The Small Branch

"He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son He loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins." Colossians 1:13-14 One of the questions from our Community Bible Study lesson this week was "When a piece of jewelry is taken to a pawn shop, it must be 'redeemed' by its owner for a certain price within a certain length of time, or it becomes the property of the shop owner. Using this analogy, describe what happened to you when you were redeemed by the blood of Christ." Wow! what a great analogy. In the beginning, we belonged to God, but we pawned ourselves so that we could experience the supposed pleasure of sin - only to find ourselves slaves in the pawn shop, slaves to the master pawn broker - Satan. Then Jesus came in, and laid down the price to get us out of there and take us home with Him - laid down His very life - and so, in our extreme gratitude for being released from this prison, we stay...

I keep meaning to post on this, but for some crazy reason, I never seem to have much time. So, here goes... I am really concerned at the state of the children in our country. Yes, there are orphans all over the world, thousands here, even, but I am not talking about true orphans. I am talking about all the pseudo-orphans. Mom's career is more important, or a bigger lifestyle, or whatever. The main thing is, Mom fails to be Mom. Not to even mention the absent fathers - whether because they choose to be workaholics or because they have truly left for good. Divorce is rampant. All parents think about is themselves and what they want. Kids are sent to school, not because that is what is best but just because Mom doesn't want to have to deal with them all day. Amazing! The most important part of survival for our nation, our faith, everything is our children. But yet we fail to anchor them to Christ. We let them float - adrift on a sea of tolerance and acceptance. God ...

I am learning something valuable along with my toddler. She is 3 years old and has just started speech therapy. Her language use and comprehension is great, but her articulation needs a lot of work. You see, she has a lot of wrong pronunciation habits developed over the last few years. The thing is, I really expected to see major improvement after each session. Her speech pathologist says she is doing great and that her progress is, and should continue to be, quick. I am, however, not so sure. I guess I wanted to see instant fixes. Every time I work with her on the assignments for the week, I feel frustrated that we are still working on the same things. But it has only been a few weeks! It hit me how much this is an illustration of a great difficulty I have. I want instant fixes for everything. Quick answers, swift decisions, 180 degree turns on a dime. But there are bad habits I have spent a lifetime developing (and unlike my toddler, my lifetime has spanned more than a f...

Is there ever enough time for everything? Not if I am looking at my to do list, that's for sure. But God gives me the perfect amount of time for His to do list. If only I could remember that! I wish He would write it out for me each morning - a day timer for each day - I would be totally willing to follow it. But life doesn't happen on a schedule. God gives us "to do's " that He saw coming, but we can't handle the same way if we saw them ahead of time. Does that make any sense? Anyway, I feel like my life is one reaction after another. Not that I don't try to plan some things out, but most of those things fall to the wayside as more important things take their place in my day. Today is one of those days. I am so overwhelmed that I actually called my dear husband to ask him to bring dinner home with him. I hate doing that! But that has been my day. And the night is still young (as a stare blurry eyed at the screen wondering how many more secon...