MY VALENTINE IS LOVE

I love love. In fact, I'm still on a high from Valentine's Day. I know some despise the day. Some complain that it's about selling cards and candy. But I love any occasion to think about, dream about and celebrate love. There are parts of the day I'd like to block from my memory, like the times I would painstakingly decide which boy would get which little card. I didn't want to send the wrong message to any of them! There was also the Valentine's Day in college when I finally had a real Valentine...and he got me a totally wrong gift. I won't go into detail, but I still remember the feeling that this guy did not truly understand or love me. And, of course, like so many others, there are the times I fell captive to the lie that I was alone on Valentine's Day.

So why is it different this year? I'm NOT going to say that I have a boyfriend or that I got engaged. Believe me, you'll know when that happens! I do have a Valentine, though. His name is Love. 1 John 4:8 says that God is love. He IS love. It's who He is, and I love it! God's love sustains me, overwhelms me, pursues me, and woos me. My box of chocolates this year was the friends that He blessed me with. My rose, my family. My teddy bear, my loving Savior who wraps me in His eternal, whole, perfect, exciting love.

I still love love, but I love LOVE now more than ever! I still hope for all the love that a Valentine's Day would bring, and the Reese's peanut butter cups that come with it, but I won't trade Love for love. He's mine. And I'm His. My Valentine is Love.

~Rebecca Phillips

Spinach Seeds and Apple Trees

Have you been to Home Depot lately?  Seed packets are in!  Last fall I went looking too late; there were no spinach seeds to be found.  So when I was there a few days ago I got some for early planting and picked up some Brussels sprouts on a whim.  They were only $1.59.  Even if I harvest nothing at all, it’s worth that much to dig in the dirt and enjoy the experiment.

I was thinking about those little brown spinach seeds this morning in Sunday School.  In the Christian Life class we are working our way through a study of end-time events.  We started out going through the Gospel of John, and someone asked a question that got us into this study. We started it in June and are still going strong in Revelation. I love the people I meet with on Sunday mornings, but today I got sort of stuck on one verse and couldn’t keep my mind following the discussion, as interesting as it was.

Here’s where my thoughts kept landing:  I Corinthians 15:35-38—“But someone will say, ‘How are the dead raised up? And with what body do they come?’ Foolish one, what you sow is not made alive unless it dies.  And what you sow, you do not sow that body that shall be, but mere grain—perhaps wheat or some other grain. But God gives it a body as He pleases, and to each seed its own body.” 

“To each seed its own body”—Think of that!  I don’t know if you’ve planted spinach, but the seed is a tiny little brown ball, a bit larger than a pin head. Inside that hard little nugget is the blueprint for lovely, tender, nourishing, green leaves. Inside a little black apple pip is a complete tree with a trunk and places for bird nests and blossoms every spring.  It’s a magnificent and amazing plan.  Paul was making a point about resurrection in his discussion, and it’s going to take some long meditating for me to have a really good handle on what he was conveying.  But all spring I’m going to have an opportunity to see the analogy in action right in my own back yard!

I can’t wait.

--Sherry Poff

 

HURLED HEADLONG!

HURLED HEADLONG!

            Friday morning the forecast of a widespread ice storm in our area was not fulfilled.  This despite the fact that almost every school in the area had already announced closures (though not the school I teach at!).  So I headed out for school, going in a little bit late.  But I never got to school!  In fact, I never got to my car.  A few tentative steps out onto the walkway which leads to the street, I hit glaze ice; perhaps I should say “black ice,” for I never saw it.  Instantly I went straight over backwards, hitting my head and landing flat on my back.  No, I am not seriously hurt—headache for a day and increasingly sore muscles, but I am moving a bit slowly. 

            There’s a lesson in this experience.  One of my favorite chapters is Psalm 37.  That’s the one with the verses about trusting in the Lord and delighting yourself in the Lord and resting in the Lord—all great verses and sources of much comfort.  But perhaps my favorite verses from the chapter are verses 23 and 24, and those are the verses I thought about in connection with my fall.

            The steps of a man are established by the Lord, and He delights in his way.  When he falls, he will not be hurled headlong, because the Lord is the One who holds his hand.

            You see, the picture in my mind when I read these verses is of a little girl holding onto her father’s hand.  They are walking on a slippery path and the girl’s feet slip out from under her.  She is dangling, but not down, because her father holds her hand.  He stops and helps her to get her feet back under her.  She doesn’t go all the way down.  She has not been hurled headlong.

            I am walking on a slippery path spiritually.  There are all kinds of things which can cause me to fall.  The verse says “when he falls,” not “if he falls.”  I will fall, but I won’t be hurled headlong, I won’t go all the way down, because my hand is enfolded in the Lord’s hand.  He is helping me get my feet back under me.  He is helping me stand. 

                                                                        ~~Faith Himes Lamb

Who's in the Mirror?

Combing my hair to come to church on Sunday morning, I kept getting glimpses of my mother in the mirror.  When I stopped to look closely, she was gone.  This has happened before---and more and more often these days. I look more like my dad than my mom, but once in a while, I see her in my mirror.  Maybe it has something to do with the brown eyes I got from her –or this time it could have been the red bead necklace I was wearing that used to be hers. 

My mother was a lovely person and one of the most unselfish people I have known.  Certainly she wasn’t perfect, but I have memories of her making a hundred little sacrifices every day--staying up late to get things ready for an early breakfast when we came home for Christmas with our children. Sleeping on the couch, insisting that she found it very comfortable.  When I was a little girl, we were always giving someone a ride to church, staying late to help clean up after church dinners.  It was just what she did. 

So I have to confess that I was at first a little put off by the Rejuvenate announcement that was said to be “all for us.”  Aren’t we supposed to be doing things for others?  But then I realized that this little mini-conference is an opportunity to connect with other women and meet their needs, to be of service.  The mission trip to the Dominican will be a great opportunity for those who can go.  I’m glad to hear that there’s a good group taking part. The rest of us need to find ways to be an encouragement and blessing close to home.

Pastor Euler gave us an interesting quotation from Francis Bacon: “A poor center of a man’s life is himself.”  It’s true for women as well.  John Donne, another notable English writer and preacher who lived at about the same time as Bacon, is the one who wrote Meditation 17 that contains the well-known lines, “No man is an island, entire of itself.” These men were onto something. If they could connect and care for one another in the seventeenth century, we have no excuse in the digital age. We need to look outside of ourselves and remember the words of Jesus: “By this shall all men know that you are my disciples: if you have love for one another.” (John 13:35)

I imagine I will keep getting glimpses of Mom.  It will remind me to emulate her, and possibly to leave a legacy for my own daughters to live up to.

--Sherry Poff

SIMPLY CHARMIN'!

If you need a reason to smile on a Monday morning,

please watch this video. I promise you will not regret it.

However, if you choose not to watch it, then don't finish reading this post!

It will ruin the surprise ending. Seriously!!! You have to watch this!

See, didn't I tell you...best way to start the week!

If my niece isn't scarred by the millions of people that view this when it goes viral, I hope and pray she'll one day realize how Simply Charmin' she was.

How many of us in our best dressed efforts still seem to find the toilet paper tucked into our pantyhose? On numerous occasions, when I wanted to feel confident, poised and elegant, I couldn't help but drag the roll of insecurity, self-defeat and well...toilet paper behind me, oftentimes without even noticing!
I think there are probably many spiritual applications that can be made from this incident, but I just wanted you all to have a good, hearty laugh this morning.
May you be filled with joy as you carry out your daily routine, 
and may others find you simply charmin'.

John 15:11

These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, 

and that your joy might be full.

~Rebecca Phillips

Remembering with Thanksgiving

Remembering with Thanksgiving

Until I was thirty years of age, Christmas was spent with my parents and siblings, my grandparents, and five aunts and uncles and many cousins.  We talked loudly and late and started again early in the morning.  We played games, sang (often singing through the main selections of the Messiah), and talked. 

But Christmas Day took special meaning.  We had a Christmas program of our own before we opened presents.  Some things were constant:  We sang carols; Aunt Joy read The Bird’s Christmas Carol; Aunt Libby and Uncle Walt sang Silver Bells; Aunt Jessie read Christmas on the Frontier; the younger children often sang special carols or played a Christmas carol on whatever instrument they were learning; when I was in college as a speech major, I often gave a Christmas reading.   All of us together quoted Luke 2, with the younger ones learning a little bit more every year.  The program often seemed much too long.

The end of the program never varied, and that is the part of the tradition that I miss the most.  Granddad would ask what God had taught us during the year, what we were most grateful for.  The youngest might simply say they were glad they got to come to Grandma and Grandpa’s.  But many times we wound up weeping as we heard what God was doing.  Often we praised, sometimes with weeping then too.

            The years have slipped away.  There is no big gathering anymore.  But for just myself, I want to go back to remembering and thanking God for this past year.

                May your Christmas memories be sweet!

                                                                       

                                                                        ~~Faith Himes Lamb

Christmas Programs Past

 “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men!” Luke 2:14

 It started right after Thanksgiving.

 "We have less than two months!  Y'all need to learn these parts."  The ladies of the church--those same ladies who organized the Easter egg hunt every spring and dinner-on-the-grounds every summer--got up a Christmas program every December. 

We gathered one evening after supper, blinking at one another in the familiar place so strangely cold on a Monday when the doors would normally be locked and the lights off. 

Our play wasn't just a children's pageant. Everyone got involved.  One year Ronnie McKinney was King Herod, lounging in an old bathrobe, eating grapes in a display of self-indulgence and cruelty as he ordered all babies in Bethlehem killed.   My dad and some other men were the three kings.  A small choir sang as these men---coal miners and mechanics in their modern lives-- walked reverently down the aisle.  With each verse of "We Three Kings," one of them placed a gift at the manger--gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Sometimes I got to be an angel and wear one of the white robes Aunt  Brookie made.  On the night of the play, it was pinned closed, and the tinsel halo kept in place with bobby pins.   All the tallest girls stood in back while we little ones were perched right out front, smiling at the baby.

The baby Jesus was always someone's favorite doll.  Once or twice a young mother in the church had a real baby of a suitable size, but most of the time it was a stiff plastic doll.  The young mother Mary picked it up and cradled it in her arms, stretching the very limits of credibility to make herself and us imagine the real baby in a manger long ago. 

 

--Sherry Poff