One Year with God

DAY 174: Have you ever noticed how many nonsensical circumstances exist in our world?   Day in and day out we live with these conundrums and rarely stop to ponder their deep irony. On one level they make no sense, yet to most of us they are intrinsically understood. That may actually be the greatest irony.   Consider these: -Why does sour cream have an expiration date? Doesn’t “sour” say it all? -Why are they called buildings , when they're already finished? Shouldn't they be called “ builts ”? -Why is the time of day with the slowest traffic called rush hour? -Why are there 5 syllables in the word "monosyllabic"? -When it rains why don’t sheep shrink? My wool sweater did. -Whose idea was it to put an "S" in the word "LISP"? -If money doesn't grow on trees then why do banks have branches? -Why do you have to "put your two cents in"... but it's only a penny for your thoughts"?  -How come we ...

DAY 173: “We can do it the easy way, or we can do it the hard way.” I remember hearing that declaration from my mother’s lips more than once when I was growing up.   The easy way meant I would simply do what I was told to do when I was told to do it – and all would be well.   The hard way meant, I would pitch a fit, have a tantrum, scream, whine, or otherwise delay the inevitable, but eventually Mom would have her way because, well, she was mom.   All these years later, I easily concede that her way was really the best way.     Why is it that only in hindsight does that kind of clarity come to us?   All grown up now, it isn’t my mom’s will I sometimes fight against, but my Father’s.   For all the moaning we do about “what is God’s will for my life” the truth is that most of His will is quite clear.   Love your neighbor. Forgive. Don’t complain. Share. The list of things that could occupy us “doing our Father’s will” goes on and on.   Th...

DAY 172: Are you ready to pick up our “list of lessons” we began yesterday as we watched young King Hezekiah face his first big trial?   If you recall, up to this point, the good King had made it his practice to “do what was right in the sight of the Lord.”   Like everyone, he had the choice to be unfaithful, to go his own way, and to seek after his own desires.   But instead, Hezekiah chose a life of faithfulness as a servant of the Living God.   He knew the Word and Law of God and it was his pleasure to not only worship, follow and obey God, but as the leader, to also encourage faithfulness among the people.   Yet, for all his good choices, trials and difficulties came his way.   Rather than throwing up his hands and deciding “being good” just wasn’t worth it if he was still going to face troubles, Hezekiah   doubled-down on his faithfulness.   In that, there are lessons for us.   The most obvious is that life as one of God’s ...

DAY 171: I don’t always do the right thing. No surprise that “the wrong thing” has often brought me consequences that are unpleasant; the punishment fits the crime, as they say.   Suffering consequences works wonders for my motivation to walk the straight and narrow path – that is until I discovered that keeping to the more noble route is not a guarantee that we will be kept from unpleasantness.   Anyone who has lived long on this earth has discovered that rain falls on both the good and the evil. (Matthew 5:45) So what is our motivation then for keeping to the righteous path?   For me, I have found that what I have learned on that "righteous path" of making choices to be faithful to God in words and deeds have been the very things that have prepared me to weather the storm when the the rain does fall. Instead of an example from my life, let’s look at good King Hezekiah.   When last we saw him, he was “dong what was right in the sight of the Lord.” ...

DAY 170: I grew up on the saying, “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.”   This was often applied to us as children when in spite of all our parents noble attempts to get us to do what was right, we resisted. There is nothing shocking in that revelation I am sure.   What kid hasn’t defied the wiser counsel and even instruction of a parent simply because he or she could?   I was certainly on that list.   You would think, having been the stalwart and stubborn horse (and that is putting it kindly) I would have understood this reality when I myself became a parent.   But nay, time and time again I forged ahead to the stream dragging my own little nags behind me only to discover that they would not partake of the sweet and healthy “water” I had to offer.   But did that stop me from trying?   Not as of yesterday.   Even now as a parent of adult children, I find myself dumbfounded when my very wise advice is spurned...