I re-read this often. You will get the gist. 100 years from now this may matter to someone.
Dad
When I sit to write in my own journal, I often think of you because you first introduced me to journaling. You let me read one of your entries once and I loved the little bits of personality and the depth it allowed me to see in you. I loved the wisdom it so clearly showed all laid out there in your own hand. It showed me that journaling was a valuable and even cool thing to do. It has since been invaluable to me. A means to get my thoughts all out where I can see them and sort through what makes sense and what doesn’t. Sometimes just having to put enough thought into it to form the words was the valuable part. I love that I now have pages to look back at and see the path my own learning has taken so far in life. It leaves a bit of legacy to perhaps share pieces with my own daughters someday down the road.
So, thank you and keep those pages coming, hope this will come in handy.
Love …(and signed by my oldest daughter)
Just a small glimpse of some of my past
In no particular order
Fair warning, discipline is required but the pay off is immeasurable. Please share your good thoughts.
Gary
PS: for some tips on approaching journaling, Mitch Teemley has some good suggestions. Check it out. https://mitchteemley.com/2018/10/15/journaling-for-life-2/ Also, Read Davids comment below…Again, journaling is worth the discipline for the long haul!
The sun was setting, it was close to dark. I was walking to the house after taking sunset pictures that were odd colored when I noticed a bumble bee on a fall flower. I took a full one second time exposure to capture the light and the bee. An OK picture I thought, but I could not see everything. Sometimes we just do not see the whole picture unless we stop and see. Really see.
For the bee this is as good as it gets.
A bee, clinging to a flower when it should have been in the hive. Old, torn wings, badly wounded leg and foot and feeding late into the evening. A bee on it’s last feeding perhaps? We all end up in tough shape if we live a long life.
This is how good it can get…
Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty (John 6:35)
But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:14)
I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. (Revelation 21:16)
The promise that came to me as I walked into the house: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest”. (Matthew 11:28)
Luke 19:37 As he was drawing near—already on the way down the Mount of Olives—the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, saying, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”
Isaiah 55:12 “For you shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
Habakkuk 2:11 For the stone will cry out from the wall, and the beam from the woodwork respond.
Psalm 1: What will be standing in my life when someday I stand before the almighty God? You and I will watch all that is seemingly important fall away.
I watched a leaf fall off a tree this morning, before it’s time, yet not I thought. but Fall is a ways off when leaves die and clutter the ground.
It was 50 degrees (f) on the screen porch where I sat with a bible and a cup of coffee. The hummingbirds were scolding me for being close to“their” flowers and feeders for a backdrop in my morning meet with God. In the distance a Rooster pheasant crowed to add reverence with a dozen song birds chirping in.
I had just had a conversation with my neighbor about decluttering our garages, storage sheds and so many extras. This morning I was reminded to think about decluttering my spiritual life. The to do lists, priorities and even not taking my own thoughts and views seriously unless they really come from God. This is serious stuff when an outdoorsman begins to pray for a smaller boat!
I had opened my Bible to Psalm 1. “Lord I want to be like the tree” I prayed. “Please help me declutter my life from the unimportant”.
I drew out a rough illustrated rendition of the psalm 1 version of the two things that could happen to each of us when we stand before God. That day is coming. It will happen. Add your comments to make it personal…Some great insights from fellow bloggers. Makes me feel like a lion in a den of Daniels.
Check out a very insightful comment below from parishdynamics . Also check out some great insight from InnerDialects written from a half a world away prompted by this blog and the concept of decluttering.
This is my own little book with blank pages ment for scribbles and bits of wisdom potential. It’s a kind of sort of journal that works for me.
Psalm 1
Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither— whatever they do prospers.
Not so the wicked! They are like chaff that the wind blows away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to destruction.
It’s a story that needs telling. Maybe some stories are sacred enough to leave for the telling in eternity. Maybe some can be told as a teaser for story time a hundred years from now. I will leave most things out but you will get the gist.
Ominous sunset with a storm coming. I wonder what clashing spiritual forces look like?
A while after moving to a strange place with hardly an acquaintance, my wife casually mentioned to me she had an aunt I had never met living in the same very small town where we lived. Odd situation, I guess. Auntie didn’t like any of us or care to meet, but she had cancer and was not long for this world. My wife had never felt any urgency to get to know auntie until now. “I’m going to visit her starting tomorrow” she announced “and she probably will not want to see me”.
My wife found her address, knocked on her door and when the door opened a crack with a “What do you want” greeting, she was quick to stick a foot in the door and let auntie know whose daughter she was, that she wanted to visit and she brought a few cookies. Auntie took the cookies and shut the door.
This went on for a while until my wife made it inside the door to talk a little longer and visit with one old-cold-bitter women. Seems Auntie didn’t need sympathy, prying relatives and even rejected her own children half the time. Auntie had no time for prayer or anything to do with God.
Auntie believed that when one dies, that’s it. No after life. No purpose to life. No God. Nothing. “Burn the body and get rid of the ashes” kind of aunt.
In all this, my wife seemed more and more confident that God was pushing her from a weekly visit over time to daily visits by the time Auntie went into the hospital. “She needs someone” my wife kept saying. The nurses drew straws (they actually did) to see who had Auntie duty. Auntie was not a nice lady and even refused to let her grandchildren visit her. She did not want to even know their names or see their faces. When my wife or her grown children would visit, Auntie would pretend to be asleep. If they tried to hug her she would say “You may shake my hand”. My wife would not ask. She would hug her anyway.Gradually her stiffening at hugs became somewhat less like hugging a wooden board.
My wife would sing hymns and read Auntie bible passages about knowing Jesus when Auntie would pretend to be sleeping. Some days Auntie would actually talk to her. She would not let any clergy see her or anyone pray with or for her.
A few days before Auntie died,My wife felt moved to ask her if she could pray for her. Auntie said “I suppose it would be OK”. My wife thanked Jesus for dying for all the things that separated us from God. She prayed the whole plan of salvation as she had been reading to Auntie in the bible. She prayed for Auntie to just believe in Jesus. If she would just believe. When she was done Auntie said something no one had heard from her lips in a very long time, “Thank you”. Then she went to sleep and My wife went home.
The next day some of Aunties kids said to my wife “What did you do to her?” Alarmed my wife said “I prayed with her, why?”
Auntie spent the last few days of her life smiling, thanking nurses and asking to meet her grandchildren. Hugs happened and Auntie was a different person. Auntie never acknowledged praying with my wife or believing in Jesus but there wasn’t any other evidence to explain the complete change from an angry and bitter old dying women to a sweet little old cancerous women in pain. She actually seemed to be living beyond the pain drugs. She died much happier than she had lived most of her life.
“All I did was do what I felt God was telling me to do” says my wife.
My wife and I thought God had relocated us 300 miles from family, friends and great fishing lakes for a job and better income. Now we are thinking God had far bigger things in mind. It’s very possible that God moved my wife here for Auntie and gave me a job while He was at it.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. Isaiah 55:8-9
Gods Ways are...Different 