GuineaField

God loves variety.  He created day and night, and nature’s seasons.  I love spring!   That suits me well.  What a delight to feel the warmth of the sun and to relish the light of day a little longer each day.  But God designed summer and winter and fall as well. Another variety built into God’s creation is human emotion.  Seasons look calm and passionless when it comes to human emotions.  We pass through many different emotions.  You may feel fear, sadness, joy, doubt, delight, anxiety, and relief all in one day.  Perhaps some people feel these all in one hour.  As we gain age and experience, we learn to control and even channel these different emotions for good rather than allowing them to control us. One comforting thought is that Jesus not only designed us to emote, but He too felt human emotions.  Christ, the Son of God, took on human flesh and with that He took on the emotions of humanity.  In a very real...

I am thankful for God's grace this past year.  He has given me and my family so many joyful tastes of life's experiences that I can hardly wait to drink His "fullness of joy" awaiting on the other side of eternity.  Thanks to each of you that played a note or two in our lives this year to make such a harmonious 2015. Christ's life was but a brief span and yet it tells that God entered the time of history in a human body.  Jesus' entrance to the human body is the incarnation - He came in flesh.  God's taking human life signals that we too can enjoy humanity.  Life is not evil or bad.  Our cup is half full and will be filled to overflowing in eternity.  And now He lives among us and helps us live day by day.  He knows how to live humanity to the fullest.  He is the morning Star that charts our course.  We are not alone to wander darkness forever because Immanuel has come - "God with us."...

I have enjoyed reading back through the Torah lately.   What a great, and unchanging God we serve!   How precious it is to follow Jesus’ footsteps on each page of this ancient text.    One of the many devotional thoughts that jumped out at me this time was the way God used the prayers of imperfect fallen individuals.   Think of Moses.   You know that God demonstrated His power in a unique way by plundering Egypt with the ten plagues.   But what jumped out at me this time was not the frogs, but how God used imperfect Moses, multiple times to pray for God to stay His hand.   God wanted Moses to pray in order to placate His plans for destruction in at least four out of the ten plagues.   Read the locust incident.   “Then Pharaoh hurriedly called for Moses and Aaron, and he said, ‘I have sinned against the LORD your God and against you.   Now therefore, please forgive my sin only this once, and make supplication to the LORD...

One of the reasons I love living in NYC is meeting people with diverse backgrounds.   Each person’s life could fill a library of stories, and all of these lives combine to form a tapestry of world history intersecting in one place and time.   One part of that tapestry is dark.   As we view many strands of life, we can connect with some of the worst parts of world history. I remember speaking with a dear lady in Brooklyn several years ago.   I approached her on the street and tried to begin a conversation about spiritual things.   She was not interested in changing her opinion about God.   She thought God was evil and did not even want to hear what I had to say about God’s goodness in conquering evil.   In listening to her story I realized that she had faced more evil than I will ever even see.   She was one of the few survivors of a Nazi prison camp.   She showed me the number tattooed on her arm and with a snarling look stormed away in ...