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Posts from the ‘Reflections’ Category

A Prayer for a Spring Day

Oh Lord, the Creator, the Giver and the Sustainer of all Life,

You are the God who awakens the earth and all its creatures from their winter slumber.

Lord, You bring forth life each spring and turn it’s still and icy nights into choruses of song,

You fill empty branches of trees with the source of all of the world’s life.

The animals make their way from their winter homes to the fields and streams

overflowing with the winter snow melt and the spring rains.

How can we experience this rebirth, this new life, this transformation each year

and not immediately turn to the new life given to us through Your Son Jesus?

In the spring, when the entire world is awakening, Your Son went instead to sleep,

When life arrived from what appeared to have been dead, Your Son died,

With the arrival of scented flowers and fruitful trees, filled with singing birds,

Jesus lay three days in a silent tomb, having only the aroma of death.

Yet the world and all that’s in it would one day go to sleep again,

to experience death, Lord you planned it this way,

But You also planned for our Jesus, to come alive, more alive than the best spring day.

Jesus rose from His death, to live forever, to give hope that all of creation would one day be rescued

from its assured death, to be delivered from its winter slumber.

And Your Son’s return to life on that spring morning, is a promise to us, who put our faith in Him,

that we too will not be bound by the eternal winter, but will one day live forever in a place

where there will be no winter, where there will be no death,

but only life found on the best spring day ever and one that will never end.

Amen

The Beach or the Mountains, or the …?

I remember late night debates with friends about which were better – the mountains or the beach? At the heart of the debate was the romantic calling of the sea and the laid back life on the beach versus the adventure and majesty of the mountains. What both have in common is that they show the immense size and beauty of God’s creation while often creating existential crises because they make us feel so insignificant in their midst.

When pressed in those debates I always landed on mountains as my choice. But over the last 15 years my preference has slowly shifted. As our family traveled down to Myrtle Beach for spring break I posed the question to them – mountains or beaches? After a bit of discussion they asked my choice to which I answered – neither.

You see a couple of years ago I realized that my answer was now “C. None of the above”, though I still love and appreciate both (especially the beach after a long Michigan winter), my first choice has become, what I call, the great north woods, especially the forests and glades around the Great Lakes.

There is nothing I love more than a summer morning filled with the sweet smell of firs, pine and poplar combined with the coolness that the natural air conditioning of the Great Lakes provide, or watching the sunset over a spring fed lake or over the coast of Lake Michigan. I still love to watch white tail leap a fence or catch a trout in a lake or a stream.

There’s just so much that I love about great north woods, but in the end, I find the same majesty of the mountains and the same romantic calling of the sea but in an environment that’s personal, intimate and accessible.  They have truly become my sanctuary.

What’s your favorite place?

Read the Bible in a Year

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Reflections – Volume 2

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Reflections – Volume 1

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