Is There a Moral to this Story?

   One of the things that all golfers want to do, especially as they grow older, is to be able to shoot a score that is the same as their age. Shooting your age is a way to say that "you have still got it".

   This is a pretty hard thing to do for average golfers like me whose game deteriorates with the passing of time. If I could freeze my game, I might be able to live long enough to meet this goal.

   But yesterday I found a way to do it with nature's help. It was simple, and I did not realize it until I finished playing and added up the scorecard. There it was, big as life, a 77 at the Indian Mound course on Jekyll, even playing from the white tees with the rest of my foursome.

   The day started out relatively cool with a little wind, clear skies and a dry course, but as the hours passed, the clouds and heat and humidity came.

   My game was average at best, but I kept hoping for a flash of brilliance as the holes added up along with the score. I managed to keep the ball out of the woods and the water, and some of the putts fell, but all in all it was not a spectacular effort. I was not even thinking of this score and age accomplishment as we were forced to stop for a rain shower.

   As we resumed play, I looked to the west and the skies were pretty dark, but maybe we could get the round in. Then the siren from the clubhouse sounded, and play was suspended, and I had found a way to shoot my age.

   Don't play the last 3 holes!

   Not much to brag about, but there it was, in black and white, on an official scorecard, on a regulation course, a 77, big as life, we just won't mention how it was done.

   I know it was bogus, but interesting to see how the score added up on that rainy day.

   Is there a moral to the story? Know when to quit? Enjoy the rain? Try again?

   OK

Using a Remembrance

   How to begin this is the question. How do you take a lot of input, from various sources, and condense it into a short narrative, especially when there is so much out there that might be said?

   So, I take a portion of a verse, a line from an old hymn and a 20 year old memory and try to get a coherent thought out of the whole thing.

   A portion of a verse from Matthew 20:

"They said to him, “Lord, let our eyes be opened"

   A line from an old hymn, sung many times in church, and today presented as part of the Moravian Daily Reading:

"till we cast our crowns before thee
 lost in wonder, love and praise"

   Then a memory of a day in July many years ago, in the midst of a college course at Covenant College, Lookout Mountain, GA.

   Dr. Donovan Graham, one of my favorite teachers at the college, had us perform an unusual exercise as part of our curriculum. He called it an "awe and wonder "day, and it was life-changing for me.

   After we settled into class that day, he asked us to listen to a short tape entitled "Awe and Wonder". It was a powerful message centered on the majesty of God's creation all around us. Then he asked us to take only a notebook and pencil and spend two hours out on the campus, by ourselves, and observe, then write down our thoughts in whatever form God gave us in that time.

   Covenant is situated on a picturesque campus, on top of the mountain, and, even to be outside on a mild July morning in that place, was a treat. To have two hours to contemplate was heaven itself, and so I did. I even ended up writing a poem, which is not me by a long shot.

   So, how does all of this fit together? Let me see if I can do it justice.

   My prayer as I began this June day in 2013, was to open my eyes and let me see what You have for me today. Help me not to miss those things that You want to show me, both through the eyes and through Your thoughts in my mind. So the words of the two blind men in the verse above fit right in.

   Then there were the words in the hymn that hit me. I thought of my photo hobby that has caused me to be more observant of the things around me, and as I walked out I reminded myself to look and then think about what my eyes beheld. The word "wonder" from the line in the hymn was on my mind as I walked and looked, and then I recalled that day in college.

   Yes, I want to see what God has out there for me, both in nature and in relationships. I want to be awed by what he reveals to me through my eyes, and I am at times, but as I relived those few minutes, in that class, on that day, I am in awe of how that experience still has an affect in my life today.

   So, I have to add another prayer this morning, "God, thank You for today and for the remembrances of an important time in my life, but help me not to just stop with remembering, but see You in all of this, Amen."

A Verse, Two Songs and a Thought

   Sometimes it is easy, in the quiet of an early morning, to see my priorities as they ought to be.

   As I began my day today, my prayer was filled with questions. Questions of what I should do in this or that situation, with this or that person, with this or that opportunity. Then I realized as I read and thought, there are way too many "I" pronouns in this prayer. Would something that I would read, or that God might bring to my mind, put this more in perspective?

   Then this verse from Matthew 20:

"But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, "

   The key word for me is "serve" or its derivative "servant", so I began to think on that as I walked An old hymn came to my mind, I guess because it had the word serve in it somewhere. A hymn written way back in 1852, Jesus Calls Us O'er the Tumult, whose last verse is:

Jesus calls us! By Thy mercies,
Savior, may we hear Thy call,
Give our hearts to Thine obedience,
Serve and love Thee best of all.

   Serve God first of all, and the rest of the priorities of service will fall into place. Get the first part right and the battle is half won, but there are other parts. Another song stanza comes to mind:

Will you let me be your servant
Let me be as Christ to you
Pray that I might have the grace
To let you be my servant too

   Others are out there that need to be served also, so where does that leave my prayer of earlier today?

   Then I go back to that verse, especially about being "great". When I get my priorities in the right order, I can be great in the eyes of The One that matters.

   Jesus first
   Others second
   Yourself last

   I could not help but go into the Internet and listen to that moving song, one more time:

http://nicedeb.wordpress.com/2012/02/12/your-sunday-hymn-the-servant-song-2/

   What a way to actually live..

So Let Me Live That I Am Not...

   I admit that when I read the Scriptures for today, nothing at all jumped out at me. I even read them through two or three times and still nothing. Then I happened to look at the listing of the passages for this day and noticed that the authors of the site had not shown, on the page, all the verses that they had put down for the reading. There were 11 verses that did not show up on the reading page.

   All that said, I thought there might be a reason I noticed this, and so went back and looked them up. I guess I was looking hard for a reason because of my inability to find something in the other sections. I did not want to just make up something to write about, but to feel led. I did not want to fake a leading just to sound good. I want whatever I write to be truthful and a result of a prompting by God's Spirit.

   It is kind of like my picture from yesterday. With its size in the blog being as small as it was, it would be easy to pretend that it was a great shot. But deep down I knew that the picture would not stand up under close scrutiny because of its fuzzy detail. That I did not want.

   Back to those 11 verses for today. The words come from Psalm 109: 20-30:

"be ashamed"

"clothed with shame"

"own disgrace"

   I do not want to look back with shame on anything that I do, or write. I want my words to be reflective of something that God has pointed out to me. I don't have an example photograph of "shame", except maybe in my mind, which I can't get in here, but I do know what it feels like.

   If someone tells me that a thought, or even a photo, in a blog post was right on target, I want to know that it was truly what I felt and not faked for appearance sake.

   My prayer this morning is twofold:

      That I would so live that I would not be ashamed, and

      That God would not be ashamed of me, either

   My wife tells me that there is a good gospel song that would go right along with this, but neither of us  can think of it. Maybe I'll be led to it tomorrow. I can only hope.

Pronouns and Thoughts in the Wrong Order

  When I got up this morning, I knew what I wanted to blog about. It was so much on my mind that I knew that God had a lesson in the experience for me. Let me set the stage.

   Last evening, my wife and I went down to the beach to catch the super moon as it rose out of the ocean. Supposedly it is a super moon because it is closer to the earth than usual, and I thought it might make a good picture. It was dark when we got there, so I took out my tripod, set it up, fixed the settings on the camera and waited for the moon to rise.

   Somewhere back in my camera past, I had heard that the manual focus setting is the best to use on these long shots in the dark because the camera's auto focus just does not have anything to key in on. So I put it on manual and took the shot after lining the moon up in the viewfinder. Looking at the image display after the shot, it looked pretty good.

   After snapping several as the moon rose into the low clouds on the horizon, we went home. Going straight to my computer, I downloaded the pics and got a closer look at what I had captured. I knew the scene was colorful and graphic, and I could not wait to see how it came out.

   The thumbnails looked good and seemed to capture the scene as I remembered it, but as I put the different takes into the develop module and played with them, I noticed, as I zoomed in on the moon, that it was slightly out of focus. All the shots I had taken turned out the same way. What a waste of a good opportunity!

   Then, this morning, I thought about the lessons from all of this, even before I read any Scripture.

Lessons like:

   Know all the settings that you need to use, not just some and guess the others....

   My life can get out of focus just like my image results....

   Regret over wasted opportunities....

   All of these were good and applicable, so could I find something in the verses this morning that I could use to fit them in? Like so many things in my life, I knew what I wanted to do, and I just wanted God to be on board. A verse from the readings would put His stamp of approval on my ideas.

   Then this verse popped out of Psalm 97:

"All worshipers of images are put to shame"

   I had put the cart before the horse. I took my own ideas and asked God to make them His. I was worshipping my ideas and not Him, placing my images, as it were, in first place ahead of everything else.

   You may think the picture above looks pretty good, but if you have the ability to look at it in detail, you will see that it is not a good representation of the scene at the beach.

   Just like my life sometimes......

   My prayer does not need to be "God, take my thoughts and make them Yours". I've got the pronouns in the wrong places.

   God, please make Your thoughts mine today.

Bird Voices and Reminders

   It is funny sometimes how the mind works. Take this morning for example:

   After getting up early, reading a little, I went for a stroll in the quiet. I looked at the sky as the sun rose, watching the cloud formations and the way that the sun played off the tops. I looked around me, and then I listened. There seemed to be a multitude of birds, flying around and making noises. But there was one particularly loud one. As I walked I started to listen to what he, or she, had to say.

   The first question was what kind of bird was I hearing? Then I wondered if he, or she, was saying anything? The voice of that one winged creature was easy to hear, it was so much louder than the others. Then I started to count the chirps in each set, seeing if a pattern emerged.

   There were 4, then 4, then 4 more. Then came 5 and another 4. Next was 4, then 6, then 7, then 2, and 4 again. There was no discernible pattern to the number. The noises sounded the same, but the frequency in each set seemed random.

   So, I wondered. Was that one bird talking to another? Was he talking to me? Was he just making noise? What was the purpose in all of this? Was there one?

   Jesus says in Matthew 10:

"What is the price of two sparrows—one copper coin? But not a single sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it."

   God created the birds that I hear. They are a part of His creation, and there is a purpose for them. Is that what I am supposed to realize this morning, or is there something else for me?

   Then I hear the sounds again, and I begin counting again, and thinking again.

   To me, these noises, however melodic, are just gibberish. To other birds around them they may have meaning, but not to me.

   Is my voice, when I speak, just more of the same, just more noise added to the din of the universe, or something else? Do I speak just to hear myself speak, or is there a purpose? Is that purpose worthwhile to others around me?

   Then I remember another verse, this one from Psalms 19:

"Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
Be acceptable in Your sight,
O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer."

   My words have meaning and are not just sounds. Thank you, birds for the reminder, and Thank You God, for creating them, words and birds, for me.

   Now if I only knew what that loud bird was talking about....

Old or New, or Both?

   As I read Psalm 87 this morning, I guess I should not have been surprised to find the words to two songs, one an old hymn by John Newton and the other a newer song, written by Chris Tomlin.

   Psalm 87 verse 3 reads:

"Glorious things of you are spoken,"

   Psalm 87 verse 7

 “All my fountains are in you.”

   After all, the Psalms were songs of the Hebrew people. What better inspiration for modern day writers, whether the definition of modern be the 1700s or the 21st century.

   Verse 2 of Newton's hymn reads:

        See, the streams of living waters, 
         springing from eternal love, 
         well supply thy sons and daughters, 
         and all fear of want remove.
         Who can faint while such a river 
         ever will their thirst assuage? 
         Grace which like the Lord, the giver, 
         never fails from age to age. 

   And here is the chorus from Tomlin's newer praise song:

               Open the heavens
               Come Living Water
               All my fountains are in You
               You're strong like a river
               Your love is running through
               All my fountains are in You

   Are they all that different? Sure a different tune, a different beat or measure, but the same message, and both written to worship God, the maker of our universe.

   Do I prefer one style of music over the other? Sure, but it is not the style that I should worship, it is the giver of that music, along with everything else.

   God, let me concentrate on the words and message and not so much on the way it is presented.