Suddenly, the storm stopped, and all was calm.

Then he asked them, “Where is your faith?” Luke 8:22b-25a (NLT)

The first flash of lightning lit up my bedroom like daytime, and it was quickly followed by a crash of thunder that began as a crack loud enough to wake the dead and continued to roll loudly through the surrounding hills for what seemed like forever. I checked the radar, and it was so full of lightning symbols I could barely see the radar imprint over our area. That was at 4:48 AM. It is now 9:30 on Monday morning, and there is still thunder rumbling all around, not as loud as those earlier displays, but certainly not giving up its hold on Clever, MO.

Last week’s message encouraged us to be still and listen for God to speak. Today, stillness wasn’t necessary. His voice spoke loudly in the dark of night.

But let me backtrack a bit. It wasn’t exactly a banner weekend for us. It seemed all our best-laid plans just disappeared into thin air. I won’t bore you with details; suffice it to say, not much went as we had wanted. On top of that, or maybe partly because of it, my writing muse seemed to be AWOL. I had hoped that something or someone at church would provide a spark that could turn into a useful message, but that was not to be.

As the day wore on, bad news kept tumbling into my lap. I heard a notification on Ken’s iPad that, considering the darkening sky, could have been a weather warning. He was working in the garage, so I checked it out, only to learn that Iran had broken its peace promise and lobbed missiles at Israel again. A little later, Ken read me a horrible story of how one government was forcing small children into slave labor in order to pay off debts incurred by their parents through the unethical practices of that same government. And then, Ken announced that a tornado warning had been issued for Springfield. What was that about? All our forecasters had agreed that the rains predicted for the weekend didn’t carry a severe threat, and yet the heart of Springfield was under a violent siege. We turned on the TV around seven thirty and found our trusty weather specialists in the midst of continuous coverage, which lasted until ten o’clock. A couple of tornadoes were confirmed, but they were brief. Thankfully, no lives were lost, and property damage was not widespread.

Here’s the thing….before falling asleep last night, I asked God to show me clearly what this week’s message should be, and He gave me a very noisy and conclusive response. Whatever worries I have are minor in the grand scheme of things because He is still in control. A God who can stir up the heavens as He has done can surely solve the problems of humankind. He will be with little children who are oppressed and hurting. He will ride out all our storms right beside us because He loves us and wants to protect us. And if some government leader decides it might be a good idea to press that button that unleashes nuclear war on our world, He gives us an out….it’s called heaven. What more could we want?

For now, the storms of life will keep coming, and after checking the forecast, it looks like we may have a bumpy week ahead. Just remember, God is still in control, and nothing or no one can defeat Him. Trust Him to be right by your side.

Then I heard what sounded like a great multitude, like the roar of rushing waters and like loud peals of thunder, shouting, “Hallelujah! For the Lord God Almighty reigns. Revelation 19:6 NIV

In the morning, Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait expectantly. Psalm 5:3 NIV

Being “here” or in the here and now is often a challenge…we live in a nutty world, running at the speed of light for 25 hours a day. OK, I exaggerate a bit, but really, we seldom take the time to truly smell the roses or notice the little blessings we encounter every day.

I have to admit I like being busy. Sitting quietly is not my strength. But sometimes God gives us a time out in which to rest…you know, a little back strain to limit our activity. An illness or injury makes us slow down and enjoy the warmth and comfort of home while someone else does the housework. A storm that leaves inches of snow keeps us homebound until it’s plowed. A power outage left us only candles and battery-operated lights. And, of course, the loss of someone we love.

Recent losses in our church have left us with a big hole in our hearts. Familiar voices we won’t hear again, eyes sparkling with a little bit of mischief but also lots of love, stories from times past, and plans for the future. It hurts when our plans are changed forever, yet during the grieving, we find quiet times in which to seek the comfort of the Holy Spirit. The ability to be still is truly a blessing. I’m learning, albeit slowly and sometimes painfully, that stillness is not a punishment. It’s an opportunity to connect or reconnect with Jesus, to rest completely under the sheltering wings of the Almighty.

In the midst of your daily storms…make it a point to be still and set your sights on Him.

Max Lucado, God Is With You Everyday

Some people can hear God speak. I can’t say I’ve ever heard a voice that I believed to be God enunciating words in a conversational manner. With me, it’s more like a gentle breeze ruffling my hair when there has been no breeze at all. It catches my attention and I wonder, “Is that you, Lord? What are you trying to tell me?“ Or I may have a very vivid dream, tossing and turning until it wakes me. And that dream may offer me a point of reference from which to write. And I just say, “OK, Lord. Message received.” Sometimes, those messages hit me like the proverbial two by four, while at other times, he really makes me search for them. But I do believe that it’s in the stillness, the middle of the night or when I’m sitting alone on the deck, that I’m most likely to experience a disturbance in the routine of daily living that feels like God is trying to communicate.

We’ve all had moments and situations when we’re about to do something that we know would be against God’s will for us, and something tells us to stop. Most people call it a conscience. I see it as a message from The Holy Spirit reminding us of whose we are.

Be still, and know that I am God! Psalm 46:10

However you prefer to communicate, don’t neglect to do it. It’s those conversations in the stillness of your night, or day, that keep you close to Jesus. And when the inevitable storms of life, whether physical or emotional, keep you awake, use that stillness, that absence of activity, as a perfect opportunity to talk with him. If you seek Him, He will hear you, and in His good timing, he will answer.

Speak to me now, Lord, and make your voice crystal clear. May it never

be said of my life that I almost listened & almost followed.

I will follow. Max Lucado (On Calvary’s Hill)

I am the true grapevine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch of mine that doesn’t produce fruit, and he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more. John 15:1-2

We’ve lived in our current home for over ten years now, and it came with a large holly bush at either end of our screened porch. I prune them by hand every year, several times, in fact. And only once, in all those years, have I let Ken get near them with the hedge trimmers. I like bushes free-formed by nature with a limited amount of control. He likes them neatly shaped and cropped closely. On one occasion, I gave in and turned him loose on one of them. It looked so naked for so long, I just couldn’t do it again. But I was very wrong. The bushes needed their excess trimmed away.

Weekend before last, on Saturday, I went out with my trusty hand pruners and began to cut away at the excess growth. I found that new growth only extended about eight to ten inches into the bush. Beyond that depth were only spindly little branches that were three to four feet long…and there were bunches of them. I trimmed everything from the bottom and worked my way up, but it was beginning to cloud over, and the wind was blowing very hard, so I asked Ken to help me bag the trimmings. I thought we could decide what to do about the out-of-control bush later. We bagged my clippings, and then he started trimming. When he was nearly finished, rain was imminent, and we still had a few scraggly limbs at the top. I headed around the pile of trimmings and caught my toe on the concrete pad beside our deck landing. I came down hard, flat on my face, but after a quick assessment, the only damage to my body was a black and blue toe and a few abrasions on my nose, along with a bruise or two. Of course, my new glasses were toast, but there were no breaks or any cuts or bruises anywhere else. I can only assume that Jesus took the fall for me, as He has so many times before, both literally and figuratively. (And I’m healing well.)

Fast forward to this past Saturday, Ken removed all the remaining growth from the scraggly bush we’d left behind the week before and the entire bush from the other end. They are both merely stumps now, and we don’t know if they will try to grow again, but they’ve had a good run, and we’re content with or without them.

You may wonder what my point is….simply this: Most plants need to be pruned from time to time, sometimes lightly and sometimes severely, in order to maintain overall health. Jesus used the reference to grapevines in John 15 to help us visualize our need to also be pruned. We carry lots of baggage throughout our daily lives….financial burdens, health issues, long-held grudges, addictions (those come in many forms), unresolved anger, and bad habits. Some of our baggage is good, but too much of a good thing can be very tiring and leave little time for things that matter more.

I learned during these past two weekends that our bushes needed exactly what Ken wanted to do all along, but I had chosen to hold on to all that unnecessary growth because I wanted a certain look. It wasn’t good for the bushes, and it isn’t good for me to hold on to the excesses in my life either. All of which brings me to our amazing youth praise band and their choice for the communion song they shared on Sunday morning, one of my very favorites, Tend. Jesus left us with the analogy of tending grapevines in order to teach us that we need to let His Father prune our unneeded branches.

So be the gardener of my heart. Tend the soil of my soul.

Break up the fallow ground, cut back the overgrown.

And I won’t shy away, I will let the branches fall.

So what You want can stay and what You love can grow.**

And one more connection to Sunday morning’s service… Pentecost brought the Holy Spirit to guide the disciples in His absence. As we celebrate the day of Pentecost, we too are offered the Holy Spirit as a constant guide and companion for our lives. Will you cling to Jesus and let Him be the true vine in your life? Will you let God be the gardener, accepting all the necessary pruning? And will you invite the Holy Spirit to be your constant guide and companion? (…for a triple braid of cord is not easily broken. Ecclesiastes 4:12b)

(**Chorus of Tend by Bethel Music and Emmy Rose—2022)

Words! They’re probably the greatest of the gifts I’ve received and the one carrying the most longevity. My affinity with words likely began with my mom always reading stories to me as a little tyke. I quickly memorized all the fairy tales that were a part of childhood in the 1940s. When school took over most of my waking time, I delved deeper into words, became an ace speller, and read countless books. My reading interest waned a bit in high school, but I replaced that with a keen desire to write, to express myself through my own words rather than those shared by others.

As a young adult, writing took a back seat for a time while I invested myself in other gifts with which I have been blessed, not the least of these being motherhood. But the kids grew up and flew the proverbial nest, health issues made most of my other endeavors difficult, so I returned to writing, and it’s been a blessing to utilize words again. It’s easy to understand, then, that my eye latched onto some devotional books, published by Guideposts, that are completely built around using a single word each day as their theme and building a devotional reading from that lonely little word.

Two of the books are Pray A Word A Day, I & II, and they contain 365 entries each for a total of 730. The other two deal specifically with Hope and Strength, each containing 100 devotionals, all for a total of 930 words. That seems like a lot of words around which to build faith-based articles, but when one considers the number of words in our American English vocabulary, it’s really not. And you’d be surprised how the human imagination can wrap a very ordinary word like “do” or “yell” or “bind” into a meaningful life lesson. It doesn’t necessarily require a complex word to make an important point.

One word that recently caught my eye was morsel. By definition, it is a small serving of an appetizing food or a scrap of something such as news or advice. It derives from Old French (small bite or portion), which comes from the Latin expression, morsus (a bite).

One type of morsel that I am particularly fond of is dark chocolate. Without a morsel of its richness on a regular basis, I would feel deprived of something very special. But the more I think of the word morsel, it begins to carry much greater weight.

The devotion that inspired my interest told of a person who was referred to by a caring relative as a “precious morsel.” She wasn’t sure how she felt about that moniker until she began to see it in different terms.

The more I thought about being a precious morsel, the more I understood that’s all I really want to be. A bit of love. A sliver of wisdom. A scrap of joy. A thread of encouragement. Little acts that in the Lord’s faithful hands become precious morsels that go down so sweet.

If I can daily remember to sprinkle love on those I encounter, pass along traces of wisdom accumulated over my many years, tear a scrap of joy from the fabric of my life and share it, weave a delicate thread of encouragement into the concerns of a friend or stranger, along with countless other delectable morsels, perhaps I can spin a tapestry of daily living that make someone else’s day a little brighter. When we all do our very best to scatter small seeds of goodness, God smiles!

You, Lord, are a big God who delights in small things.

In the beginning, God created…..

When was the last time you accepted an opportunity to truly ponder that simple yet overwhelmingly profound statement? Have you imagined a boundless void where now stands a mature and majestic tree? How about a snow-capped mountain or a seemingly endless ocean, teeming with life of every description? When did you take the time to savor the intricacy of a freshly opened blossom or cradle a newborn child? God created every single solitary thing!

For the life of every living thing is in His hand, and the breath of every human being. Job 12:10 NLT

How can we absorb the complexity of everything surrounding us and not know that God absolutely is the hand that created it? Created…not just assembled from parts and pieces lying around, but with His Hand, brought it into being. It’s truly astounding to imagine that there was nothing, and then, as he spoke, there was everything.

These past few weeks, I’ve been acutely aware of the power of creation and recovery. Following our spring freeze, which stopped every growing thing right in its tracks, it’s been amazing to watch the transformation from the gray of winter to the lush growth of spring. As a matter of fact, our trees and plants resemble the fullness of early summer. And it happened so fast, it almost seemed like a new creation. What appeared to be barren and dead leaped almost instantly onto a colorful palette of life.

I’m so grateful God chose to insert us into this time and place. To be a part of His masterful plan is a privilege I often take for granted. So today, I thank you, God, master of all creation, for the gifts you have provided for all your children. Help us to remember to care for them with the same care you extend to us each day. Help us to grow into the people you intended us to be.

….neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. I Corinthians 3:7 NLT

Wherever we go, we will always be immersed in the goodness of our God. And if He was able to create such vast beauty here on earth, just imagine what awaits us in His heaven!

We cannot find a place where God is not! Max Lucad

For we live by believing and not by seeing. II Corinthians 5:7 NLT

Just in case you hadn’t noticed, prices for anything we want or need to buy have absolutely skyrocketed. As there seems to be no end in sight, lots of people are seeking new ways to save. Thrift stores are doing a booming business. Discount food markets are seeing a new group of customers walking through the door as well. And some restaurants are seeing a decline in business.

Ken and I are no different. We’re looking for ways to stretch our budget and trying to make wiser choices regarding all our purchases, as well as using our most cost-effective vehicle for the majority of our driving. A hobby we latched onto last fall has blended well into our cost-saving plan. I believe I’ve mentioned that we really enjoy estate sales for a lot of reasons. Nice prices for slightly used goods when you shop carefully, top the list at present. And, of course, Ken gets ecstatic when he finds a cache of old rusty tools to restore. We’re learning that it’s important to take a good serving of self-control along with us. A bargain is only a bargain if you really need the item and have a constructive use for it.

A side benefit of these fun sales is discovering new communities all over the greater Springfield area. We’ve visited older neighborhoods of very traditional homes, many in need of repair or upgrade, but others lovingly maintained. There have been newer and quite affluent communities of large, modern homes. We’ve attended city sales and country sales, many of those on beautiful properties, and the drives to find them have been breathtaking in their spring colors. Each home has shown us its individual personality, but one thing has been a continuous thread between them all….we locate them with the miracle of GPS. What did we ever do without it?

We don’t even mind the “sweet” voice providing directions. I can only recall once when those directions were completely wrong and led us on a merry chase. But we finally put our common sense to good use and found our destination. Yes, there are those times when a miscommunication occurs between the two of us, and we may have been known to make a circle or two while en route, but cool heads always find a way.

By faith he (Moses) left Egypt… he persevered because he saw him who is invisible. Hebrews 11:27

The Global Positioning System is able to guide us to our earthly destinations with the aid of satellites, but how do we find our way through the tangled web of life? How do we survive the storms, celebrate the milestones, and cooperate with colleagues? How do we parent children and care for aging parents? What or who is our spiritual GPS?

Without the printed Word of God and a solid relationship with Jesus, we can’t possibly navigate this world we live in. Many have tried, and many have failed. Truth be told, we all have a tendency to try to do things our own way. It’s our very human nature. It isn’t easy to give up control, especially when our provider is invisible. But when we give everything in our lives to Jesus, He’s always right beside us. Often, He completely carries us. Our strength, our wisdom, and our mercy are all limited, but with Jesus in the driver’s seat (or as the voice on our spiritual GPS), we can do anything.

If we can put our trust in a sweet voice offering travel directions through our vehicle’s audio system, surely we can trust the Word of God and be able to put our hand in the hands of the one who worked countless miracles. Next time you find yourself at a crossroad, whose direction will you take?

Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see. Hebrews 11:1 NLT

When I was a girl, yes, I can still recall those days, my mom used a couple of phrases rather freely, as did most mothers of that day. When their daughters became a bit obsessive about personal appearance, they would typically remind us that “beauty is only skin deep” or “pretty is as pretty does.” These two simple statements, spoken with love, brought us back down to earth and reminded us not to take our physical beauty too seriously.

I doubt many young girls hear those phrases today. Personal beauty has become big business in America and throughout the world. According to several online sites, Americans spent nearly one hundred and ten billion dollars on beauty products and services in 2025, with skin care and hair care topping the list. And, believe it or not, men figure heavily into the personal appearance equation. One study cited that when they decide to splurge, they spend significantly more than women on their chosen products.

A whopping 75% of Americans claim that beauty products, cosmetics, and services are important enough to them that they are willing to spend big in order to have them. Add to this that we also spend tens of billions on cosmetic surgery and boast the lion’s share of the global market at 30.7%. During COVID, all non-essential surgeries were postponed, but there has been a strong rebound in the years since. 3 million plastic surgeries are performed annually in the US…more than any other country.

Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it. Psalm 139:14 NLT

Understand, I am not criticizing our desire to look nice. We all want to present a pleasing appearance. I just think we may go a little overboard at times and, perhaps, tend to forget that beauty is about much more than our outward appearance. When I look in a mirror, I often wonder who is looking back at me. My once clear and nearly perfect skin is wrinkled with age, and my arms are covered in brown spots where once there were none. Sure, I’d like to smooth out those wrinkles and remove those unsightly spots. But I’ve earned every one of them in my eighty-plus years, and I know that God cares more about what is in my heart than He does about a few wrinkles and sunspots.

You should clothe yourselves instead with the beauty that comes from within, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is so precious to God. I Peter 3:4

God made each of us in his own image, and He doesn’t make mistakes. Each of us was created as He wanted us to look. In His eyes, we are perfect. What more could we ask?

The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. I Samuel 16:7.

Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and he will establish your plans. Proverbs 16:3 NIV

Wow! As I look out my windows, the signs of spring are popping out all over. Our perennials and trees are making a strong comeback from that nasty spring freeze in March. Lots of plants are showing off their spring colors, and the trees are budding out nicely, except for one, my favorite red maple.

We are blessed to have four lovely mature trees in our yard. Our large pin oak graces the front yard, a treasured old bur oak sits between our neighbors and us, and two red maples are at home in the back yard, waiting patiently to show off their fall colors.

When we moved here over ten years ago, those maples were still just teenagers, about fifteen feet tall, and their growth was mostly upward. In the intervening years, they’ve probably doubled in height and begun a more mature spread, turning the backyard from a sunny space into a very shady one. The trees stand about forty feet apart and, for a number of years, they flanked a large island of perennials. We removed that bed a few years back, but the watering of all those perennials, along with the mulch that covered the bed, helped to create a condition not uncommon to maples called girdling roots. The term girdled may have been borrowed from the corsets worn by ladies of a bygone era, in that they tighten around the body to restrict the waistline. Girdling roots circle the base of the tree and continue to grow tighter, restricting the flow of water and nutrients, essentially strangling the tree.

Improper planting can also cause girdling to occur. If a tree, or any plant, has been in a pot long enough to become potbound—that is, with roots circling around the plant because the pot won’t allow them to spread outward—you must break those roots apart and spread them out before planting, so they can grow properly away from the base of the plant.

We made it easy for our tree to obtain water at the surface of the ground, and small roots formed there, hidden under the mulch. It wasn’t until the landscape bed was removed that we realized we had acquired a mass of these roots climbing over each other, resembling a sort of snake’s nest in appearance. This tree typically sprouts leaves before the other maple in spring and drops them later in the fall, providing a prolonged period of beautiful color. Last fall, the sequence reversed. The other maple was absolutely lovely, but my favorite tree just turned brown and dropped its leaves. This spring, it’s sprouting new leaves much later, and they are small and unhealthy in appearance. Intervention is required.

So, we’ve been researching, and Ken is currently attempting to cut as many of the girdled roots away from the tree as he can. They are not just keeping our tree from reaching its potential. If they aren’t removed, it will slowly die. We hope to avert that.

And, of course, those strangling roots made me wonder how much my spiritual roots are being strangled by the girdling effect of the distractions in my life. They don’t necessarily have to be negative distractions; losses of relationships, illness, or financial issues. We can become distracted by overcommitting to good causes, like taking on an extra class when we don’t have time to keep up with the other ones, accepting new leadership roles when we’re already bogged down, and taking on new volunteer opportunities, prompting the erosion of our efforts in others we had started.

Too many commitments can weigh us down with responsibility so that our spiritual roots are strangling, just like that maple tree in our backyard. We all require downtime to be the people God meant us to be. We need the nutrients that can only be supplied by spending time in the Word and talking with Jesus. The next time you’re asked to accept a new commitment, take a good look at what you’re already doing and be sure that you can continue to flourish by adding something new. Or maybe you could choose to drop a current project and take on something new and different that would be more fulfilling.

Think about a maple tree struggling with girdling roots each time you consider adding more to your plate. Sometimes less is better.

You have planted them, and they have taken root, they grow and bear fruit. Jeremiah 12:2 NIV