Matthew 5:3 (New Living Translation) “ Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven
Matthew 5:3 (The Message)3"You're blessed when you're at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.
I was talking with a friend about a book that we are both re-reading, perhaps you have heard of it, “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.” The heroine of the book is an eleven year old girl, she is very poor and her one extravagance is holding her cup of coffee in the mornings to warm her hands so cold in an unheated apartment. The point is that the child is very poor. As I thought of it, I thought about that fact that growing up our family was really pretty poor most of the time. A preacher’s pay is not great, or wasn’t before the day of mega churches where pastors are driven in limousines, and there were times that he would give his entire pay check back to the church to pay the bills.But we never had a “poor” mentality. I realized that being financially challenged and being poor is two different things. God always provided for us, when there was no money, there would be someone that brought us something good to eat. There was an event called a “pounding” and I cannot tell you for the life of me why it was called that, but what it was, for you too young to have ever heard of it, was when the people got together and gave food the way people bring gifts to a birthday party or a baby shower. Very exciting for us kids!Mother kept our clothes clean and pressed, even our shoe laces, and the shoes had a shine on them. One particularly sad moment for her was when she found that my brother had cut out cardboard and put it in his shoes because there were holes in the soles. When we moved to Atlanta we received some good government surplus peanut butter and cheese that came in brown paper boxes. But poor? We never felt poor not at all; it never dawned on us to feel poor. As I said, God always provided for us and we were always happy. So after going through all of this in my mind, I thought of the scripture that I put at the top of this Blog and when I really studied it, I understood. The Message translation said “You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and His rule.” Read that over and over until it dawns on you…being at the end of your rope you realize that there is nothing that you, in your own power can do to change your circumstances, BUT God, the answer lies in Him alone. That kind of takes the pressure off, if you think of it that way. I KNOW there is nothing I can do to make my life better, happier, richer, but God, Who knows all, has the answer, not just the answer, the solution for my problems, and yours! I would rather be poor and know that I will inherit the Kingdom of God than to have all the riches and goodies that a kid used to find in the blissfully cool Woolworth’s Five and Dime!If you are poor or just FEELING that way, know that you are blessed!
I am remembering standing in a radio studio, tears running down my face. My life had been turned upside down at the age of 15, and although change can be exciting, it can be scary. I was taken out of a school and a church where I had friends, friends that today I still communicate with, and plopped down in the middle of a school in Arizona where I was, once again, a stranger. No one knew what I was going through, all the adults in my life had more pressing problems than to worry about whether this young girl was happy...or not. From a small town high school where I was the pastor's daughter, to a school that probably had more students than the whole town we just left. It was a hard transition. But our family has always been close and when I came home from school each day it was a haven. We were living in a house that was probably smaller than your living room, and our dining table was an ironing board. There was a drawer that my mother put a pillow in that was my little sister, Janet's, bed for the whole time we were there. Thank God that we did have a 12 inch black and white TV! That is the very TV we watched the first Presidential debate between Nixon and Kennedy on, sitting there on straight back chairs and on the floor. What a time! Back to the radio studio..we were singing a song that still rings in my ears.. He Knows read the words with me and know that whatever you are going through...
Psalm 119:105 says: Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path!
That means that we look at the Word of God for comfort, advice, consolation and for instruction! Amazingly, if we all followed the instructions that we find in the Word, we might not need some of the other perks it offers! One day Jesus was talking to His disciples and told them that the first commandment was to love God, and the second was to love their neighbor in exactly the same way that they loved themselves. That is a big WOW for me, but if you think about it, if everyone loved their neighbor as much as they loved their own self, no one would steal, kill or destroy anything that belonged to their neighbor, that would pretty much wipe out crime as we know it.We would never want anyone to hurt and definitely not want to be the person who was the cause of hurt.In listening to the ads from the different candidates, and here I am speaking mostly of the local campaign, they don’t mind trashing each other, telling half truths and sometimes outright lies…are these the people we want to run our city, state, country? I will be honest with you here, I have already cast my vote, and I voted my conscience. My granddaughter, Chloe’, asked me today if I knew what a “partial birth abortion” was. I answered that indeed I did. She had seen a film about it and she was horrified. I hate that a 16 year old had to see that tragic end to a life not yet begun, I hate that there is law that one of our Presidential candidates concerning that very act is trying to protect.How will we line up in judgment if we just ignore this? To let a baby come to term then stick scissors in the back of its little head to kill it while it is still partially in its mother’s womb.We expect God to protect us from harm and danger and tell Him that He has promised to keep us, how do we help and love others as His hands reaching out on this earth? I wanted to end by putting in a Psalm that just covers us with His precious love, read it and feel Him close to you.
Psalm 23 (New Living Translation)
1 The Lord is my shepherd;
I have all that I need. 2 He lets me rest in green meadows;
he leads me beside peaceful streams. 3 He renews my strength.
He guides me along right paths,
bringing honor to his name. 4 Even when I walk
through the darkest valley,
I will not be afraid,
for you are close beside me.
Your rod and your staff
protect and comfort me. 5 You prepare a feast for me
in the presence of my enemies.
You honor me by anointing my head with oil.
My cup overflows with blessings. 6 Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me
all the days of my life,
and I will live in the house of the Lord
forever.
Someone sent me the link to a song today; guess this is the week for old songs. She asked if I remembered it. When I hit the link and listened, the Hoover Dam that was holding a whole river of memories burst wide open and they all flooded down into the valley of this little mind of mine. I envisioned bold colors of Leisure Suits being worn by young men with wide sideburns and droopy mustaches, girls with long hair parted down the middle wearing long peasant dresses, peace signs and a much younger face looking back at me from the mirror! Remember it?Back in the day singing this song was just that, singing one more song that people requested. It never really impacted me for the same reasons that Something Beautiful didn’t. At the time I didn’t have “rags of my life”, I have since collected a whole drawer full of “rags!” The song I am referring to is “One Day at a Time”.There comes a time in your life when things are not good and you begin to feel scared for what the future holds, that is when you have to take a deep breath, put it all in the hand of God and just know that you will wake up in the morning, the sun will shine and, if you are so blessed, you will see the moon shining bright in the night sky, you will. Read Psalm 139:1-12 (the Message)
1-6God, investigate my life; get all the facts firsthand. I'm an open book to you;
even from a distance, you know what I'm thinking.
You know when I leave and when I get back;
I'm never out of your sight.
You know everything I'm going to say
before I start the first sentence.
I look behind me and you're there,
then up ahead and you're there, too—
your reassuring presence, coming and going.
This is too much, too wonderful—
I can't take it all in!
7-12 Is there any place I can go to avoid your Spirit?
to be out of your sight?
If I climb to the sky, you're there!
If I go underground, you're there!
If I flew on morning's wings
to the far western horizon,
You'd find me in a minute—
you're already there waiting!
Then I said to myself, "Oh, he even sees me in the dark!
At night I'm immersed in the light!"
It's a fact: darkness isn't dark to you;
night and day, darkness and light, they're all the same to you
I am putting the link here for you to listen in to this old tune!
And speaking of requested songs, probably the funniest request we ever had was to sing, at a WEDDING, a song titled “Wasted Years”. Yes we did sing it…it wasn’t easy but we did.Be blessed!
I believe that it was Gloria Gaither that penned the words to a song that I have sung many, many times, but it has never had more meaning for me than it does at this moment in time. When you are young and have everything ahead of you, you go day to day and your children do something marvelous and you look at it and take it for granted. Your mom or dad says something "wise" and you just shrug your shoulders and do what you were going to do anyway, regardless of their advice. Then one day you take a good look in the mirror and YOU are the mom or dad that you so carelessly regarded when you were younger. All of a sudden everything you wanted to do seems left undone (does this seem redundant? Yesterday?). Point: I received an email from a dear old friend of mine who told me that he now sings that song and wrings every emotion out of it, the way I used to do. That struck me several different ways. First of all...DID I mean those words as much when I was younger than I would now, given the chance to sing them? The second and third reasons don't count right now. Luke 12:28 gives us some good "today" advice: If then God so clothes the grass, which today is in the field and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will He clothe you, O you of little faith?
Now, do you want to know which song it is? Have you not guessed?
Something Beautiful
If there ever were dreams that were lofty and noble, they were my dreams from the start, and the hopes for lifes best are the hopes that you harbor down deep in your heart, but when your dreams turn to ashes and your castles all crumble and your fortune turns to loss, well wrap it all in the rags of your life, and lay it at the cross,
For He'll make:
Something beautiful,, something good, all my confusions He understood, all I had to offer Him was brokenness and strife, but He made something beautiful out of my Life!
I felt that this was for one of you especially as you read this today, let Him make Something Beautiful out of YOUR life....be blessed...
