I am a Christian, a retired teacher, a mother and a grandmother. I love to read and I love the Lord Jesus Christ! Unless otherwise specified ,all visual illustrations are from the YOU VERSION APP of the Bible.
There was a lot of buzz this week about the appearance of the strawberry moon for the first time since 2006, an anomaly that we won’t see again until 2043. Naturally curious, I looked up information about it and when to best view it. During the best time to see it, we had dense cloud cover, so I couldn’t see the moon at all. But I did capture a shot of it as we returned from Bible study Monday night.
It was supposed to be most visible on Tuesday night at dusk, but our cloud cover interfered. So here is a photo from http://www.flicker.com that shows the strawberry moon over water.
Here is a second photo that my husband took from our front yard on Monday.
Why all these photos of the moon? Am I directing your attention to the created things? Absolutely not! I want everyone to understand that the Creator of the Universe makes all things beautiful for us to enjoy. He put the moon there and even created special views like a strawberry moon.
When we are gazing at the sky, at least we are looking up. While our eyes are focused upwards, let’s remember to give praise to the Creator for all the wonder He has made all around us.
To God be the glory, always and in all ways for all things!
My thoughts on this prayer are yes! and amen! I am not a bold person, but with the Holy Spirit’s help, I can be. I love that I can fight fear with faith. That is what I leaned on while we were traveling so far these last few weeks. I leaned hard into the Lord and he calmed me. I even fell asleep in the car yesterday, and I never do that (you can ask my husband). I’m usually so anxious about traffic and weather and the car in general that I just can’t relax. But I actually snoozed. Thank you, Lord! I needed that!
I am praising God that we are home for a while now and we can both rest and recover. Our daughter is traveling home today, my brother and his wife are going to see my sister in NC and then home to CO, so I am still praying for them and their safety.
I am praising the Lord for a wonderful time with my family as many of us joined together in SC this week. I got to see my brother (we see each other every couple of years), his family from Colorado, including his new grand baby Juni, and our daughter from Pennsylvania and her granddaughters. We enjoyed meals together, swim time, game time and a lot of laughs. So, praise God!
Think about this verse. We imagine, and God does more, so much more!
A Life of Thanksgiving (YouVersion Daily Refresh, 5-19-25)
How thankful are you when you talk to God? The world around us generally doesn’t encourage thankfulness. We’re taught to look after ourselves in order to get what we think we deserve.
And yet—Christians ought to be the most thankful people on earth because we have been given everything by God. James 1:17 reminds us that every good gift comes from Him. This implies that God is always acting in kindness toward us.
Not only has God given us life and breath, but He has also offered us the free gift of eternal life. God made a way for us to have a relationship with Him through the death and resurrection of Jesus. That alone is more than enough for us to live a life of gratitude toward God.
Because of what He’s done for us, our hearts should be in a constant state of thanksgiving. And yet, we often find ourselves complaining because things don’t go the way we want. We grumble because we don’t have the things we think we deserve. And the more that we complain, the more our hearts grow critical and bitter.
Thankfully, Psalm 100 gives us the antidote for grumbling and complaining: thankfulness. Thanksgiving is a spiritual habit that we have to intentionally develop through continual practice. We can practice by taking time each day to talk with God, and to thank Him for all He has done. We can also practice thankfulness by telling others how grateful we are for them.
So the next time you find yourself complaining or grumbling, take a moment to think about the love and goodness of God in your life. Instead of complaining, express how thankful you are for who God is and what He has given you. Keep a list of things you’re grateful for and add to it throughout the week. Watch as your heart and mind begin to be transformed by the simple act of thanksgiving.
My Thoughts
I really needed this devotional today, so I am preaching to myself and not necessarily to you, my readers. I must confess that by the time our long journey to three graduations in nine days was ending, I was grumpy, with a capital G. Nothing my husband tried to do appeased me. I was determined to be miserable. My legs ached, my shoulders hurt, I was too old and too tired for this adventure, and on and on. Then, the Holy Spirit reminded me that I had been healed after a stroke and should be counting my blessings that I could attend these ceremonies of these very special grandchildren instead of whining about how inconvenient it was for me and my poor body. So, I did an about face and started looking for things to be thankful for, especially my health, even though I was feeling weak and unable to walk another step at times. Thus, I was able to walk more than the length of a football field to our car when the last ceremony concluded on Saturday.
This morning started as usual. I slept in a little later than what is normal for me because I didn’t get in bed until after 2 a.m. Anyway, everything was going well until I picked up my Ipad and sat in my recliner to do my morning devotions. The black screen of death greeted me! I was distraught, but I had my phone so I looked up what “fix” I could do. Well, I thanked God for technology and followed through with the instructions online. Did you know that you can “gently burp” your IPad? Well, I tried that and it didn’t seem to work, so I went to the hard reboot and prayed really hard. Thank the good Lord that it worked and now I am using that IPad to tell everyone how thankful I am that it did.
We have had some tough losses lately. The lady named Verna who led me to the Lord over fifty years ago passed away this weekend. The elderly lady from our former church who allowed us to live with her when a hurricane made it impossible for us to live in our home until electricity was restored passed away last week. Finally, a very dear friend from where I used to teach is on home care for cancer and not doing well, so her loss seems to be inevitable. All of this saddens me, but it also makes me reflect on how good God has been to me throughout these decades I have spent as His beloved child. Healings too numerous to fit on this page, blessings of children, grandchildren, family visits and new friends at new places and a new church.
I have so much to be thankful for that I don’t have time to complain. How about you? Are you in the mollygrubs and need a reality check from the Holy Spirit? Or are you a naturally cheerful and thankful person? That is what I am striving to be as old age has caught up with me, aches have become a constant part of my life, and I know without a doubt that I have already lived more than the majority of my life. That being said, in whatever time God blesses me to continue to live on the earth, I want to remember to be thankful every day, in every way, for everything He is and all He has shared with me.
A good verse to remember is Colossians 2:6-7:
“So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.”
Deep Confidence in a Big God (YouVersion, Daily Refresh, 5-16-25)
Before the telescope was invented, all that was known about the sky above was what could be seen with the naked eye.
Now, thanks to advances in modern technology, we are aware of far-off galaxies, stunning nebulas, and mysterious black holes. Now, we realize that our knowledge was (and still is) severely limited.
There’s something about staring up at a blanket of stars that beckons wonder. There’s something about a watercolor sunset that invites curiosity. There’s something about standing on top of a giant rock—that’s suspended on nothing in the middle of a massively complex universe—that invites worship.
We are merely discovering what God has put here in the first place. And the more we uncover, the more we are filled with awe.
Yes, the heavens remind us of God’s majesty; the skies remind us of His splendor. But they also remind us of how big He is and how small we are. They remind us of His vastness and our limitations, and of His independence and our utter dependence on Him.
So whenever you see a star-filled sky, are stopped in your tracks by a brilliant sunrise, or read about some extraordinary discovery on the fringes of space, don’t forget to praise the One who has created and sustained it all along.
My Thoughts
If this trip of over 1000 miles this week has taught me anything, it has taught me to look around me at the wonderful world that God has given us to enjoy. I have looked at the mountains of PA, the rolling hills there and the beautiful sunset after a mostly rainy day. I have seen the green, mountainous landscape of West Virginia, the flat farmlands all along the way and the beautiful flowering trees and plants. God created and put us here to enjoy it. We see, we are grateful and more than that, God’s creation teaches us to trust. In times of change, like having three grandchildren whom I held as infants graduate from college, it is a good time to remember that God does not and will not change. He is always as close as our next prayer. I am deeply grateful for all that God has allowed me to see and experience. I know that He is a big, big God because of all He has done and continues to do for me.
Today, we head home (yes, that was a big sigh of relief), and tomorrow is the final college graduation of our oldest grandson. God continues to amaze me with the talents he has given these young adults and the way I am certain He will use them if they will let Him. There are a lot of miles on this body and so many steps over the last ten days that I am aching, but God is an awesome God who gave me the strength for each mile and each step, and I am confident He will be with me, showing me new things until He calls me home.
So, in all honesty, I must say that the idea for my blog today came from a devotional I am reading called JESUS DAY BY DAY by Sharon Kaselonis, published by Mutnomah in 2019. In this devotional, the author presented the fact that Ruth was a Gentile. That got me to thinking because I always just read over the words (skimmed, overlooked) that told me she was a Moabite and didn’t consider the fact that she was a Gentile. Just like me!
The author also pointed out that she was loved by a Jewish man named Boaz who showed her kindness and made sure that she was fed. All of this truth led me to think about that I have also been wooed by a Jewish man (Jesus) and He makes sure I am fed daily, not only physically but spiritually through His Word.
The final revelation isn’t one that will surprise you. Boaz was called Ruth’s kinsman and she married him. We are the bride of Christ, adopted into His family by His sacrifice so He is our kinsman and we will all participate in the marriage supper of the Lamb because we are the bride.
Okay, so maybe no surprises or big reveals for you, but I have always loved the story of Ruth. It’s like having a clean romance story in the Bible and it has a happily ever after. The greatest story ever told is part of Ruth’s story because she and Boaz were the great-grandparents of King David, in the lineage of Jesus. So, to realize that I am like Ruth…that is a blessing not to be taken lightly!
“Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab, Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth, Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of King David. David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah’s wife,” Matthew 1:5-6 NIV
Boaz was a relative of Naomi who had returned home after her husband and sons died. Coincidence? No, a God-incidence, or as the television movie says, it’s a “Godwink.”
God had everything figured out and planned for Ruth, a Gentile woman in a strange land, just as He has good plans for each of us.
Jesus came for the purpose of bringing the Jewish people back to God, but since God is not a respecter of people just because of their lineage, He included us, the Gentiles, in His great plan of salvation. We were grafted into the family, adopted and accepted just as if we were originally born into the family. That, my dear friends, is grace.
We are not better than the Jewish people who rejected Christ. Rather, we should be thankful, knowing that God still calls the Israelites His chosen people and continues to work in their hearts to draw them to Him. Meanwhile, we need to be grateful that we were called and chosen to be a part of the family, grafted in and accepted as His children.
The Gospel message is one of hope, the same message that Boaz gave to Ruth when he provided grain for her and then redeemed her and married her. He brought her into his family, just as Jesus brings us into the family of God and welcomes us wholeheartedly and lovingly. Thus, as I began, I will end. We are all like Ruth.
Join Richard as he persuades us with this beautiful verse and imagery to worship our Creator. Make sure to follow Him to receive His timely and encouraging verses daily.
Observing Sabbath-rest allows us to step into the same rhythm God established in creating the world. Scripture tells us when God rested from His work, it was because His work was complete (Genesis 2:1). God took joy in His accomplishment.
In Hebrews 4:10, the writer draws a parallel between God’s rest and ours: “for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his.” We’re invited to delight in His presence and share in God’s divine contentment.
This rest isn’t about taking a break from good works. It’s about surrendering the need to control by trusting in the completeness of God’s work. Our “rest” releases us from the burden of proving ourselves good enough to earn His love and approval. These things have been secured through Jesus’ finished work on the cross. When we step into this rhythm of rest we can find contentment that spills over into every part of our lives.
Is God calling you to stop trying to do everything on your own and instead find peace in Jesus’ finished work on the cross?
Lay down your burdens, not out of laziness, but surrender. Believe that the One who made the world also takes care of you.
My Thoughts
I really needed today’s devotional today and hope that it speaks to your heart, too. The part that spoke to me the most is above and I changed the print to make it stand out. All my life, I have struggled to be accepted, to be good enough to win approval. First from my parents, then from my friends and then various administrators for whom I taught. Once I accepted the Lord, I knew in my mind that He had accepted me just as I was, but I still had difficulty getting this truth into my heart. I had gone through years of not being good enough. My mom told me she never wanted me, called me ugly and told me I had to go to college since no one would ever want to marry me. My father abandoned me and sought drugs as his source of comfort. My friends were good while they lasted, but we kept moving to new places so I never really got close to anyone until we moved to Virginia. And my bosses gave infrequent kudos and little appreciation. I found that no one could demand the same perfectionism that I demanded of myself. Then, Jesus stepped into my life and I could breathe for the first time the clean air of complete love and acceptance. I didn’t have to get good grades, be a stellar employee or do a lot of favors to win approval. I already had it. Today’s devotional is a reminder to me of how far I have come from the child who was not loved to the child of the King who is loved eternally. God is good and wants us to rest in Him and be totally content with who He made us to be.
They are words of priestly blessing, for it is part of the work of priests to bless the people: “Tell Aaron and his sons, ‘This is how you are to bless the Israelites’” (Num. 6:23). One thinks of Melchizedek as he blessed Abraham and of our Lord himself, “a high priest for ever, in the order of Merlchizedek” (Heb. 6:20). “Today,” says Andrew Murray in a memorable comment, “He comes to meet thee, as thou returnest from the battle weary and faint. Bow before Him, and let Him bless thee!”
It is frequently the privilege of Christian ministers to utter these words of blessing – their privilege, but not their sole prerogative, for we believe in the priesthood of all believers. Let them give the words their full meaning, and then the blessers and the blessed will be able to sing.
My Thoughts
I am blessed to be a blessing and thank God daily for His love for me. I saw my nephrologist on Monday and he did the usual lab tests to check my kidney function. I was delighted when the report came back that all of my numbers are in the normal range and my kidney is stable. What a blessing that was to me! And what a blessing each of you who reads my daily thoughts is to me, also! I pray for each of you to know the unfathomable love of the Father and that you, too, may know that you are blessed to be a blessing.
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