Let Me Tell You One Thing

You Can Count on That August came in and I welcomed her with aching muscles from the previous day loading things that had been in my ninety year old mother’s barn so long they had forgotten how to rust.   They decided they had no more strength to fight the cockroaches and the fish bait worms.   They made room in their decaying existence for things that lived. They bowed out knowing that they had given a reprieve and a home for life, unappealing as it may have seemed. The rusted shelving and the rotted doors, buckets of Christmas lights hiding for years with no interest from anyone glared at us. The buckets of long forgotten Christmas lights that had not shined for baby Jesus in decades: one of them had accumulated instead a rather humongous frog that just wanted to live out his days in the bucket croaking and living in stagnant water; it’s skin a red hue which had absorbed the rusty looking water, comfortable with the pungent and offensive smell, but ann...

Devotions in Psalms pauladayjohns Psalm 95 August 2 2019 Heart Posture 1 . Oh Come let us sing unto the Lord! Let us shout joyfully to the Rock of our salvation. 2. Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving. Let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms.                   Strongs # 8426 Thanksgiving (todah) (toh-dah) is derived from the verb Yadah (to give thanks, to praise) the root of the word, is yad or “hand”.                   How incredible that thanksgiving is given with the hands, not words. A remarkable demonstration of thanksgiving merged with praise. 3. For the Lord is the great God, and the great King above all gods.                   Psalm 94:4 for the Lord is great and greatly to be praised!                   God is no better or greater whether we praise Him or not. ...

There are seemingly different theatrical stages in our mind where costumed visitors come to dance in our head.  They seem to be cast as the realities of failure, despair, and  hopelessness paralyzing us into immobility.  It causes us inability to think or act and we are frozen in panics and fears.  It seems our mind has flatlined and life is done, over. We sink into the bankruptcy of hope, dreams, expectations, and happiness.  We have feelings of being doomed, lost, void, and forgotten. Hopefully, when we have been in this paralytic position, a faint ray of hope streams from our past experiences with the realization that we have been here before and we lived again. That realization comes from our deep seated faith in God, through Jesus Christ.  Many times, when we feel the visitors dancing on the stages of our mind, we are often alerted to the fact that we have seen this production before, and the end of the story is one of a window of hope opening...

3/16/2019 The spring flowers are blooming without you Without you here to see with me, I look to see if you are here to see with me, but you are not. The children are just what we hoped they would be without you Without you here to see with me, I look to see if you are here to see with me, but you are not. The grandchildren are coming up into their own without you Without you here to see with me, I look to see if you are here to see with me, but you are not. The great grandchildren are the epitome of perfection without you Without you here to see with me, I look to see if you are here to see with me, but you are not. The house you left to me is staying maintained without you Without you here to see with me, I look to see if you are here to see with me, but you are not. The wife you left behind is realizing she is a woman without you, Without you here to see with me, I look to see if you are here to see with me, but you are not. The h...

10/26/2018 Psalm Studies Psalm 87 A psalm of the sons of Korah 1.        His foundation is in the holy mountains.                 According to Spurgeon’s Treasury of David ,   God chose to found His earthly temple upon the mountains of Zion.   These were made holy by the fact that God chose them.                 Like the mountains around Jerusalem, God also lends His attributes for the strength of the church.   He founded the church on His own power.                 Surely the writer had long contemplated the mountains and then he starts the passage with a burst of wonder and adoration. The mountains of Zion are there to witness.        2.   The Lord loves the gates of Zion more...

1. Bow down Your ear, O, Lord, hear me; for I am poor and needy. 2. Preserve my life (soul) for I am holy; You are my god; save Your servant who trusts in You! Preserve: Strong's #8104 guard, keep, protect Shamar ( shah mar) a watchman, shepherd, a guard 3. Be merciful to me, O Lord, for I cry to You all day long. 4. Rejoice the soul of Your servant, for to You , O lord, I lift up my soul! 5. For You, Lord, are good, and ready to forgive, and abundant (Hebrew rab (exceedingly) in mercy to all those who call upon You. Psalm 130:7 O Israel, hope in the Lord; for with the Lord there is mercy, and with Him is abundant redemption. ' Let me just stop here and say that David had words to write that keep jumping into our hearts.  How strongly he spoke with such transparency! In the beginning of this psalm, he makes it clear that he is appealing to the Lord to hear him, guard his soul, and give salvation and mercy! Redemption flows freely and abundantly to us all.  As we...

The photographs I see, when you are looking back at me, rule my heart. The intensity of your eyes, when I know what lay behind the sparkle. The passion for life, and the love you gave to so many. But saved the best for me.  Your words, your actions, your hugs and squeezes. Coffee times, reading together, working together, a part of our daily life. We were so blessed to have what we had. Now, you are in a different location, physically apart from me.  I feel the void each day. You left earth working to fulfill the mission.  A persistent, pursuant man on a mission. I know God could hardly wait to get you back!  They danced and sang your song.  The song of your arrival. Sometimes I hear the song faintly, and I smile.

May 15 2018 The one thing that most people never realizes until it happens to them is that after your husband dies suddenly, it takes awhile to catch up with it all, if you ever do catch up. For instance, my husband, Clyde, whom I married at 15 as a virgin, by the way, he was a virgin also, and the years we had together, 55 married, and two years dating, (since he was 16 and I was 13 when we met, died on November 7, 2016 in my presence and suddenly.  He fell back to the floor and was dead even though a medical team worked with him for 30 minutes or more. All of that takes quite a toll on someone's' psyche, and to compensate, the brain starts feeding itself some nulling drug so you can actually function through the funeral and the coming months.  The drug more than likely is something that is placed there for trauma victims and those survivors of those who face sudden death. It could even be why: Philippians 4:7 and the peace of God, which surpasses all understa...