The Real Questions

For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors. And the ransom he paid was not mere gold or silver. 1 Pe 1:18 NLT

Do not ask whether something is enjoyable. Ask if it is worthy of love. Ask is you should depend upon it.

How will you find an answer? Is there an infallible argument or a verse of scripture that will enlighten you? Can you think of any example or axiom or sacrament that will prepare you to discover these things?

You can tell if something is made of gold. But how can you know if it is worth your love, or if you can depend upon it? Being gold is one thing, but being worthy of love is something else.

Desiring exquisite food and clothing is like painting firewood. These things are consumables. Clothes keep you warm regardless of the color. Common foods will satisfy your hunger. Desire what is right for you. -Guigo 1: Meditations

The Gift

I heard today
Of a decrepit native woman
Who walked mile after mile
Under the blistering sun
To bring a small gift of embroidery
To the missionary she deeply loved.
Hour after hour she trudged
Over rough, rugged roads
Clutching tightly her small gift.
Her weary body sagged
Her vision blurred
Her bare feet bled from the jagged rocks

Grateful but overwhelmed,
The missionary wept.
The trembling old woman spoke softly:
"Please understand.
The walk is part of the gift."

My Lord
My commitment to You is for life.
I give myself to You unreservedly
To do with me as You please.
But may I not forget
That the tears, the fears
The strain and the painThe sunless days
The starless nights
Are all part of the whole.
In my total commitment
I give full consent:
The walk is part of the gift.
~Ruth Harms Calkin

HT: http://www.windscraps.blogspot.com/

A Heart Full of Fear

Do not fear, for I am with you;Do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God I will strengthen you, surely I will help you,Surely I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.' (Is 41:10 NASB)

Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
(Ez 36:26 NASB)

I want you woven into a tapestry of love, in touch with everything there is to know of God. Then you will have minds confident and at rest, focused on Christ, God's great mystery. All the richest treasures of wisdom and knowledge are embedded in that mystery and nowhere else. And we've been shown the mystery! I'm telling you this because I don't want anyone leading you off on some wild-goose chase, after other so-called mysteries, or "the Secret." (Col 2:2-4 MSG)

"You can't think straight with a heart full of fear, for fear seeks safety, not truth. If your heart's a stone, you can't have decent thoughts—either about personal relations or about international ones. A heart full of love, on the other hand, has a limbering effect on the mind." —William Sloane Coffin

Burning Bushes

The angel of the LORD appeared to him in a blazing fire from the midst of a bush; and he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, yet the bush was not consumed. So Moses said, "I must turn aside now and see this marvelous sight, why the bush is not burned up." (Ex 3:1-3)

"Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees, takes off his shoes - The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries."
-Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Set A Straight Course

My son, if you aspire to be a servant of the Lord, prepare yourself for testing. Set a straight course, keep to it, and do not be dismayed in the face of adversity. (Ecclesiasticus 2:1-2)

Home Alone … Well, Not Really

My wife and daughter are in New York City with friends and family and Zach and I are bacheloring it. For supper tonight he has already had pizza, spaghetti, 4 small powdered donuts, and 2 strawberry pop tarts. I have some oven baked barbeque wings cooking.

Tomorrow my daughter Rebekah is singing at St Patrick’s Cathedral with the chorus from her last year’s school in Cape Coral, Florida. She was invited to sing with them again this year. Today her and her friends Sarah and Rachel had a birthday party at the American Doll Store and left with more than they went in with. I hear I bought my daughter a small doll for her American Girl Doll. They are doing the open top bus tour tonight.

Zachariah and I are doing well so far. I have stopped up one toilet but should be able to unplug it. He has hid the TV remote for the living room and, so far, has not revealed its hiding place. Hopefully it is not in the garbage. Yes I did look, but did not see it. I also looked under the couches, the tables, in the cabinets, bedrooms, closets, toy bucket, kitchen, drawers, bathrooms, the fridge and even the cat’s litter box.

God Is Also In The Ordinary

So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. (Ro 12:1-2 MSG)

If what God does has to be some big spectacular thing in order for us to recognize it as being His activity, then we will probably miss a lot of what God is doing around us. God is involved in the ordinary everyday living of life and is constantly revealing Himself, His purpose and His ways in ordinary life.

I like it when God shows up and does something incredible, but if that is the only time I am excited about Him or even recognize His activity around me, then I am mostly missing out on God’s involvement in my life and the lives of those around me.

We must live in the now, interacting with God and others in the present moment we are in. Anything other than that and we are disengaged with life, out of balance with its rhythm, and out of sync with God’s Spirit.

Let us cry out to God that we might see Him not only in His extraordinary supernatural dealings, but also in His involvement in the ordinary issues of life.