From the Pastor's Pen

Pastor Sally’s Devotional 1/13

| January 13, 2021

Dear friends,

I came downstairs early this morning looking for my husband so we could have breakfast together, and he was gone.  He wasn’t in the kitchen or out back with the dog.  He wasn’t in his prayer chair in the back room.  He wasn’t upstairs.  Where was he?  That’s when I noticed the beautiful sunrise over the river.  I opened the front door and looked down the sidewalk.  Sure enough.  There he was in his bathrobe and slippers down the street with his camera taking pictures of the sunrise over the river!

 

My husband spends a lot of miscellaneous moments taking pictures of that river across Lexington Ave.  It occurred to me this morning that we are blooming where we have been planted.  In almost every house we have lived in (and as pastors, there have been quite a few now…) In every house we have lived in there have been things about the house or property or location that we have liked and disliked but we have always grown to look past the shortcomings and to love our homes.

 

We loved our home in Sturgis.  It was a quaint colonial in a quiet neighborhood where people actually drove to so they could walk in it!  But ceilings were short, the basement flooded, and I didn’t like the proximity to the hospital and the ambulances and helicopters that woke us at night.  And I loved my 1940 colonial in La Porte with its large yard and big quiet street!  I did not, however, like all the snow, all the lawn and gardens that needed tending, and the wood siding that needed painting every summer!  And I love my smaller old home (1932) in Elkhart.  I love the wood floors, the fenced yard for Theo and the big kitchen.  But we don’t like the traffic on Lexington and the ambulances that pass by day and night with sirens blaring.  But in each home, we have discovered unexpected blessings.  Our blessing in Elkhart is this river just on the other side of Lexington and the surprisingly beautiful sunrises we are privileged to behold on so many mornings!  We are situated perfectly to catch their glorious colors reflected in the river.

 

It seems to me we get to choose what we will see and remember and think about.  We get to choose if we will bloom where we are planted or wither in grumpiness.  I want to bloom where planted!

 

May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart

    be pleasing in your sight,

    Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.  Psalm 19:14

 

Peace,

Pr. Sally

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