Peace & Presence

I once worked in the television industry as a camera and lighting person and learned a lot by watching people do their thing.

At the Taste of Minnesota, a reporter from channel 11 was getting ready to go live when suddenly, I heard him scream, “What are they doing?”

When a reporter goes live on location, they introduce a package, which is a pre-recorded video. Because the signal going back to the station was so bad, the station decided to roll the package and not go live to the reporter.

Hearing the reporter scream made me wonder if we sometimes don’t scream, “Lord, what are You doing?” when we go through a hard time. I have wondered about this many times, such as when my dad divorced and left Minnesota. I wondered again after I left Minnesota and moved to Illinois to get a job running a camera, but then left the television industry.

One night, on my way home from my courier job, I screamed, “What are you doing, Lord?” The Lord reminded me that night when a tornado took off the roof of a nearby apartment building. I felt Him telling me that could have been my apartment. Yet the Lord did not leave me or forget me. God promised the same thing to His Old Testament people and still promises it to believers today.

When we know Jesus as our Savior, He will be there for us. Trust Him now if you haven’t already. He knows what He is doing. 

As I listened to my beloved football team, I silently barracked hard. My boys overcame a deficit and kicked away to a fabulous victory. Well earned. My team has a reputation for being comeback kings.

Enjoying a touch of spring in the air, I thought about how comebacks can inspire us. It is just as the word of God expresses in this verse: They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory. I agree that not one of us knows when Jesus will be our comeback king. But as a Christian, I can be inspired by this promise of magnificent glory to come. So can any Christian.

Jesus asks each of us to love God and each other. If we smile, pray, and speak in peace, we can all act like talking Bibles daily. This is the greatest gift we can give each other: to be examples of making our faith accessible to all we meet.

Smiling and praying are important jobs. So are things such as not rising to bait and catastrophizing minor non-issues. Like my team, which aims to play on, we can all hope to pray on.

We hope to see Jesus, our comeback King, returning in all His great glory. In the meantime, we can keep praying to be His living word. We are all here for such a short while, so let’s make the most of our God-given days and enjoy happy times.

Let’s celebrate together the spiritual blessings of Jesus, our comeback King. Pray on.

My mind was so focused on the problem that I couldn’t think about anything else. Scenarios played in my head like a trailer for a horror film … all the what-ifs.

Someone once said that if we don’t fill our minds with God’s Word, the enemy will fill them with doubt, fear, and confusion. I had certainly allowed that to happen to me.

Then I read Sarah Young’s words in Jesus Calling: “A mind that is unfocused is vulnerable to the world, the flesh, and the Devil, all of which exert a downward pull on your thoughts. As your thinking processes deteriorate, you become increasingly confused and directionless. The best remedy is to refocus your mind and heart on Me, your constant companion.” ~Jesus

Shifting our focus is as easy as calling out to the Lord. Whispering His name. Spending time in His presence. Saturating our mind and heart with His Word.

No one can change our thoughts but us. It’s up to us what we dwell on and allow to take up residence in our hearts. But the Bible is clear on what we should be thinking about. I love the way the Message translation explains it:

Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies. Philippians 4:8-9 MSG

What are you thinking about today? If your thoughts don’t line up with God’s Word, maybe it’s time to shift your focus.

When our son-in-law resigned from his job to accept a new position, colleagues blessed him with many good wishes, including a quilt, cards, a memory book, and gift cards. One gift card was for Cracker Barrel.

The family planned to enjoy supper one evening at this fun restaurant. As soon as the family swallowed the last glass of water, placed their silverware on plates, and bunched their soiled napkins, the waitress returned to their table with a big smile.

When our son-in-law whipped out the gift card, she beamed and said, “Oh, no, sir, you don’t need to use that at all. Someone in the restaurant paid for your meal.”

“Wow!” our daughter exclaimed.

“Who paid for our dinner? Can you tell us?” their daughters asked.

“No,” the waitress replied. “The person wanted to remain anonymous and bless your family.”

“Well, let’s keep this thing going,” our son-in-law replied.

All four looked around the restaurant to pick out another family to bless.

The waitress was only too happy to participate in these two generous exchanges. She took the gift card to the family as my daughter and her family headed out the door. The person who paid it forward to my daughter’s family had no idea another family would also be blessed by their kind act.

We’ve all heard stories like this one. Occasionally, a generous donor might bless us by paying for our coffee or even a whole meal.

The story of Jesus’ generosity in paying it forward by leaving heaven for all of us is divine and unparalleled. His death on the cross represents the ultimate gift for all our sins—past, present, and future. He paid His love, grace, mercy, and forgiveness forward so that we could spend eternity with him.

Some of us may be the lucky recipients of a generous donor who anonymously pays for our coffee or dinner at a restaurant. But in truth, we all receive Jesus’s pay-it-forward gift of His sacrificial life daily.

Enjoy God’s gift to you and look for ways to pay it forward to others who need to hear Christ’s message of salvation.

(Photo courtesy of pixabay and sahinsezerdincer.)

My husband delivered a basket of home-grown tomatoes to the local senior center. The director told him that when she opened the front door that morning, she smelled something burning. The acrid aroma drew her to the kitchen, where a freezer plug had shorted. That faint smell, sensed in the nick of time, assuredly saved the building from a disastrous fire.

God created us with the senses of smell and hearing to help us be more aware of our surroundings.

Memory smells are recollections of scents that evoke particular memories, transporting us back to a forgotten place and time.

I like to recall the smells of bleach in my grandmother’s sparkling-clean bathroom, my mother’s favorite perfume, the halls and walls of my elementary school, and the salty waters and steamy sands of the Gulf of Mexico.

Remembered sounds also trigger happy thoughts: melodious wind chimes playfully swinging in the courtyard, the pitter-patter of tiny feet on hardwood floors, the whirrs of hummingbird wings, and the creaks of the back door of my childhood home slamming shut.

Jesus leads us in a victory procession on earth to entice others to follow Him. Our presence, fragrance, and voice escort those around us into God’s presence. They may think they are with us, but they experience Christ. Just think—we might be the only earthly beings who reflect Jesus to them.

Thank God for smells and sounds, past and present, that He created to alert us to danger and generate snippets of joy in our lives. Boldly march in the eternal procession of Christ to lead others to Him.

(Photo courtesy of pixabay and PublicDomainPictures.)