I’m trying to decide if I really want to pick some of these Norway Spruce cones, heat them in the oven so they open up and allow me to harvest the seeds. Then I will plant them in starter boxes and transplant them around my place. The female cones have about 200+ seeds per cone. I’m sure there are over 50 cones per tree so you see where this simple undertaking could lead. The cones are 25 feet up the tree but I have an old rickety ladder that might reach one rung at a time. Yearly goals are like this I guess. Do I really want to do this? Is my ladder good enough? Some of my many 2019 questions.
So many seeds, so little time. Maybe enough resources? However, these young (as trees go) 35 foot trees each came from one good seed planted in good soil and grew. Seems worth the risk.
SO… fellow bloggers, speakers and readers: May 2019 be a year where your words are as the cones of the Norway Spruce in my front yard. Housing thousands of precious seeds capable of growing a huge forest. reachable one solid rung at a time as you climb your ladder to the harvest. Whatever your goals may be there is a ladder to climb.
So reach for those cones and take care of those seeds. Plant them in soil you have prepared in us….those you connect with.
To many this would be sacrilege. but to those who have realised they just escaped hell, sacred.
I came a stranger, a visitor and casual observer. I left immersed in wonder.
The place was packed. The air as electric with excitement as a tied championship game in final seconds. Yelling, clapping and (very) loud cheering sounds from young and old alike. God winning. Testimony and story from several teens, twenties and some elderly as they declared hardships and victories before being dunked in an icy water filled cattle tank. Tears and much shaking of heads as memories of who they were “before Christ”. Gods power was evident, powerful, overflowing and permeating. All were participants in this sacred gathering.
Thirty-five quick stories and baptisms before moving on to thirty-two child dedications. The electricity was still there. Clapping, yelling and various carrying on continued as parents gave their kids to God and pleaded with the people to help them raise their kids to Love God. Not a dry eye in the place as a mom gave her child to God. “Before Christ”, Strung out on drugs at life’s bottom she had given away her young child for adoption. Now in her new life in Christ, she was now giving her child to God. A child she may never see again on earth. She desperately wanted to at least see her child in heaven someday.
[Side notes: extremely organized, the youth band was great but their drummer is an alien with six arms I think. How could over 70 events happen with people talking and take only 2 hours? Wow, they didn’t come for the cake afterwards! I still feel compelled to pray once in awhile for the barren mom with purple and pink hair. So this is where my grandkids are being raised…wow]
There was nothing ordinary about this afternoon church service. God wasn’t just “talked about”, God permeated the room and the people with his presence. A sacred excitement. We were there with His Spirit. I could picture Jesus in the eyes of the little kids standing on chairs clapping with glee. The year was 2018. I shall not forget this sacred moment.
Ask God for a sacred moment in your life and church (and by faith carry ear plugs)
Gary
PS: a bit of irony on the backstory. This meeting was held in a nice church building given to this ministry. Seems the church grew old and disbanded from lack of people and funds. This ministry grew out of that church a few years back but was attracting young people that made the church people uncomfortable. Now that ministry is a come-as-you-are church and the old church building given to them is just big enough for the youth ministry. God wins.
6-9 people will sleep in this house each night. The Motorcycle will transport up to 4 people at one time. My world is different from this.
I fell asleep praying and pondering deeply on Psalm 23:3 last night. I awoke praying and pondering the depths of God’s work of restoration when I let him. I think somehow I prayed and pondered in my sleep…is that possible? I’m quite sure His remake is quite different and beyond what I have in mind. Like the picture above we might be asking for a bigger bike when our house needs a rebuild.
A brand new house in Guatemala
On this day of thanksgiving (our american set aside holiday to mostly over-eat), May we say “The Lord is my Shepherd” and allow his remake process to be happening in our lives.
Our team built a new house for a family. Great as it was for them, it’s only a house. Oh the undiscoverable depths God wants to build restoring our soul.
Now that’s something to be thankful for. My personal challenge: Give someone else a reason to be thankful today.
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!
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
This is how to get invited to events, camps, fishing and hunting trips and so on. This picture and pun will reveal all… Bring something to the table
We all have something to offer. We all have our particular ways to be in demand. To serve is a better way of understanding how to be invited. While it may seem to be self serving with this approach it is also a good personal measuring stick of our own character.
I met a couple of young gals (at a men’s retreat) who were invited everywhere. It seems they had bought the equipment from a coffee shop going under and were willing to be portable and serve. They had skills and great coffee. How about: they had skills and 100 kinds of really great coffee! They were also willing to take a stab at making anything requested with an adventurous smile. Side note: They were not single very long.
This morning as I plopped an easy made breakfast and some coffee onto the table I saw how the plate, cup, and book represented me. I cook, make special mugs (and a mean coffee) and speak in public at special events. I get invited. What’s more they invite me back (Remembering that journey will hopefully keep me humble).
What are you willing to bring to the table to serve others?
My day job keeps me very busy as well as home life. My heartbeat is summed up on the coffee mug of this second picture. This side of the mug says it all.
What Jesus brought to the table; The Hebrews 11 Hall of Faith Roll: Mine and Your part?
Gary
Credits: 3 eggs, 1/4 onion, 2 baby bell pepper, Men’s breakfast mug with thrice heated coffee and my bible opened to where I am at in my morning time with God (Hebrews 11). Oh ya, and bacon…don’t ever forget the bacon at a men’s breakfast.
To all you readers and fellow bloggers, Merry Christmas from the frozen lakes areas of northern United States. The sun is a bit inconspicuous through the cab and the trees as it sets over the small lake I was fishing. A safe 7″ of ice with the fold up shelter allowed me to see 9 fish and catch 3.
When I read your blogs from South Africa, UK, South America and so many warmer countries, I often wonder what I am missing that excites you. I only know what you are missing if you have never driven or walked on a frozen lake or peered down a hole in the ice as a monster fish suddenly appears to bite your hook (Or decide not to).
I dropped a camera down the hole to show you just what it looks like down there. I was catching some blue gill that day. Check out this utube video
Have a Merry Christmas fellow readers and bloggers. may you keep connected. May you also become more connected to the God who created all that we know and love.
For me, Christmas is a time where I reflect on how our creator exchanged His eternal Glory for a different kind of glory never seen before. A glory He wants to pass on to us through God in a finite human body as a baby. Inconspicuously inserting himself into his own creation to make a way to restore our relationship to Him. “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. ” Luke 2:14. take some time to mull over what the angels proclaimed to some obscure shepherds who would worship God in the form of a baby born in a barn. Glory to God both in heaven and now on earth
May you make room for Jesus in your everyday life this next year.
We have a christmas tree wall for some of our Christmas Cards
Merry christmas All from the Frozen state of Wisconsin, USA. It’s -8 F actual temperature and diving. Wind chill close to -30 F.
Gods Ways are...Different 