Prayers

Hey everyone, I know I had teased about posting about the sewing project Nicole and I did the other day and said it would go up today.

However, I’m not feeling the blogging today; today my cousin’s little baby girl, Hailey, in in surgery. As I type this, the surgeon is operating on her tiny little heart. It’s been a long hard road of ups and downs for her and her family since she’s been born, and the goal along the road has been to get her healthy and strong for this surgery. She was flown in to Vancouver last week after the local doctors had determined that there was nothing more they could do for her here and it was time to head there for her surgery.

Say a little prayer for her and her family (mom, dad, and big brother) today, if you well. So far everything is going well, and there are so, so many prayers going up today that this surgery will go great and that she can be on track for a ‘normal’ life… no more tubes, IVs, or hospitals.

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So I thought I posted this when I wrote it, but I didn’t; so I’ll give you the update. The surgery is complete, things went well with very little by the way of complications. If all goes well in the healing process, hopefully the family will be headed home in no time!

Sunday Meditation–Proverbs 21:22

Whoever pursues righteousness and love finds life, prosperity and honour.
Proverbs 21:22

This sounds like a nice thought… if we try to be good, good things will happen. But if you really read it again, it’s more than just a happy idea… it’s an instruction.

What really strikes me in this text is the word ‘pursues.’ Not ‘whoever likes righteousness and love’ or ‘whoever hopes for righteousness or love’ or ‘whoever tries’ but whoever pursues.

Dictionary.com defines pursue as this:

pur·sue

[per-soo]  Show IPA verb, -sued, -su·ing.

verb (used with object)

1.to follow in order to overtake, capture, kill, etc.; chase.

2.to follow close upon; go with; attend: Bad luck pursued him.

3.to strive to gain; seek to attain or accomplish (an end,object, purpose, etc.).

4.to proceed in accordance with (a method, plan, etc.).

5.to carry on or continue (a course of action, a train ofthought, an inquiry, studies, etc.).

So to pursue righteousness and love, you’re chasing it. Following it closely. Striving for it, planning for it, continuing on it it. It’s an active thing, pursuing. You’re working hard for it, continually, actively.

If we move on to righteousness and love, I feel like we need to put those together, hand in hand. We can’t pursue righteousness alone. We can’t pursue just love. And we can’t hold them apart, keeping them boxed into separate areas of our lives.

We can’t go to church on Sundays and Bible Study on Tuesdays and then go after that hot guy down the block who declares he think the Bible is a bunch of bunk. It may sound fun, but if you two work out and he never comes around, the righteousness and the love are going to eventually clash. If you get married, do you get married in a church? Will your church even marry you if you’re not both members? Will your kids go to church? Even if you don’t have kids, don’t you think it will grate on you that he thinks you’re silly?

Likewise, if you’re working hard at being incredibly righteous but you’re not doing it with love… well, then you have your own personal version of the Crusades going on. You may not be bearing a sword, but if you’re cutting people down left and right with your righteous tongue but not showing them any love… well, Richard the Lionhearted… you, my friend, are not going to find life, prosperity, and honour knocking cheerfully on your doorstep. If you’re always ‘in a fight with someone’ you are going to be stressed out, anxious, and eventually you are going to start laying some low blows and snapping out cruel things. It’s hard to prosper under those circumstances.

So in conclusion, I feel like this text is saying that we need to actively pursue love and righteousness, both together hand and hand. If we do so, we are bound to find life, prosperity, and honour.

 

(I’m trying to get back into blogging, and I also think it’s important for me to put the most important part of my life into it. So what better way to start than with doing meditations on texts on Sundays, especially if I wind up staying home with my kids in the morning.)

Spellcheck

I have a confession to make. I don't run the spellcheck very often.

I am very good at spelling, and I don't make a lot of mistakes. Not noticeable ones, at least to me. So I don't even think about it. It never crosses my mind! But, when I do stop to think about it, I feel a bit embarrassed. First of all, I know I do make some mistakes, and I make them very consistently. For some reason, for example, I cannot spell thier. Their. I'm not even sure! But a lot of people can, and I'm sure they tsk when they see my consistent misspelling. Other people reading my blog can surely see my mistakes much more clearly than I can.

There's always more words that I thought I got right, but when I run the spellcheck there will be one or two that I'm surprised to realize are actually wrong when they're checked over. I thought I was right, sometimes strongly enough to argue another person over the spelling, but when I run the spellcheck all my mistakes are laid bare.

Life is a lot like that. Often, I get so caught up in the right and the justice and the knowledge that I don't make a lot of really terrible mistakes that I forget to give my actions a quick once-over and run them past the Lord. But no matter how well I think I've done, when I take a moment to run things past Him, things pop up with those squiggly little red lines under them. There are the little mistakes I make fairly regularly and I am totally aware of - losing patience with my husband or daughter, for example. But then there are always also those things I didn't even think were mistakes. When I hold them up to His Word, and to His standard of love, many of my actions fall short. A friend once passed a quote on to me - If you had to run everything you did past God before you said or did it, would you even bother to bring some of the things you're planning up at all?

This might seem like a discouraging post, but I say this all with a cheerful heart. I know that the Lord doesn't demand perfection from us, He just demands we try. My salvation is not linked with my deeds, they are merely a byproduct of my thankfulness. If anything, the shorter I fall, the more amazed and full of joy I am that He could love and forgive one such as me!

So I will try to remind myself to run the spellcheck, as my mistakes are often more visible to others than they are to me. And I will try to remind myself to run my walk and talk before the Lord, as well. The mistakes are always there, even if I don't see them myself at first glance. ;)

note : I ran the spellcheck today, and I found two mistakes other than my thier/their. LOL.