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When Life is Over…LIVE!!!

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ID-100186249I can’t help wondering what my mom is thinking tonight – after fifty-five years in one house, this is her last night there.  This is the place where she brought up her two little girls, the place where Dad farmed, where life was lived. It’s over; another chapter has closed in her book of life.

I wonder if she feels like life is over?  I know Tom and I felt a bit that way when Nathan left for college this year.  The chicks have flown, the nest is now empty.  Is life over?  Only if you want it to be!

Next door to my mother’s beautiful new home, another James will grow – our grandson.   Perhaps someday, like my father, he will have cows just like his Pappy!  Maybe he will love the fields and woods too.  He is a new generation, having the rare privilege of growing up in the same room as his grandmother did!  My room is now his room!  What an awesome thought and blessing!

Growing old gracefully – it’s harder than you think!  It seems like we spend so many years changing diapers, feeding hungry teens, training our children to have character – preparing them to receive the passed baton; and then suddenly, they’ve snatched it from our grasp and are running, running, running!  (And we can’t keep up! 🙂 )  We sigh a little, remembering all those wonderful years – wondering where they went; and we can feel as though life is over.

It is a new chapter, and that can be a bit scary; but if we dwell too much on the past, we miss all the wonderful blessing that God has for us today!  And isn’t that just like Old Scratch!  In much the same way, he tempts young people to dwell on the future, missing today’s blessings !

One of my favorite sayings (I believe of Ken Hay’s of at the WILDS) is: “Keep your mind where your body is!”  Grant it, there are times when we enjoy looking forward to a special occasion: but if we spend too much time in the past or future, our lives become nothing more the skips and jumps with a whole lot of emptiness in between!  Cherish the past; prepare for the future, but most of all, relish today – you will never be able to live it again!

So here’s to tomorrow: moving day!  May this new chapter add many wonderful memories to an already full life!

“He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” Micah 6:8

 “But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?”             Luke 12:20

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What happens when you don’t heed the warnings!

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025Well, it finally happened – I looked down and noticed a stone missing from my ring.  I’ve been worried about the prongs; so I took it to several places and they all warned me that the prongs were in bad shape.  I looked at in under a very powerful magnifying glass and noticed that the one prong was pointing straight up.  No wonder it felt rough!  So, I pushed it back down – there!  No problem.  Not really.  That extra pushing and bending must have weakened it because not only is the prone gone, but the stone is gone as well!

Why didn’t I listen?  Because I thought I knew better!  I can take care of it and save money to boot!  I knew it would be expensive to get it fixed at the jewelers, but now it’s going to cost me even more!

I am writing this from the sponsor lounge at the Wilds Christian Camp in North Carolina and the spiritual applications are too numerous to share; however, as we listened to the speaker pouring out his heart last night to the teens about fighting the battles that they are facing and being a victor instead of a victim, I realized that I am a victim of my own making!  I knew what to do but didn’t do it because it would cost me too much!  How many of those teens know what they need to do but won’t do it because it will cost them too much: their friends, their pleasure, their comfort?

I’m thinking of a young man who came to this camp seven years ago.  He was in my son’s cabin, and because of how the Lord was directing our lives, our paths would often cross again over the years.  He heard all the warnings that these teens are hearing, but he did not heed them.  Now, seven years later, he has fathered three children to three different women.  His life is a mess.  God can still get hold of his life and change it, but the scars will be there for a lifetime! Sin will always cost more than we want to pay and take us further than we wanted to go.

As you read this, what warning signs are you ignoring?  Do you see them in your children – perhaps they are not going the way you would like for them to go.  Is it a bad habit that you know you should give up or a good habit that you know you should start?

“Do it now, don’t delay!

Don’t put it off for another day!

Go ahead begin it; right this very minute.  You’d better do it now!”

  (Thank you Ron Hamilton, Kidnapped on I-Land!)

 

If only I had done it sooner!  I’m thankful my SIN of procrastination only cost me a tiny stone!  How much greater the cost always is when we procrastinate in our spiritual walk!

 

 “Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.”

Acts 26:28