Grains of Sand

Reading: Acts 10-12 The snow is beginning to fly. It will be a while before we get a real snowstorm. Right now we are still in the “in between” period that marks the transition of fall into winter. But still, it's cold and windy and the flakes are falling, suffering an identity crisis as they try to decide whether they really are snow or should actually be hail or rain. It’s a good day for stew and that is exactly what is now beginning to fill the apartment with the slow-cooked richness of a nice piece of beef shank. Comfort food for cold weather. Cornelius wasn't looking for a nice bowl of comfort food on a winter-like day. But he was looking for comfort. He was a good man “…devout and God-fearing; he gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly ” (Acts 10:2, NIV). That wasn’t what he said of himself but what others testified about him. When the messengers came to Peter to ask him to come to the centurion’s house, they said: “ He is a righteous and Go...

Reading: Luke 21, 22 There are times when sermons and studies resemble nothing more than a series of personal illustrations or human philosophy lightly brushed with a phrase from Scripture. The Word of God becomes the illustration for the story instead of the story illustrating the Word of God. While the illustrations and the philosophy might have a positive impact, it is only the Word of God that will have “the last word” as it were. That means it should also have the first word. Luke 21:33 (NIV) tells us: “ Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away .” This verses couples beautifully with this promise from Isaiah 55:10, 11 (NIV): “ As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish the purpose for which I sent it .” I ...

Reading: Isaiah 28-31 “ Be stunned and amazed, blind yourselves and be sightless; be drunk, but not with wine, stagger, but not from beer. The Lord has brought over you a deep sleep: He has sealed your eyes (the prophets); he has covered your heads (the seers). For you the whole vision is nothing but words sealed in a scroll. And if you give the scroll to someone who can read, and say to him, ‘Read this, please,’ he will answer, ‘I can’t; it is sealed.’ Or if you give the scroll to someone who cannot read, and say, ‘Read this, please,’ he will answer, ‘I don’t know how to read. ’” (Isaiah 29:9-12, NIV). Paul paraphrases these words in Romans 11:7-10, NIV, when he writes: “ What then? What Israel sought so earnestly it did not obtain, but the elect did. The others were hardened, as it is written: ‘God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes so that they could not see and ears so that they could not hear to this very day.’ As David says: ‘May their table become a snare and a trap, a s...

“ Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting ” —Psalm 139:23, 24, NIV. This chapter began with the psalmist’s recognition that God knows everything there is to know about him. When he asks at the end of the psalm for God to plumb the depths and discover even more, the psalmist is not doubting all that he has said earlier. He is admitting that he doesn’t knows himself as well as God does. He wants God to show him those things that only God sees—the areas of the psalmist’s life that have defied not only public scrutiny, but the psalmist’s own. We all have things in our lives that aren’t pleasing to God. Sometimes they are nameless and elusive, niggling in the backs of the our minds and hearts where we can’t quite put our fingers on them. With that heart’s desire to have everything in us in submission to God, we ask Him to go digging in our garbage, not because He doesn’t k...

The other day I asked the Lord for a word of encouragement. At lunchtime today he delivered. A friend was telling about an incident that happened out at her campsite. She, her sister, and her sister's husband were part of a course on Angels I taught in the spring. The hubby was the only man in the study group and I really felt sorry for him and was actually surprised that he hung in right to the end. He never said a word all through the weeks we met together for the study. That wasn't a surprise since he's a quiet soul even among his own family. So everyone was astonished when another sister, visiting the camp that afternoon, asked a question related to angels and he proceeded, not only answer to her question, but to tell her a whole raft of other things that he had learned from the course. My friend commented that if she or her sister had answered the question, or interrupted with their own contribution, it would have resulted in a "ho-hum" from the third sis...