Friday, July 23, 2021

FMF: Order

For He will give His angels orders concerning you,
To protect you in all your ways.
(Psalm 91:11, NASB)


There is a wonderful older woman in my church named Carol.  Carol is very private.  She is concervative and proper.  She is full of love.  She cares deeply about the people in her life.  Often when I talk to her, she breaks into prayer as part of her normal conversation.  God's love flows out of her like an artesian spring.

Psalm 91 is key scripture in her life.  She has told me on many occasions that she is praying it over my family.  For our safety.  For our well being.  That the angels would protect us.

And honestly, I just kind of smile and nod when she talks about angels.

I was always more interested in Scripture like that which is in the later verses of Psalm 91, which talk about God saving me and being near me. When I was a teenager and it seemed like every Christian mother I knew was watching Touched by an Angel, my pastor once said he'd rather be touched by Jesus.  That always resignated with me.

But, the truth is, angels are a part of God's plan.  I don't like writing about things I don't understand.  Let me just say it here, I don't understand angels.

Scripture proclaims that God has ordered His angels to protect me in all my ways.  So, I trust in that promise.  Whether I see them or understand them, I am thankful for them.  God's ways are so much bigger than my ways.



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This post is a prompt from Five Minute Friday
and was written in approximately five minutes.
For more information, visit fiveminutefriday.com.
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Saturday, July 10, 2021

Worse Things

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.  (Matthew 6:19-21, NIV)

I sit in the silence of a darkened dining room. Little houses leave few places to escape to. I can hear the crickets outside; they have started their nightly serenade. My husband is watching television too loudly in our room, but tonight it does not bother me. There is peace in my heart, and so there is peace in my home.

This was not the scene last night when I fell exhausted into bed.

About 1pm I was at the mall with my husband, returning something we had bought, when I noticed I had missed a call from my boss, the church pastor.  It was Friday, my day off, but I had planned to work from home to make up for the day off I had taken Thursday.  However, my husband and I needed a break from stifling humidity that has been plaguing us, and so we headed to the mall for our errand and a bite to eat.

I returned the phone call quickly to discover that our church office had been broken into and "ransacked." The word was repeated at least a dozen times yesterday.  There was no other way to describe it.  Drawers opened.  Paper everywhere.  Items misplaced.  Ransacked.

We left the mall and headed to the church office, where we looked in surprise at the situation.  The police were called as well as a locksmith, and shortly thereafter the members we had received now-stolen tithe checks from that week.  The good news, the first we would discover, was there had only been two checks, and one was from my own family.  We would also soon discover that although they stole our master key ring, they had not taken our back up key ring which had copies of almost all of them.  The police arrived shortly, even sending their forensic unit to take fingerprints.  And the first locksmith we called was able to come almost immediately to begin the arduos process of changing a lot of locks.

But the whole situation was unsettling.  Our pastor described the feeling of being "violated" because trinkets were stolen off his desk that, though of little monetary value, had high sentimental value.  It reminded me of a similar experience we had last October.  You can read about it here: WHO STOLE MY KIT KATS AND FAITH IN HUMANITY?  We did the best we could to put the pieces together, and decided the rest could wait.  We left frustrated and frazzled.

A few hours later, after watching some television with my husband, I stumbled to my bed, so tired that I left my phone in the livingroom.  I wanted nothing to tempt me to stay awake.

The next morning I awoke to a string of missed texts.  Just after I fell into my bed, our pastor's daughter had been in a dangerous situation while out with some friends.  The Pastor had texted the leadership team to ask for prayers as he and his wife tried to find out what was happening.  Of course, by the time I read the string of texts, the situation had been resolved for nearly 12 hours.  But all the same, I sat there with tears in my eyes this morning, thinking of the far greater loss I would have felt if events had turned out differently. It put the entire previous day in perspective.

There are worse things than stolen money.

There are worse things than broken posessions.

There are worse things than trespassed property.

Far worse things, indeed.

Friday, July 9, 2021

FMF: Summer

Hands that don’t want to work make you poor.
But hands that work hard bring wealth to you.
A child who gathers crops in summer is wise.
But a child who sleeps at harvest time brings shame.
(Proverbs 10:4-5, NIRV)


"What do you plan to do this summer?" she asked me.

"As little as possible," I told her with a laugh.

And it was true. After a semester of working two part time jobs and taking a near-full load of classes, I needed a little time to rest and prepare for the fall. For many of us, not just students, Summer is the time we cherish most because we are able to do just that.

However, in agriculutural societies, like the one in which the Biblical writer of Proverbs lived, summer was a time of work. You can only gather crops when the crops are ready. They don't wait for you to want to work, and so your schedule revolves around the harvest's schedule.

There's a line from a hymn I sometimes find myself singing: "Bringing in the sheaves, // Bringing in the sheaves, // We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves."

(Sheaves, in case you do not know, are bundles of grain. I had to look it up too.)

In my spiritual life, there are some things that can only happen at certain times. Perhaps I will never encounter another person or have the same opportunity to extend God's grace in a situation.

As God's children, it is wise to work when the harvest is available.

The only question that remains is will we rejoice as we bring in the sheaves?



* * *
This post is a prompt from Five Minute Friday
and was written in approximately five minutes.
For more information, visit fiveminutefriday.com.
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Friday, July 2, 2021

FMF: Deserve

“All my grandfather’s descendants deserved nothing but death from my lord the king, but you gave your servant a place among those who eat at your table. So what right do I have to make any more appeals to the king?”
(2 Samuel 19:28, NIV)


Years after David had taken begun his rule over God's people, he thought back to his friend, Jonathan, whose father, Saul, was the king.   Jonathan and Saul had both died in battle, and it appeared that their entire lineage was now dead too.

One day David found himself thinking of his old friend, and he asked his servant if anyone was still alive in their family so that he could should them God's kindness (2 Samuel 9:3).

This, in and of itself, is convicting to me.  Too often, I limit my willingness to love people to when it is convenient for me.  David, however, went searching for someone to love in the same way God had loved him.  Eventually he found Mephibosheth.

Mephibosheth had lost his ability to walk when a caretaker dropped him in the same siege that had killed Jonathan and Saul. When Mephibosheth was brought before David, he did not condemn him, but rather restore him.  He gave him land, status, and most importantly, acceptance.  We read that Mephibosheth ate at David's table forever.

God wants to restore us as well.  Like Mephibosheth, life has left us broken, but God wants to be kind to us. Allow yourself to be carried to God's table today.



* * *
This post is a prompt from Five Minute Friday
and was written in approximately five minutes.
For more information, visit fiveminutefriday.com.
* * *