Pick a Psalm, Any Psalm!

It has been a rough couple of weeks at our house.  My husband was the first to come down with a cold, and he is telling people I didn't even thank him when he gave it to me!  Along with a cold, I had been fighting issues in my stomach and intestines which I trace back to a meal with a salad bar.  And, no, none of it was COVID related, as we both had to be tested to get into the local clinic for our routine blood work, and both tests came back negative.

In addition to feeling crappy physically, it has also been an emotionally draining week, which included the death of a classmate.  His partner in life is also a dear friend of mine, one who shares many things in common with me, including the love of music.  In the past we have done music together, and looking back, I'm not sure why we haven't done so lately.  I guess the busyness of life always gets in the way. [Sad excuse!]

Then news of another tragedy reached us.  Members of a family we know were involved in a car accident.  The mother and teenage son had minimal injuries, but a daughter had multiple broken bones, and the youngest son, an 8 year old, had critical injuries, leaving him brain dead.  The parents are close in age to my own children, with their children similar in age to my grandchildren.  I kept thinking how totally unexpected it was in their world, and yet, through their faith in God, they are navigating the valley road.

So it was, physically and mentally drained, I headed back to the clinic this morning for an ultrasound of my liver.  My provider didn't like some of the liver function numbers in my blood work, and wanted a closer look at things.  Results won't be in until tomorrow or Friday, so back home I went to face a house in desperate need of cleaning.

Where would I even start?  It was then I heard this little voice in my head say, "Start with Me!"  I've heard that voice before, and knew I had been shoving God to the back burner lately.  I found my Bible and did the daily reading assignment in the morning instead of squeezing it in last minute at the end of the day.  It was satisfying to put a check mark behind "Read my Bible", but somehow the assignment in Ezra didn't have much to feed my soul.

Then came the voice again, "Why not read a Psalm, too?"  It seemed like a good plan.  There is something about the Psalms that fits every up and down of life.  But which one?  I decided to just open my Bible somewhere in the middle, and found myself looking at Psalm 107.

Several verses had been underlined from past times of reading, and interestingly, they all said basically the same thing:

"Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and He delivered [saved, brought] them from their distress." 

Interesting.  Verses 6, 13, 19, and 28 were close to repeats of each other.  Investigating further, I found there was more of a pattern than these similar verses.  Each section talked about God's people getting themselves into trouble, and after crying out to the Lord, He was faithful to help them out of their struggle.

My favorite verse was the last one in the chapter, verse 43:

"Whoever is wise, let him heed these things and consider the great love of the Lord."

It was all I needed to face every bit of physical and mental stress. . .just consider the great love of the Lord.  Simple.  I went on to have a very productive day.  Seems this often happens when you put God first.  Let's see if I can remember this lesson when the test of the busy holiday season hits us!  In the meantime, I am thankful for family and friends who pray, and the assurance of God's great love, come what may.

Have a Blessed and Very Happy Thanksgiving!

Peter's "To Do" List

It seems if there are many things to get done, one of the best ways to tackle them is to prepare a "to do" list.  In my own life, I often find myself jotting down a list of things I hope to accomplish the next day before retiring for the night.  It somehow gives me great satisfaction to mark each item off with a check mark, or even draw a line through to show completion.  Better yet, once all items are complete, is crumbling up the piece of paper and tossing it in the garbage!

This evening, as I was reading from 1 Peter, I came across a "to do" list he left for us to follow.  When writing this epistle, Peter commented in verse 7 of chapter 5, "The end of all things is near."  If it was near back then, how much nearer is it today?  If you are a scholar of the Bible, you will agree there are many things happening in our world which point to the return of Christ.  Yet, God's timing is so different from ours, and a day to him is like a thousand of ours.  My Aunt Mabel, who passed away four years ago, would often comment on how they felt Christ's return was at hand some 90 years prior  The point is we are closer now than we have ever been!

Exactly what was on his list back then?  Lets continue on through verse 11 of chapter 7, and make a list:

1.  Be clear minded

2.  Be self-controlled

3.  Pray

4.  Love each other deeply

5.  Offer hospitality to one another

6.  Don't grumble!

7.  Use your gifts to serve others

8.  Faithfully administer God's grace

9.  When you speak, do so as if you are speaking the words of God

10.  Serve with God's strength, so He can be praised through Jesus Christ

Quite the list, isn't it?  How did you do while reading through it?  Were you able to cross off each of the items, or are there some you need to work on?  There are days I do pretty good, and others where I need to be reminded over and over to "stick to the list"!  It might be wise to keep a copy of this list handy throughout your days.  Ask God to help you by His Holy Spirit to follow through with each of the items.  The more we include this list in our every day behavior, the easier it will become. . .and the better off we all will be!

 

Messages to the Heart

Often in life, we might hear a "still, small voice" speaking to our heart.  It is the voice of the Holy Spirit gently guiding us along the straight and narrow pathway God has placed before us to follow.  On other days, like yesterday, it seems God uses other means to get His message across.  Perhaps this happens because we aren't first listening to the "still, small voice" He has already attempted!

It all started with my Bible reading for the day.  Not always do I get this done in the morning, but yesterday I did.  I follow a Bible reading plan which takes me through the Bible in a year, with daily assignments received from a guide called "Prayer Point" I receive quarterly from Samaritan's Purse.  The reading for the day was in 2 Chronicles, chapters 29-32.  It is part of the segment of God's Word where He lists the various kings ruling in Judah and Israel "back in the day".  

The king getting the attention during these chapters was King Hezekiah, who was 25 when he became king, and ended up ruling a total of 29 years.  The Bible tells us he chose to do what was right in the eyes of the Lord, which is always a good plan.

The first thing on his agenda was opening up the temple of the Lord, repairing damages it had faced, and going through a process of purification.  A couple of verses standing out to my mind were verses 11 and 15 of Chapter 29.  Hezekiah was speaking to the Levites, a tribe of people whose job was to care for the temple.  It had been neglected far too long, and God's people were suffering because of it.  His words to them were first, ". . .do not be negligent now, for the Lord has chosen you to stand before Him and serve Him". This was followed by instructions to "purify the temple of the Lord. . .following the Word of the Lord".

As I pondered these words, spoken many years ago, I realized they were still applicable in each of our lives.  As Christians, we have a responsibility to stand before God, serve Him, and purify what is not appropriate in our lives.  We discover what this looks like as we read God's Word.   It is interesting how the same words ("following the Word of the Lord") are used again in Chapter 30, verse 12.  Here the hand of God was on the people to give them unity of mind as they followed His Word.  It seems to me many of the problems we are experiencing as a church today come because we have allowed the dust of the world to accumulate on our Bibles instead of reading them, and following their instructions.

The second means God used to speak to me yesterday was through a YouTube video.  I had been viewing something else, and below it was a link to a teaching by Priscilla Shirer.  Since I had done a Bible Study by her earlier this year, my curiosity peeked and I found myself listening in on an episode featured as "You're Right Where You Need to Be" and "God is Preparing You for More".

The teaching was on the feeding of the 5,000 and the essence was this:  you already have what you need to give to God, in order to bring about that which will in turn give glory back to Him.  Perhaps that is a cumbersome sentence to absorb, so if you have an extra 38 minutes, I would encourage you to watch the video for yourself and get the complete teaching.  For now, it will suffice to say I found the time yesterday, AND again today.  There is so much packed into it!  Here is the link:

Priscilla Shirer - You're Right Where You Need To Be     

And so I had two lessons to consider for the day.  Lesson one told me there is work to do, and I needed to follow God's Word in accomplishing it.  Lesson two told me I was already equipped to do something for the Lord.  And now on to lesson three, which was a clip sent to me by a friend.  It's message was basically, "There's a lot out there to do, and it's not going to get done unless you do your part."  Wow!  Talk about a "1-2-3 Punch" from the Lord!

All of this challenged me.  I have been faithfully reading His Word, so I should have some insight into following it.  What has God given me to use?  Two of my gifts are writing and music.  Although I have used both to bring God glory at various times in my life, I found myself asking, "What more could I do?"

How about you?  What has God entrusted to you?  How do you think He wants to use what He has already given you, to turn around and bring glory back to Himself?  It seems to me the world would be a better place once we all accept this simple "1-2-3 Punch" from the Lord!  

Aronia Berries

Perhaps you have never heard of aronia berries.  They were new to me a couple of years ago when a lady in our church introduced me to them.  Her daughter and son-in-law had started growing them organically in Montana, and she shared with me the health benefits packed into these little berries, which look similar to blueberries, but have a very different taste.  Also called "chokeberries" (different from the chokecherries we are familiar with in our area) they are more tart, and have a drying affect on your mouth if eaten alone.  Because of this, it is suggested they be added to other food sources.

After reading about the health benefits, I decided to add them into my diet, and most often sprinkle a handful of them on my breakfast cereal.  They come to me frozen, and so far straight from the freezer is the only way I have eaten them, although my friend who sells them says they are great in smoothies or added to muffins, too.

I searched out a good website to tell you about the berries, and found this one, which also lists the trusted sources they pulled their information from.  If you'd like to research them further, follow this link:

Information on Aronia Berries

A quick summary, should you not want the full information, is they are a great source of fiber, vitamin C, manganese, and very high in antioxidants.  They have potential in being anti-cancer, can be beneficial to your heart and liver, and give your immune system a boost.  Although I am not crediting aronia berries as a solution to fighting the COVID-19 virus, my body did fight it off in May without me experiencing any of the usual symptoms of fever, aches, and loss of taste and smell.  A simple blood test in July assured me I indeed did have a good supply of antibodies to prove it.  Supplementation of Vitamin D has also been important to keeping my immune system healthy, as well as eating right, exercising, and getting the proper amount of sleep.

If you would be interested in trying some of these berries, stop by for a visit.  I can provide you with a sample, and then point you to my friend who sells them.  If you are not interested, I'm okay with that, too, but would say you are passing up a great "super fruit"! 

   

Monday Moments

Last night, as I was visiting my Aunt Sue, I expressed there was nothing on my "to-do" list for my Monday this week.  It was a busy week-end, and I was thankful to have a day with no special obligations.  As I left from the visit, she told me I should "sleep until noon" to rest up, and it was accomplished.  I did wake up earlier, and got out of bed to take my morning Thyroid pill, plus drink my usual 2 glasses of water to start the day, one without lemon juice added, and one with.  But the bed still looked inviting, so I returned, and was awakened by our "noon whistle".  It was good to feel rested!

After a breakfast/lunch of Rice Krispies with banana slices and aronia berries [more on these in a later blog!] I munched on watermelon slices while my hubby had his noon sandwich.  Then I filled my three hummingbird feeders with the sugar water I had boiled up last night.  I had been told to simple use 1 part sugar to 4 parts water, and avoid the red syrups you can buy.  Turns out it is healthier for the busy little creatures.  They usually show up in our community around the end of July, and I had yet to see one.  Looking out the window, I spotted my first one. . .not on the feeders, but on the flowers below.  Will be watching for more in the days ahead!

Laundry needed tending, as it always is a never ending chore.  Sorting, I ended up with four piles, which will be tackled throughout the day.  It is such a blessing to now have my very own cheery laundry room, which came after 40 years of having my washer/dryer tucked in a closet in the bathroom.  I am so thankful for my husband and son who have been working on a remodel project over the past several years, which not only gave me a laundry room, but a larger bedroom, a sunroom, and a yet to be designed office space.

Sometimes it is the little things which stir my heart to a prayer of thanksgiving.  My son showed up while I was fixing the bed, asking if I could help tie his shoes.  He can do a lot one handed after his accident, but shoe tying is not on the list.  Somehow, as I did the simple task, it transported my mind back in time to when he was a little boy in need of assistance.  I was thankful to still be available when he needed me, all these years later.  A noise outside the window alerted me to look, and I saw my husband and his cousin moving some vehicles and a trailer.  I was thankful for this helper while his usual "right hand man" is out of commission for a time.

Seeing some songbooks in need of tucking away, I decided to sit down and plunk out a few tunes.  It brought me back to my best friend's house, an old piano, and times of playing songs together and singing from the "Reader's Digest Family Songbook".  This song in particular also brought me back to times of cruising Main Street Crosby in a little white Oldsmobile she drove!

A buzz from the dryer alerts me to the fact there is laundry to fold.  What other moments will fill the rest of my day?  Time will tell, but it is good to know we have a God who is with us in each one of them!

"Be strong and courageous.  Do not be afraid or terrified. . .for the LORD your God goes with you; He will never leave you nor forsake you". ~Deuteronomy 31:6

 

The Lord Knows the Way

A week ago, we received a late night phone call from our son, who had been working on building frames at his dad's woodworking shop.  His interest in framing stems back to his fraternal grandfather who, for a time, used the business name, "Frames By James".  Since our son's middle name is after this grandfather, he decided earlier this year to start his own business called, "Frames By Ryan James".

Back to the phone call, my husband was the one to take the call, only to have our son tell him we needed to bring him to the hospital.  His left middle finger had been injured while using the router table, and we weren't sure how bad the injury was.  Picking him up, his first words were, "It's just dangling there!" but my husband calmly reassured him it would be okay.  [When our son was little, my husband had his own run-in with a different type of tool, and now is missing the tip of one finger.]

As it turned out, the injury was not as bad as he had initially perceived, as the cut had only barely nicked the bone.  Still, because it was a router, it was not a clean cut.  They did an X-ray, and consulted a hand specialist in a city 2 hours from us.  The local doctor was instructed to stitch it up as best he could, and then make an appointment to see him in the new week.

Monday, after having some difficulty with the phone lines, we finally received an appointment for Tuesday.  I was unable to go with, but father and son did the two hour drive, only to have a very disappointing visit with the specialist.  For more reasons than one, we opted to try for a second opinion in our Capitol city of Bismarck.  

Lots of prayers were going up to heaven on behalf of our son, and we had been given several possible names to pursue for the next appointment.  As I was saying my prayers, a song popped into my head I hadn't thought of in years.  It was a little Sunday School song, and the lyrics are as follows:

             The Lord knows the way through the wilderness, all I have to do is follow. The Lord knows the way through the wilderness, all I have to do is follow. Strength for today, is mine all the way, and all that I need for tomorrow. The Lord knows the way through the wilderness, all I have to do is follow.

Something about the song was reassuring to my heart, and our son set off for the clinic to see what he could do about scheduling the next appointment.  To our amazement, he was able to get in to see a doctor our niece had recommended the next day.  In the evening, as I washed some dishes, my eyes landed on a "to do" list I had posted during the challenging days of COVID in 2020.  Hanging next to it were the dried roses from my mother-in-law's funeral.  It was like another encouraging message from above.

Early Thursday morning, the three of us got ready for the four hour drive.  As I dressed for the day, the socks I grabbed out of the drawer gave me the message, “I am Optimistic”.  Was it a good sign?  I could only hope it was!  

The appointment was scheduled for 11:40am, and the first step was some paperwork at the reception desk, followed by a repeat X-ray.  After a bit of a wait, we were escorted to an exam room, where a nurse took down a few more details, and told us the doctor would be in shortly.

From the start, I liked this doctor.  He was friendly, thorough in explaining what was wrong with the finger, and also in letting us know what the options were.  Basically, we could let it heal as it was, and end up with a drooping finger, or we could have him do a surgery to repair.  Oh, and by the way, he felt he could work us into the afternoon schedule that day!  Not exactly what we had planned for the day, but it would save us another trip to Bismarck.  It was indeed a blessing and answer to prayer!

Our son was a bit nervous, to say the least.  In his nearly 40 years of life, I can only think of a couple times he has ever been in a doctor's office, let alone had surgery.  He has simply been blessed with a healthy life.  So the next two hours were a long waiting game for him, and for us, too.  But once again God provided up with a couple of "signs" that eased our mind.

The first was a bouquet of big yellow roses on the nurses station just outside the little room he was waiting in.  Yellow roses always remind me of my dad, who passed away in 1987, and seeing this bouquet was like a hug from him!  

Then, on the floor in front of the nurses station was a unique design in the floor's tiling.  To me it looked like a large picture frame built into the design of the floor.  It seemed the Lord did know the way for us to go, and gave us lots of signs to assure us we were in the right place.

Surgery itself lasted only about 40 minutes, and the doctor was pleased to find one tendon intact, and the other he was able to piece together.  He inserted a pin to hold the finger straight during the healing process, wrapped his hand, and in another hour or so we were on our way home!  God is good!

Our son still has to face the long road of recovery, but was assured he should have full use of his hand in about ten weeks.  We continue to pray for a problem free recovery, with complete healing of the skin, and no infections.  One thing, however, we are certain of.  Whatever awaits us down the road, the Lord has already planned the way, and will guide us through to an outcome He has designed to bring good out of a not so pleasant situation.  One of my "life verses" is Romans 8:28, and it was one I used to bring comfort to my soul, and hopefully my son's, too.  May it also help you through whatever you are currently facing in your own life!

                               For we know that all things work together for good  to those who love God and are called according to His purposes.

Tending the Wrong Fruit

It all started early this summer when I was preparing to plant my flowers.  Gerber daisies are traditionally added to an old washtub.  As I started adding some new soil to the leftover dirt from last year, I spotted a small starter plant with leaves similar in shape to the Gerber daisies.  Could it be a small plant sprouted from last year's seed?  Not knowing for sure, I dug it out and placed it in a separate pot of its own to watch.

As the plant grew, I could tell it probably wasn't a Gerber daisy.  The color wasn't quite the same, and the leaves weren't getting big enough.  But what was it?  A friend had an app on her phone that would identify plants by simply taking a picture of them.  According to the results, I had some kind of tomato plant on my hands. . .it even started producing little round fruit, and I was leaning towards it perhaps being a cherry tomato plant.  I transplanted it into a bigger pot, and continued to faithfully tend it, making sure it had both sunshine and water to help it grow.  It still puzzled me how a tomato seed had turned up in my flowers, since I have never grown tomatoes in the past.

Then something interesting happened.  I was weeding my watermelon patch, and came across the same type of plant.  Something told me there was perhaps a weed with similarity to a tomato plant, and to Google I went.  It turns out there is something called a Solanum carolinense.  According to Wikipedia, it also goes by other more common names, such as radical weed, sand brier, bull nettle, devil's tomato and wild tomato.  It also informed me all parts of the plant, including the fruit, are poisonous to varying degrees.  Effects of ingesting the plant include fever, headache scratchy throat, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea.  Had I continued to tend those cute little fruits it was producing, eating them could cause abdominal pain, circulatory and respiratory depression, or even death.  Sure enough, I had been nurturing a weed!

Now, as I look at this carefully tended plant, I shake my head and wonder why I didn't recognize it as a weed.  Perhaps it is because satan is very crafty in his deceitful ways, and even in plant life has invaded our world with things to lead us astray.  As I pondered this, my thoughts went to a passage in Ephesians 5.  Verses 22 and 23 is a very familiar list of spiritual fruit:  love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  The verses following tell us those who belong to Christ Jesus have gotten rid of their sinful nature, and have replaced it with this new fruit of the Spirit.

So, what is the sinful nature comprised of?  Backing up to verse 19, there is another list with a different kind of so-called "fruit" which gets displayed by someone acting under the control of their sinful nature.  The list consists of sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, and envy; drunkenness, orgies "and the like".  It seems this list is longer, and filled with some unpleasant things.  The worst is, verse 21 ends by saying those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Your challenge this week is to make an honest evaluation of your life.  Which list best describes the way you are living?  Or, in the analogy of my careful attention to the wrong type of plant, are you producing good fruit, or simply tending weeds?  As you ask God to help you, work on cultivating the good things listed as fruit of the Spirit, and work on eliminating the weeds of the sinful nature.  Our world will be made better as you do!