Devotions Revisited

A dear friend asked me to contribute some devotions for her discipleship group a while back. I was very diligent for a while, but haven't contributed any recently (sorry Rosie!).

Here are a few of my contributions:


CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?


In the Fall of 2004 by a freak accident, my eardrum was punctured. My first thought was, “I just became deaf in my right ear.” Of course, after the initial panic passed, I realized my right ear wasn’t deaf just injured. The next few weeks while my ear healed, I learned a great deal.

My hearing was intact in the ear, but with the hole in my eardrum I wasn’t able to isolate voices or specific sounds well. Too much information from the world around me was getting in. It was the strangest feeling. All this noise and yet I wasn’t hearing anything at all! When my hubby and I were at a restaurant, I had to put an earplug in the injured ear so I could hear his voice above all the din around us.

My sheep hear my voice. . . Let’s be honest, sometimes the din of the world around us is so loud, it’s hard to hear the Savior’s voice. When the world around us keeps getting louder and louder, we have to be sure we are not dependent on that Voice coming from outside – it needs to come from within. Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against Thee. We all need that earplug – the filter that helps us isolate truth from lies, the light that clearly shows the path ahead. [Read: Proverbs 2:1-9]


BEES


My husband and I came home from church on Sunday and out in our back yard, hanging from a branch of our redbud tree, was a big thing that wasn’t there just the night before! “What in the world is that?” my hubby and I asked each other in unison. Out came the binoculars and as it brought the thing into focus, we realized it was an ever-increasing swarm of bees on what looked like the beginning of a hive right there only several yards from our back door! We searched the phone book for bee removal services and I put on my shoes to go warn the neighbors to keep their kids away from our yard. My hubby grabbed the phone to call a local home supply center to see if there were any “do-it-yourself” options for the invasion of the bees.

And then. . . as he dialed the number, he said, “Alisa, look.” The thing was dissipating. Gradually, the mass of bees were flying away and the thing was unraveling like a snagged sweater. Within minutes, the thing was completely gone. We watched the swarm, twirling like a tornado, disappear.

We all have things. Things that perplex us. Things we don’t know how to resolve. Things that are, frankly, scary. But like the bees, our Creator controls all things.

Cast your cares upon Him for He cares for you. ~ I Peter 5:7


That’s more than a children’s Sunday School memory verse. That’s what we have to hold on to when we have to deal with things.