The Apple Tree

When we first moved into the neighborhood,  this apple tree stood regal.  It's branches reached out in symmetrical unison; seemingly to the sky.

On many early morning runs, I'd find the ponies from across the street had broke through their fencing and stood munching on the tree's fallen apples.

Winter storms have stolen many of it's branches.  It no longer stands as magnificent as in years past.  Critters have made holes in it's trunk and call it home.

And yet today as I ran by, it's solitary branch was loaded with apples. 

After all the broken, after all the losses, the tree still does what God created it to do.

Be encouraged. 

Thorns

It was well into the evening.  The summer sun had almost set. 
There was a knock at the door.
It is my neighbor.
Opening the door, I joined her on my porch.
She was struggling.
Words were not needed to tell me this.  I could see it on her face.

She talked.  I listened.

She was not tired from the battle, she was weary from the war.

After she left, I thought of our talk well into the morning hours.
The Apostle Paul came to mind.  He spoke of a thorn.  A thorn he asked God to take away.

God didn't.

I thought of my neighbor's thorn and how she, like Paul, pleads with God to take it away.

Friends, I wish I had magic words to make it better.
I wish I could tell you words that bring immediate peace.
I wish I could tell you my neighbor left feeling a hundred times lighter.

I can't.

Beloved, Paul found his answer in God's grace.
And in God's power to take the weaknesses and make them strengths.

And that is the hope He gives us.

Maybe you feel the fresh cut of the thorns.
Maybe your hands touch the long-ago healed scars from thorns.
Maybe, like my neighbor, you are so very, very weary of the thorns.

Friends, it is your thorns that fashioned His crown at the cross.

And He did not take it off.
He died with the crown of thorns upon His head.

Your thorns were nailed to that cross.
They died there.
When He rose 3 days later the thorns were gone.
The only thing He held was victory in His nail-pierced hand.
 

And His victory is ours.
Be encouraged

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^{2 Corinthians 12: 8-10}
Concerning this I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might leave me. And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in distresses, in persecutions, in difficulties, in behalf of Christ; for when I am weak, then I am strong.

The Letter

The letter was sent to me.  The return address reads the state penitentiary.  

Upon opening it I recognized the name of the sender.  A quiet, hard-working man who had been employed by our company.  He now found himself in a cell counting days.  He was on day 284.

It's true what they say, you know.  Bad things happen to good people.  

I read the letter.
I am touched by it.
There is no earth-shattering information, nor deep emotional words. 
No hint of anger.
No whisper of self pity.

Only gratitude.

His words tell me of his arrest, his sentencing and what he hopes for over the next several months.  He lays out his goals and speaks of his accomplishments.

He offers thanks for the promise of employment. 
He confides he has no words to convey the magnitude of what he feels around that hope.

As promised, upon his release we brought him back.  He's now been employed with us for several years.

I still have the letter.  I pull it out every once in awhile and read it.
Like today.

The letter is a tangible thing I can hold reminding me what God asks of me in each today. 
Show gratitude, find hope, seek joy and be thankful in all things.
This has nothing to do with circumstance.
It has everything to do with God. 

Did he become a rags-to-riches story?  Has he become successful despite his past?

Sometimes success is measured in the height of the corporate ladder climbed.
Sometimes it is measured in the journey one takes.
And sometimes success comes simply in the strength one gains from the battle.

The world doesn't define your success.
God does.

And in Him we are all a rags-to-riches success story.

 

The Pivot

 We have all had those pivotal moments.  The moment when your life changes whether you want it to or you don't.

It was Christmas Eve in the ICU.  We were in the waiting room listening to the surgeon deliver the grave news of Daddy's condition.  He asked for a directive in a decision that had to be made.  Keith asked the question and looked around the room for an answer.  

Every set of eyes turned to me.

The pivot.

My siblings, our spouses, and the eyes of our dearest faithfuls turned and looked at me. The enormity of that moment seared into my forever.  To this day, I do not recall what he asked or the decision we made as a family.   But I do remember every emotion of that moment.

That is the moment God injected into my quiet time this morning as I read Joshua 5.

Moses is gone. Joshua is now preparing to lead the people into war.  With all the people around him, Joshua looks up and sees a man off in the distance with a sword in his hand.  I reckon with all eyes on him, he and I share a bond.

Joshua went to him.

Don't lose that part of the story.  What appeared threatening, Joshua approached.  He didn't stay in the comfort of the crowd.  He left them and approached the threat.

Joshua asks the man if he was friend or foe.
Here Joshua finds out it's Jesus and Joshua falls on his face in worship.

Jesus tells him, “Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.” 

Joshua's pivot.

In the wilderness, Jesus met him.
In all his uncertainty, Jesus met him.
In his fear, Jesus met him.

And it was holy ground.

Maybe you are faced with a room full of people turning their eyes to you or maybe it's the eyes staring back at you from the mirror, Beloved, Jesus is there.  His eyes are looking at you too.

He will lead you.
He will protect you.
And He will bring you to His favorite spot - holy ground.

Beloved, whatever may be happening in your today, do what Joshua did.
Take off your shoes, feel the carpet between your toes.
Then bow down.

God has you on holy ground.

And He promises victory.

 

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Joshua 5:13-15
Now it came about when Joshua was by Jericho, he raised his eyes and looked, and behold, a man was standing opposite him with his sword drawn in his hand, and Joshua went to him and said to him, “Are you for us or for our enemies?” He said, “No; rather I have come now as captain of the army of the Lord.” And Joshua fell on his face to the ground, and bowed down, and said to him, “What has my lord to say to his servant?” And the captain of the Lord’s army said to Joshua, “Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did so.

 

Pinions of an Eagle

 True confession : sometimes I test God.

Like the other day, I needed some encouragement and I told God as much. Sitting at the breakfast table, I told God I was going to flip open my bible and would He please let it land somewhere that would give me a whisper of comfort.

It landed in Deuteronomy 32.

Really God? Deuteronomy?

That’s when God took out the 2x4 and smacked me across the head. Hard.

Like an eagle that stirs up its nest,

That hovers over its young,

He spread His wings and caught them,

He carried them on His pinions.

Deuteronomy 32:11

When an eagle wants to teach it’s young to fly, it pushes them out of the nest. The eaglet learns what her wings are for. If the eaglet comes in danger of not spreading her wings soon enough, the parent eagle will swoop down and carry them in its pinions back to the nest.

Dare I admit the tears that welled up in my eyes friends?

But God, I’m comfortable in the nest.

Push.

But God, I’m warm in the nest.

Push.

But God, it’s safe here and I’m fed.

Push.

In our today, there is no mistake we have all been pushed out of the nest.

The gut-wrenching feeling of free falling is followed closely with confusion.

God, why?

His pinions grab and we are returned to the comfort of the nest.

Until the next push.

It is in the free fall Beloved that we learn the strength of our wings.

It is in God’s faithfulness in which we are taken back to the place of rest.

The eaglet would never know the power of flight, if it wasn’t for the push.

The eaglet would never know it was meant for great heights while in the comfort of the nest.

The eaglet would never know its magnificence in which it had been created.

Friends, maybe today you feel the free fall.

Maybe you long to feel the comfort of the nest.

Maybe you cry out for the safety of His pinons.

Stretch your wings.

Know we have been created for magnificence.

And His pinions are always near.