Hearts in Service

My heart is full this morning and I'm so thankful for many things. Multitude Monday on the blog is a day in which I list those things. This weekly exercise has turned Monday from being mundane or miserable into one that I look forward to each week. I'm thankful for the opportunity to share these blessings here and encourage you to begin to look at how God is at work in your life. Today starts our last week of vacation this summer and so it will be another week of hiking and local day trips. But it's also going to be a week where I do have to work on a talk that I'm going to be giving so it won't be all play. Fall is right around the corner and I'm looking forward to the new season. This week I'm thankful for blessings #3,916 - 3,925. 3916. We got an email from Emily's college saying they reduced her fall bill by $2,400 which is a huge praise for us! 3917. A really good board meeting at church the other night. I can't always say that so I'm thankf...

1 Corinthians 2:1-5 ~ When I came to you, brothers, announcing the testimony of God to you, I did not come with brilliance of speech or wisdom.  I decided to know nothing among you except  Jesus Christ and Him crucified.  I came to you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling.  My speech and my proclamation were not with persuasive words of wisdom but with a powerful demonstration by the Spirit,  so that your faith might not be based on men’s wisdom but on God’s power. This morning as I was reading during my quiet time I felt the Holy Spirit give me a poke. I've read these verses a hundred times, but this time it hit home. Those two little words in verse two, I decided , jumped out at me. Paul was a brilliant man. He was skilled in the Jewish law. He was a Jew who was also a Roman citizen. He was your typical Type A, successful and driven man. And yet, he deliberately chose to not come to the Corinthian church and show off how m...

We are so prone to discontent. We look at other people's lives and think, "If only..." The problem with that is that it just continues to feed our discontented souls. And the problem with social media is that people can crop out the bad parts of their pictures and make everything look perfect. You can begin to believe everyone else has it altogether which causes us to want to crop out the bad parts of our lives.  What if we were to take our eyes off of others and start looking around at what we have. What if instead of thinking, "If only...," we thought, "Thank you, Lord" Thank you for this moment right now in front of me. Thank you for how you are working. Thank you for what you've given me. Thank you for this hard moment because that is what is keeping me clinging to you and that is how you will work in my life. Thank you for this grace. I believe we would find ourselves less discontented and more joyful. Because there is joy in the small things....

I woke up this morning and realized that it's August 22nd. I haven't really been paying attention to the calendar, but all of the sudden summer is at an end. I can tell that autumn is just around the corner because even though the days are still warm, the temperatures cool down at night. Leaves are starting to change colors and trees are beginning to drop their foliage.  When I'm not working on ministry items, the days have been taken up with canning, baking, sewing, and cooking. My daughter left to finish her senior year of college yesterday and her leaving left a hole. It's been so nice having her home for the summer. I've been busy restocking - restocking some of my book titles that sold out this summer. Restocking craft items that sold out as well. I'm thankful that my sewing business has seemed to have taken off here.  Our farmer's market here goes through Columbus Day weekend and I'm going to try and stick it out through then. It's been a nice ...

  I've been in full-time ministry for the past 30 years and 18 of those years have been church ministry. One thing I've discovered in church ministry is that we are program-driven.  Churches love to have lots of different things going on for our families and success is measured by how many programs are happening and how many people attend those programs. There is Sunday School, children's church, outreach events, Bible studies and on and on.  Then Covid-19 hit and things came to a screeching halt. No more programs, no more activity, no unending busyness. And I'm not sure that's a bad thing. The more I reflect and pray about things, the more I'm convinced that the church has got it all wrong. We've replaced devotion with duty, adoration with activity, worship with a wealth of programming. And it has produced a bunch of burned-out Christians who don't want to do anything. Perhaps what God desires is for families to come together to worship Him. To grow in ...

  I've been making these lists of blessings for the past eleven years and I'm thankful I started doing that so many years ago. The reason is that I find that often I wake up and I'm not particularly thankful. I'm not feeling joyful. I'm discouraged and depressed. And yet, when I start to actually type them out, something shifts within me and my attitude changes. When I see, in writing, all the things God has done for me over the previous week, I change. My circumstances remain the same, by my attitude towards them is different. And that is blessing all by itself! This week I'm thankful for blessings #3,887 - 3,900. 3887.  This past week was our second week of staycation and it actually felt like a vacation this time. We went out on an adventure each day and it was a relaxing and fun week. I'm thankful for that. 3888. I'm thankful that I'm able to actually move again. There many times during the five years of injury when I felt so discouraged. 3890. I...

  In the second book of Kings, chapter 6, we read of a story about the King of Aram and the King of Israel. These two nations were at war with each other and each time the King of Aram attempted to ambush Israel he was thwarted. Somehow the King of Israel would learn of his plans and escape. So the King of Aram accuses his servants of being spies. However, they assure the king that the prophet in Israel, Elisha, is the one spilling the beans to the King of Israel. God is allowing Elisha to know ahead of time of the attempts to attack Israel. So the King of Aram attempts a stealthy night attack to capture Elisha. When Elisha's servant wakes up the next day he sees the city surrounded by chariots, soldiers and horses and he is panicked! Elisha tells him not to be afraid and then prays that the Lord would open his eyes so he would see what Elisha sees. And there on the hillside is a vast army from the Lord with chariots of fire. God's heavenly host is ready to do battle to protec...

Most of my days are spent checking items off my to-do list. I'm  finishing projects, getting ready for the market, preparing for the next meeting or the next event. I'm fairly task-oriented so if I'm not "doing" something I feel a bit lost. And that's fine because I'm wired that way and it's how I operate best. However, I'm also learning to take a day or a moment here or there and just stop and take in the scenery around me.  To stop and stare and take a photo of that memory. Because when I really take the time to look I appreciate the beauty that is all around me. The beauty in a different kind of busy. Beauty in beating wings. Beauty in delicate petals. Beauty in ripening fruit. Beauty in the labor of another which provides food for his family as well as others. Beauty of pollination. Beauty in a field, standing at attention. Beauty in someone who understands sanctuary Take a moment, stop and stare, soak in the beauty around you. Leisure by W. H....

  A friend came for tea the other night. As I put together the tray to carry onto the back patio where we would be visiting, I felt thankful that in the middle of these strange times we live that we were able to find a way to connect with one another. We had a great visit outside in the fresh air and it felt good to be able to chat and spend an extended time together. I love summer and the slower pace. Out of town friends stopped by for a visit last night and we went out to dinner with them. Today we start another week of vacation and I'm looking forward to some new adventures even though we are staying at home.  It feels like the summer is coming to an end faster than I want. Emily goes back to school on the 21st and I will really miss having her here. It's been enjoyable. Fall will be here before we know it.  In the meantime I'm going to enjoy every moment I can. This week I'm thankful for blessings #3,879 - 3,886. 3879. Unexpected encouragement in the mail; a card fr...

I rounded the corner on my walk this morning and the sight was spectacular. Sunbeams made their way through the trees and lit up the pavement with a light that was breath-taking. If I hadn't been paying attention I would have missed it. So often we speed through our days totally unaware of God's presence around us. We have our heads buried in our screens or our to-do lists and we miss so much. We don't slow our brains down long enough to hear His voice. We don't create sanctuary for His presence to come in. We are distracted, busy, and stressed. And we erroneously believe that we have to carve out large chunks of time away in order to experience peace and God's presence.  And yet, I have found it's the small little moments in a day that add up. It's taking time each day to spend it in God's word and prayer. It's when I allow some margin in my life and then keep my eyes open that moments like the one this morning happen. I almost didn't walk this ...