Prayer Shapes Life
Meg and I are very blessed with our kids. We have spoken to each of them in the last week and several of them multiple times. A couple of them call Meg almost every day. Sometimes we call them. Lately we get to FaceTime with Mabel and I’m on a constant quest to find ways to make her smile. Motorboat sounds work well lately. Meg talks to her dad every day. My parents feel like they talk to me almost every day because they watch this service and Compline, but I do try to talk to them every week.
With our kids and our parents, we might talk about anything from the weather to a movie or whatever the latest challenges or news may be in our lives. All of that conversation is life-giving because we love each other. We never stop being parents or children, in a sense, but it’s nice when that takes on friendship as well. Whether it’s family or a friend, we treasure such intimacy and trust.
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Loving God and Neighbor
Some years ago the church I served bought Stations of the Cross for the new sanctuary. They are nice; brass renditions of each of the 14 stations each on a piece of wood about one-foot square. We planned to have seven on each side of the sanctuary. I happened to be in the sanctuary when our contractor’s supervisor mounted them. I was amazed.
If it were me, and thankfully it wasn’t, I would have mounted the first one, getting it the right height and so on. I would have then moved to the second one and done the same. I would have been very careful and it would have taken me a long time, maybe a day or two. In all honesty I would probably have had to re-hang a few along the way.
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God's Triple Action Formula
God promises to feed with his love; as a result, our hearts, that part of us that is nearest to God, shall rejoice, and our bodies shall flourish like the grass.
When it comes to grass, you can go to Walmart, Lowe’s or Home Depot and find all sorts of products designed to feed the grass in your lawn. Here is a picture of a bag of Scott’s Turf Builder. It has a triple-action formula. It not only feeds your lawn so that your grass grows tall, thick and green with deep roots. It will also kill your weeds and get rid of fire ants.
God’s prophet Isaiah tells us that God has his own triple-action formula that will kill the spiritual weeds that may take root and grow out of our hearts. It will also repel anything that might sting our hearts or our bodies like a fire ant, and it will feed our hearts and bodies so that we can grow up to be like Jesus.
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