Saturday, March 23, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Back to the future
This morning I began the trip back to Austin, leaving behind people, places, memories in Illinois that I am grateful for. Spring weather is slipping into the Midwest, and I fully expect Texas to be also in the midst of spring, for all of us in Texas to enjoy before the bleak mid-summer weather comes far too soon.
Here’s a devotion (first of three) from last year, when Chris and Melissa’s family visited Austin, thereby bring all four of our grandkids, all four cousins, together in the same place.
They had a ball, and so did we:
For all the saints
How can you believe, when you accept praise from one another and do not seek the praise that comes from the only God?
As we participate in our own family’s life, I realize how precious is the fact that everyone loves Jesus. Our love might be more or less intimate one day to the next, but every one of us recognizes, and will say so, that the love of God never ceases, never slackens, never fades. The intimacy from God’s side goes on and on and on and on.
For a few days all our grandkids are in Austin. Jack is 14, Aly will soon be 11. Both have been baptized. Miles is six. When he watched Aly’s baptism in 2021 with his mom and dad, he asked what it meant. “It means you know that Jesus is in your heart,” Andi said. “Well,” Miles responded, “I know that Jesus is in my heart.” He’ll be ready to be baptized whenever the path turns straight.
God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, so that everyone who believes in him shall have eternal life.
Jasper will be four on July 31. His big wide eyes crinkled in an endless smile yesterday afternoon. We spent an hour or so in the bluebonnet fields at Brushy Creek Lake Park. He wasn’t given much time to hold the kite string in the strong wind, but he rolled around in the flowers. Jasper sees crosses everywhere. “That’s where Jesus died,” he says, more or less pensively. He holds my palm cross in his hand for a minute, staring at it, then passes it back to me. He says nothing.
We left our Mahomet church a little early last Sunday so we could visit the Urbana Vineyard Church to be with my brother John and his wife Karen. His son Christian, is a music minister at the Vineyard. He and Adrienne have a second child, baby Emma-Marie Joy, and she was dedicated Sunday.
Each couple wrote their own prayer, and the pastor prayed it. “We thank you, God, that with long life you will satisfy Emmarie, and show her your salvation. Amen.”
I think about that long life idea. Then I found a picture of the Conrady Family Reunion, taken in 1939. Mom is 17, Aunt Mary will be 12 in December (fifth and third from the right, second row from the back). Aunt Mary was always tall. Grandma is surrounded in the front row by her daddy on the left and her hubby on the right. They are surrounded by several generations of family.
World War II is about to explode in the lives of many of those young men in the back row. The Great Depression has decimated some of their families in the last ten years, wrestling them financially and physically to the ground. And those eight kiddoes sprawled out in front of the group? If they are still alive, they’re in their nineties now.
The Conrady families have met every year for more than a century. I remember Joel’s words to his people:
In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.
And as I remember those words, I recognize their truth. We have so much to learn from each other. And so much fun to have while we do it. Long life for you, Emma-Marie. Keep calm and hold on. Love the Lord your God.
(Ezekiel 37, Jeremiah 31, Ezekiel 18, John 11)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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