We’re Having Triplets!!!

By Cheri Cowell -

We have triplets!!! My husband and I are proud parents of three baby mockingbirds. I’m sure that sometime in your life you have experienced the joy of watching the maternal care of one of God’s creatures. There is no training camp, no apprentice program, and no how-to baby book for these moms, yet they seem to know what to do.

I have heard many mothers say that something happened to them when their baby was placed in their arms for the first time. They didn’t have all of the answers, and especially the first time moms were afraid they would do something wrong. Yet, they instinctively knew their main role: to love and care for that child with a depth of love that can only be described as unconditional.

In the book of I John, John was an older man when he wrote boldly of begetting and birth in the passage listed below. He tells of the intimate relationship between Christ, God the Father, and the Christian. He explains that the “seed” of God’s nature is placed within each believer allowing that seed to be nurtured until it becomes a mature tree in the likeness of God. Verse 1 tells us who we are- God’s child, verse 2 tells us we are becoming reflections of God; verses 16-18 shows us how we are to respond to the gift of God’s love. Love is an action, not a feeling, and He wants us to learn from God’s love how to sacrificially love others.

PRAYER: Thank You for being my Heavenly Father, for showing me Your great love on a daily basis through the gifts of my relationships. I Praise You for placing the seed within me that allows me to become more like You every day. Help me learn from Your example how to love more sacrificially and more unconditionally today and every day.

“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure. This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth” (1 John 3:1-3, 16-18 NIV).

Third-Hand Ham

By Cynthia Ruchti -

Sometimes love looks a lot like ham.

It did the day someone gave us a third-hand ham. Oh, it was new, fresh, still in its original packaging, but it had traveled through two other homes before it came to rest at ours.

Its first owner won the ham in a raffle. He doesn’t eat ham. So he gave it to a friend. But the friend insisted the ham was outrageously too big for his small family. So he gave it to us. For us, it was an answer to prayer for something nice to serve at a big family gathering. Spiral ham, no less.
Now that I think about it, the ham was a fourth-hand ham, if you count the people who donated it for the raffle.

Rather than viewing it as the dreaded “regifting,” we saw the journey that ham took as a journey of love.

It made me stop to think about a subject that the Lord often uses to reveal more of His genuine heart toward His people. Toward me.

I’ve marveled before at the feeding of the 5,000 where Jesus took five small loaves of bread and two small fish and turned it into a feast for the multitude…with twelve basketsful left over! But fourth-hand ham stirred me to consider what might have happened with those leftovers.

Did the disciples throw the leftovers away? It doesn’t fit the picture of how God operates. Did Jesus instruct His disciples to take those baskets out into the villages and find homeless or hungry people who would receive the scraps with gratitude? That seems more likely. Once Jesus touched anything, it wasn’t worthless. His leftovers, His glances, the dust-caked hem of His robe brought people in contact with His mighty, healing power.

Someday I may meet a new friend in heaven who starts her story with, “I wasn’t there that day, for the feeding of the 5,000. But my family was the recipient of one of the baskets of leftovers. I’ve never tasted anything so delicious. It fed us for a long time and not only kept us from starvation, but it showed us that God cared about us, even us.”

What do I have—in its original packaging, fresh, valuable—that might need to pass through a few hands until it gets to the hungry person God had in mind from the beginning?

PRAYER: Father God, thank You for all the times You’ve laid a ham at our doorstep, a bag of groceries, a gift card. Please make me more sensitive to those around me who not only need the food, but the reminder that You care.

BIBLE VERSE: “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you” (Luke 6:38, NIV).

Unswerving Hope

By Rosemary Flaaten -

The rain pelted against my windshield with such force that the wipers could not keep it clear. The overwhelming volume of rain pooling on the roadway created a slick covering. As I crept along, hands tensely gripping the steering wheel, I feared that at any moment my car, with its bald tires, would be caught by a gust of wind and skid across the sea of water. Suddenly from behind, a large pick-up truck approached and passed with confidence and precision. This heavy bodied vehicle enabled the driver to manoeuvre the treacherous highways without fear of swerving or hydroplaning.

There is a phrase in scripture that reminds me of my stormy driving experience. Numerous times when we are admonished to hope, the adverb unswervingly is added. Hope by definition is having a desire for something and a reasonable confidence that it is going to happen. As Christians we say that our hope and confidence is in God. But, is it really?

When the torrents of life strike – teenage children go astray, a scary diagnosis is received, a spouse betrays, a parent dies, a friend ridicules, loneliness looms dark – does our hope hydroplane? Battered by the wind and rain, do we skid from one side of the road to another, perhaps even ending up in a wreck? Or, do we have an unswerving hope in God?

I surmise that my fellow driver in the large pick-up truck, who cut through the storm without fear, knew the capacity of his vehicle and was accustomed to driving in the present formidable circumstances. This leads me to ponder how well I know God? Have I studied His character and trustworthiness? Have I prepared for the storms of life by going deep into God’s word and fostering an intimate relationship with Him? Can I recount the storms I have weathered with Him remembering that He has proven faithful?

When our hope is placed in God’s faithful presence in our life, then we will have the confidence to go through any storm knowing that God is carrying us in the palm of His hand and nothing will overcome us. God is trustworthy. He will make our paths straight. God alone is our Rock.

QUOTE: “Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible, achieves the impossible.” Anonymous

BIBLE VERSE: “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for He who promised is faithful.” (Hebrews 10:23 NIV)

Naptown, is That Very Far Away?

By Jarrod Spencer –

It is not uncommon for our family to run to “America’s Drive-In” a few times a week. Sometimes we will eat lunch there, while other times we will go through there to pick up a drink for my wife. Either of these times will be at the end of the typical lunch hour.

Following lunch, our children will take a nap. At least that is the ideal situation. Our two kids may go down for a nap at the same time, but may not end up sleeping at the same time, unfortunately. This lack of symmetric schedules often affects my wife much more than me.

One such day as we had been out running errands around town, we had gone by the drive in before we went home. It was later in the afternoon, and our kids were showing signs of fatigue, which meant that a nap was just a few minutes away.

After we left the drive-in, we came to an intersection. Our son asks us where we are going to go next. My reply was “Naptown, do you want to go?”

My son then responded, “Is that very far away?”

His mom, after her initial snicker at his remark, said “‘NAP-TOWN’ means you’re going to take a nap, it’s not a place.” My son is not usually a gullible person but this caught him off guard.

It reminds me of the times when I am trying to think my life’s plans instead of leaving them up to God. I want one outcome and God has another planned for my life.

PRAYER: Father, may I learn to enjoy or at least appreciate the interruptions You place in my life.

BIBLE VERSE: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. As the heavens are higher than the earth, s are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 44:8-9).

Even Toed Ungulate Mammal

By Elaine James -

While my family and I drove an hour from our house to a popular farm, we made a pact to purchase fresh cider, donuts and produce, and then leave. Our motto is “Get in, get out.” We got out of there so fast we still had sugar on our faces from the donuts!

The next day my daughter approached me with the question “How do you hide an even-toed ungulate mammal, more commonly known as a giraffe?”

I looked puzzled at my daughter, who has a lifelong dream of one day being able to pet a giraffe, and I asked “What?”

She burst into tears and stated “The farm we went to had giraffes back in the field that the public could go and pet!”

I was speechless, yet mustered up the courage to declare, “There is no way we missed that.”
She rebutted quickly, “Ya way, we did!”

That night in bed I pondered “how did we miss out on the chance of seeing those giraffes?” They weren’t hiding, but we were not looking. We had missed the signs that the giraffes were there. I failed to mention that right as we were checking out, there was a section in the gift shop dedicated to all sorts of merchandise with giraffes on it. We bought a sweatshirt. Did one of us slow down and question why were they selling giraffe merchandise?

Jesus is just like those giraffes. He is out in the open and available for us all. Do you slow down and see Him? Do you look at the signs?

“When Jesus saw His ministry drawing huge crowds, He climbed a hillside. Those who were apprenticed to Him, the committed, climbed with Him. Arriving at a quiet place, He sat down and taught His climbing companions.” Matthew 5:1-2 (MSG) Jesus often directed the people to sit down in a quiet place. Do you sit down in a quiet place to learn? If not, this is a New Year, make it a priority.

Just as the even-toed ungulate mammal is believed to be spotted easily, so is our Lord Jesus Christ. Both, when spotted, are a blessing!

PRAYER: Jesus, help me to see You. Forgive me for I am having trouble sitting down and being quiet.

BIBLE VERSE: “And He directed the people to sit down on the grass.” (Matthew 14:19a NIV)

Next Page »