Corona Devotionals

Do you have any difficult people in your life? Maybe just that one  person whose world revolves around them alone, which makes it hard to be around them.  God has been telling me to go  to that person, serve  that person, show acceptance to that person.  And...I have not acted on His edict.   Okay, so all of you are better  Christ-followers than me, and you would have already taken steps to live in love.  But the great thing about Jesus is that He doesn't leave us alone in our selfishness.  And perhaps He is showing me a teensy-tiny thing about selfishness, as I struggle with the selfishness of another.  That would be just like God.  He is a good Father, and if we allow Him, He is always shaping and raising us to be more like Him.  Selfishness is not one of His character traits, and it should not be one of ours. God doesn't "speak out loud" to me, but I think about this "difficult person" fairly often, and lament that I a...

God created us and all of the world around us.  Did you know that it is right for us and nature to praise Him?   Our lives may be a bit topsy-turvy and perhaps we might not feel  like praising the Lord depending on the day or our mood, but that does not change the respect and glory that the Lord is due from us.  And when we give Him honor, respect, thanks and glory: it is called "praise". Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever. ~Psalm 107:1 We might have a bad day or a bad couple-of-days, or even a bad quarantine, but does nature have bad days that delay or impede it from praising the Lord?  I've never observed it.  I have observed robust bursts of color in fall leaves, burning sunsets, white blankets of snow, and rainbows arched across the sky.  There are scientific explanations for these occurrences, but I absorb them as creation praising it's Maker.  We could take a few cues from nature. And perhaps sometimes nat...

As new campers, our family is figuring things out on the fly and by recommendation of others.  We recently got an outdoor griddle.  It’s basically like an oversized electric frying pan for the outdoors.  It comes highly recommended and is supposed to create yummy culinary delights while we are in the great outdoors. As with any new appliance, there was an instruction manual.  The longest part of the book was dedicated to “seasoning” the griddle.  I learned that it is a critical first step, and will affect the outcome of each meal you make…favorably if done correctly.  As I studied the process of seasoning our griddle, and then sat down for some time in the Bible with Jesus, I realized a correlation between us and griddles.    God blesses those whose hearts are pure, for they will see God.  ~Matthew 5:8 The first step in seasoning the griddle is heating it up (hot!), and letting it just sit for a while, being hot.  Then you pour some...

Ladies and Gentleman, Start....Your....Engines! Well, we have been waiting months for "it" to occur, and I think someone has (finally!) taken their finger off of the "Pause" button of our lives.   Can you feel it?  School, practices, church, gatherings (with distance)!  Slowly but for-sure: The wheels of our life-trains are beginning to chug in a forward motion again.   We have been suspended in Corona-animation for so many months that as activities (and let's be honest: responsibilities)  resurface, I am caught off-guard, even though we have been begging for this to begin happening.  And a few old "friends" that I have not  missed during the Corona slow-down have started knocking at my door and are even trying to barge in on me and my spirit: Frantic Fran, Stressed Sally and Mean Molly.  These three are best friends, and (at least in my life), they often pal around together.  When one visits me, the other two are close by. ...

Who will show us better times? It is a fair question to ask, especially in these times. Not that life is always fair, or that "times" are always fair.  But if someone asked us "Who will show us better times?" we would understand and commiserate with their question, wouldn't we? Ponder it once more: Who  will  show us better times?     Will the current leaders show us better times?     Will new leaders show us better times?     Will less sickness, infection and fear show us better times?     Will more money in our pockets show us better times?     Will a decrease in social unrest show us better times?     Will an increase in community and fellowship show us better times? Many people say, “Who will show us better times?”   Let your face smile on us, Lord. 7 You have given me greater joy  than those who have abundant harvests of grain an...

The two steps forward and one step back pattern of Corona makes me a bit cuckoo. My mom loved clocks, and we had more than one that would sound on the hour.  My favorite was the cuckoo clock.  Each hour a tiny door would swing open and the cuckoo would pop out of his "house" and chirp, "Cuckoo, Cuckoo".   Anyone feeling like that little crazy bird as Corona wears on?   Like the cuckoo, we keep popping our heads out of our houses and sticking our toes into little pools of society to "test the waters" and see if public events will cause another virus landslide, or if we might actually be able to venture out a tiny but further than the last time without calamity. It's a cycle that may not happen every hour (like the cuckoo chirps), but it feels regular enough that we could set our watch to the repetition of it. Noah's flood was much more monumental than our Corona-flood, but he also "tested the waters" in the same way, as he tried ...

It's been a while now that we have been surrounded by the Corona waters.   Bobbing up and down in the daily media and health reports has made me a bit sea-sick, and in case you are didn't know: the kids are still home.   I had to laugh when I read and related to Noah this morning:   But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and livestock with him in the boat. Genesis 8:1  Unlike Noah, we have not been floating in an ark with only our immediate family and a bunch of wild and domesticated animals for months on end, with no visible land in sight... Wait a minute...or have we? Just think about Noah's situation and see if it could  relate to our Corona-quarantine environment?   Don't tell me that the Lord doesn't see  our situations and our hearts and encourage us through His Word.  W hen I read about Noah and the ark it brought hope to me (and a smile) and I felt comforted when I was reminded that  God remembered Noah. ...