May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. [Psalm 19:14]
I’m sharing these daily devotions in the hope they will inspire you to read God’s word. I’m praying that they will help you find your way to a closer relationship with God. [Read More ….]
While I expected bear sightings when we lived in the mountains of Colorado, I never expected a bear to find its way into our Florida community and scavenge in a neighbor’s trash bin on her driveway! While bears generally prefer natural foods like berries and nuts, as civilization encroaches on their habitat, those foods are becoming less abundant. Driven by their need to eat, bears will go where they can find any food. With a sense of smell that is seven times greater than a bloodhound’s, it’s estimated they can smell a food source from as far away as 20 miles. Opportunistic creatures, they take advantage of whatever is easily available, whether bird seed, pet food, barbecue grills, or garbage.
Tenacious and intelligent animals, bears will spend hours solving a problem if food is involved but, since they lack opposable thumbs, bears couldn’t open the lock on our community’s “bear-proof” dumpster in Colorado. At the time, however, the doors on Subarus didn’t require thumbs to open and the hungry bears in our Colorado town eventually learned how to open the doors of unlocked Subarus. After that, no unlocked Subaru in town was safe from a bear! Once a bear gets inside a car, the door often closes and traps it. By the time the imprisoned angry animal manages to make an exit, the car’s interior is wrecked and the bear has done what it usually does in the woods! Nevertheless, just as people often forgot to latch our dumpster, some people still left their cars unlocked!
Satan is as opportunistic and tenacious as any black bear and, if we let him, he can leave our lives even more messed up than a bear does a Subaru. Rather than sniffing out the aroma of a garbage can or a candy bar on the dash, he has an uncanny way of sniffing out our vulnerabilities and spotting our weaknesses. Think of the story of Job. When Satan couldn’t get him to curse God by taking his wealth and livestock, servants, herdsmen, workers, and children, he came back and took the man’s health. Although Job never cursed God, he lost perspective and cursed the day he was born. As determined and unwilling to admit defeat as a black bear, Satan probably was behind the words of condemnation spoken by Job’s wife and friends. Like a hungry bear, the enemy does not give up easily. When the devil failed to tempt Jesus in the wilderness, he departed “until the next opportunity.” Like the Terminator and hungry bears, Satan will be back.
Just as storing garbage inside, latching bear-proof dumpsters, and locking car doors is a way to prevent bear problems, being aware of our vulnerabilities is a way of protecting us from Satan’s attacks. Recovery programs often use the acronym H-A-L-T as a reminder. Standing for Hungry, Angry, Lonely, and Tired, these feelings make us susceptible to Satan. While we often think of hunger as that grumble in our tummies, it is more. Hunger is dissatisfaction, frustration, a desire for something more or different and often has nothing to do with food. Anger isn’t just being mad at someone. Anger is holding on to unforgiveness, hostility, and resentment, and often includes casting blame. While lonely seems self-explanatory, we don’t have to be alone to be lonely. Even when surrounded by people, we can feel isolated, unappreciated, deserted, and desolate. Being tired can be physical exhaustion, but it’s also apathy, feeling drained by circumstances (or people), or wanting to abandon both hope and effort.
Being aware of these feelings when they arise helps us take extra precautions to protect ourselves. Instead of locking our dumpsters and cars, we redouble our efforts to study God’s Word, pray, worship with praise, offer thanks, gather in Christian fellowship, or even seek Christian counseling. When we leave ourselves vulnerable with hunger, anger, loneliness, or tiredness, we’re little safer from the enemy’s attack than people who keep their food in their tents when camping, store their garbage outside, don’t lock their Subarus, or fail to latch bear-proof dumpsters. Whether from bears or Satan, we’re just asking for trouble.
Satan loves to fish in the troubled waters of a discontented heart. [Thomas Watson]
Once upon a time, a little boy was busy digging in the sand at the beach. Like other youngsters through the years, he thought he even might be able to dig all the way to China. His steadfast excavations got so deep that he encountered a large rock. With great determination, he dug and dug with his plastic shovel in an attempt to free it from the ground. Unfortunately, the little boy and his small shovel were no match for the rock. When the shovel broke in two, the boy let out a howl and burst into tears. Hearing the child’s cries, his father immediately went to comfort him. Through his sobs, the boy told how he’d tried and tried to free the rock but was too weak, his arm was too short, and he’d broken his only shovel. His father gently asked why he hadn’t used all of his strength. “But I did, Daddy, I really did!” exclaimed the boy. “No, son, you didn’t,” explained the man as he reached into the hole, grabbed the rock with his large hands, and pulled it from the ground. “You should have called me!”
While the circumstances and challenges are different, we’re really not much different than that little boy. Determined to be self-sufficient and strong, we often fail to call on our Heavenly Father to help with the heavy lifting. I’ve never sobbed at the beach while holding a broken shovel but I’ve sat in despair, hopelessness, and tears in plenty of other places because I thought I was at the end of all my resources. It’s usually after complaining to God with a variety of whys—why this, why now, why here, and (my personal favorite) why me—that I finally resort to asking Him for help! Perhaps our trials exist to drive us to God—to trust in Him and call on Him in faith. While God rarely offers an answer to the whys, He does respond and, if it’s something He wants done, He helps me find a way to get it done.
True confessions here! When I was away over the holidays, I had a glitch in my website. While two devotions were posted on the site, they failed to be sent out to my subscribers. Upon returning home, after spending over two hours with the site’s AI assistant, I was no further along in finding the cause or solution. After AI finally conceded defeat, I was turned over to a real person for a live chat. The site’s “Happiness Engineer” was stumped but promised to get back to me later in the day. It was not until I was awaiting the response that I finally used all the strength available by going to the true “Happiness Engineer” in Heaven. Shortly after praying, I received the very simple solution to my problem! Why did I wait and when will I learn?
Famine in Israel, an agricultural society, was a grave matter. After Israel suffered from a three-year famine, David prayed to God about it. Why did he wait? What was David doing during the three years of food scarcity before he finally fell to his knees and consulted God? Why didn’t he pray at the first sign of trouble rather than waiting until the people were starving? Could pride have made David think that he and his advisors could solve a food crisis on their own? If so, that pride caused his people to suffer for three years simply because he didn’t use all the strength available to him by calling on his Father! It was only after his prayer that the Lord told David the famine’s cause and David did what needed to be done to end it. [2 Samuel 21]
Ours is not a God of Last Resort! He is not where we go when all else fails: when the shovel breaks or the grain bins are empty. Rather than a back-up plan, God is our first and best option! Ours is a first-responder God! He’s the first call we should make when the rock seems immovable, we discover insects infesting our fields, a drought threatens the harvest, the website isn’t working, or we see challenges looming on the horizon. With His power, we can do things we could never accomplish by ourselves. Let us be strong in the Lord!
We tend to use prayer as a last resort, but God wants it to be our first line of defense. We pray when there’s nothing else we can do, but God wants us to pray before we do anything at all. Most of us would prefer, however, to spend our time doing something that will get immediate results. We don’t want to wait for God to resolve matters in His good time because His idea of ‘good time’ is seldom in sync with ours. [Oswald Chambers]
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. [Exodus 20:8-10 (ESV)]I’ve always thought of the first four commandments (only one God, no idols, not taking Lord’s name in vain, and keeping the Sabbath) as being about our relationship with God and the next six (honoring parents and the prohibitions on murder, adultery, stealing, false witness, and coveting) about our relationship with people. The fourth commandment, however, seems to be a bridge between the two sections because it has as much to do with people as it does with God. Reminding us that we have six days in the week for work, it tells us to stop work on the seventh and keep the day “holy.” Rather than a “thou shalt not” law, this commandment is a gift to us from God—it is the gift of rest and rejuvenation!
As happened with many of God’s commands, the Israelites took this simple law and added their own restrictions and interpretations. Wanting a clear definition of work, they categorized 39 kinds of activities considered work and then further defined prohibited activities within each category. What was supposed to be a blessing became an inconvenience! Since His hungry disciples plucked grain on the Sabbath and Jesus had no qualms about healing on the Sabbath, He often came into conflict with the Pharisees about His Sabbath observance (or lack thereof). When criticized, Jesus made it clear that the Sabbath was made for man and should not be an onerous legal requirement. The only Sabbath laws He and the disciples broke were the man-made ones of the Pharisees. Jesus, however, never said to ignore the Sabbath; after all, He was the “Lord of the Sabbath.”
For Jesus and the disciples, Saturday was the Sabbath day and it remains the Jewish day of worship and rest today. The mostly Jewish early church continued to worship on Saturday but, by the second century, Sunday (“the Lord’s Day”) became the day of worship. Some branches of Christianity continue to observe Saturday as their Sabbath but, for most of us, Sunday is our “Sabbath.”
In reality, other than possibly attending church, Sundays are pretty much like any other day of the week. Parking lots are full at the grocery, hardware, and mall; cell phones and the internet keep us in touch with work; and the kids have sports and homework. Sundays have become the day to complete everything that didn’t get done during the week. With families scattered every which way, even the traditional Sunday dinner (complete with cousins and grandparents at the table) is but a distant memory. Regardless of which day of the week it is, have we missed some of the beauty of a Sabbath in our busyness?
Does keeping this day “holy” mean sitting quietly all day, reading nothing but Scripture, and doing nothing but praying? Could it be something more? Could keeping it holy simply mean that we rest from our ordinary work, dedicate the day to God, and intentionally make it different from the rest of our week? We can do that by taking something away (as did the Israelites with their many work prohibitions) or by adding something special to it.
Instead of my husband catching up on paperwork or me writing on Sundays, we try to trust God for enough hours in the other six days to do those things. In an attempt to disconnect from the busyness of the world and connect with one another, family, friends, and God, we try to deliberately set aside time for relaxation, laughter, fun, and fellowship by doing something out of the ordinary. That may be a bags tourney with neighbors, a barbecue for friends, or spending the afternoon at the zoo or botanical gardens. It also can be as simple as a game of Rummikub or cribbage or moving from the breakfast bar to the dining room table for a special “Sunday dinner.” Nevertheless, good intentions are not enough and, during the pre-holiday rush, we found ourselves “too busy” to stop and enjoy God’s gift and set His day apart. Perhaps, that’s why God made keeping holy the Sabbath a commandment rather than a suggestion!
How we set our Sabbath apart from the rest of the week in a way that both honors God and nurtures us will vary from family to family. It’s probably naïve to think children won’t have homework and working moms and dads won’t have to play catch-up with chores. Nevertheless, we must remember why God gave us this commandment. He wants us to recharge our batteries—to be still and know that He is God. The Sabbath is our time to rest from the week’s busyness, take a break from our daily routine, connect with one another, find joy in His creation, and rest in Him. When we neglect having a Sabbath, we neglect both God and ourselves and turn whatever it is we do the rest of the week into tedium and drudgery. God doesn’t need a Sabbath, but we surely do.
Thank you, God, for the gift of the Sabbath. May our Sabbaths be days of worship, renewal, connection, rest, peace, and joy.
A world without a Sabbath would be like a man without a smile, like a summer without flowers, and like a homestead without a garden. It is the joyous day of the whole week. [Henry Ward Beecher]
“A Bayberry Candle burned to the socket brings Luck to the household, Food to the larder and Gold to the pocket.”
Every year a friend sends me a bayberry candle to burn on New Year’s Eve. Legend has it that lighting a bayberry candle when the first star appears, burning it past midnight into the new year, and letting it burn all the way down will bring good luck, wealth, and prosperity to a home. We can’t stay awake past midnight and allowing an unattended candle to burn down to its socket seems more a guarantee of fire and disaster than good luck. Nevertheless, in honor of our friend, we light our candle every New Year’s Eve and extinguish it shortly after the new year begins in Greenland (three time zones east).
There are a host of new year’s traditions ranging from jumping seven waves or eating a grape at each stroke of midnight to smashing plates, hanging onions on your door, or eating Hoppin’ John. Like the bayberry candle, these traditions are supposed to ensure good fortune for the coming year. Rather than trusting in luck, however, we trust in God.
Starting the new year by taking inventory of the past year’s God-given blessings seems a better tradition than trusting the new year to candles, grapes, or a mixture of black-eyed peas, rice, and pork. While I keep a gratitude journal, some families have a “gratitude jar” into which little notes of thanks are dropped throughout the year. With the new year’s advent, the jar is emptied, the notes are read, memories are enjoyed, and a new year of gratitude begins with an empty jar.
If you had a gratitude journal or jar, what things would be mentioned from the past year? Would there be thanks for finding things—the car keys, the money to pay the mortgage, or the perfect gift for that hard to please relative? What about unexpected blessings—technical assistance that spoke English, the surprise visit from your children, or a year-end bonus? There could be thanks for the ability to give—Christmas boxes to Samaritan’s Purse, blood to the Red Cross, clothes to the charity resale shop, or an opportunity to a deserving person. Gratitude would probably be expressed for the various people in your life—be they exterminators, trash collectors, skilled surgeons, first responders, your spouse, grief counselors, helpful sales associates, or physical therapists.
In all likelihood, there’d be gratitude for your accomplishments and those of others—not burning the holiday pies, getting sober, or finally finishing the 1,000-piece puzzle. Would you mention the moments that took your breath away, whether a roseate spoonbill in the swamp, a double rainbow, or seeing the elusive green flash at sunset? Would you write of thing that were found—perhaps the solution to a problem, the right words, a lost locket, or a new friend? Surely, there would be thanks for things received, be it a good mammogram report or words of encouragement, forgiveness, and love.
Of course, there would be thanks given for arrivals—the prodigal who returned home, spring daffodils, or a new baby. What about things that happened—trips, weddings, baptisms, and anniversaries—as well as things that didn’t—hurricanes, leaky roofs, or getting downsized? Perhaps there would be thanks for getting through a challenging time—anything from the terrible twos or chemo to the loss of a spouse—as well as thanks for things as simple as the cat, Amazon Prime, a child’s giggle, or deep-dish pizza.
There is so much for which to be grateful—from big things like Jesus, salvation, forgiveness, and eternal life to little ones like warm chocolate chip cookies, FaceTime with the kids, or a lazy afternoon with a good book. If you don’t have a gratitude journal or jar, what about looking through the hundreds of photos you probably have on your phone? You’ll probably be reminded of all sorts of ways in which you were blessed this past year. Remembering them all is a great way for one year to end and the new year to begin because it reassures us that God has our lives firmly in His hands.
I don’t know how this year will play out for any of us—but I know it will not be without its challenges. Nevertheless, remembering the good things of 2025 reminds us that God protected, defended, supported, loved, and blessed us in the past and reassures us that He will do the same in the coming year!
New Year’s resolutions are made and broken every year. Perhaps the best way to begin this year is to start with the determination to look for our blessings and offer thanks for them daily.
Happy New Year, dear friends. May 2026 be filled with a multitude of blessings and gratitude.
Give us, O Lord, thankful hearts which never forget your goodness to us. Give us, O Lord, grateful hearts, which do not waste time complaining. [St. Thomas Aquinas]
Ruthless and paranoid about possible usurpers to his throne, King Herod the Great killed three of his sons, several uncles and cousins, and one each of his wives, mothers-in-law, and brothers-in-law to protect his regime and keep his crown. Having been crowned “King of the Jews” in 40 BC by the Roman Senate, it’s not likely a man like that would be willing to share his title with an infant the Magi described as “the king of the Jews!” When Herod realized he was duped by the Magi and had no way to identify the infant king, the merciless man safeguarded his reign by ordering the wholesale slaughter of all Bethlehem’s boys two and under.
While there is no historical evidence of this slaughter, the story is plausible. It’s easy to believe that Herod, the Kim Jung-un/Joseph Stalin/Mao Zedong of the ancient world, would order the death of innocent children. When he was dying, the heartless king hatched a diabolical plan to gather all of the Jewish leaders and execute them upon his death. By doing this, he guaranteed that, instead of people rejoicing at his death, the entire nation would mourn. Massacring innocent children was right up his alley!
Perhaps, because the early church grossly inflated the number killed by Herod’s men to between 14,000 and 144,000, historians question its historicity. Bethlehem’s population at the time was somewhere between 300 and 1,500 so there probably would have been no more than two dozen children under the age of two (about half being girls). While the death of even one child is a tragedy, the deaths of 12 to 15 baby boys in a time of high infant mortality probably wasn’t newsworthy. Those innocent children may have gone unnoticed by ancient historians but they had names and mothers and their loss was noticed by all who knew them.
The first Christian martyr wasn’t Jesus on Calvary or even the sainted Stephen; it was a nameless baby boy in Bethlehem. St. Augustine called these murdered children the “flowers of the martyrs” and “the first buds of the Church killed by the frost of persecution,” while pointing out that “they died not only for Christ but in His stead.” They died for the one who would die for all!
Around 485 AD, Herod’s massacre of these innocent children was commemorated in a feast day called Holy Innocents or Childermas. For the Western church, yesterday was this often-overlooked feast day. Just three days after singing “All is calm, all is bright,” we’re singing of Herod slaying children. Instead of picturing Mary peacefully holding Jesus in her arms, we picture Herod’s soldiers tearing babies out of their mother’s arms. This day is the dark side of Christmas. It serves as a poignant reminder of the vulnerability of the innocent and the depths of human cruelty; it is a day to reflect on the sanctity of all human life.
As we recall Herod’s victims, we thank God for the children with which we have been blessed. May we also remember the holy innocents of the twenty-first century. Not just children, but all who are trafficked or abused, refugees or homeless, hungry or disenfranchised. Today’s holy innocents are all who are victimized, poverty-stricken, vulnerable, or casualties of war. Both young and old, all are God’s precious children. How can we protect them from the Herods of today?
We remember today, O God, the slaughter of the holy innocents of Bethlehem by King Herod. Receive, we pray, into the arms of your mercy all innocent victims; and by your great might frustrate the designs of evil tyrants and establish your rule of justice, love, and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen [Collect for Holy Innocents from the Book of Common Prayer]
Several years ago, I was given a Christmas cactus in early December. It had just started to blossom and, by Christmas, it was in full bloom and beautiful. A Christmas cactus typically goes dormant by Easter but mine bloomed until mid-May. The next year, it blossomed again at Christmas but the flowers weren’t as spectacular. It was dormant by February and didn’t survive the summer. Admittedly, I’m a neglectful gardener and my record with plants is dismal. That cactus actually lasted longer than any of my holiday poinsettias.
The spirit of Christmas shouldn’t end when the flowers drop from the Christmas cactus or poinsettia. Christmas shouldn’t be forgotten when the lights are packed away, the tree comes down, the ornaments and creche are stowed away for another year, or the peppermint bark is gone. We can’t leave the baby Jesus in the manger and forget that He grew, taught, led, healed, loved, forgave, suffered, died, rose, ascended into heaven, and will come again! We need to keep the spirit of Christmas alive in our hearts well beyond the time the toys break, the Christmas cookies are eaten, the holiday sweaters are back in the drawer, the poinsettia dies, and the Christmas cactus goes dormant. The spirit of Christmas—its joy and anticipation—the good news of the gospel message—shouldn’t be dependent upon the calendar. It should flower all year long! Of course, we must remember to fertilize and water it with God’s word and prayer.
A pastor friend keeps a small nativity out in her office all year long. It’s to remind her (and her visitors) that the manger is as important a symbol to Christianity as is the cross. If we have Jesus in our hearts, we can be Christmas people regardless of the season. May the spirit of hope, love, joy, and peace that is so present during Christmastime continue in our hearts all year long!
The immense step from the Babe at Bethlehem to the living, reigning triumphant Lord Jesus, returning to earth for His own people – that is the glorious truth proclaimed throughout Scripture. As the bells ring out the joys of Christmas, may we also be alert for the final trumpet that will announce His return, when we shall always be with Him. [Alan Redpath]
Devotions of the Heart 