Category Archives: Uncategorized

Lungs are made for breathing air.

Astounding discovery, I know!  Right?

Well, last night I managed to breathe in some chocolate almond milk when I was taking my pills. It’s good stuff!

But it wasn’t made to be breathed in.

It was not meant to go into the windpipe or the lungs.

The result was a lot of coughing to expel the intruder.  It was a noisy, chaotic consequence of putting chocolate milk in a space where air was meant to be.

Our souls were made for God. This is a less recognized fact, sometimes spurned by those who refuse to believe.

Our souls were meant to house the Spirit Wind.  (John 3:8)

They were made to be filled with God’s Spirit, just as surely as our lungs were made to be filled with air.

But sometimes we try to fill our souls with other things:

• Possessions – more new…

On this Lord’s Day I am happy to present the second submission from our sister Beth Alisan; another beautiful and very effective doggy devotional, which I am sure will be a blessing to you today. I would highly recommend subscribing to Beth’s devotional blog Lessons From A Lab , which has been a huge blessing in my own spiritual walk.

Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you have a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.

Colossians 3:13 (NIV)

One of my memories of our Brittany Spaniel is of the burrs that would entangle themselves in her coat after a hunt with my father and brothers.  Eventually, one of us would need to sit down and painstakingly work these burrs out of her long red and white fur. 

The first time Adi emerged from a patch of tall grass with burrs adorning her coat I…

Sometimes strange things happen in life for reasons even we can figure out. I’ve asked Tracy DeMarse  (yes my daughter) to be a guest blogger.  You will enjoy this and please make comments below.

                                                                 Green Rivers

                                                                By Tracy DeMarse

Do you ever look back and notice crazy threads that somehow seem to keep showing up in your life? Like knowing a different couple named “Mike and Julie” in all five cities you’ve lived in so far?  Or no matter how many job changes you have you always seem to have a boss named “Mitch”?  For me it usually involves “Green River.”

    The first Green River was a small town in Utah.  Wikipedia tells me its population…

. . . a crown of beauty instead of ashes . . . –Isaiah 61:3 NIV 

At 8:32 a.m. on May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens erupted in a violent blast that blew out the north side of the mountain. Everything within eight miles—man, beast, and vegetation—met with instant death and destruction. Shock waves leveled everything within their path, including centuries-old trees, for another 19 miles. Beyond that, the trees that remained were nothing more than standing matchsticks, seared of leaves and life.

Fifty-seven people lost their lives in what was the most destructive volcanic eruption in U.S. history. Miles of roads and railroad tracks were destroyed. Ash spewed 12 miles high, then mushroomed out, eventually dumping an estimated 500 million tons in 11 states and five Canadian provinces.

The blast, and the accompanying earthquake, altered the landscape and forever changed the ecosystem.

In July Dean and I visited the…

People who teach young children often hear them say the same things over and over. “It’s MY TURN!” “I’m telling on you…” And my favorite, “That’s not fair!”

Big people are, well, bigger than this of course. We’re too sophisticated to stoop to the “tit for tat” spats of childhood. Or are we?

Just four chapters into the Bible, we find someone who thought he was treated unfairly. And this “little boy” retaliated in the worst way imaginable. Cain killed his brother Abel because God favored Abel’s offering over his own. The Lord tried to intervene, but Cain wouldn’t listen.

Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at the door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.

Genesis 4:6-7

You mean…