Tag Archives: God

Into My Heart

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Into My Heart

Into My Heart

Into My Heart

The thought was overwhelming. Although I was driving I took my phone out of my pocket to call my wife who was several counties away for an appointment.  At that very moment I saw she was calling me.  Now I had forgotten to take my phone out of its silent mode and I had not been aware of the incoming call.

Although the call was not an emergency, it was a reminder in a wonderful way of God’s very presence inside me.  “Into my heart, into my heart. Come into my heart Lord Jesus. Come in today.  Come in to stay.  Come into my heart Lord Jesus!”  I still remember learning that song as a child. I remember believing it as I asked the Lord Jesus to come in.

It has taken a lifetime from that moment so long ago to appreciate how powerful a change this has made on my life.  God is truly our Great Friend, unlike any other.  He consoles, guides, promises, protects, chides, disciplines, encourages.  He loves!

In my life as this wonderful Friendship has grown I have long lost count of the many ways He has done these things.   I cannot imagine a life without Him!  My greatest concern is displeasing Him.  I know that I am far from perfect and that I do displease Him at times. It is at those times, when I realize I have gone astray in some way that my heart breaks and I run as fast as I can back to Him.  How thankful I am for His many wonderful promises!  “I will never (ever) leave you!”  “Your sins and transgressions I will remember no more” “I will come and I will receive you to myself”  “I am with you always, even to the end of this age.”  And they go on.

As I said, I cannot imagine life without Him.  Into my heart He came.  In my heart He stays.  Have you asked?  Do you believe it?  If you don’t I would love to talk with you and tell you so many, many stories of how good, how faithful, how wonderful is this, the greatest of all Friendships.  It is an offer to everyone no matter who you are or what you have done.

Plastic Bags

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Plastic Bagsplastic bags

Walking our dog after the rain had swept through I noticed, caught in the shrubs along the drainage ditch plastic shopping bags caught in their branches.  Looking more closely I realized that most of them had been there for some time, dirty, tattered, deteriorating from sun, mud, wind and rain.  They have no value.

Later in the day after paying for my purchase the sales clerk placed in another plastic bag not unlike those along the ditch back. That bag placed on the seat of my car continued to serve a purpose.  That bag contained something important and was needed until the contents were safely home.

With a new year has come the ever renewed resolution to take better care of our bodies.  In some ways our bodies are like those plastic bags.  Their real value is not in the bag but in what they contain.  Our bodies are NOT us.  Our bodies DO serve the purpose of containing “us”, holding us, keeping us alive in this world and able to do what we were put here to do.

Sooner or later, these bodies fulfill their responsibility and are set aside.  We call this death, passing away, or just “passing”.  We may spend a moment looking at them but then they begin the same journey as those abandoned bags along the bank.

Resolutions to work on our bodies are important.  But infinitely more important is the care of our souls, the contents of “the bag”.  Feed the body.  Feed the soul.

Sale!

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Sale!

    “50%off” That was two days ago. Now it’s Christmas morning.  The “magic” of Christmas was going cheap before the day had come … and gone.  Could it be that those ads and commercials touting the latest, the best, the brightest to make our lives better, easier, more satisfied could have the cherished objects deeply discounted even up to 75% off before the day has even come?

You can fool some of the people all the time.  You can fool all of the people some of the time.  So which one are we?  Why is it so hard to see through the empty promises which fill the air waves, internet and print leading up to the ‘magic’ day of Christmas?

Perhaps it is because they are telling us what we want to hear.  We want to believe that if we had enough money or the right pill, or even Mr./Mrs. Right,  life would live up to our dreams.  Anything or anyone who plies our imagination with enough ‘magic’ surely gets our attention.

But, as you read this the ‘magic’ day has come and gone and the New Year beckons or has arrived.  By now the wrapping paper is in the trash, perhaps the tree and tinsel are taken down, and we are still the same.  We are pestered with the same aches, pains, disappointments and heartbreaks that all that ‘magic’ was supposed to fix.

God alone can fix us.  Albert Einstein famously said that the definition of insanity was to continue the same behavior with expectation of a different outcome.  Surely now, as we contemplate 2014 with bulging bathroom scales, empty pocketbooks, and the excitement of Christmas 2013 now all but forgotten, we are ready for a new approach to life.

January 6 heralds the visit of the Wise Men to the manger.  Will it find us wiser and seeking the Savior and His Solution to the unfulfilled life?

“Prom? Yes”?!

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English: Duluth box car number 18052 on displa...

English: Duluth box car number 18052 on display at the Mid-Continent Railway Museum in North Freedom. Photo by Sean Lamb (User:Slambo), October 10 2004 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Prom? Yes”

That’s what the train said.  It was early this morning.  On my way down Cumberland to have breakfast and prepare for the day ahead, I heard the sound of an oncoming train.  Just before I reached the crossing, lights flashing red, the barricade dropped, blocking my path.  One, two, three, four engines headed up the slowly moving freight train.
This is gonna be a while I thought.  What to do?  I started counting the cars but soon lost count.   I began trying to read the sides as one by one the graffiti embellished cars rolled past.  Were these graphic displays the work of gangs, an attempt to create art, or something else?  Then it caught my eye.  Amidst the graffiti on the side of the boxcar I could clearly make out, “Prom? Yes”.
I understood that.  A question.  From whom?  Was the yes an answer or was it a hoped for response?  I thought, “Why, in this age of seemingly unlimited means of wireless communication was the side of a box car used?”
We are told that the amount of information competing for our attention has doubled in ten years to something like 35 GB of data.  We are not built to process that much and the overload takes a toll on us. If we are going to pay attention then the communicator better do something special!
Golden skies, billowing clouds, autumn leaves, soft new fallen snow, the tiniest peep of a newborn chick, the cry of our own new baby, the anguished cry of His Son dying for all of us.  No one would or could have done more to get our attention.  Are we listening?