Corona Devotionals

Have you ever felt trapped?  In such a heavy mood, predicament or situation that you could feel  yourself sinking.  Slipping away from reality, your loved ones, your life.  The weight of your cares so burdensome that nothing else seems in focus.  It's a terrible and dangerous state to be in, but you don't notice because you can't get enough energy to care.  Jonah was there.  He was running away from God's call on his life, and it took him to a bad place inside of himself--and inside of a whale: but believe it or not, his physical reality was much less intimidating than his emotional state.    2 Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from inside the fish. 2 He said, “I cried out to the Lord in my great trouble, and he answered me.  I called to you from the land of the dead, and Lord, you heard me!  3 You threw me into the ocean depths, and I sank down to the heart of the sea.  The mighty waters engulfed me; I was buried beneath y...

Clutter.  That would describe the top of my dresser for the past two weeks.  I started the seasonal switch of clothing, but then the phone rang, dinner needed to be made and three kids kept calling my name.  Next thing I knew, weeks had passed, and the clutter never moved.  I can't say that it was inactive, though.  Just seeing it every day was a tiny weight on me.  The clutter pulled me down every time I glanced at it.  It weighs down your mood and any sense of feeling accomplished.  It's hard to feel organized when you have piles of clothing towering.  They silently berated and mocked me.   You might have your own mess waiting to be cleaned up.   The beautiful thing is--when we do take the time to put some time and effort in to completing a project: physical or spiritual, there is a tangible sense of contentment and gratitude for having it "cleaned up".  Because the mess weighed so heavily (for so long--in my case),...

I believe I have a preschool teacher to thank for the wise and deep advice of: "You get what you get and you don't throw a fit." That was an oft-repeated phrase to the children in the 4 year-old's class, and in many ways, I feel they taught those little kids the secret of life that year. If we could just learn to accept what happens to us, without debating it/bargaining about it/whining about it, or worse--losing our temper and taking things into our own hands--life goes much more smoothly.  For us and for those around us. You probably have a person that pops into your head when you think of someone throwing a fit because they did not get their own way.  That person did not learn this lesson at age 4, and when you grow up throwing a fit every time you don't like what you receive in life, well, that's a lot of fits.  Naaman was an army commander for a pagan king during Old Testament times.  He had leprosy and he heard that there was prophet in Israel who could ...

Have you ever memorized a Bible verse?  Besides John 3:16? My (amazing!) husband has most of the Bible on mental card-catalog in his beautiful brain.  If you say a book of the Bible and verse (ex. Psalm 37:4), he spends few seconds computing, and out comes the verse.(!)   His memorization skills are excellent.  They are something I am terrible at. I have a (very) few verses committed to memory, but as I read the Bible this morning I was touched not only by this verse and its meaning, but also by God's reminder to me of how I came to memorize it.    Here I am! I stand at the door  and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door,  I will come in  and eat with him, and he with me.  ~Revelation 3:20 It's such a great verse!  Spoiler alert--it's not really  about Jesus knocking on our front door and asking for supper.  It is an image of Jesus always standing near to us, knocking on our hearts.  Waiting for us t...

Sometimes I find it uncanny how God speaks in our lives, and what He uses to speak to us.   Not outloud, of course.  But by His words in Scripture, and by situations and through people.  And through play-dough. I had been stewing over a situation, and I had decided (with Christ's help) to get over it.  But have you ever tried getting over an emotional roadblock?  It's a process.  And if we are not careful, we can relapse in our journey to freedom and end up stewing again. Enter...play-dough or Play-Doh.   Our kids have been bored lately.  We are still sticking with minimal public activity due to Corona, and they are feeling the burn of home-boredom.  I had the idea (last night) of letting them make their own play-dough.  I copied down the recipe and prepped the ingredients for the next day.   This morning when I read from a devotional book that I pick up only now and then, the theme of the page was "Play-Dough"....

It's embarrassing to say, but I have been in a spiritual pout for a little while.   Have you ever gotten miffed about something in life, and it perturbs you so much that it causes a separation between you and God?  You just can't connect with Him in Bible study or prayer? It also produces a gap between you and your family and your happiness, and well--everything.  But even so, I was still choosing  to sit in my pout, rather than step out and get over it.  And so, I stayed captive to it.  A s long as I held on to my resentment about the situation--it held me captive from connecting with Jesus and the rest of my people and my life.  Not good.  Am I the only one who's been here?  I hope that you are more pious than me, and that you cannot relate to this at all.  Bless you. I have a buddy in the Bible named Jonah who went through a similar (self-pity) period.  God told him to go to Nineveh to warn the Ninevites to stop sinning and ...

Have you ever had the pleasure of getting lost in the melodic chant of a wind chime?   Yesterday our house was quiet (a rarity), and the windows were open and the wind was a-blowin.  It was the perfect staging for the set of wind chimes hanging in our front peach tree.  They tingled and tanged in a concert all their own, and it was lovely.  Relaxing.  Peaceful.  Calming.  Reassuring. More often, I have opposite sounds assaulting my ears.  Loud voices (sometimes it's mine!), shouts of excitement, or demanding barks.  Bickering. Opinionated quarrels.  These sounds ring out in our homes and our Nation.  I would never liken them to the lull of my windchimes.  No--far from it.  The noise that our pride and self-focus creates is more like a noisy gong or clanging cymbal.   But The Lord doesn't want us making noise for Him.  He desires that we speak in love.  Act in love.  And that our lives reverber...