The Path We Are On Now - Looking Back

Lord, I feel myself getting tired and growing discouraged.

I am weary of  trying to work things out. I am tired of toilet paper jokes. I am tired of wearing a mask. I am tired of distance markers in my usual stores.  I am tired of wondering if I can approach and greet my friends.

I miss church.

But I remember You never grow weary or impatient.
You never give up.

Your love is never-ending  and without limit.

It always covers me, no matter where I am or what I am doing or what I am feeling. And it fills me with joy.

I praise You because I can count on that and I know that this path we are on has a purpose.

It is taking us somewhere. Somewhere You want us to be.
And this path is exactly where You want us to be right now.

And so I am content.  Just work Your will in us.

Our Father, You and pleasing You are all that matter to us!!!

Charles Spurgeon - The Winter in My Soul - Even in June

You have made summer and winter.

Psalm 74:17

My soul, begin this wintry month with God.

The cold snows and the piercing winds all remind you that He keeps His covenant with day and night and serve to assure you that He will also keep that glorious covenant that He has made with you in the person of Christ Jesus.

He who is true to His Word  in the revolutions of the seasons of this poor sin-polluted world will not prove unfaithful in His dealings with His own well-beloved Son.

Winter in the soul is be no means a comfortable season, and if it is upon you just now, it will be very painful to you: but there is this comfort, namely, that the Lord makes it.

He sends the sharp blast of adversity to nip the buds of expectation. He scatters the frozen dew like ashes over the once fresh green meadows of our joy.

He dispenses His icy morsels, freezing the streams of our delight.

He does it all; He is the great Winter King and rules in the realms of frost, and therefore you cannot murmur.

Losses, crosses, heaviness, sickness, poverty, and a thousand other ills are of the Lord's sending and come to us with wise design.

Frosts kill harmful insects and restrain raging diseases; they break up the clods and sweeten the soul.

O that such results would always follow our winters of affliction!

How we prize the fire just now!  How pleasant is its cheerful glow!

Let us in the same manner prize our Lord, who is the constant source of warmth and comfort in every time of trouble.

Let us draw near to Him, and in Him find joy and peace in believing.

Let us wrap ourselves in the warm garments of His promises, and keep working, unlike the lazy man who refuses to plow because it is too cold; in the summer he will have nothing and will be forced to beg for breed.


---- From Morning and Evening, by Charles Spurgeon

We Reap What We Sow

Meantime I seek no sympathies, nor need;
The thorns which I have reaped are of the tree
I planted -- they have torn me, -- and I bleed.
I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed.

-- From Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, by Lord Byron


And from the New Testament....

Don't be misled: No one makes a fool of God. What a person
plants, he will harvest. The person who plants selfishness, ignoring the needs of others --ignoring God! -- harvests a  crop of weeds. All he'll have a show for his life is weeds! But the one who plants in response to God, letting God's Spirit do the growth work in him, harvests a crop of real, eternal life.
Galatians 6:7 (MSG)

Whose Work is More Spiritual? C S Lewis

                                           

                                                Whose Work Is More Spiritual?

Is your work more spiritual than mine? Is a musician's performance more pleasing to God than a ditch digger's labor?

Thoughts from C S Lewis:

"I reject at once an idea which lingers in the mind of some modern people that cultural activities are in their own right more spiritual -- as though scholars and poets were intrinsically more pleasing to God than scaverners and bootblacks...this is a dangerous and anti-Christian error. Let us clear it forever from our minds.

The work of a Beethoven and the work of a charwoman become spiritual in precisely the same condition: that of being offered to God, as being done humbly 'as to the Lord.'

This does not mean, of course, that it is a mere toss-up whether he should sweep floors or compose symphonies.

A mole must dig to the honor of God and a cock must crow. We are members of one body, but differentiated members, each with his own vocation."

     "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men...It is the Lord Christ you are serving."   (Colossians 3:23)

It Will Not Always Be Night

                                  

                                    It Will Not Always Be Night

"At the Last Supper, as recorded in John 13, we read, 'As soon as Judas had taken the bread, he went out. And it was night.'

History's greatest injustice was underway, yet Jesus declared, 'Now the Son of Man is glorified and God is glorified in Him.'

In a few hours, the disciples would experience panic, defeat, and rejection.

 But Jesus saw God's plan unfolding as it should.

When it seems darkness is winning, we can recall that God faced His dark night and defeated it. He walks with us.

It won't always be night."

                              -- Tim Gustafson

Jesus saw God's plan unfolding as it should. No, friends, it will not always be night!