Have you listed your goals for this year? Ways you want to improve? For many of us, this past year was tough. Challenges. Trials. Pain. Grief. And some of you are struggling right now. I always told my children when hard or frustrating things happened that trials build character. One of my daughters, who has had a particularly rough couple of years, asked, “Don’t I have enough character yet?” I know how she feels. For years, I struggled to try harder, live better, do more. My efforts mostly took me down a lot of dead ends. I’ve found the key to really living is not in how hard I work, but in who I am walking with. What I trust. How I am willing to open my heart.
Galapagos Islands
I can’t explain the hard stuff, but I think God wants far more for us than we seek. Our eyes looking way higher than our glances take us.
by Jack H Thompson
There is so much more life available with God than we ever reach out for. How do we go from trying hard to trusting much and receiving more?
My path changed when I began to listen to — really hear — the voice telling me I am loved.
Then I learned what we tirelessly teach our little ones – to say thank you. Giving thanks for what I have, seeing the blessing, however tiny, puts a new lens on my day.
Maui beautyCloud forest fern, Ecuadorbee in flower, Isabella, Galapagos
And the gratitude heart leads me to trust. My hard edges melt when I find the thanksgiving places.
Soaring by Jack H Thompson
Then I can relax into hands far stronger than mine, and more loving than any earthly hands could ever be.
My prayer request list is growing heavy. A young family loses their husband/father to a vicious cancer. A fiancée, instead of planning her wedding, dreads the anniversary of the jog her loved one never returned from last year. A son goes off to college, and two months later is diagnosed with stage four cancer. Others battle infections, chronic pain, family hostility, strokes, break-ups, houses that won’t sell, or bills that can’t be paid.
It’s pulling me to my knees.
Sometimes in tears, always with anguished heart, I lift the aching ones up to the father who cares.
In this huge, crazy world, how can anyone care about every person, every family, and every broken heart?
I know only one who can, because he is love. Love that never fails. The source of life, and in the end, all we have.
The common house sparrow is probably the least noble or photographed of all feathered creatures. They certainly aren’t sought after by birders, since sparrows cluster in towns and cities, and their little tan bodies display little to warrant attention.
Glimpse of Peace 