and puppies are so popular. They simply are love; and a few trips outside to potty for the puppy. Babies just look at us and it’s love. We cuddle, snuggle, pat, rock, caress, kiss the cheeks and love just oozes out of our hearts.  Puppies simply want to be loved. Pat me, pet me, feed me, walk me, play with me and then let me lay on your lap and sleep for awhile. Love seems so easy. Then we have people love. Some people are easy to love. Some people love to love others. Some people love being loved but are a bit difficult to love back; porcupine love we call it. The problems we have when looking forward to love is we often don’t quite know if someone is going to love us back. Babies and puppies are pretty much a guarantee. People; and yes babies are not people yet, are a bit more of a challenge.

There are certain ways that I interpret love. If you talk behind my back, attack my heart and the things that are important to me, don’t try to snuggle up and say I love you. If you can’t find time to spend with me, listen to what I say or give me credit for something I am doing, don’t tell me you love me. Love is an action word not a noun. Love means that I am important. Love says that my interests are above yours. Love means I get the piece of cake with the most frosting. (well that might be a stretch).

1 John is all about love. John is all about love. His gospel is about love, his three gospels were about love and his life was about love. But then again, he was Jesus BFF (Best friend forever for those of you who have no clue) When you spend time with the love giver, you must get a pretty good idea of what love is. He begins 1 John by describing Jesus as being what they have heard, seen, touched and then tells them he is writing this book so their joy may be full. Love and Joy seems to go hand in hand. And in verse 10 he hits the main artery: love your brother. He goes so far as to say that if we love our brother we can see. We are in the light. If we don’t love we are in darkness. I love the dark. But, what makes the dark beautiful is when a solitary light shines through and makes a beautiful shadow. Just a little bit of light or an incredible full moon, light just makes the picture brilliant. We see things with that little bit of light that were always there but the darkness hid them. Love does that. With love we see things that might have been there but were hidden. With a bit of love, children become confidant. With a little bit of love, friendships are born. With a little bit of love bridges are built and rivers crossed. With a bit of love, hearts are soothed and burdens lifted.

So I will continue my tradition this year of sending out a little bit of love. I know it has nothing to do with the history of Valentines Day, but it does accomplish what God told me to do and that is love. Love that 1 John 4:7  “Beloved let us love one another; for love is of God; and everyone who loveth is born of God and knoweth God.”  I want to know God. I want to understand more and more of His word.. So, I need to love others. If Love is of God, and I love others, then I will know God. Sounds like a long way around the barn to get to the door, but if that’s what God wants, I will love. I have done this for many years: I sent the extended family Valentines. It’s fun, it’s got to be done early, like start now, but it’s fun. And then, I get a box of Valentines and hand them out randomly. McDonalds is an awesome place because you have alot of people just sitting around waiting for you to hand them a Valentine. Go to a deli at a Grocery store, or where old men gather and drink coffee.  Take a Valentine, hand it to them and let the rest just happen.

I was in Georgia many years ago driving back to my son’s college. I had about 25 Valentines to hand out and between KFC, McDonalds and a few gas stations I had quite a fun time. One place I stopped there were about 5 old men sitting at a table drinking coffee. That’s my target! Old men! I can imagine their discussion after I left but as I walked out I heard the laughing, the happiness, the smiles and yes you can hear smiles all because I went out of my way to encourage a loving gesture. I probably should have stood and paid for people’s coffee; but maybe next time. I want to know God; that means I have to love others. I need to plan ahead how to love but I also need to randomly love. We paid for someone’s stuff at the Dollar store when they didn’t have enough change. One time a gal in back of me had one thing and I had a ton. I told the cashier to ring it through on mine and let her go. The look on her face was priceless… And then she looked at me and said, “Don’t I know you?” Oh well..

So you have a couple weeks. Plan on being loving in a way that really challenges your heart to love.  And yes, we have to plan to love. Sometimes it does not come naturally…it takes planning and working at it. Sometimes it’s messy; babies do poop and puppies have accidents. Anything worth loving is worth some time, elbow grease and risk.

Go ahead; get a box of Valentines and go share some love. February 14- Looking forward to sharing some love.

For some of us, well it’s just another day. We are another day older. We made it through another day. It’s one step closer, or one step farther. Days go by, 24 hours, and hopefully a night of sleep removes us from the number on the calendar on the wall. For some, it’s a hurrah to survival. A chance to live again. A time to breath a sigh of relief. A moment of realizing the worst is over and it might actually be a good day today. For some, there is much fuss and ado. For some cakes, balloons, festivities, gifts and singing. For others its just another day on the calendar. I made it through another year; alive. I didn’t lose my patience, I still have my pride and I wonder how I will walk another step but I am alive.

When we were kids we didn’t have birthday parties. We did get to choose what cake we had. This year, the first in many, I didn’t have a cake. I don’t need cake. Mother always made me the chocolate cake with white fluffy frosting. She’s gone! I could have made it but since I only like the frosting, kind of pointless. I could make a pan of the frosting and eat it and I would be happy; and sick.

I chose to do something different with my birthday- ignore it. Well not really since I had a plan and we were up north and we painted the cabin and then went shopping and then had fireworks on the lake. But it’s just a date on the calendar. The joy and fun wasn’t there. Perhaps because other things in life were more pressing. Perhaps because a few cards from friends warmed my heart and that’s all I really needed. I drove home to cowboy church and hugs from people with music being the bow on top. Years ago I would have through that insignificant and unsuited for a Birthday. This year; thankful I am allowed to be a part of a community that shares the passion I do. Thankful for those who come to listen and love what we do. Thankful that I can still sit at the piano and let em’ rip and they rip! (figuratively for tickling the ivories).

Birthdays give me a reminder that it’s one less here on this earth and one more closer to heaven. And, if heaven is all it’s cracked up to be, I will have that pot of frosting with no calories, no head ache and no one looking at me and asking, “Did you eat that whole pan of frosting?”

It is so beautiful. A little girl, bread crumbs and seagulls. The waves are calm, the water is coolish but the sky is full of sun and the shadows make life look so simple. Sometimes that’s life. You want to capture the picture forever. You want to blow it up and hang it on the wall so that everyone sees it and ahh’s with delight. You want that moment frozen in time. You want the feeling to go on forever. You want to simply relish in the moment that makes you feel warm, loved and safe.

and…then there are days that you would wish would hurry by. If only you could close your eyes and wake up on the other side of today. If tomorrow the sun would waken you through the window and the birds would be singing. If the fears that are keeping you hostage now would be a distant memory and the warm fuzzy feeling of knowing that everything will be fine, is tapping on your hearts door.

When the husband says he needs help, someone hurt themselves it’s not what you think. He is not a doctor or a  day care provider, he is simply a farmer. So, who is someone? probably an animal… I played in school early and returned home to see the farmer running hot water into a big white tub in the kitchen sink. “Someone hurt themselves” was interpreted as one of the horses is hurt.  Now the farmer is rather unobservant.  I will ask him if he does the chores how everyone is and his answer is upright. If all the horses are moving on four legs, he figures they are fine and when they rush him for hay and start eating, all is well. When I check on horses, I feel them over, check their legs, rub my hands down their backs, look at their eyes, feel their muzzles and basically do a very complex job of making sure they are upright and walking. The farmer did observe something the other day; blood. Not just blood but lots of blood. Blood all over. That is not normal in a horse pasture. A little blood would have been a concern but a lot of blood. And, he didn’t see the blood right away, he saw that someone had kicked a big hole in his lean to! His lean to; not the horses lean to. Then he had to begin checking over horses to see which one of the brown and black horses had red on them.  And even though farmer is non emotional, I think it worried him about the vast amount of blood that had been shed.  A small cut- washed, put iodine on it and put her back out. It’s clean- snow is clean and it’s cold! Awesome time of the year for a cut. Last night we bound her cut up a bit more with compression and vet wrap and duct tape.  No fresh blood in the pasture this a.m. And I did look over everyone a bit more as I pulled the wagon of hay around and spread it for the woolly beasts.

We tend to see things and think it’s bad. When we get in the middle of cleaning up the mess we can often hear ourselves saying, “well that’s not too bad now was it”. Perhaps we say it to sooth others that we are helping because in our minds things always blow up and get bigger.

Matthew 6 has some  of my favorite verses..vs 25 .“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? ²⁶ Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? ²⁷ Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life”   In my world there are days that I could interpret that as, “Don’t look at it so closely- it’s not as bad as it looks.”  There are days when tomorrow looks horrifying.  The signs of the day seem to indicate it will be a doozy- blazing with both barrels and shooting right at me. And I don’t worry by the way- I just am very concerned with added emphasis on the very.  By the look of the blood in the pasture, we had a dead horse. I have made suppositions based on the looks of things and usually God is laughing because he knows its not that bad.  Why, then, do I make it seem like it is life threatening? Based on the looks of things, I need to worry… and worry alot.  God wants me to not be VERY CONCERNED even when there seems to be all indications this is the last straw, and remember who gave me life, who gave me food, who gave me my body, who always seems to make sure I have the basics.. And then he compares my existence with a bird. Of all things, a bird.  A bird… birds poop all over. Birds hit windshields. Birds lay nests in the eaves in my barn and make a mess. Birds also are beautiful to watch, they are great mothers, they are creative in building and making a home and birds will never let a storm keep them from the birdfeeder.   So I need to remind myself that often things look worse than they are but also that God is bigger than how ever much blood is all over the white snow. He has got my life. If he can handle making it work for the birds who make a mess all over the farm, the deck, the trees and the barn, then I think he can make my life; one of which has much more complexities than the birds, he can make my life doable.. And if there is alot of mess lying all over the ground, well then perhaps God has some things for me to think about while I clean them up and I have a feeling God will make that clean up also. He has an awesome track record of making things whiter than snow… Of course the horse pastures are still quite colored she is walking normal and baring her ears back at others today.  Life goes on… and the purple and pink vet wrap and duct tape is still around the hoof.

If only. Two words that seem to haunt our hearts and our souls.  Regret, do overs, desperate wishes to change something, the results of living in a fallen world and the hope we have clinging to a faith in God that somewhere, someday, sometime this will all be explained. But, in our finite minds, we are still holding onto the “if only’s” of life.

For some it’s as simple as, if only I had chosen a different house, a different car, an educational change, a friendship or a job opportunity ended.  For others it’s the if only’s of a marriage, child’s poor decisions, addictions and choices that affect others, and we are left wondering what would have happened if….

Then it’s the heart wrenching phone call, the accident, the moment one looked away, the consequences of living in a world where so quickly life changes. As many options as we have we can’t go back. We won’t know what would have happened if.  We don’t know if we would be any happier, any more successful, any more creative, any more financially stable or anymore content in our relationships.  The underlining part of the “if only’s” is simply how our faith in Jesus Christ is holding us from falling apart.

Psalm 147:11 “the LORD delights in those who fear him, who put their hope in his unfailing love.”   When nothing else seems to make sense, God’s unfailing love is what I have to totally rest in. I can’t go back and redo the “if only’s” and that leaves me petrified with fear. I can simply rest in knowing the God is in control of the out of control stuff in life and I have to be okay with that.  We live in a world that is broken. Good people have bad things happen to them, children get cancer, children get hurt and die, mom’s leave this world before their children are grown, men don’t love their wives and wives walk out and never come home. Fallen, broken, hurt, desperate, damaged, shattered and I have to look at the pieces and cry. But there is a God… Daniel said that. He had seen God walk with them through the long trek to Babylon, shackled as slaves, made into eunuchs, forced to work in a pagan culture. But Daniel knew, there was a God. It didn’t seem fair, it wasn’t just, it wasn’t the right thing to take young men thousands of miles away from their home, it wasn’t their choice, but the God who was walking with them every step of the way to Babylon, was the God we helped them find favor in the eyes of the Pagan rulers, who converted one of them to the Jehovah God. We rescued them from the Fiery Furnace, the Lions Den, and walk into the palace with a dream interpretation so they wouldn’t lose their lives. Fair, no; a God thing? Yes! I don’t look for the bad stuff in life, it finds me pretty quickly. I don’t look for God in the bad stuff; I can’t miss Him. He is in, on, around, about, through and stuck on every bad thing thing we spend our time thinking, “if only”. He is holding the hand of thee hurting mom in the hospital, the young boy in the cancer ward, sitting beside the chaplain as he tells the young women her husband is missing in action. God is and always will be right in the middle of our lives. We will always have “if only’s” but God only has time for “what now’s”.  “What now God?” when we  can’t cry anymore. What now God when our heart is so broken the pieces seem too many to put back together. What now God when plan A, plan B an plan C all have totally fallen apart?  Some days, what now God doesn’t even make sense.  We are trusting that God will keep us upright, keep our heart from bursting, keep our soul from  going insane and keep us looking forward to a time where we won’t remember and ask “if only” or “what next God”.
Revelation 21:4   “And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.”