Crosswalk.com--The Devotional

[Judy Harder]

Be a Friend to Have a Friend
by Laura MacCorkle

A friend loves at all times. Proverbs 17:17, NIV

Christmas is just about three weeks past us, but the remnants remain on a bulletin board in my office.

There, I have thumb-tacked various holiday family pictures and newsletters that I received in the mail from all different friends and acquaintances.  I decided that that's how I would "handle" these materials this year, instead of putting them in a pile to collect dust and go forgotten.

As I look at the bulletin board each day, my heart is warmed as I see the faces of friends who have played different roles in my life:  comforter, truth-teller, listener, hugger, encourager, constructive criticizer, relationship decoder/investigator, and so forth.

I see so many ways of serving and giving from so many different types of friends.  And I am blessed as I am reminded of what they have done for me.  And then I am also convicted:  What am I doing for my friends?  How am I pouring into their lives as they are pouring into mine?  How is God moving me to be part of their worlds?  And am I responding to his instruction and guidance in my life?

Ralph Waldo Emerson famously said:  "The only way to have a friend is to be one."  And he was so right about that.  Friendships don't just happen.  They take time.  They take effort.  They take upkeep.  And that means we all have to do something if we want to cultivate, grow and nurture relationships with others.

When I look at my bulletin board of friends, if I am truly willing to be a friend "who loves at all times," I know that that means I have to always be ready to shelve or alter my plans in order to help meet the varied needs of others.

It's something God has been working on me for a while now.  Am I willing to lay down my plans and sacrifice my time and my desires for my friends?  Or is it more important that I get done today what is on my list and what I think is right for me?  Am I seeking the Lord for his direction?  Am I paying attention to the Holy Spirit for conviction?

Let me warn you, though.  Don't ask God to move in your life in this way unless you really mean it.  Because when you do ask him to help you be a better friend and to help you reach out to others, he will give you plenty of opportunities that may or may not be what you had in mind.

You might be asked to...

Offer your professional skills to someone else in need for free.
Forgo your after-work errands or agenda to just sit, listen and offer a warm hug
Give up your Saturday to help someone move, paint a house or run a garage sale.
Better yet, you might be moved to...

Give financially to someone you don't even know.
Befriend the "different" or "difficult" person whom no one else likes.
Not take careless words or confusing situations personally and instead choose to "cover" these minor offenses with love.
That's what a true friend does:  gets outside of themselves and gives.  And gives.  And gives!  Are you up to it?  I'm asking myself the same question.  For friends both new and old, how can we be a true friend to someone else today?

Intersecting Faith & Life: No doubt, at some point in your life you've known what it's like to be on the receiving end of someone who has been a good friend to you.  But what's it like to be your friend?  Do you take more than you give?  Are you ever around?  Do you take time to listen and care about others' concerns and life matters?  Take a friend inventory today and see what changes you might need to make in your outreach to those you call "friend."

Further Reading:

John 15:13
1 Corinthians 13:4-7

[Judy Harder]

Missing the Forest for the Trees
by Debbie Holloway, Crosswalk.com Family Editor

"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied:"'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments" (Matthew 22:36).

I just read an article about how being technically "overweight" might not actually, in and of itself, carry a higher mortality risk. It discussed how previously established governmental standards of healthy, "normal" weight might have sprung more from our society's visual obsession with thinness, than with any inherent physical dangers of weighing more than your neighbor.

As mind-blowing as this conclusion may seem, perhaps the real problem isn't a number on a scale. Perhaps it's when too much extra weight for a person's body brings on unnatural fatigue, immobility, illness, or discomfort. Perhaps the problem is eating too much, or too poorly, for our bodies to function correctly.

Perhaps we're missing the big picture of health and wellness and zooming in too close on the raw numbers of weight.

I would venture to say that we do that in our spiritual lives as well. Perhaps you've diagnosed a fellow believer as having a spiritual "illness" – let's say they don't attend church on Sunday morning. Knowing only this raw data can lead to a judgmental shake of the head, with a sigh of "Hebrews 10:25!"

But, if you were to ask this person about their health and habits, perhaps you might be surprised. But I do meet together with other believers regularly, they may say, citing a weeknight Bible study or regularly occurring night of intentional fellowship. I travel weekends for my job, so traditional church is pretty impossible, they might say. There are many things they might say, many things that might remind us that a single suspicious tree might not be representative of the forest of someone's life.

Jesus said that everything we learned from the Law and from the Prophets could be summed up like this:

Love God.
Love other people.

This is the Forest. Everything else is merely a Tree within it.

If there is something in your life causing the Forest to suffer, only then can a problem be properly diagnosed (and, rest assured, if we ignore things like fellowship, worship or prayer for long enough those things will suffer). However, sometimes we get a little too focused on smaller things and forget about the bigger picture. We forget about the Forest, so preoccupied have we been on individual Trees.

Intersecting Faith and Life: Perhaps your individual Trees line up. But how is your Forest looking these days? A little too much like a Christmas tree farm? Rather than focusing on the good-Christian-checklist of your day, ask a trusted friend or mentor whether your life truly could be described as loving God and loving people unselfishly.

Further Reading

Luke 11:37

[Judy Harder]

Are You in the Belly of a Big Fish?
by Fred Alberti, Salem Web Network Director of Social Media

But the Lord provided a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was inside the fish three days and three nights.
Jonah 1:17

Being a homeschool family we sometimes have some rather interesting experiments that we get to enjoy as a family. George is one such experiment. George is a goldfish whose bowl-mate sadly perished. My son's task was to teach the goldfish to come to the top of the bowl when he tapped on the glass. After several weeks of tapping and feeding and tapping and feeding the fish finally learned to come to the top of the bowl.

Big deal right? Right, that is until the fish started to do more. Anytime someone would walk by the bowl he would get all excited and start moving his mouth like he was yelling at whoever it was that was walking by the bowl. This became rather normal and we would just ignore him or comment that he was yelling at us in Spanish.

Then one day my kids were listening to an FFH song titled "Big Fish." It was then that George decided to really show off what he could do. When the song played George would begin to swim around like he was dancing in the water and would seemingly move his mouth to the words (move over Ashlee Simpson).

I particularly like the first verse of the song which goes like this:

Are you in the big fish
Are you sitting in the belly of a world gone mad
Have you turned your back in His wish
On His will for your life, have you made Him sad
Do you want to get out of the big fish
Listen to God and follow His plan
And you won't be part of the main dish
He'll spit you out on to dry land

I've sometimes felt like I was in the belly of a big fish. I had decided to do something my way instead of first seeking the Lord's guidance and leading.

You, whoever you are, God has a plan for your life. Maybe you feel like you are wasting your time at a dead-end job. Or perhaps you have no job but would desperately like one. Maybe you think you have the dream job but the Lord has been speaking to you in a still small voice to give it up for something else. Like Jonah, you may not particularly like the mission God has for you but He has the intention of making you ideally suited to carry that plan out.

Will you follow His plan or will you turn your back?

Maybe you've already chosen to turn your back and feel that there is no way out now. If that is the case I've got good news for you. The Bible has this to say about Jonah, "From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the Lord his God" (Jonah 2:1). God is the God of second, third, and fourth chances.

Commit your way to the Lord today.

Intersecting Faith & Life: Buy a goldfish if you don't have one already. As you feed it remember that the Lord has a purpose and a plan for your life. Ask Him to reveal it to you daily.

Further Reading

Jonah Runs From God
Jonah and Me
Hebrews 13:20-21

[Judy Harder]

Is Suffering Inevitable?
by Shawn McEvoy, Managing Editor, Crosswalk.com

For it is better, if God should will it so, that you suffer for doing what is right rather than for doing what is wrong.
1 Peter 3:17, NAS

Suffering. It's not standard daily devotional fare, because let's face it, usually we want to begin or end our day being uplifted, or even better, lifting up God, rather than focusing on our pains and problems.

But there's the rub... we all have pains and problems. Christian and non-Christian. Lifelong disciple and baby believer. Red and yellow, black and white. Everyone, from the moment he or she was born, has struggled, tried, failed, hurt, sinned, misunderstood, and reacted. Humanity shares a true brotherhood over suffering, one that we might understand a lot better if suffering weren't also so relative. By which I mean, one person's issues may sound simple, easy-to-solve, even petty to another. "That's nothing compared to what I've had to endure!"

But the fact is, your sorrows and difficulties are real to you. It's one reason why I'm no fan of when people say a certain place or time in their lives isn't "the real world," as if the spot they are currently tucked away at is immune from any degree of difficulty.

Suffering is very real, and there's certainly no reason any Christian would expect life to be otherwise. We purport to follow a "Suffering Savior." His stripes have healed us, and wow do we seem to feel them sometimes, which is as it should be, as we deserved them instead of Him. If we agree that no person but one - no matter where they lived or how easy or hard they had it - has escaped sin's corruption, then how much more must we agree that truly NO person has escaped suffering?

Look at what Peter suggests in today's verse: you can suffer for doing good, or you can suffer for doing bad. By extension, some of the problems in your life may be a result of your own rebellion, while other hurts may naturally result from walking so closely with Christ that you ache at the injustice and hardship around you, with the world despising and persecuting you.

In the classic allegory Hinds' Feet on High Places, Much-Afraid journeys with companions named Sorrow and Suffering, and these two assist her in her climb up the Injury Precipice, which is a part of her transformation into "Grace and Glory."

The same is true for you. Your sufferings have informed you, educated you, helped you along in your journey. You may despise them, but they are yours. And they will be with you whether you are doing right, or not. Of course, the nature of them will be quite different.

There may be one way, though, to avoid suffering. There's a third option, left out here by Peter, but not left out by John in the Revelation. It's the lukewarm response to life, the do-nothing approach. This is the approach that cocoons itself off from life and all of its pain. And make no mistake, "Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something," says that famous theologian the Man in Black in The Princess Bride.

You may not feel anything from inside a cocoon; in fact, it may be an abundance of pain and suffering that forced you in there. But remember, no creature that cocoons itself is intended to stay locked up forever. The point is to be rested, healed, matured, transformed. To become more beautiful, useful. Even the emerging process itself carries a degree of struggle, but one that, if the insect did not go through itself, would leave it too weak to fly.

So be lifted up in your suffering today.

It is a companion.

It is designed to transform you.

It gives you a share in the inheritance of Christ and the brotherhood of humanity.

And it gives you empathy, which gives you every excuse for ministry.

Intersecting Faith & Life: Make it your goal to partake, as much as possible, only of the brand of suffering that comes from doing what is right according to God's Word.

Further Reading

God's Undeserved Gift to the World: Christian Sufferers
Trusting God in the Darkness

[Judy Harder]

New Creations
by Ryan Duncan, Crosswalk.com Culture Editor

"For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God." – 1 Peter 1:23

Have you ever done something embarrassing? I know I have. In fact you could say my entire childhood (and a good portion of my adult life) has been one long string of embarrassing moments. I am still haunted by the memory of when I threw up during my English final, or the time I tripped while skiing and caused a massive, ten-man pile-up in front of the ski lift. The worst part is you're brain never lets you forget it.

The difficult news is it's not just embarrassing moments we seem unable to forget, it's our mistakes. Many of us have done things in our lives that we regret. We've acted selfishly, or violently, and other people have been hurt because of it. The Devil loves to use our past mistakes against us; they are by far his favorite weapons. He will always wait until we're vulnerable, then take our dirty laundry and rub it in our face.       

It's at moments like these that I always turn to 2 Corinthians 5:17-19 and reminded myself about the truth behind Christ's ministry.     

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation:  that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation." – 2 Corinthians 5: 17-19

When we choose to follow Christ, our slates are instantly wiped clean. All the mistakes we've made all the stupid things we've done, embarrassing or otherwise, no longer matter to God. We may still have to accept the consequences of our actions, but we can take comfort in knowing that it God's sight we are new creations. So do not allow Satan to guilt you with past mistakes, you are a child of God and he will never see you as anything less.

Intersecting Faith and Life: Take a moment to read your Bible and reflect on God's words.

Further Reading

2 Corinthians 5

[Judy Harder]

Keeping the Best Things First
by Katherine Britton

And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best... Philippians 1:9-11 

How often do we resign ourselves to the "tyranny of the urgent"? If you're me, it's a daily struggle not to use that little phrase as an excuse for losing sight of the big picture. It's so much easier to take care of what's immediately in front of me instead of what should be first in my life.

I'm a task-oriented Martha, so concerned with getting the job done that I forget to focus on Him first. I can tell myself that I'm doing my work "as unto the Lord" as much as I want, but I don't serve anyone when I get harried. You probably know the feeling; you tell yourself that you're cooking a wholesome dinner as a supreme act of service and love for your family - if they only appreciated how many other things you have to do besides stand over a stove! - when little Anne asks if you'll help her find a favorite CD. Something boils over, and it's not the pot on the stove. In taking care of dinner, you've forgotten to feed a godly attitude of patience and love.

That's me to a fault. James makes it clear that faith is constantly looking for ways to serve; like Martha, however, we can get so busy that we forget why we're doing it. I often catch myself thinking that if I'm not busy, I'm not "doing enough" for God. But then the act becomes its own end, instead of an outworking of love. Imagine Martha in the kitchen, fluttering around and looking for that special recipe to serve Jesus, while Mary just sat, soaking up His words. Martha's response to this was probably well-intentioned - that is, from a human point of view. She was serving and wanted others to serve with her! But Jesus called her bluff. "Only one thing is needed," Christ said, "and Mary has chosen what is better" (Luke 10:42). Better? Lord, you mean that sitting at your feet and being quiet is better than my idea of being busy serving you? That's right.

I think I got a double-portion of Martha's spirit. Too often, I think that sitting and listening to Jesus is the same thing as sitting and doing nothing. I think it's laziness. Satan whispers that my time could be better spent doing than learning, and then the tyranny of the urgent takes over. But even Olympic acts of service are as nothing if not done in love (1 Corinthians 13), and only time at the feet of Jesus can teach me that.

Love leads to action, as Paul writes to the Philippian church, not the other way around. I can't "discern what is best" in my work and words unless I keep the very best in front of my eyes, like Mary. My prayer this week is that I will focus on Jesus and see how to love. Then the priorities will fall in line. Then I see what is best, because I see Jesus.

Intersection of Faith & Life: We have to preach the Gospel to ourselves daily, as Jerry Bridges writes, so we never lose sight of what is first and last in importance. Reevaluate your commitments and make sure that you've set aside time to sit at the feet of Jesus before anything else.

Further Reading:

1 Corinthians 13
The Authority of Intimacy

[Judy Harder]

Owned by Identity, Bought by a Savior
by John UpChurch, Senior Editor of BibleStudyTools.com

You are not your own, for you were bought with a price (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).

Arguments about "identity" should end at this verse. For non-Christians, it's meaningless noise. For Christians, it's everything. We own nothing from our hair follicles to our toenails. Every drop of cytoplasm, every hormone, every spark of our synapses was paid for in full. Christ didn't die for the "good" parts or the parts we let Him have; He wanted all of us.

That's why it makes no sense for us to justify what's natural or what makes us happy or what satisfies us. To do so breaks us into pieces, compartmentalizing where we will and will not surrender, what we will and will not hand over to Christ. But the choice isn't ours. The price paid was for the whole shebang.

The heart loves to mass-produce idols, and identity works just as well as anything else. Deep inside, the hammers of what's just and fair and right beat in time with our resistance to surrender. We know who we are, and we can't change.

But the possibility of change is completely beside the point. Even if no change comes before the perfect does (1 Corinthians 1:10), even if the desires never stop, we have no room to act on them or justify them. We have no ownership in ourselves. Not even a partial vacation stake.

It all belongs to Jesus.

Christ urged us to follow Him with the heavy weight of lumber slung across our shoulders (Mark 8:34). That image is one of ownership. Why else would we take up humiliation and hardship to struggle after a bloodied Lamb? It isn't an image of coercion, but of willingness. Just as the Messiah surrendered Himself to be crucified, we crucify ourselves to admit surrender.

The arguments about orientations or ingrained needs or natural behaviors focus on one thing: us. They point to who we are and what we want. Put succinctly, such discussions are nothing more than navel-gazing. We're peering down at what makes us tick and letting that determine our course.

And ultimately, none of it matters. That navel we're peering so deeply into belongs to Christ. He bought it.

We've got genes. They're Christ's. We've got a past. It's Christ's. We've got failures and foibles and more twisted thoughts than we know what to do with. And they're hammered to the cross. The ownership of a Savior sidesteps any arguments about identity because our true identity starts and ends with who we are in Christ. It undercuts any passionate defense of "who I am" because who we are is His. Nothing should come between us—the purchased—and the One who took care of the bill.

We must not let the clanging of our idol-making heart drown out the call of Christ to follow how He leads.

Intersecting Faith and Life: Salvation is free, but following Jesus isn't. The cost isn't in wealth or doing enough good stuff. It's sacrifice—the willful surrender of even some of our most cherished beliefs about ourselves and what we need. When we come to Christ but refuse to surrender it all, we're like the rich man who couldn't bear the thought of empty pockets (Matthew 19:16). We're not all in.

However you identified yourself before you got blisters from hauling around your cross, that identity is now the old identity. You gave it up to the One who paid up. You're His. You're new.

For Further Reading

1 Corinthians 1:1
2 Corinthians 2:1

[Judy Harder]

Fits Any Niche
by Shawn McEvoy, Crosswalk.com Managing Editor

Your word is a lamp to my feet And a light to my path.
Psalm 119:105

All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness.
2 Timothy 3:16-17

As the editor responsible for all devotional content here at Crosswalk, one of the questions I'm asked most frequently by our beloved users goes something like this:

"Your devotional offerings are great, but could you please include one for cousins of divorcees with sleeping disorders who have befriended agnostic vegetarians? Because that would be really great."

Okay, that's an exaggeration (but only barely). And it's not like we dislike filling niches. We have devotionals for women, the workplace, weight loss and the list goes on. We're continually adding to the selection and have plans for a men's devotional, a children's devotional, a singles devotional, and more. To an extent, we're at the mercy of what's well-written, theologically sound, recognizable, and most of all, available.

But when I'm asked a question like, "My fiance and I are interested in a devotional for yet-to-be-married couples living in the mid-Atlantic from different church backgrounds who are both post-millenialists. What do you recommend for us?" my answer is always the same:

Just study the Word, man.

Whether you find it here or somewhere else, locate a ministry, author, preacher, or regular old Joe/JoAnn whom God has gifted with insight into his holy scriptures, and read their take regularly. Follow that up with your own deeper individual study. Take that into praying with a spouse, accountability partner, disciple, or mentor. Join a group Bible Study. And take notes during sermons.

It's not much more complicated than that. We sometimes make it so. We pigeonhole ourselves or our current life situation or level of belief, and so risk hindering the effective wholeness of the Word.

Besides, if there's one thing I've noticed through almost a biblical generation of life, it's that our specific situations are many times made more complex by our non-stop obsession with them, and are often made more simple by backing off and getting at them indirectly through solid study that may not at first seem related to what we are going through.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to hear which verses were blessings to folks who have gone through heartbreaks or challenges similar to what you are now experiencing. What I'm suggesting is that the Word of the Lord never returns void. And that there have been several topics I've tried to understand (and been disappointed in the lack of direct guidance the Bible appears to give on the subject), or several life situations I've wanted to study (and not known where to start or how to find others who have biblical wisdom to offer in the form of a devotional) that have been solved when I stepped away and just studied sound teaching with prayer.

One example is when, as a young man, I wanted to find everything the Bible said about the "big sins" our youth ministers were so concerned with keeping us from -- sex and drinking. I shortly exhausted all the verses that dealt directly with these topics. But it wasn't until I backed away from a focus on these issues and began more comprehensive studies of what God had to say about all things that the picture grew bigger and the reasons for abstinence, purity, sobriety, and not causing others to stumble became clear in the light of grace, righteousness, sacrifice, and ministry.

Another example is the time I was battling a crippling depression. I found few answers and little comfort in attacking the problem directly -- even if there didn't seem to be a lack of correlative verses or devos, which only would have reminded me double of the state I was in. What did help was reading other topics from the Bible, and books from established Christian authors and preachers about the Bible itself, about faith, about truth. Eventually the clouds lifted, and I was stronger for having gone through the darkness and for the overarching principles that brought me home.

Let me encourage you today not to wall yourself off from the full richness of the Word, but to seek out sound doctrine and study on general principles regularly that I promise will apply to your specifics, whether directly or indirectly, immediately or eventually.

Further Reading

A Plea to Use the Bible Every Day
How to Have a Meaningful Quiet Time

[Judy Harder]

Blessed are the Meek
by Sarah Phillips

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Mt 5: 5 (NIV)

I used to have a strong dislike for the word "meek." It brings me back more than a decade to a defining moment during my sophomore year of high school.

I was a shy teenager who had stepped outside of her comfort zone by enrolling in several theater classes, including a class on "behind the scenes" theater productions. This should have been the easiest of all the courses for my sensitive nature. But my instructor, while delegating roles for the Spring production of Peter Pan, proved me wrong when she voiced her choice of stage manager like this:

"I've chosen Melissa because I need someone with a strong personality - someone who isn't meek, like Sarah."

Of course, I only drove her point home when I didn't stick up for myself. I spent years after that scene developing assertiveness, determined to prove that Sarah was not meek. Like this teacher, I associated meekness with weakness and both were traits that needed to be eradicated if I was going to get anywhere in life.

At least that's what I thought until I found that dreaded word jumping off the pages of scripture at me in the Gospel of Matthew. There it was, one of the first things Jesus says in his famous Sermon on the Mount.

Our deacon offered some thoughts on this verse that helped put things in perspective for me. He shared that it's in the Sermon on the Mount where we see Jesus begin to expand on His true purpose - and to the disappointment of many, He was not going to be an earthly king bestowing power and prestige on His people, not just yet. Instead, God's plan for mankind included an interior transformation of souls for the sake of an eternal kingdom. To properly prepare us for this kingdom, God rejected earthly methods of acquiring power in favor of the healing that comes with merciful love.

It is God's mercy that changes our hearts from hearts of stone to hearts of flesh. It's Christ's humility, His lowliness, that beckons us into a relationship with Him. And ultimately, it was Christ's willingness to give up earthly glory that opened the door for us to share in His eternal glory.

Now, as much as I would like earthly power, He asks us to "learn from him." As our souls find rest in God, He can continue His redemptive work through us as we display these same "weaker" virtues to the world.

This isn't to say God lacks power or that Christians should throw out virtues like courage. I think sometimes cultivating traits like meekness and humility are trickier than learning boldness because we can easily tip the scales too far and become passive. It's a difficult balance, but a necessary one if we want to reflect Christ to a hurting world.

Intersecting Faith & Life: Is there a situation in your life right now that would benefit from a little meekness, humility, or gentleness on your part? Ask God to show you how to have a meek and humble heart like His - one that offers healing and restoration while maintaining your God-given dignity.

Further Reading:

Psalm 37: 11
Ephesians 4: 2
James 4: 10

[Judy Harder]

White Walls
by Meghan Kleppinger

Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon, "Build houses and live {in them;} and plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and become the fathers of sons and daughters, and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; and multiply there and do not decrease. Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf; for in its welfare you will have welfare."
Jeremiah 29:4-7

If we were playing the word association game and someone said, "Military life," I would answer "white walls."

Thanks to our travel agency, otherwise known as the U.S. Army, I moved with my family 13 times before I graduated from college. Many of our abodes were Army quarters (houses on army installations for military families). The walls were always white. I determined early on that when I moved out on my own there wouldn't be a single white wall in my home.

From the time I graduated college until now, I've continued to be in transition which has meant more white walls in my apartments. Well, I just bought my first house and, of course, I'm not thinking about the practical purchases that need to be made (like a washer and a dryer for example), I'm considering color! I'm thinking about the things that need to be done to help me feel settled and at home.

Eventually, I could move to a different town, or I could marry (this one gets my parents' vote), or a number of other things could happen that would require me to move out of this house. Will my probable future keep my belongings in their boxes or the paint in its can? Of course not! If there is one thing I learned as a military kid, it's to make home wherever I am for as long as I am there.

This world is not our permanent home and God tells us our days are like a breath (Psalms 144:4), but He has also given each of us the opportunity to unpack our boxes and make an impact while we are here.

Like the exiles in Babylon, God has put each of us where we are at this time for a reason. While we anticipate a "better country" (Hebrews 11:16), we are to live, enjoy the blessings God continues to give, and exhibit a life that tells others of His magnificent love.

Intersecting Faith & Life: In the words of missionary Jim Elliot, "Wherever you are, be all there." In other words, get a brush and paint some walls!

Further Reading

Called to Contentment: Living Happily, Here and Now