Long time no see

There are people in my life I have not seen in a while. Not by choice, but sometimes circumstances just keep us away. For the most part I really miss seeing family. I have missed our last three dirtball weekends (My annual family camping trip on my mom’s side of the family. This is an awesome weekend where up to 80 people of my family get together to go camping.) I miss seeing my siblings and parents. I have some joy this weekend with my brother Zach coming in this weekend from Nebraska. He is driving 10 plus hours here just to hang out for the entire weekend. I miss my family, but sometimes life just keeps us apart.

Paul shares about a time life just kept him apart from the Thessalonians. Paul wrote this in 1 Thessalonians 2:17: But, brothers and sisters, when we were orphaned by being separated from you for a short time (in person, not in thought), out of our intense longing we made every effort to see you.”

Separation happens in life. For Paul, he was talking about a group of young followers of Jesus he got called away from. They were new in their walk with Jesus.  After leading them to Christ, Paul had to move on. But they were never out of his thoughts. He used the term orphaned here, the Greek word means to be orphaned from. There was a separation but Paul long to see these young followers of Christ and it pained him that he couldn’t be there with them.

While Paul talks about this with young friends in faith, who have you been separated from for a long time? Who has it been a while since you have seen that you miss? I miss my family, while I consider where I live my home and I love Terre Haute. I still miss my family. My siblings and parents, my cousins, aunts and uncles, it’s not always the same without those we love far away.

Today who is someone you can connect with that you haven’t talk to in a while? Who have you been missing in your life? Try to make that connection today.

Have a great day.

It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye

There are some sayings I remember as a kid, this being one of them.

There are things I used to do I couldn’t imagine Nevaeh doing now.

As kids we did all sorts of stuff, there are things that would completely scare me if my daughter did them at her age that I used to do.

I remember playing in Washington Park behind our house.

My brother Zach and I loved to climb trees.

There were these two trees by the softball field we loved to climb.

The trees went up about 75-100 feet.

We would climb them often.

I think about those trees how tall they were, how we loved to feel a big wind gust hit us and make us feel like we were falling.

Man, how did we not get hurt more often?

This past weekend we were at our family camping trip.

I think we had 62 members of our family there.

It was awesome.

With that many people someone is prone to get hurt.

I had to make a couple of trips to the ER with one being Connor.

Connor started to say his foot hurt and by the end of one day he was limping.

The next morning I took him up to the hospital.

After about 3 hours up at the hospital, found out he sprained his ankle.

I love kids though, the next day, he was completely healed and running around again.

Thank you God.

Some bad things happen during the day, but it can be more challenging when there is no light around.

Some of the injuries of the weekend took place at night.

I almost fell down a hill at night when I stepped in a low spot and heard my toes crack, I was okay, but bad things can happen without light.

I could have taken a huge fall but, thankfully I did not.

Jesus tells us this in John 12:35-36…

““For a brief time still, the light is among you. Walk by the light you have so darkness doesn’t destroy you. If you walk in darkness, you don’t know where you’re going.”

We know about literal light and darkness, but it goes beyond that in these verses.

Jesus made it known he was the light.

The light was still around the people, but soon Jesus would move on and it would be dark.

Not dark literally, but there would be an empty feeling inside.

I know about that empty feeling.

Before knowing Christ, I tried to handle everything on my own.

The problem was, I couldn’t.

No matter how hard I tried, I could not do it.

Sometimes the harder I tried, the more I failed.

Then Christ came into my life.

I am still a sinner and still make mistakes, but I have light to look forward to.

No matter what, there is still light at the end of the tunnel even during dark times.

Some points in my life, that was the only thing that gave me hope, that Jesus was still there for me.

Sometimes we feel hopeless in life.

It happens.

Jesus is there to be a guiding light when we feel nothing else is.

We have hope again.

We get hurt.

We feel lost.

We feel depressed.

We can still have hope, because of what Jesus did for us.

He was a light when there was none.

Have hope in Jesus.

Have a great day.