Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 ESV
Rejoicing, praying, and giving thanks put the circumstances of our lives, both good and bad into God’s hands and help us see them through His eyes. Last night our beloved daughter-in-law Melinda slipped from this world into the presence of Jesus. And while we are overwhelmed with grief and shock, these words are promises to which we cling. Melinda has finished her race. Her battle with cancer is finished. And while that pernicious disease claimed her physical life, it could not touch her soul. That remained fully and exclusively in the hands of Jesus with whom she now lives. Nancy and I didn’t know how to process the news that came in three words. “She is gone.” Yet as sadness rolls over my heart I sense the message echo back from Heaven, ” She has arrived!”
Peter came up and he said to Him, “Lord, how often will my brothet sin against me and I forgive him?” Matthew 18:21 ESV
The forgiveness Peter hoped was good enough, entailed adding and subtracting. But the Lords’ answer took him by surprise, when Jesus moved the conversation from addition to multiplication. Peter’s problem, like ours is that we add up our brother’s sins thinking that we need to subtract from our own resources to forgive them. We forget that it was Jesus who paid the terrible price of pardon and that He washes sin away with multiplied grace!
Yesterday was a day that will live on in infamy, or at least in the top ten of my not favorite days of 2026. It all began as my wife, the family bookkeeper, started up the laptop to check our checking account yesterday, when lo and behold she discovered that we were overdrawn by $600! Now we run a pretty tight ship around here (my kids call me cheap). So this came as a shock. No, we had not spoken to anyone on the phone, clicked any bad links or been hacked by the CIA. Instead, three unexplained checks showed in the account, made out to folks we had never heard of. Immediately I fired up the Di lithium crystals and put the car into warp drive and headed for the bank. There we discovered that a forger had written three checks for several thousand dollars, totally wiping us out. The remainder of the day we spent filling out reports at the bank for their fraud division and then again at the sheriff’s office to report the crime. By dinner time, I had no ambition to cook anything complicated, and my wife’s diet calls for no evening meal at all. To simplify things, I simply broke out the skillet, and determined to have eggs, sausage and an English muffin. Yes, I still remembered that God works all things together for good, but at the moment, I needed something more than hearing that truth quoted to me. Imagine my surprise when I opened the egg carton and saw a Bible verse on the inside lid.
This is the day the Lord has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it! Psalm 118:24 NKJV
Though He doesn’t do it all the time, I have been amazed and blessed to discover the many occasions when God drops a line of Holy Scripture on my path, just when I need it most. Though someone could have given me a well-deserved a lecture on thankfulness or sermonized on the reality that in this world we will have tribulation. But God chose a gentler approach to soften my heart and attitude and turned my terrible, horrible, no-good day, into a wonderfully blessed one and a time I will remember His gentle correction and care for years to come. Isn’t God amazing? I hope that whatever your circumstances, that He may come alongside of you today with His word and bring light in the darkness, calm in the storm and rejoicing in this day that He has made!
And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James and John and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them. Mark 9:2 ESV
When Jesus took His three closest friends up a mountain, He began to show them who He really was in a way they had never seen before. Yet in spite of the beauty and holiness of that moment, Jesus did not tarry on the mountain. No! He came down the mountain to heal one young boy. And He left the highest mountain of all, that place in Heaven when He came down to the manger, He came for you and me. But before His mission was finished, He had one more mountain to climb, the mountain that had a cross waiting at the top where He suffered and died for our sins. He paid the terrible price so that one day when this life is over, if we have put our faith in Him, we will be able to join Him forever on that mountain in Heaven!
Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form. Philippians 2:6-7 NLT
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