Spring’s Beauty

KODAK Digital Still Camera

Yes, I am going a little stir crazy! Because of my age and health issues, I am weaker than most people. I have had a few rounds of chemotherapy and taken off my hormones so I still have issues of fatigue. Naturally, I have stayed at home to keep away from the corona virus. But I am getting a little tired of staying away from other people.

My husband in his kindness drove me around town so I could take a few pictures of the beauty of this spring’s flowering trees. I don’t know exactly what kind some of them are, but I do recognize the tulip poplars and what we always called pink bud trees. God in the midst of troubles still delivers beauty in His natural world. Praise God!! I pray you have a very blessed day.

Problem Solved

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God is the answer to all of our earth’s problems. He made it, He controls it, and He loves it and you more than anyone else will ever love it or you. Praise God! But you have to return the favor.

Malachi 3:7-12 Ever since the time of your ancestors you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,” says the LORD Almighty.

But you ask, “How are we to return?”

“Will a mere mortal rob God? Yet you rob me.”

But you ask, ‘How are we robbing you?’

In tithes and offerings. You are under a curse —– your whole nation —— because you are robbing me. Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the LORD Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it. I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not drop their fruit before it is ripe,” says the LORD Almighty. “Then all the nations will call you blessed for yours will be a delightful land,” says the LORD Almighty.

Tithes aren’t always money or in Israel’s case food. Sometimes it is just the tithe of time, energy or just plain respect and reverence.

Malachi 2:17 You have wearied the Lord with your words.

“How have we wearied him?” you ask.

By saying, “All who do evil are good in the eyes of the LORD, and he is pleased with them.”

Malachi 3:1-3 “I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple.

But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver.

Malachi 3:5 So I will come to put you on trial. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive the foreigners among you of justice, but do not fear me,” says the Lord Almighty.

God loves us so passionately, profoundly and deeply He was willing to put His only precious Son through a tortuous death so we could live with Him in infinity’s Paradise forever.

Try to stay safe and have a blessed day. Praise God!!

Pure Love

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The love of the God-head—God the Father, God the Son Jesus and God the Holy Spirit— is overwhelming. They are the only source of all the good things in life that most people deep within themselves really desire. The fruits of His Spirit are listed in Galatians 5:22-23 ‘But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law’. In a nutshell, this is God.

That is what made our rebellion in the garden so terrible and horrific. We rebelled against someone so beautiful, wonderful, magnanimous and gracious that it is hard for us to comprehend because we do not come close to His goodness and beauty. We rebelled against pure, unadulterated, unblemished Perfect Love. His love is so perfect that the Creator of Heaven and Earth, let Himself be hung on a cruel, torturous Roman cross instead of inflicting the torment on us. He died for every human being that has ever existed so we could be forgiven for our rebellion. That is His Amazing Grace!

Won’t you accept His perfect love today and come back into the original peace and harmony we at one time had in that garden. He is ceaselessly looking for you. May you have a blessed day. Praise God!!

Power

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I had a very terrible start in life. An orphan from birth, I was shuffled between an orphanage and foster care. I have known lovelessness and having nothing in life, but somehow God found me. Even at a very early age, say 9 or 10, I was able to feel a presence in my life. They said I was a highly sensitive child. An elder at our last church said I seemed to be a very spiritually sensitive person. I’m thankful to God for staying so close to me as I never really felt loved or that I really fit in anywhere even after I was adopted.

He has at times given me dreams and visions or impressions which I have talked about on this blog site. I pray I could make God feel more real for you.

We have a small second story balcony off the front of our townhouse. It’s up so high you get a panoramic view of the sky and the clouds. I was out on it one day when I felt I could envision a flat platform made of only clouds with more leading up to it. At the top was a very tall angel dressed in a short white tunic and holding a massive golden spear in his hand. His face was beautiful but frightening to look at, resembling a human face but not quite like a human’s. It was beautiful but frightening to look at. The overall impression was one of extreme, extreme POWER.

I think in our American culture and even in a large number of our churches we have lost respect for God’s extreme power and sovereignty, lordship over us. God owns every atom, every molecule of our planet, every heartbeat and every breath taken down here. We have lost our reverence for his Kingship over us. He owns us. Whether we like it or not doesn’t matter. We own nothing but are just temporarily using His stuff.

Fortunately for us, He is perfect love and loves us enough to send His only Son, Jesus Christ, to take the punishment we deserved for our rebellion against Him. He overwhelmingly loves and adores us!

I pray you will have a very blessed day. Try to stay safe and may God bless you today with the knowledge of His extreme love and power over all events down here. Praise God!!

Spring’s Rites

Rites of Spring
Ancient as time
Watching Her fling
Her flowers
As she climbs

Higher, Higher
Becoming stronger
As She ascends
Promising the Sun
He may run longer

Across the sky
Holding night at bay
Within his fiery grip
Lengthening each &
every day.

We rejoice
She has returned
Winter had brought
Cold’s drought
We felt as lovers spurned

From her warm embrace
Denied the beauty of
Her face
We now feel entitled,
Must we really battle?

Over these Rights of Spring
Are we forced to stand
Toe to toe
Cajole, implore, as if
With her we are now foes?

No, we had rather
Love
Receive freely the Rights we feel
Are our due
Release our peaceful doves

As Spring returns
our Happy Rights
To enjoy the sun,
Laugh in his warm embrace
lying aground within the sight

of multitudes, gatherings
of happy flower faces
brought forth amid
Spring’s joyful warmth
Nature’s once again reminder
of God’s great & gentle graces.

I couldn’t help taking a few pictures from around town of the first signs of spring. The moss is turning greener, plants are now floating on the water in our wetlands and the animals have started daring to stick their heads out. Even the birds, a few ducks and Canadian geese, have started returning. I always love this time of year. It’s almost like feeling a return of life after the cold of winter. Have a blessed day. Praise God!!

Wintry Trees

KODAK Digital Still Camera

Wintry Trees

Winter’s trees
Devoid, stripped of
All their leaves
Exposing for each to see
Their wooden figures
And bony knees

Clutching upwards
Toward grey skies
With lacy fingers
And limbs so high
Do they ever notice
One as small as I?

Long elegant limbs
And wispy strands
Of twiggy hair
No longer full or
Covered with youth’s
Greenery so fair

Still I find your
Beauty rare.
As you reach up
for cold, empty air
Tis strange, I know
To say I better love
Your forms now so
fully more exposed.

I too am like you.
In my winter of life
I also will lose my
Youthful glow
Reach upward for hope,
To find new life
in heaven’s peaceful
azure skies.

I think the trees in winter are almost as beautiful as they are in summer. You can see the actual shapes of them better. These photos were taken along our greenway system which runs along a river. Have a blessed day. Praise God!

I am a Blade of Grass

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I am a Blade of Grass

Not literally, I know
But
I am a blade of grass
Only another Part of Creation
Never meant to ever
Last

In this form, level of
Existence.
Shaped by Love’s
Own voice
It was my Creator’s
Choice

To give me life
Within
His bounds of Love
And Grace
Meant to live in the light
Of His most beautiful face

I am alive, green, for now
But He is the God
not I
For soon I too will wilt,
Blown upward to live
Within the expanses of
Heaven’s bluest skies.

So, I, the creation,
Am satisfied,
Transformed into
Heaven’s own child,
Transplanted to grow,
& Dance beneath his Smile.

So many people in the world have lost respect for our Creator, forgetting we are just another part of His creation & only here because He wanted to share His overwhelming beauty and love with us. Praise God!

Choice

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Choice

Mindlessly, I wander
Demanding Culture shaping
My thoughts
Loudly it screams
TV, movies,
Magazines

Until
One moment of a
Tap
On the shoulder
A voice whispers
Stop.

Into the heart
It speaks
You have a
Choice
You are loved
From above

Entirely up to
You
Another way exists
To guide,
Live by, above the
Roaring Mass Confusion.

Transcendent above
All life below,
A Savior speaks
Your name
Lovingly

Holds out the keys
To joy
Or pain, but
The choice
Is left to
You

Keys to
Paradise
or
Hell
He holds in His
Hands
You have free will.
this choice
is entirely, totally,
completely
up to You.

God created us with free will in order to give us the ability to love. Love is an act of the will not just an emotion. Desiring to be loved, He will not force His way into your heart. He leaves that choice up to you. Have a blessed day. Praise God!!