How do you think Samuel felt when God called him for the first time? Actually, it took Samuel a few times to realize just who was calling him. At first, he assumed it was Eli the priest who was calling out to him in the night. Samuel went running each time he heard the call to see what Eli wanted but Eli told Samuel, “I didn’t call you my son.”

1 Samuel 3:7-10 (NLT)

7 Samuel did not yet know the Lord because he had never had a message from the Lord before. 8 So the Lord called a third time, and once more Samuel got up and went to Eli. “Here I am. Did you call me?” Then Eli realized it was the Lord who was calling the boy. 9 So he said to Samuel, “Go and lie down again, and if someone calls again, say, ‘Speak, Lord your…

Did you ever notice how the older we get, the worse the news seems?  Whether it’s national or global (witness the 494.23 point this past Thursday/Friday  Dow Jones drop) or personal (realizing I put the wrong year on an art contest poster that already went out via email and internet), all kinds of things seem to be going wrong.

Dean Koontz’s character, Odd Thomas, said it better than I ever could, Usually I spare myself from the news, because if it’s not propaganda, then it’s one threat or another exaggerated to the point of absurdity, or it’s the tragedy of storm-quake-tsunami, of bigotry and oppression misnamed justice, of hatred passed off as righteousness and honor called dishonorable, all jammed in around advertisements in which a gecko sells insurance, a bear sells toilet tissue, a dog sells cars, a gorilla sells investment advisors, a tiger sells cereal, and an elephant sells a drug…

I ran into a wonderful concept this morning as I was doing some homework on our retreat. I came across this verse:

The LORD is my strength and my song,
and he has become my salvation;
this is my God, and I will praise him,
my father’s God, and I will exalt him. – Exodus 15:2 ESV

We were given a number of verse to read, and as I was looking at this one, I wondered about the root for the word ‘praise,’ as I know there are many Hebrew words translated as such.

I first noticed that the KJV translates it

The LORD is my strength and song,
and he is become my salvation:
he is my God, and I will prepare him an habitation;
my father’s God, and I will exalt him. – Exodus 15:2 KJV

It turns out this word ,transliterated ‘navah,’ is defined as follows:

I…

5 Boaz asked…, “Who does that young woman belong to?”

6 The overseer replied, “She is the Moabite who came back from Moab with Naomi. 7 She said, ‘Please let me glean and gather among the sheaves behind the harvesters.’ She came into the field and has remained here from morning till now, except for a short rest in the shelter.”

8 So Boaz said to Ruth, “…And whenever you are thirsty, go and get a drink from the water jars the men have filled.”

10 At this, she bowed down with her face to the ground. She asked him, “Why have I found such favor in your eyes that you notice me—a foreigner?”

11 Boaz replied, “I’ve been told all about what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband… 12 May the Lord repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.”

(Ruth…

I feel very blessed.  I have a wonderful wife. I live in a nice home.  I have enough food, clothing and shelter.  I enjoyed most of the working career I had.  And I am enjoying the retirement I now have.

Yet our days are numbered–literally.  Job says, Man that is born of women is of few days…his days are determined, the number of his months are with thee, thou has appointed the bounds that he cannot pass. (Job 13:1,5)  The old saw nothing is certain but death and taxes is always at least half true.  David said, We are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers. (I Chron. 29:15)  He went on to say, our days on earth are as a shadow, and there is nothing abiding.

When English patriot Sir William Russell went to the scaffold in 1683, he took his watch out of his…

Looking at this cartoon, I found myself wondering how it is that so many of us always think the grass in greener in the other guy’s yard.

The prodigal son of Luke 15 felt this way.  ¹¹ Jesus continued: “There was a man who had two sons. ¹² The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them.  ¹³ “Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. ¹⁴ After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. ¹⁵ So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. ¹⁶ He longed to fill…

The book of Revelation is a tale of two cities, each represented by a woman.  According to Colin W. Smith, the author of many devotionals, the first city is Babylon (see Rev. 18), another manifestation of the tower of Babel, which reminds us that throughout human history, right up to the end of time, humanity will continue in its defiance of God. That city is represented by a prostitute.  The second city is Jerusalem, and it is represented by a bride.

There is all the difference in the world between a prostitute and a bride.  The prostitute sells herself; the bride gives herself.  The prostitute is motivated by greed’ the bride is motivated by love.  The world is divided between those who trade their lives for the things of this world and those who give themselves freely to the Lord.

Imagine the contrast of these two women, projected…

Six Degrees of Separation is the theory that everyone and everything is six or fewer steps away, by way of introduction, from any person in the world, so that a chain of a friend of a friend statements can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps.  In the Old Testament, God spoke through His prophets, who then spoke to the people, who then may have or may not have shared the message with others.  Regardless, no one ever made that direct, face to face connection.  Moses came close and the power and glory of that near meeting was such that Moses had to wear a covering over himself because the Israelites couldn’t bear the reflected residual glory of God.

Jesus changed all that with His arrival in the New Testament.  It’s amazing to know that God was willing to send his son to make that personal connection…

” Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.” ~Joshua 1:8

What does it mean to “meditate” on God’s Word? When I was young this verse would puzzle me. Are we suppose to meditate like the Buddhists and Yoga people do? How do I meditate on God’s Word and why?

Well, I learned that “meditation” does not mean sitting in one place for hours on end saying “Ommmm”. When reading God’s Word, the Bible, meditation is thinking over the verse over and over, seeing it from every angle and applying it to your own life. 

This is one way it was explained to me: When a cow eats, it goes out to a field and eats the grass. However, to really digest the…