Corona Devotionals

It's an uphill battle, for sure: this life lived for the Lord.   Some days (most days?) we can feel alone in our pursuit of God's holiness.  Everyone around us is in pursuit of themselves , it seems, and if this is a war that we are waging with the world, many days it feels as if we are losing. Self-focus/Self-pleasure/Self-truth: these breed and bring  violence  (when people do not get their  way).  Evil deeds  rise and run rampant.  People without God and without His purposes are miserable and they produce misery  for others.   Do we feel like we are an army of one (for the Lord) today?   Habakkuk did too. Haba- who ?   Habakkuk .  He was a prophet of the Lord, and he begins his book of the Bible lamenting the brokenness of the world, but not just  that people are broken, but that these (Godless) people are mean, evil, destructive, argumentative, and wicked  to us. Ever feel the same?--As if...

"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep..."  (From the poem "Christmas Bells", by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow). News flash! This just in!   All points bulletin! God ( our  God...the one, true God) is NOT dead.  And nor does He sleep.   Brothers and Sisters in faith: God is alive,  and well, and breathing His Holy Spirit into us and into the next generation.   Believe it!  I'm  seeing  it, and I pray that you are too. Yes--- the service-of-self has replaced service-to-our-Lord in many people... But, YES!!!  There is also an undeniable movement, a shift, a hunger and a renewal-of-faith in our young people and (while some wander), others are blossoming in faith and focus on the Lord. "God is not dead, nor doth He sleep..." (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow). The Lord went ahead of them. He guided them during the day with a pillar of cloud, and he provided light at night with a pillar of fire. This allowed them to travel by day or...

  The word of the  Lord  that came to Zephaniah son of Cushi, the son of Gedaliah, the son of Amariah, the son of Hezekiah, during the reign of Josiah  son of Amon  king of Judah...  ~Zephaniah 1:1   Do we have any rock-solid relatives or relations in faith? Zephaniah did.   (Did we catch it?)  He was the great-grandson of Hezekiah , and if we do the hereditary-math, then we can compute that: Zephaniah  was the son of Cushi. Cushi was  the son of Gedaliah. Gedaliah was  the son of Amariah. And  Amariah was  the son of Hezekiah. And so that makes Zephaniah the great-grandson of  Hezekiah .  And--what does that mean for Zephaniah (to be the great-grandson of Hezekiah )? Alot , actually--because Hezekiah had some hefty spiritual credentials.  King Hezekiah  lived a life in faith and service to the Lord.  And that means that (if Zephaniah chose to follow in his great-grandaddy's faith f...

My, my, (my!) how time flies. It seems just yesterday that we noticed a newly crafted nest on our front porch (artificial) tree. And then three blue eggs were suddenly sitting in the nest. But my, my, (my!) how time flies, because then: three tiny naked bodies with beaks began to be seen within the nest, and then (my, my, my) these little guys began to foster fuzzy feathers and my, my, (my!) how time flies---now they barely fit in the nest and their rapidly-growing little robin statures are fully-cloaked with full feather coats. Where does the time go? This robin life cycle has all occurred in only the last month, and yet today it is now time for these (recent!) babies to stand up, step out, and begin the natural progression of beginning to fly. But these members of the robin family are not the only ones that the Lord brings from birth to life...and into living-life (ups and downs both included!) as He has designed and planned-out for them. As His children--this is our progres...

Thud!....   Silence.   Thud!....   Silence.  What was  that, I wondered?   Thunder?  But the skies were clear.   The factory that backs up to our backyard?  ...Not this time. Thud!....   Silence.   There it was again and it was  coming from our backyard.   Wait a minute...I know that sound,  and I know that distance-interval in between those thuds. The  thud  was our middle child, Silas...kicking his soccer ball from about twenty yards out from our backyard goal.  The silence was Silas running to retrieve the kick from the back of the goal net or the side yard, and the next  thud was his next shot on goal.   Thud!....   Silence.   Thud!....   Silence.   Thud!....   Silence.     He stays out there shooting for hours.  He loves shooting a soccer ball.   He always has.  He is seventeen years old, and if...