I do apologize for missing this last month. I have been on sabbatical, a time of deep introspection, meditation, prayer and visioning. It has been the time Ralph Waldo Emerson speaks about in his poem, THE APOLOGY.

By Ralph Waldo Emerson

Think me not unkind and rude,
That I walk alone in grove and glen;
I go to the god of the wood
To fetch his word to men.

Tax not my sloth that I
Fold my arms beside the brook;
Each cloud that floated in the sky
Writes a letter in my book.

Chide me not, laborious band,
For the idle flowers I brought;
Every aster in my hand
Goes home loaded with a thought.

There was never mystery,
But ’tis figured in the flowers,
Was never secret history,
But birds tell it in the bowers.

One harvest from thy field
Homeward brought the oxen strong;
A second crop thine acres yield,
Which I gather in a song.

ANYWAY I AM BACK AND HERE IS OUR FIRST DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT FROM MY TIME AWAY.