Be Ready to Follow and He will lead you.

Not a surprise but HOW GOOD this past week that my neighbor LOVED her visit to the nice assisted living facility where she “interviewed” for suitability for placement. So so GLAD that she is relieved that it is a good place! Her kids essentially said: Mom, we wouldn’t have picked anything less than a good place for you.!!!! THAT’S REASSURANCE!

Now it’s just less than a month until she moves in.  My neighbor is excited because she now knows where she is going! NO SURPRISES!

The director was so nice and told her “All we do is eat!”,  LOL … And said the staff is so nice and they wait on you, bring your medicine, take you on senior field trips, and have many pre-scheduled activities! BINGO! SOUNDS HEAVENLY!!! 

My neighbor told her daughter: “make sure I get cash for the trips!” LOL.

My first favorite sight on the example menu was sweet potato fries! [Yummy spiritual-level food for me, VERY MUCH SO!] Then I also saw: “DIRT PUDDING WITH WORMS” – now that made me LAUGH OUT LOUD!!! It’s candy gummy worms in whipped cream and cream cheese pudding mix and crumbled Oreo cookies, layered and looks like dirt! All sugar but when I’ve made a version of it, people were laughingly confused! The worms are supposed to be a SURPRISE! How interesting that this menu gives away the Surprises… NO SURPRISES.

Is that part of what Heaven will be? A surprise or no surprise? Knowing our path to Heaven is through Jesus, we should not be surprised on HOW to get there (don’t need cash for that forever field trip). He Knows the Way (because He IS the Way). A surprise might come to some who haven’t heard, not knowing Jesus, yet for us who HAVE READ THE STORY, the BIBLE STORIES, it should not be a surprise. 

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened”. Matthew 7:7-8

BINGO! I am sure that Heaven will be filled with justified surprises, like when you get to meet your great great great grand-generations who went before… I mean what’s it like when you meet Moses? Mary and Joseph? And your own kin again.

Now, as for my neighbor, I pray her a great experience with moving. What’s maybe surprising to some is the willingness of someone whose lived 55 years in her house to go so easily, (isn’t better all around to live each day without whining) – but if you KNOW where you are going, and you TRUST the Way there, and you adjust your expectations and even plan your steps, won’t that make life MUCH easier all around? Pray and God will give you the strength to move forward. NO SURPRISES THERE!

Amen 

I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me. Philippians 4:13

PS

I found today’s “Jesus Calling” entry so fitting to the no whining clause in scripture – based on a few passages including Isaiah 30:18-21. We do have good teachers who show us the Way and the Walk without the whine.. including especially JESUS… No Surprises there! 

Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you; therefore he will rise up to show you compassion. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him!

People of Zion, who live in Jerusalem, you will weep no more. How gracious he will be when you cry for help! As soon as he hears, he will answer you. Although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, your teachers will be hidden no more; with your own eyes you will see them. Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”

—

2nd Corinthians 4: 3-18

 And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.

But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.

It is written: “I believed; therefore I have spoken.”Since we have that same spirit of faith, we also believe and therefore speak, because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you to himself. All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God.

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.