How is your heart?
I suppose we’ve all had the experience of hunkering down during a storm. The last hurricane was Irma in 2017, about 4½ years ago. The storm came in strong during the day on September 10th, 2017 and blew hard most of the night. We had our 3 younger children plus 2 of our daughters-in-law with us that night, all huddled together in our family room, watching the news, watching movies, playing games and hoping for a lot of things.
We hoped that we wouldn’t lose power. That none of the oak trees around our home would fall on it. That our new roof would withstand the winds. We prayed that people across the state would be safe and that help would come quickly to those who needed it.
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Our Prodigal God
When my husband and I were first married, we lived in Arizona while he finished graduate school. Everything about the state was different from our native Virginia, and it was a wonderful time of adventure. On weekends, we liked to explore, and we’d often heard about a long-deserted silver-mining settlement named Jerome, where (among other oddities) one-half of the rough, 19th century town jail apparently still stood… the other half of its single jail cell having long ago collapsed, sliding down the side of the mountain below where the town had once stood.
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Aligned with Christ.
Some months ago, a house across the street on Bullard caught fire and burned during our 10:15 service. It was surreal to see fire trucks going by with their lights and sirens going during the sermon and hear the sirens go silent almost immediately after seeing them.
Of course, I went over immediately after the service to comfort the family, offer support and pray with them. Rob Quam from the Lake Wales Care Center was there, too, and he asked the firefighter in command how often they deal with house fires. “Not much,” he said, “I cannot remember the last one but it has been several years. Most of our calls are traffic accidents and medical emergencies.”
And they get called a lot. There are accidents almost daily, and all too often there are serious injuries and deaths involved. I don’t know about you, but when I read about such an accident, I automatically pick up on things I might have done differently. Were they wearing their seat belts? Were they drinking or speeding or texting?
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