Fallible human, infallible God -- while we may not achieve perfection, Psalm 119:1-7 assures us we can live blameless lives by “walking according to the law of the Lord, seeking him with all of our heart, praising him, and learning from his righteousness.”
A friend of mine told a story about someone who read one verse of Psalm 119 every day. By the end of six months, he read the whole book. Then he started over.
When my parents decided to end their 35-year marriage in 2020, my life was shattered in an instant. I couldn’t understand how a God that loved me so much could allow my family to be ripped apart, never to be put back together again.
Women love to talk!
We love to get with our friends and just share our lives up and downs, heartaches and challenges, love and romances, compliments and complaints. We just love to talk.
What kind of words come from your mouth? Are they sometimes critical words to someone or about someone? We must be careful that we don't fall into a pattern of criticism
Have you ever watched a potter work, as Jeremiah did in today's passage? It is amazing to see something lovely begin to take shape from a lump of clay. In this passage God was showing the prophet that the nation of Israel-as well as every person from the beginning of time-was to be shaped by His hand. We are all lumps of human clay waiting for the touch of the master Potter.
Until several years ago, I had a complete set of china dinnerware. In spite of moving households every few years, each fragile piece remained perfectly intact. Then as I packed the dishes one last time, a tea cup slipped from my fingers and broke in two pieces. My spirit was crushed in disappointment.
It was a beautiful early spring day. The sky was cloudless, and the temperature was perfect for an outing. My husband and I decided to visit the zoo in our town.
If you have ever been through a ropes course, you learn a lot about who you are-and even more about your co-workers. The course is there to teach you to work with each other, build trust, as well as grow your confidence.
I listened intently as the doctor described the cancer diagnosis explaining to me the rare form of lymphoma I had and what to expect in the coming days. I asked, “So what is the treatment and when do we start?” In which she replied there were more tests needed to complete for the treatment study. “I will send orders right away. It will take about 2 to 3 weeks to get all the results,” she said.
It looked simple enough on the box. Let’s face it, how hard it is to do a 300-piece jigsaw puzzle? Boy, was I wrong in my assumption! I dumped the pieces on the table, and the colors were so alike.
I don’t know what made me notice the article about birds. But as I scrolled through it, the author said something that caught my eye--birds continue to sing through the pain of a broken wing. The main reason researchers think they do this is to keep predators away.
Pain and loss have deep purpose in Kingdom work. We don’t simply move through lament, find healing, and consider it the end. We should ask the Lord, “What have I learned? What do I do now with this experience?”
When we faithfully practice lament, diligently search the Scriptures, and incorporate Scripture into our prayers, we unlock the experience of profound peace. This is an experienced peace—not the resolution of every “why,” nor the sudden release of burdens that may have weighed on our hearts for years.
