Can you believe it!
“Believe what?” you ask.
Can you believe we have made it to December of the year 2015!
Another day passes into another week, passes into another month, passes into another year.
And we are on the verge of that ‘another’ year. Time just keeps slipping away a moment at a time.
It has been on my mind (and in my heart) to tell you that as surely as time is slipping away, our lives will slip away too. Sometimes in a blink of an eye --without any warning sometimes. Not everyone has the luxury of knowing their end is near so we must be ready - all the time! - to stand in front of our Lord and give an account of how we spent our lives.
When Kat died a part of me died.
That much is true.
When Kat died I turned more fully to God. This ‘spiritualism’ isn’t new for me. I have been on this path for several years now and I’ve alluded to it from time to time in my letters.
“I don’t believe in God,” a beautiful lady that I love so very much told me. “I think when you’re dead, it’s over. There’s nothing more.”
I was sad when I heard that and though I am not a fast thinker, maybe I had a little help when I replied with, “If that’s true than I haven’t lost anything but if you’re wrong then you lose all of eternity. In heaven. With God.”
“I don’t need God to be good,” another lady I know said.
No, you don’t need God to be good but you do need God and His forgiveness to go to heaven. As men we are all sinners. You can’t say enough prayers or do enough good works to earn your way to heaven. It is only by God’s divine grace and mercy that we may attain heaven, and of course, the death of His Son on a cross.
“If your God sends me to hell even though I’m a good person then I don’t want any part of a god like that!”
That makes absolutely no sense to me at all. My God, our God, desires all of us to be in heaven with Him. That is why He created us. Someday, when God makes the world new again, we will all walk with Him in a new Eden, just as Adam and Eve had. Only this time, we won’t mess it up.
“I’ve done some really awful things in my life. I don’t deserve forgiveness.”
Amen. None of us deserves forgiveness, but this little voice, whispering that into your ear, is Satan trying to keep you separated from God. You haven’t done anything, you can’t do anything that God can’t forgive you for.
“But Peg, what about the ‘unpardonable’ sin? I’ve asked many people what it is and no one can tell me,” another beautiful lady in my life asked.
There is only one thing that God will not forgive and that is rejecting Him. Makes sense, doesn’t it? If you don’t accept Him how can He forgive you?
Paul was a terrible, evil man before he was saved. He zealously persecuted Christians and yet went on to be an apostle of Jesus and write thirteen books of the New Testament.
The Bible.
A love letter from our Lord.
“Read my Word,” He commands me. Listening to preachers and Bible teachers is like a baby drinking milk. Someday you have to grow up and eat solid food. You have to read the Bible for yourself.
I struggle with that one but it is something I aspire to.
On the return leg of our recent trip to our Mountain Home, my thoughts drifted to God and I prayed a prayer I pray often. God, please just tell me what to do! I don’t want to have to guess because if you ask me to guess, I might guess wrong. Often times when I am praying for God’s direction in my life I have a little prayer that goes something like this. Heavenly Father, remember that I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed and I’m not good at guessing, so please make it perfectly clear for me to understand.
Sitting in the passenger seat of the RV, going down the highway, I prayed for God’s guidance once again. God, please just tell me what to do!
“Go to church.”
I was surprised because it was just as clear as if it was spoken to me. ‘Go to church.’ Just like that. And to be honest, God has been hinting at this for quite a while now, but I’ve been resistant. I don’t want to go to church. I like to watch Sunday Morning with Charles Osgood. That is one of my most favorite TV shows of all time. If I go to church I’ll miss it.
“Go to church.”
“I don’t have to go to church to believe in God,” a handsome young man in my life once told me.
I had no rebuttal at the time. Now? Now I would say, “No and you don’t have to go to a bar to drink either.” Something about birds of a feather…strength in numbers.
“Go to church.”
Don’t you hate it when you get an answer you don’t like?
I am going to church, at least I am in search of a home church. I went to Mt. Carmel Baptist Church last Sunday and I knew several people who attend there on a regular basis. Everyone went out of their way to make me feel welcome.
Today I went to The Church at Osage Hills. They had a guest speaker this morning and the message could have been written just for me.
“We ask God all the time what He wants us to do. Hmmm. ‘I’ll tell you what I want you to do and just so there are no misunderstandings, I’ll write it in stone!’” I smiled and others laughed. “Top ten, right here!”
Yeah. Written in stone.
On to another church next Sunday.
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By the way, that was not the letter I intended to write.
“What were you going to write about?” you wonder.
After I got done bemoaning the slippage of time, I was going to tell you about my current desktop photo. I don’t know how I got off on the other subject, but writing takes on a life of it’s own sometimes and gets away from me.
We had frozen fog the other morning and I hooked up Itsy and Ginger and went in search of photographs. This photo, that is my current desktop, is the store front of a business called Richard’s Relic Shack. There is a reflection on the window that I can probably remove if I wanted to.
As I was looking through this days photos looking for a new desktop photo I realized I got a couple of pretty nice shots and I made up my mind right then and there to post them for you, something I haven’t done in a while. The last time I posted photos was October eleventh and I was posting photos from September twenty and twenty-one.
Do you have any idea of the number of photos I’ve taken between then and now? Yeah. I’m really behind.
But sometimes I worry too. I worry you will be bored with seeing the same kinds of photos over and over. How many times can you look at flowers and butterflies? Then I’ll toss in other things like rusty nails and buckets and old pieces of wood and wonder if you will think there’s something wrong with me. Sometimes it’s a lot easier to not put yourself out there, you know what I mean?
So yesterday I’m going through the photos picking out some for you and when I got the whole way through the file I might have picked out three or four of the same thing so then I have to whittle it down to one or two of those. After that I reduce their size for easier uploading onto the world wide web. Flipping though the completed project I worry. If you just breeze through them all you see is fog, ice, leaf, weed, fog, water droplet, red leaf, fog, trees, fungus, fog, dead log, weeds, fog, fog, fog…
I wasn’t sure you would even like the photos and I posted them anyway.
Then today, when I got on the internet…You guys surprise and overwhelm me.
“Beautiful!!! I like how you capture the serenity of the moment.”
“These are so delightful!!! I can’t even pick a favorite – they’re all wonderful!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
“These are some of your better shots. Especially like the cob webs.”
“Really like a lot of these, but my fave is the lock & spider web one.”
“Beautiful pictures. You have such an amazing talent.”
Thank you.
Now if only I could find a way to use this talent for the glory of God.
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