Sometimes you just don’t have time.

I certainly am not knowledgeable about all the Jewish traditions during this month. If I had been born into a Jewish family I would have been taught from a young child to understand exactly what all the practices mean. I’m an adopted child of God; and so very thankful for my gift of salvation. But I’m privileged to read about the significance of the Passover documented in the Bible in Exodus 12.

As I was enjoying my time this morning beginning my prayers with the instruction when we come to pray, is to first pray for all those in authority (1 Timothy 2: 1-3) and (Psalm 122:6 ) Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee.

My mind began to drift, as it often does, which I hate, so when the picture of how the Israelites were supposed to eat the Passover meal was described in detail along with how the meal was to be prepared I began to think about these things.

I love to cook. I’m a novice bread maker. I’ve tried my hand at making yeast bread several times. I could eat yeast bread every day, all day if possible. I recently went on Keto and if you know anything about Keto—bread is a no-no unless you use different flour. (I digress.)

See how my mind drifts? My point is, I wondered why they were instructed not to use any yeast. Again, please anyone reading this who has a much better handle on the tradition, forgive my lack of knowledge.

What came to my mind as to why the lack of yeast was stated was that it takes time for bread to rise when it has yeast in it. Usually, an hour or so and then a second rise time. Everything in the 12th chapter of Exodus lends itself to being prepared for a quick exit.

My mind also drifted over to the latest news about the Baltimore Bridge accident and the loss of lives. I kept trying to bring my mind back to some sort of order of thought but in some way, it all began to come together.

As I prayed for the individuals lost in this accident, probably like most of us I couldn’t help but think that these men had absolutely no idea that anything of this magnitude would happen to them as they headed to their jobs. Then I thought about the time it takes for yeast to rise or other things that sometimes take the time that we don’t have.

The Israelites didn’t have time for bread to rise. They needed bread that could also be carried without spoilage I assume. I don’t know of any person who hasn’t at some time in their life needed more time. It’s said that time is one of the things we’ll never have enough of or ever get back.

As I have gotten older that has become more evident to me every day. I spent a lot of my time on things that didn’t really matter. Time, that now I wish I had back. One thing that time hopefully gives each of us is wisdom. Sometimes it’s too little too late. And sadly we do finally wise up but have run out of time. No one knows exactly when that time will be. As we see, we can be going about the most common everyday activity and have no idea that time is about to run out.

When I sat and gathered all the threads of my thoughts today I paused to take the time to be thankful for everything in my life. I always try to do this because when I compare my life to that of others; I have nothing to be unthankful about. I am a blessed person.

When I went through a health problem over a year ago and the pace of my life came to a halt by the interruption, I remember saying to myself and others, that when this time of my life was over I would appreciate the return to even the smallest routine of my day and take nothing for granted. I saw other people who were walking the same path as I was who had different outcomes. Sitting in a waiting room you hear conversations of all types. The ones that were hardest to listen to were people complaining about such insignificant things when there were people who would have given anything to have their everyday routine back.

This post might have felt all over the place, so I’ll try to tie it together with the pictures in my mind. I saw the Israelites, clothed, and packed, standing as they had been instructed in preparation for the journey ahead of them. Laying aside anything that would take more time than they had to prepare. I saw images of people who have had to recently flee their homes, usually with nothing but clothes on their backs because of weather or other sudden events in my area. I looked at my own life and took stock of what could be considered—yeast.

I’m prepared to grab a suitcase that contains all my important papers, a set of clothing, extra medications, a cherished Bible, and money if the fire alarm goes off in my senior apartment building. But the most important event that I am prepared for is when my time runs out; I’ve already made that preparation, and there will be nothing I have to grab.

One final thought; never ignore the urgencies in life. Those thoughts that interrupt your day that later on you wish that you hadn’t ignored.

I hope that you will take some of the time you have right now to read Matthew chapter 24 very thoughtfully. Maybe it's things that you already know and will be blessed by the reminder or maybe it will be the first time you have taken the time to do so.

I pray that what you have read here will cause you to “drift” off from your thoughts to something you didn’t expect to think about today that will change your life.

I bless you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When everything looks hopeless.

When I decided on this title I thought of how many other things I have read over the years with this same first line. Hundreds, probably thousands. Because I was attracted to anything that might lead me to an answer for my own hopelessness.

I read these articles like a starving person. Would this be the one that finally caused me to believe in life again? Would I find that keyword or phrase or five or ten-step plan to follow to lift my life out of the daily despair I fought with all my might?

Sometimes it worked for a little while but then it was like trying to walk in someone else’s shoes. I had two problems, the hopelessness I started with, and now I failed yet again to be able to do what the author had obviously been able to accomplish in their life. So much so that they felt led to write about it for others to read.

So I have to ask myself, do I have anything different to offer someone who might stumble upon this page who went searching as I did for a solution that would lift them permanently out of the pit of hopelessness?

I don’t know if what I’ll write here under that popular title will be what you came looking for. That’s my most honest answer. I never did find a solution. Believe me when I say that I earnestly searched for one. It would have been so much easier if someone could have just handed me a set of steps to take. I’d have done it in a heartbeat.

I remember reading some of those articles with tears running down my face. I repeated aloud many times, “How! How do these people do this?!”  I thought I had carefully noted every bit of advice they gave and rose up just knowing that this time I was going to be victorious—until the next time.

If my title led you here, as it often did me in search of that—fix—I’m so sorry if my title has given you false hope. But I can offer you something else. It might not be the answer you are looking for. It wasn’t for me either when God led me to befriend a woman who wanted me to do her hair as my last customer on a Friday night.

I almost said, no. It meant having to wait for her to arrive around 5:30 and then not finishing up my day until probably 7 o'clock or so. I had a young son that needed to be picked up by 5 o'clock or I would be charged more. So my thoughts were, would what I made by staying to do this woman’s hair offset the extra babysitting cost? If not, then why do it?

At that time I had no idea what made me say yes, come on, I’ll wait on you. Today, I know exactly not what but Who moved me to agree to stay late.

That night a friendship began and after watching her life for about a year, I found the answer to my hopelessness. And because I try very hard to be honest with any reader, I’ll tell you what she said to me when I asked her why she was so  happy all the time. She proceeded to say, “Because I have a hotline to heaven.”

My very first thought was, and again I make no apology for my honesty because you might have the same thought after you read my response. I said, “Oh, please don’t tell me that it’s religion.”

She said, “No, not religion.”

I said, “Then, what? What are you talking about?”

She said, “I have, Jesus.”

I wish you could have heard the groan that came out of me when I heard her final response. I went home that night to have my own debate. I did this because at that time I had no idea about the Trinity of God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit. All I knew was there was a God somewhere. I did give myself credit for not being totally ignorant.

With respect to your time and length of this posting, I’ll try to be brief. I spent the next week going back to her over and over again, sometimes in a heated confrontation, demanding she tell me something different as to why she was so happy all the time and I was a miserable mess. Her, Jesus, was all she kept offering me. She gave me a brief description of what I needed to do to be saved and that ended our conversation.

I wrestled with this for several days until one night I sat upright in my bed and yelled out, “Ok! Ok! God, if you are real and you are the one who has been bringing all this to a head, I can’t take it anymore!”

I had been under such conviction that even to this day I have never forgotten what I felt like that night. I had absolutely no idea exactly who God was, what He was about to do, or even if what I said would be the right words. The first thing that came out of my mouth was, “God, if I give you my life I have two requests. I have to know that the buck stops with you; that no one will ever be able to change your mind about me. That I can trust you and that you will never leave me.”

I didn’t really know that night just how Biblical my first prayer was. My heart was crying out for someone I could trust who would always have the final say about me and that they would never leave me or as I later learned—never forsake me. Even right now, my heart swells remembering how utterly forsaken I felt that night. I voiced my confession of needing Jesus to forgive me and accepted his death in my place. 

I don’t want to put words in your mouth, dear reader. And I don’t want to give you false hope. If all I can offer you is some process I took, then that isn’t going to help you. So I’ll give you what did help me.

The surrendering of my life to a God I couldn’t see, didn’t even know at the time if He was listening or would do what my friend said that He did for her. But, seconds after I uttered my first prayer to God, my eyes were opened. I understood for myself at that moment what my friend had been telling me was true.

Something wonderfully, explicitly, and unexplainable happened that night. It was as if my whole life lifted off me and I was born all over again. Yes, the term born again is actually what happens.

In closing, I went to my friend’s house the next night and asked her, “What does it feel like to become a Christian? I’m not sure, but I think I became a Christian last night.” Needless to say, tears filled her eyes, and she welcomed me into the family.

Well, dear reader, here it is almost Easter again. The world will display its bright baskets, chocolate rabbits, and colored eggs, and the Bunny will take center stage. We see it every year. You can accept this as the reason for Easter, load up on all the leftover candy sales, and go another year still hunting for the solution to your feeling of hopelessness—or maybe stop and ask the same questions I did.

If one word you read here has set something off in you that will make you so uncomfortable until you face the fact that it is God knocking on your heart asking to come in, then I have done my job.

Dear, dear, reader, I pray that you don’t go another second in your hopelessness. So I’ll offer you the only solution that I know. The same one that has been offered to the world since the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Perhaps at some other time in your life, you have heard these verses, and I’ll remind you of them again.

John 3: 16-18 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. 18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

This is Easter.

This is the answer; When everything looks hopeless.

I bless you.

 

 

 

 

Who would do such a thing to a child?

Matthew 19: 14 But Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and don’t prevent them. For of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Once there was a man who always wanted a racehorse. One day, quite out of chance he was given one. But it didn’t look like the one he had wanted. He was now forced to feed and take care of this less-than-desirable horse. For some reason, the horse loved the man. So it trotted around trying to get the man’s attention. Day after day this horse, tried to run as fast as it could to please the man.

Once in a while, the man stood at the fence watching the horse run with all its heart, but when the horse came over to where the man stood, the man criticized the horse. You need to bend your knees higher. You're not stretching your legs out far enough. Over and over the man only told the horse what it wasn’t doing right. No matter how much the horse tried, it was never enough. Years went by and after a while, the horse finally lost all desire to please the man and ran away; never to see the man again.

But the man had damaged the horse's ability to believe in himself so much that all through the rest of the horse's life he felt that any time he tried to run fast, he’d fail.

One day, as the horse was plodding along in life, another man saw him and stopped to look at the horse. This man knew that the horse was meant to be a racehorse. So this man bought the horse and took it home to care for it.

Every day, he encouraged the horse to do his best. He gave the horse short distances to run at first until the horse could begin to see that it still could run. Finally, the horse began to run longer and faster. The horse made enough progress to once again see himself as a beautiful racehorse. But there was still something in the horse that it never could quite get over; being made to feel like a failure by the first man.

The thing that’s hard to understand is this, why would this man do everything he could to discourage his own racehorse? You’d think that he would have done the opposite. But no, instead of encouraging the horse, praising the horse’s efforts, and showing the horse that he was loved regardless if he ran fast; the man heaped discouragement upon his horse.

This story isn’t about a horse; it's about children.

Why for the love of God would any parent constantly criticize everything their child does? To what advantage does that help? If anything, it destroys any hope that child has. And the worst yet is that child lives their life feeling that no matter what they do it will never be enough. It’s an uphill climb for any person who has been made to feel that everything they do isn’t good enough but it’s especially damaging for a child.

I believe that children come into this world with childlike hope. Most parents clap and cheer when their child takes its first steps as though their child just invented walking.

It’s supposed to be natural for parents to cheer on the accomplishments of their children. Especially, a child who isn’t as bright, strong, or as talented as other children. But to purposely break the spirit in a child who is trying their best is cruel.

I know that there are no perfect parents. I dare to say that even the best of parents would admit to not doing everything right.

I always had to ask myself how different I would have been had I had a nurturing encouraging father instead of like the first man in this story.

But I was bought by another Man; Jesus Christ. And HE loved me back to wholeness. I’m not that damaged child who tried her best every day to please an earthly father who said over and over, “What you do isn’t good enough.”

So maybe you’ve read this far wondering why I’d be writing this. Yes, I thank my Heavenly Father for all the love and changes he has made in me. So many times he has reminded me that He knit me in my mother’s womb and saw me before any eyes saw me. He also knew who my father would be and how he would damage my life.

These are some of the questions I’ve asked God and still don’t know the answers. But I do know this, no matter where God sends us into this world, or how he sends us, He never loses sight of us. He has his reasons.

I quit trying to spend my life trying to understand why I was given to such a destructive father. Instead, I realized that I was doing the same thing to God that my father did to me. Was I telling God that HE wasn’t enough? That He couldn’t fix the damage in me? That no matter what Jesus did on Calvary I would never be emotionally healed?

Dear reader, if you are still reading and there has been something going off inside of you that you feel that you will never be able to overcome; let me encourage you that you can.

It might not happen overnight. You might have days when it will take everything inside of you to fight that voice in your head or the pain in your heart. But when we have the Holy Spirit living within us that was sent to comfort, encourage, teach, and abide with us forever, hope can and will be restored.

The Word says that children are a gift from God. Not every person who becomes a parent sees it that way. I pray that you or someone you know isn’t doing everything they can to destroy a child’s hope.

The Word also says in Matthew 18:6 But if any of you causes one of these little ones who trusts in me to lose his faith, (hope) it would be better for you to have a rock tied to your neck and be thrown into the sea.

I’m an adult but I’m still one of God’s little ones.

I pray that if you don’t know the Lord you will ask for forgiveness, believe in the Name of Jesus, and ask Him into your life today. Your life will begin to change in ways that you could never imagine and if you have little ones depending on you to shape their lives you should thank God for entrusting them to you and lean on God to show you have to show them how to see the racehorse in themselves.

May God forgive anyone harming their own child today or anyone’s child.

I bless you.