Joy in the Journey

  Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. Mark 10:44-45 Seeing people as a means to an end sounds just awful, doesn’t it? A few things have happened in the last few weeks that have made me wonder how many of my relationships are good and solid, containing loyalty and truth and how many are just a case of me being the means to an end for someone else.           As usual this led me to examine my own heart. Who are the people in my life that I see as a means to an end. I was feeling okay about it; admittedly there are a couple of people who seem to serve more of a purpose than with whom I have an actual relationship. I prayed about that and asked God to help to know what I might need to do in response to that information. His response startled me.           First I was clea

  “I do not accept praise from men, but I know you. I know that you do not have the love of God in your hearts. I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; but if someone else comes in his own name you will accept him. How can you believe if you accept praise from one another, yet make no effort to obtain the praise that comes from the only God?” John 5:41-44 If you are a parent of a child over the age of four, then it is my guess that you’ve had this experience.   Your child tells you all about his calamity. You offer sage wisdom and sound advice. You offer it in the face of explanations and sputtering that give a pretty fair indication that no one is hearing your words except you. Now, flash forward a few days, a week or maybe a bit more, to the next phase of the conversation when your darling comes to you so excited because he now has a solution to his problem. He’s garnered said solution by listening to the learned perception of; choose one or more of these, h

  "For I know the plans I have for you" declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." Jeremiah 29:11 Why you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that." James 4:14-15 Trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding. Proverbs 3:5 There is an event that happens in my life almost every year. Some years I look forward to it and other years it just feels like too much effort. I've prayed to be able to modify it, have a tad more control over it but for the past few years, it's gotten completely out of my control. This year, as in years past, as the date loomed closer I felt myself getting anxious, trying to find tactful ways to say, "Folks, this just doesn't work for

  If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. Romans 14:8 For the past several years I have worked in a school where the principal made all of the decisions, somewhat arbitraily. At the end of each school year teachers and staff are shuffled around without much thought to how that might impact those individuals. Bad as it was for the teachers, it worse for those of us in paraprofessional positions. Often we would not know where we would be placed until the day we returned for the new school year. Several of us have commented over the years that it makes us feel like furniture. We can be picked up and moved without comment, question or thought. It's not a nice feeling. It would seem that each of us should have some say in where we work.           That principal is retiring this year and as it occured to me that her replacement might not treat us like her belongings, I realized that that is exactl