Category Archives: Morning Musings

Morning Musings

Reflected Light…

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 The other morning while taking my early walk just as the sun was peeping over the hill, I could see a distant house that we never normally noticed. But just at that time of the day, the rising sun caught the windows facing it, and the reflected light was almost blinding. A bit further on, a closer house also caught the sun’s rays on its front windows. The thing that impressed me was the fact that there was no light in these windows of themselves at all, they were merely reflecting the sun at that time.

   It brought to mind the story of Moses in the Bible how that after he had been in the mountain top with God receiving the ten commandments for the people, his face was lit up with the light of heaven  on it. It was too bright for the people to look at it and he had to wear a veil over it until the brightness had faded somewhat. Then there is the account of how a man called Stephen was arrested for preaching about Jesus. As he spoke in his defence, members of the council saw that his face was shining like that of an angel.

   You might think that this was just in Bible times, but we heard of an elderly Christian gentleman who we knew, who was in hospital recovering from some heart trouble. One day, one of his friends went to visit him and asked the nurse where they could find him. She said, “Oh in the room just along there….look for the man with the face like an angel”.

  I wonder if people could say that about us? Or do we have a hard expression on our face when in repose? I often find myself so busy thinking about my own affairs that I hardly see other people and just march past them! It takes effort to think of others and give a smile to lighten their day. If we practiced that more often then perhaps people would see Jesus in us too. This is how we should be….little reflectors of His great light.

                                               

  

Morning Musings

Thinking Ahead

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    We have been reminded several times lately how it’s been pretty pointless in thinking ahead and making plans…even from one week to the next. One weekend, we had got as far as packing our motorhome for a  Christian Rally we were going to, only to hear about four hours before we were due to leave that the whole thing had been cancelled. Someone in our district had been diagnosed as having tested Covid positive, and as a result everything was closed down within a few hours! And it stayed that way for the next two weeks!

    We’ve heard it said that things will never get back to what we considered to be normal….maybe we older ones have had the best years of life! But then, the younger ones will grow up in a world that knows nothing else and will become more adjusted to it all!

     None of us likes change, but it  seems that this will; become the new normal….changes all around us. When we look at the seasons, we are always glad when spring time comes and everything is fresh and green. The trees are covered in new leaves, and fruit for the coming season is setting on them. This is change with a capital C! The old is left behind with the winter chills, and the new gleams ahead of us full of promise.

       Let us look at life like this….what lies ahead will be infinitely better than what we now know, and we can say, “The old has gone and the new has come!” So no matter how uncertain things are here for making plans ahead, we can say with confidence that “we know in Whom we have believed, and are persuaded to that He is able to keep that which we have committed to Him until that day!”   (2 Timothy 1:12)

We know that we can have this confidence if we know God personally, and if we don’t have this assurance, let’s begin to read the Bible and find out how we can know these things!

Morning Musings

He Will Never Leave Us!

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      We have  here the account of a godly family living near Jerusalem …Martha (who seemed to run the house), Lazarus her brother, and her sister Mary. We don’t read of the parents so presumably they had died with the family continuing to live in their home.

    We first see them as opening their home to the Lord Jesus and presumably His disciples as well, and it was a convenient place for them to call in and rest. This particular day, Martha was bustling around getting a meal ready, but all Mary could do was to sit on a stool at Jesus’ feet listening to His every word. This bothered Martha and she went to Jesus saying, “Lord, tell Mary to come and help get the food ready! “

   But Jesus said, “Martha, Martha, you are fussing about too much….Mary has chosen the best thing by sitting down and listening to what I have to say!”  In other words, what you are doing will soon all be gone, but what Mary is doing will last as long as she lives! How often we fuss about things that don’t really matter, and forget the things that do! Let us take stock and make sure we do the things that matter first, and the other things afterwards!

    The next time we see the family, food was the last thing on their minds. Lazarus was very ill, and Martha sent a message to Jesus asking Him to come and see if He could do anything for her brother. She was sure that if anyone could he[p, He could. But to her utter dismay, He didn’t come straight away, and Lazarus died. How often our prayers don’t get answered the way we want straight away! But it was through this tardiness of His, that His power could be ultimately shown, and so it is with us too. We often learn more through our prayers being unanswered (as we think), than having our every whim granted. God is not a big Santa Claus in the sky….He always does what is best for us, even though we may not like it at the time. How else can we learn His grace and sufficiency in time of need? “ My grace is sufficient for you”, He says. (2 Corinthians 12:9)

   It was through this time of sorrow for the sisters, that they saw His power shown in bringing Lazarus back to life….the greatest miracle of their lives! This proved to both Martha and Mary that He really was, Who He said He was! So it is for us too! Hard times that happen to us during our life time, teach us that God is still there, and that He cares for us, and even though we may not able to make sense of what is happening around us, we can know that He is still with us as He said He would be.

  Finally we see the family gathered together with others, and once more it is centred around food, and again Martha is serving and seeing to the meal. But this time Mary is the one who is concerned with giving back to the Lord something of what she has been learning at His feet. She brings out this jar of sweet smelling ointment and rubs it into His feet, weeping while she does it. The disciples watched this with mixed emotions….they had no idea why Mary was doing this, and Judas in particular scornfully said, “What a waste!!”. But the Lord knew Mary’s heart. and He knew that she understood far more than the others, and He knew the real reason for her action. She was sorrowing for the things that were going to happen to Him, and for the pain that lay ahead for all of them.

    We can be thankful that He DOES know our motives when others don’t, and He can see the reason we do things for Him when others don’t understand.

Morning Musings

What Do You See?

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       As we were driving along a beach frontage one beautiful sunny day I noticed three teenage girls sitting on the edge of the beach beside the road. The blue sea and white sand made a lovely picture.  But their backs were to the superb view and their eyes were glued to the smart phones they were each holding.

    I thought of the story in Pilgrim’s Progress about the man confined in a room playing around in the rubbish at his feet while an angel was hovering above him holding a crown. Alas, he never looked up to see the glories above, but just kept on with the worthless stuff around his feet.  

   What a pity that these three girls were missing the beauties of the great creation that God has given us to enjoy!  It costs us nothing to enjoy a good day at the beach….these other things will still be there later on to use. Let’s make sure that we focus on the worthwhile things of life while we can!

    When those times have gone and it is too late to recover them, we will regret all the missed opportunities that we once had. Let’s do what we can, while we can because as time moves on these times will pass away for ever! Where we once had unlimited time to look ahead, the time may come when our future is down to a few years at the best. This is all the more reason to make the most of the here and now, remembering that only what is done for the Lord is all that we can take with us when we leave this world.

Morning Musings

That Temptation in Your Pocket (2)

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   If you idolize popularity, if it is being admired and having lots of followers that makes you feel good about yourself, then you will be tempted to use your smart-phone to pursue that idol. You may use the camera to take inappropriate photographs of yourself and put them on  Instagram, or you may use the Facebook app to say harsh words about other people. That phone that can be used to do so much good and to bring so much encouragement can  also be used to cause great harm.

There are not many people who buy a phone intending to use it to harm others or to look at pornography. But where your heart is, there your technology will be also. The way you use your technology reveals your heart.

   It shows whether your heart is oriented toward God and toward finding true joy and satisfaction in Him, or whether you are attempting to find counterfeit joy and satisfaction in the things He forbids. At any moment, your heart has a purpose for your phone. Yes, thank God for your smart-phone, but plead with Him for wisdom to use it well, and guard your heart.

 Use It to the Glory of God!

 And now it is time to take that phone out of the box and to turn it on for the first time. As you hold it in your hand, why don’t you take a moment to pray? Ask God to help you to use that phone well. Commit before Him right now that, to the best of your abilities, you will only ever use it to serve His purposes. Ask a believing friend or two to be your accountability and check in regularly. Then go and glorify Him with and through it.

Morning Musings

Beware of the Temptation in Your Pocket (1)

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This blog has been on this site before, but it doesn’t do us any harm to be reminded of the traps that surround us….

Do you have an idol? You might ask whatever I’m talking about! An idol? Of course not. The very idea is ridiculous!!!   

But do you know what God classes as an idol? An idol is anything that you can’t possibly do without. Anything that you raise up in the place that God  wants from you. Something that, at least for a moment, takes first place in your heart.

    How do you feel if you find you have left your phone behind when you go out? Does something seem to be missing? Is there a feeling of panic? What exactly do you use your smart phone for anyway? Do you use it merely for messages or talking on the phone? Or do you sneak looks at some of the things on line that you wouldn’t like anyone at home to see you doing?

    Whatever your idol is, will prove to be a special kind of temptation for you when you use your phone. If you idolize sexual pleasure, you will probably be tempted to use your phone to look at pornography. Did you know that more than half of all pornography is now viewed on mobile devices like yours? This means that many people like you bought a smart phone so they could text with their friends and take pictures of their vacation, but somehow they ended up using it to look at pornography. They used this great, God-given technology to do harm instead of good.

    If you find yourself being tempted in this way, ask God to give you the strength to resist looking at those sites. Right now. If that doesn’t work, go back to the ordinary small phone that only does talking and texting until the temptation is out of your system. Remember that verse that says And now, little children, abide in Him (Jesus); that, when He shall appear, we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before Him at His coming  (1 John 2:28).

Morning Musings

Tough Times Ahead.

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Tough Times Ahead.

    There is no doubt about it, there are more tough times coming!  When we hear of the new regulations that the authorities are talking about bringing in, we realise that our opportunities to speak in public about the truths that the Bible teaches are going to be greatly curtailed. Pastors and ministers are going to be criminalized if they talk about controversial topics such as transgenderism and homosexuality. Christian teachers too, are going to have to be careful what they say…in fact they are going to be required to teach things to their classes that they know are contrary to the teachings of the Bible.

    We might wonder how we are going to be able to cope in a climate such as this, but we are not alone in this fight against evil. Our Lord said before He left His disciples, “In the world you will have tribulation, but don’t be afraid, I have overcome the world”, and “ I will pray the Father and He will give you another Comforter (Helper), that He may abide with you for ever, the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. But you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you….I will not leave you orphans, but will come to you…”   (John 14:16-18),

    It reminds me of a story told to me years ago by an older friend. She said that she had had to go into hospital to have an operation for cancer, and was very apprehensive about the whole thing. But as she remembered these verses and others that she knew, she felt the peace of God surround her mind and soul, and was able to relax knowing that He was in control. After a few days when it was all over, somehow this sense of peace left her, and this bothered her very much.

 “Where are you Lord?” she asked, “Why have You left me?”

Almost immediately the answer came into her mind…. “I haven’t left you, I will always be with you. But you don’t need Me the same now it’s all over, and  you have walk by faith again”.

    So it will be for us…when we need God’s strength in difficult situations, it will be there for us if we ask Him. Until that time comes, we need to live in faith, and learn to depend on Him more and more as we see the clouds darken around us.

Morning Musings, Uncategorized

What is in Your Hand?

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    I was given a book to read this week about the old time bushmen that worked the bush in the backblocks of New Zealand in the early days. In this time of high mechanism and technology, it is incredible to read of how those huge trees were felled by hand, cut into manageable sized logs, and then hauled to the nearest timber mill for processing. To read of how bullocks were trained to pull them out of the bush to the nearest creek which had been dammed up until the next heavy rains came, and then to watch them tumble all the way to sea level.

    I found this account quite fascinating as my own father had been involved in the process of towing the log rafts to the timber mill by launch when he was a young man. He only gave up the job when the first timber trucks came in and took over the cartage of the logs to the mills, thus saving many hours of double handling.

   It just goes to show how, no matter what era man has reached, God has given the ability to cope with what is needed for the current job. One time is no more right than another, it is just a matter of using what God has given us, and these old timers did just that. The men of today would be useless if faced with what those men back then coped with, just as the old timers would be bewildered by the modern technology of today.

   It just reminds us that no matter what aids we have, we are still dependent on God as our Heavenly Father to provide the strength to do what is at hand, and it is still our responsibility to use what He has given us at all times.