Next week I will be sixty eight years old. Life has truly been gracious to me even with the struggles that have been salted into it.
Lately, I have sensed a change of direction coming. Doors are slowly closing. My wife and I are set to anticipate the opening of new doors. The sensation of what may be ahead are usually set with anxiety, but this time, I feel it will be different. It’s as if it’s the coming into my own right. All the years behind me have brought me to this day.
My wife and I thought we’d found the church to end all churches for the remaining portion of our walk on this earth, but we have been profoundly shaken over events that have occurred in the church. None of it involves us as an intricate part of the event.
The contrast of where I came from in life and where my wife came from is broad. She spent years in and out of church, but in the last four or so years she has grown by leaps and bounds having read the Bible through once and is nearing her second read through. She has been solidly saved and filled with the Spirit. I am blessed to know her and have her as a deep part of my life.
I spent 30 some odd years heavily involved in church. I did grow up in a Baptist church so you could tack on a few more luke warm years. But those thirty years were very formative. I saw a lot as a leader. I’ve seen the good, the bad and the downright ugly. I could say I am included with the ugly at the end of it all.
It has taken me several years to allow myself time to come to a new realization of who I am. People from my past would not know me now. I walk more solidly and understand situations and hopefully can articulate how I feel more clearly.
I do have a fault of going into too much detail and my wife will readily say “Do you have to say so much about that”? Then I have to pare it down to the base form of the statement I am trying to convey.
I will make this post short. To say what I feel is this. I feel a paradigm shift in the making. A totally new way and direction is at hand. Where this will take us is not fully known at this moment. I just know that my heart is open to God so that He can direct us where He wants us.
I’d like to add one thing in closing this out. I could be mistaken for talking about myself too much, but my biggest hope is that someone else can see themselves in it and identify with it. It’s my hope that what I say will help someone else. Never give up in the midst of circumstance. Take it as a challenge to overcome. Be prayerful in it and God will draw you and Himself closer together.
for at least another week and that means bus drivers and others have also been out of work for a month, the end of next week.
town of Richlands. Jones-Onslow EMC has power back up in many areas and is highly visible to the public around here. Not Duke Energy, though and they have told some customers it could be several day longer than we, who already have power a couple of days ago. It’s not for the lack of lineman in the area. I’ve even seen Tideland guys in the town hooking up huge power generators to gas stations so they can operate their pumps. I know these guys come from areas hit at least as hard as us.
So, hurricanes, can spawn more than wind and rain. They can also allow the mind to stop a moment and observe the nature and calling of God. People lost their homes and possessions, but let’s concentrate on Him. Loss can sometimes mean a fresh beginning. I never look at anything with negative circumstances as anything more than a challenge of something to overcome. I cannot express that enough. God’s hand is shown when diversity comes. And it’s not a closed fist. It’s an open hand. Look for it. It’s there. Waiting for you.
summer has been awfully quiet till now and suddenly we’re looking at a storm that can and likely will alter the lives of many people.
left. Now that sits dormant till I catch back up. There’s still crown molding to get and put up. Still, doors to paint. Really, I would like to replace them. There’s always something to do if you’re a homeowner.
Bible and a Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance. So I set my eye towards getting them. But I didn’t expect how I would get the Bible. In August I was in the mid-week service at Faith Assembly of God in Wilmington when as the end as the benediction was being prayed I felt a tap on my shoulder. When the amen was said I turned to look at a friend of mine by the name of Chuck Spooner. He leaned forward and handed me a Bible. He said God spoke to him to give it to me. I looked at it and saw that it was a Thompson Chain Reference IV edition. Chuck didn’t know this was what God had told me I should have. There it was. Handed to me. I hugged Chuck, thanked him for it and took that treasure I’d been given home with me and devoured it over the coming years. There are notes everywhere in it as you see in the picture of it now.
A short back-story to that is I was awakened one day from sleep when I was working graveyard shift by my phone ringing. It was Chuck. There was so much excitement in his voice as he began to tell me that in God telling him to give me his Bible it opened up a blessing on him by someone giving him a new Thompson Chain Reference large print red-lettered edition, which he really needed since he had very bad vision. We rejoiced in this and he went on about his business and I went back to sleep knowing all was well.
and two 16″ bicycles ready for someone to give them some degree of fun or ability to travel.
emained open, walk through it. The day I walked into the Richlands District Transportation office I was put on a bus with a woman who was leaving in a few days. She drove that morning. I drove that afternoon and next morning and then she cut me loose and I drove from Thanksgiving until the end of the school year on the two routes she left me with.
Livin' Small 