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Praise Song – Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus, 16Jun

The PRAISE band song that’s been rolling thru my head the last couple days is “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus”…
“when you dull from all that glitters, and your status is status quo….. all you need to know is where you belong…”

I appreciate that song, I KNEW I would need that song once in a while, and I do… There is also that great new Mudcrutch song “Hope” which I heard in concert last week, and at the end Tom Petty sings: “you give me hope, and I need it, oh I need it”…. Yeah “turn your eyes” hits the spiritual spot too… Both talk about this great HOPE… “I know I got a friend, when I’m lost in the wind” – yup our hope is from Jesus… all we need to know is where we belong…

Highs and lows exist in life, daily, it’s always been that way…. Roses have thorns; life is a mixture of roses and thorns, that’s LIFE…. Jesus certainly had His highs and lows of things to deal with, and He even had to retreat at times… I have a sparkly beautiful cross from my cousin dangling in my car and can I hold it whenever I sing the Turn Your Eyes Upon
Jesus song…. “and the things of Earth will grow strangely dim, in the LIGHT of HIS glory and grace” and we are to turn to Jesus not JUST for earthly stresses, but ALSO when we look TOO MUCH to the human sources of joy… “These things will grow strangely dim…” They will… Only God’s love endures forever. Only God truthfully glimmers and shines our way – all good things are from God – we take too much credit here on Earth…

Yesterday, I had just finished a stressed diatribe via email with a friend about the many pressures I was feeling, and the time crunches for not having time to do things I want to do… BUT, before I sent the email I ran into our pastor and he told me about a long time young member who passed away… That puts life into perspective huh?, and was a humble teaching lesson for me AND my kids… I could remind them and myself that this young person couldn’t never even run or speak…. I could see when he smiled though – especially at the Christmas band concert and during praise band music…  Later that same day a friend was telling me how his grave illness has been getting worse…. It was another time to count my blessings…. Yeah….

Earlier this week, I gave our UMW dinner speaker an empty pottery vase made in my college’s home town. I felt that the SPIRIT led me to say that the vase was empty, because God wants us to be empty so He can fill us up with HIS SPIRIT… I prayed and hoped that our speaker and all of us will ALWAYS be Spirit-filled as we are led on God’s missions… to go out to the world to give HOPE.

We all pray to be led on God’s missions – Oh how blessed we are to sing HIS PRAISE! “He gives us HOPE”  -“in the LIGHT of HIS glory and GRACE!”