A little poem for VBS:

Sweet Sheep, Jesus heard your crying bleat.

You are not forever lost, your found is just hidden down deep. 

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Reach out to Jesus, He knows, He searches, He sees. 

A path to follow is in your life, wherever He leads. 

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So hold tight, don’t worry little lamb, 

See the Light, and just follow God’s glorious plan.

Amen

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I’m happy to have taken lunchtime out in the great weather, with VBS scriptures open as my refocus for the shortest respite. There are GREAT volumes of the Word, which guides us, and TINY nuggets too. Even in a great forested garden, I’m not lost here in thought, but grateful for my mentality to be FOUND. 

Mental health surely starts with knowing we are not alone. We can pray and know God hears.

VBS day 2’s saying from True North is “When we feel alone – TRUST JESUS”. Yes, blessed to find VBS PREP time in the scriptures. The Word brings us hope and help. Jesus stated that He knows the little ones are never left alone, like wandering sheep are found. And Jesus stated that we are not to worry, God provides to us all we need, now and forever. Look at the birds – and know God provides – so don’t worry! I know in these scriptures that we are gifted VBS prep time, we know what to do, now just need to embrace it and do it! Remember our blessings!

My Aunt would have be 87 this week, she loved activity, she would love being outside. She loved us as family. She was fun. I wonder, in her death, 4 years ago now, if she was a believer in Jesus, but I don’t know.  I do know she wouldn’t have been one to dismiss faith, maybe just it was never brought up, as she wasn’t brought up in it. But she shared holidays and saw others, got messages on cards. She had reverence, I remember, for faith-folks, like the ministers at my grandmother’s or my aunts’ funerals. She had a sweetness of not telling us (kids grown but still kids) about her worrying, and we didn’t even know how sick she was, I doubt she even knew. And when she passed away she was gone so quick… She seemed to have suffered a long time but still was joyful and fun. If she worried she only told a few. I do miss her. I remember our conversation of the last zoom call from her locked down intensive care unit under many precautions (both covid and other) – and that she was chipper to hear me – she seemed to have an internal lack of worry or at least compartmentalization. She passed the next evening. In pandemic lockdowns I wasn’t able to get to the funeral, yet facilitated a zoom for it. But I don’t think I will ever have complete closure until I see her again – I pray to Jesus to see her again in whole health and in joy. That’s where I also place my trust for Jesus to take care of her.

My hope is that she is at best rest. And my faith knows Jesus’s reminder that God would never let us perish alone. I hope in faith for her faith and have hope in Jesus the Rock. I trust Jesus that He showed up to her at the time she needed Him most.

If we are to trust in Jesus, then let us drop our worry, and keep walking. God’s got us. God’s got the lost, the asleep, the rest. I believe that. I trust in Jesus. 

Amen 

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Matthew 18:12-14 NIV

“What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish.

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Do Not Worry

Matthew 13:25-34 Jesus said: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.