...so my daughter has this cardboard house we bought for her at "the world's largest dairy store"...and her favorite thing about it i think is the mail box. She's loves mail, it's awesome. She'll stand outside the house for as long as you put up with being inside of it passing mail back and forth through the slot...anything works...business cards, plastic toast, you name it...
...mailboxes stuck in my mind last week
... i visited friends, churches and church plants last week in PA sharing what we're up to. I heard many stories about fear and uncertainty in these "economically unstable times"...pastors are worried as giving is down, non-profits are worried that giving is down, jobs are being slashed, buses are going on strike...it can easily overwhelm you, and for good reason... i did a lot of praying on the spot as people told me their stories.
...each time i spoke with someone i was reminded of a visit i had last week with an 82 year old woman who attends New Hope (the Anglican church I'm pastoring)
...she grew up in Kansas in the early thirties...she's not a financial advisor and you'll never see her on CNN...she has a keen awareness of hardship, food and money...see she lived through the depression... she lived in the dust-bowl. She was hit by one of the uncontrollable causes of the depression and the economic fall-out as well.
...yet in the midst of it all her family still fed neighbors and strangers alike. Her father was a postman and had one of the few secure jobs. People knew that they had food, they knew others didn't and their hearts that had been molded by Jesus spilled out the overflow into the cramped stomachs of the hungry...
...in those days, hobos and the unemployed had a system of marking houses that would feed you, often notching mailbox posts. My daughters mailbox brings her joy, these mailboxes brought hope.
...so here's the challenge i was given by The Lord as i drove home last night about my mailbox and i pass it along to you;
is your mailbox notched, or is it marked with washable markers like my daughter has.
See, notches take an awful lot of work to cover up...sanding, filling, painting. Washable marker cleans up with only water, they don't even stain.... it doesn't take much to make it as if a mark was ever there
...the Lord asked me this question and i was grateful to reply, "Lord, my house is notched because you notched it". See, i could only use a marker, but in God's mercy He changed that...
Ezekiel 11:19 I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in
them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of
flesh.
...and i keep ever before me the One who did more than notch His mailbox to feed me Himself...
...so i pose the question to you...is your house notched, or not? Will mere water wash away your serving, or will you pour out your life like Jesus did for you? If you could answer yes, wipe the tears of gratitude away from you eyes and say thank you to Jesus, if you couldn't, ask the Lord to show you what He did for you...He really wants to.
...so this is how the church has grown and God has worked through ages...in times of famine His people gave, in times of plague they cared for the sick and went to houses of death, the ran into the fires, not away...because the Word did the same thing (John 1:1)
...as i walked around my house this morning putting things away i found; a stroller against my garage door that my neighbor gave me to give to the needy, a booster seat and a bag of clothes to pass along in our storage room that a parishioner had given my wife for us to distribute and a gift in the mail to help us pay our bills... by God's mercy my family has marks of their foreheads and we are know to have a notched mailbox...
...see, when we live lives that show our treasure is not of this earth others take notice, come along and do the same. It's "pay-it-foward" in response to salvation.
Blessings to you all, may all of your needs be supplied by Jesus...and may He give you His heart so that you may give as He gave so that all might be His children and be saved.
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Isaiah 49:8-16 This is what the LORD says: "In the time of my favor I will answer you, and in the day of salvation I will help you; I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people, to restore the land and to reassign its desolate inheritances, to say to the captives, 'Come out,' and to those in darkness, 'Be free!' "They will feed beside the roads and find pasture on every barren hill. They will neither hunger nor thirst, nor will the desert heat or the sun beat upon them. He who has compassion on them will guide them and lead them beside springs of water. I will turn all my mountains into roads, and my highways will be raised up. See, they will come from afar-- some from the north, some from the west, some from the region of Aswan." Shout for joy, O heavens; rejoice, O earth; burst into song, O mountains! For the LORD comforts his people and will have compassion on his afflicted ones. But Zion said, "The LORD has forsaken me, the Lord has forgotten me." "Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands
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1 comment:
Right on!
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