Remembering the Forgotten

This past Wednesday was my last service at Allied Nursing Home after 23 years as volunteer chaplain. I was deeply moved by the expression of love and thoughtfulness of so many. I want to thank each of you who have liked, loved or commented on this special moment. While I deeply appreciate all the good wishes I would most of all love to see others step up to get involved in some way, because these years have been all about remembering the residents who are often forgotten by others. To help anyone who is interested in getting involved , I am running a free book promotion over labor day week-end of all my books dealing with nursing home ministry. Here are the links to two of them. Reflections is a daily reader devoted to residents, family members, staff or anyone else touched by the challenges of long term care.

Hope thumbnail

Reflections of Hope

There are also 4 other books that concentrate on training and inspiring volunteers, but I will just post the link to the most comprehensive of these:

Nursing Home Ministry thumbnail

Nursing Home Ministry -The Heart of Jesus Christ

Cast Your Bread on the Water

When she could hide him no longer, she took for him a basket made of bulrushes and daubed it with bitumen and pitch. She put the child in it and placed it among the reeds by the river bank.  Exodus 2:3-6

When we read the story of Jochebed, Moses’ mother we see a woman trapped between two agonizing decisions. If she kept Moses for herself any longer he would be discovered and killed. If she threw him into the Nile River according to the king’s command he would drown. Lovingly in faith she chose to do all she could as she worked into the night forming a basket for her child. She wove together the bulrushes and covered them with tar, then fearfully placed the basket into the river and prayed. If ever anyone cast their bread upon the waters it was she. Her heart floated down the river in the basket with little Moses inside. She trusted God with what was beyond her control. Then as Moses cried, Pharaoh’s daughter heard him and chose to save his life.  You and I may not be forced to put our child in a basket and send it down a river but we each face choices that seem like the end of own hopes and longings. There are times when it feels like everything good and beautiful in our lives is being torn away. We hold on to them as long as we can but the time comes when we have to release them to God’s grace. We must trust our loving God. He sees beyond the bend in the river to a plan that is greater than anything we can imagine. God will never abandon us. God will always watch over our fragile dreams. One day He will put back into our arms what we have let go of and trusted into His mighty hands.

1523193883008_image.jpg

Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days. Ecclesiastes 11:1

 

Harvest Planning

Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering his seed, some fell along the path and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop – a hundred, sixty, or thirty times what was sown. Matthew 13:3-8

IMG_5328In seed catalogues every variety comes with a photo. But the photos are not of the seeds; they are of, red ripe tomatoes or deep green broccoli. No one wants to see shriveled up corn or dried beans. Continue reading