Family

After celebrating His birth the next best thing about Christmas is family!  This year our family in Florida, our oldest sone Scott and his wife Diane and my two grandchildren hannah and Ben, plus their foreign exchange student Ramon Bosek all drove up for the week.  Our other two children Catherine (our youngest), her husband Clint, and their two children, Cassidy and Cade, and our middle child, our son Wesley, his wife Rhonda, and their two children Elijah and Abigail all were present!  We had a great Christmas Eve and Christmas day, lots of great food, too much actually, and special time together.  I try my very best to remember each day to think about the countless things I have to be thankful for, and wonderful family is at the top of the earthly list.

When I was a young man I was very materialistic.  Christmas was very much about presents.  What I wanted was always on my mind.  I’m certainly not saying that I have lost all attachment to “things”, but there order of importance has definitely shifted!  While I still love cameras and lenses, nice clothes and fine meals, I see them in God’s perspective now.  He wants us to own what we need and even what we want, He doesn’t want us to be “owned by” any of those things.  You may remember back a few weeks ago my sharing that Sherelene and I came home form a weekend trip to find our kitchen cabinets, one long wall of them, lying upside down in the floor, with a lot of contensts smashed and destroyed.  First we were shocked, but then something amazing happened, we stood in our kitchen and prayed together, not becasue we were  decimated by the loss, but because we knew it was ll in God’s hands and He would be faithful to help us put it all back together.  I read a wonderful book many years ago by Merlin Caruthers, called Prison to Praise.  In the book Chaplain Caruthers, he was an army Chaplain, explained that through scripture he had learned to praise God in all things, both good and bad and he shared some of the miraculous things that had happened after  He had praised God in tough situations.  It does say in scripture, “In all things give thanks, for this is the will of God….”

Over the next several years I learned to praise Him in all things, and I have discovered the rewards of this act of obedience, and it  has yielded amazing results in my own life.  The principle is really pretty simple;

1.  God wants us to trust Him, to know that He only wants what is best for us.

2.  God has promised us over and over in scripture that He will not let anything happen that He will not use for our growth, and instruction.

3.  if God allows us to find ourselves in a troubling or difficult circumstances and we praise Him for it, it is saysing to Him, “From my perspective this is a bad thing, buyt you have promised me you will never allow anything into my life that will not, eventually, be for my good.  So I will thank you and praise you now for your faithfulness!”

Just before the family arrived, the cabinets had been repaired and re-installed, the broken glasses and dishes had been replaced.  We stood int he kitchen and looked at our restored cabinets and our Christmas decorations and talked about how glad we were that we  dealt with this trying circumstance in the right way, God’s way, to trust Him.  Falling kitchen cabinets, in the big picture,  is not as very important event, but it is a chance to practice trusting in Him, for when we face the really challenging time sin life.  Sherelene and I have already faced th loss of all our grandparents and parents, those are difficult times, but the same principle worked for us then, we knew God was in control, that he had a plan, and that He had done what best for them, we could find complete peace in knowing the truth of that!

The most fantastic thing about a walk with Him is knowing He is in control, that you can trust Him, and He will get you through the toughest times!

Today;s Prayer:   “Thank you Father that you love us so much, and you control all the circumstances around us, that they may make us stronger, wiser, and most important of all,  more dependent on You!

the pilgrim

By-The-Way, the photograph of my family above was a gift from Homer and Terri Fortney, my brother an sister-in-law.  Terri is an incredible photographers ands she kindly came to our home back in August at another family gathering and shot all these images an then  stitched them together.  If you have an interest  in portrait work, you must visit her website, prepared to have your socks knocked off!!!    http://www.fortneyphotographystudio.com/