I had a mixture of emotions today. I was shocked and amazed. It never ceases to
  amaze me when God takes a verse I have read so many times, even memorized and
  teaches me a new understanding of it. I can’t wait to share with you a new
truth  God graced me with today.

I was reflecting on The Lord’s Prayer
and one  part really hit home. In saying The Lord’s Prayer we pray that God
would keep  temptation and evil away from us.

Where is the evil? Evil is
everywhere.  All one has to do is turn on the local news or pick up a newspaper
to hear or  see about all the evil that is taking place.

Another child
has been  kidnapped and another child is dead. A drive by shooting, some country
threatens  war against their neighbor and a bank has been robbed. Angry teens
have burned  down a school, a homeless man is found dead in an alley and
horrible crimes  against our elderly in the homes they live in that are supposed
to be set up for  their care. Children being abused by the parents who are
supposed to love them,  the crime rate for rape has a drastic increase and even
preachers who abuse  their positions.

Evil is everywhere! This is the
point that caught my  attention. If evil is everywhere doesn’t that include me?
I am human could I not  be capable of stealing from someone? Is it impossible to
think that life could  become so stressful that I could be driven to do
something I wouldn’t under  normal circumstances? My spouse or child could upset
me today and I could snap  back at them with a verbal assault. Satan is
everywhere and he is a deceptive  soul. Without proper protection I could become
one of those people I hear about  on the news or read about in the newspapers. I
believe there are things we must  do to insure we are safely under the umbrella
of God’s protection.

We  must give our lives to God. That means all of
ourselves, heart, body, soul and  mind. We must put on the armor of God as well.
(Ephesians 6:13-19)

We  must study and be in God’s word daily. Reading is
not enough, we must study and  memorize so that we can put what God teaches us
to use into action as we live  each day. We cannot live a life that will bring
glory to God if we don’t know  and understand what the word says about how we
are to conduct ourselves in our  daily lives.

We must have daily
fellowship with God and build a lasting  relationship with Him. God desires to
fellowship with you, read 1 John 2:27. He  wants us to lay our burdens down and
let Him carry the load for us, to lean on  Him in times of trouble.
Find a
church home, one where the pastor is truly  preaching the Word of God. Where you
can learn and grow spiritually and put the  gifts God has given you to use
according to His will.

Pray! One of the  last things I do before I go to
bed is to pray for God to protect me from evil,  whether that evil is of this
world or inside me. Evil comes in many forms. It’s  easy enough to say I would
never rob a bank or abuse my child but what about “smaller” things. The same
rule applies to evil as to sin. There is no sin that  is better or worse, a sin
is a sin, just as evil doings, thoughts or something  said that is verbally
abusive is bad. I think the one most of us need to watch  is our thoughts and
words. I’m speaking to myself as much as anyone else on this  topic. We are
warned in the Bible that the tongue has the power to wound and  kill. (Psalm
10:7, 64:3) What ugly things have you said to someone in the past  that may have
left a lasting hurt or killed their spirit? I not only remember  the horrid
names kids used to call me, I remember the names of the kids who did  the name
calling. I have forgiven them, however, that hurt still resides to a  degree
even at my age.

The next time you ponder or pray about the evil  of this
world take time to do a self-examination and assure there are no seeds  of evil
within you. Pray often that God would help you recognize if there are  any and
to help get rid of them. Pray that He stop you if you start to say or do
  something that would help those seeds to sprout and grow into a really large
  issue. Ask God to give you a tongue that only speaks and thoughts that only
  think things that will glorify and give glory to God.

2 Corinthians
  13:14 May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the
  fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. [NIV-The Learning
  Bible]

Heavenly Father I pray that you help us keep our thoughts and
  words in check and that you allow no seeds of evil to sprout within us. Father
I  pray that you make it known to each of us when we begin to stray off the path
  that leads to you and salvation through you. That we not turn into the evil of
  this world but that we are shining lights of your love and glory especially to
  those who don’t know you yet. In Jesus Holy name I Pray. A-Men

A Fragmented Mind

It was a warm summer
  day, Susan set in her chair on the porch with a soft breeze floating across her
  skin, pondering one of her favorite verses from the Bible. Isaiah 40:31 “But
  those who wait on the Lord will find new strength. They will fly high on wings
  like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not
  faint.”
Memories of long ago gripped her heart. They rolled through her mind
  like the ripples in a wheat field on a windy day. Oh, how often she would sit
at  that window and day dream of working in her garden. The feel of the soft
earth  in her hands as she prepared the ground. Planting her flower bulbs and
waiting  for them to break through and make their tiny appearance known.
Sometimes the  flowers would come up so fast it reminded her of a ground
squirrel popping out  of his home in the ground. One minute there was nothing
and the next there was.

How Susan longed to walk among the flowers, to
lean down and smell their  sweet fragrance. The aroma of summer mixed with pure
beauty was overwhelming. To  be out in the garden picking fresh vegetables or
wondering through the  strawberry patch and enjoying the liquid sunshine that
enveloped her mouth when  she ate one of the bright red berries.

She
could never understand how  some considered the care of a garden to be
troublesome work. It refreshed her so  to go and take care of the seedlings. To
pamper and water them, to provide  support when they were in need or removing
the weeds that threaten to steal the  water and nutrients her precious plants
needed to grow and mature.

Then  her memories flowed to the evening
hours she would spend in the gardens. To  listen to the choir of birds and
insects as they sang their symphony of love to  one another. Butterflies
flittering from flower to flower, taking a moment here  and there to stop and
sip the abundance of nectar available there. Hummingbirds  speeding around like
the gardens as if it were their own version of the Indy  500. Darting back and
forth, chasing one another and stopping for a brief moment  to get a drink,
their wings moving so fast that the naked eye couldn’t see them
  individually.

It had been three years since Susan’s accident. Three
years  since she has been able to fully enjoy the beauty of this world God has
given so  freely to her. Susan was weary from watching and wishing for a change
in her  situation, the thoughts and memories wore her out and exhausted her mind
and  body. The memories were all she had left, she didn’t have the strength to
get up  and move about. She had no strength left in her broken body to do the
things she  longed to do. Her mind so focused on what she couldn’t do that it
was drained  and only useful for dragging her through her memories of the past.
How she  longed to find different ways to enjoy her garden, different ways to be
a part  of God’s miracles and beauty.

While sleeping very peacefully one morning I 
was jerked out of my sleep by the most gut wrenching screaming you have ever 
heard! It scared me to death. I fumbled out of bed so fast that I nearly
slammed  my head into the dresser as I tripped over a shoe.
Running from
my  bedroom to the kitchen I now realize my 2 yr. old son was the one screaming.
As  I rounded the corner, all wild eyed and my hair standing on end I saw my
small  son crumpled on the floor. He was crying so hard his tiny face was purple
and  his body was shaking like a leaf on a tree during a terrible storm. 
As I  landed on the floor next to him, nearly falling on him because I
was moving so  fast, I start searching. I see no blood; no bruise nothing to
indicate a wound  or anything else that would indicate a reason for this
screaming.
Calming down I pulled him into my lap and said “son what is 
wrong”?
The jumbles of attempted words coming out of his mouth were like 
trying to understand someone speaking a foreign language. So we sat there and
we  rocked. I kept telling him he needed to calm down so I could understand what
was  wrong.
Finally between waves of tears this beautiful blonde hair,
blue  eyed baby of mine finds the strength to talk. He points his tiny finger
toward a  kitchen chair and said “Matthew killed my Bo Bo monkey”.
I know
I sat  there for a moment thinking that I have certainly misunderstood this
little  darling. How could his brother have killed his stuffed toy? 
Slowly I  turned my head in the direction of the chair that was holding
the beloved Bo Bo  monkey.
I nearly choked to death when I saw the monkey
laying there. Trying  to hold in laughter and maintain some sense of being the
adult in control was  like trying to not breathe.
There lying on his
back was Bo Bo, one arm  hanging off of each side of the chair and both legs
hanging off the other side.  His lifeless little face covered in red blood. His
mouth was full of blood. The  blood was running down each cheek with the speed
of frozen molasses.
Standing on the other side of the kitchen was
Matthew looking at me like  he had no clue what my problem was or why his little
brother was crying so hard.
I grabbed the reins of my emotions and ask
him what on earth was going  on.
His first response of course was that he
had done nothing. After an  interrogation that would have put an FBI agent to
shame I discovered that there  had been a conversation as to whether the stuffed
monkey could swallow catsup or  not. Trying to solve this scientific question
Matthew and our middle son  Jonathan took BoBo to the kitchen and proceeded to
test their theory to see who  was right and who was wrong. Shawn walked in
during this testing faze and  assumed the red to be blood.
It took several hours to clean all the  catsup off of BoBo’s face, to get the stains out
of his yellow shirt. Finally he  was returned to the land living stuffed
animals. This task was made even harder  because of having a small child glued
to my leg the entire time.

Yes  life with my three boys has always been
entertaining. Days like this happened  more often than not. I never did come
into the world I dreamed of. Fame and  fortune were not to be mine. There would
never be thousands of adoring fans or  more money than I knew what to do with.
The fame I searched for came to me, not  in the manner I dreamed of but in the
hearts of my little boys. They could have  cared less about movie stars and
models. Their focus was on mom and that made me  famous to them. Now when I sit
back and think about the fame I once sought and  the fame I ended up with I
realize I was blessed by God to get the latter. That  meant more to me than
fancy clothes, money or my name in lights could ever mean.

This is a
true story, no names have been changed. We still have BoBo  Monkey. That is the
only major incident he was involved in, I can’t say the same  for the boys. He
now rests comfortably in his old age and is quite content.

The Boxes in My Mind
Cynthia Dawson

I was taking
inventory of the things in my mind one day. There were so many boxes 
sitting around. As I went from box to box I would lift the lid to see what was 
inside. Oh yes, I remember these things. 
The day I married my
husband, the births of our three children, oh and
the many Christmas
memories. On, and on I went.  Then I noticed a box sitting in the
corner, I
had seen it before, all wrapped up in pretty paper with a large bow on
top.
I wondered to myself why had I never opened this box. Today was different 
something was tugging, even pulling me to open the box. . My desire to open it 
  kept growing greater by the moment. As I approached the box I thought I
could
hear voices….someone was saying something. I just couldn’t quite
grasp what it
was saying. My excitement was now nearly uncontrollable as I
reached for the lid
I just couldn’t imagine what beautiful memory could be
inside this pretty
package. I touched the lid and ever so carefully began
to lift the lid. My
excitement started fading quickly. The voice was coming
from inside the box.
Still muffled but it was certainly within. Then to my
horror as I finished
removing the lid the voices became very clear. You are
worthless! You are not
the person you used to be! What was this? Where were
all these ugly things
coming from? You are a stress and strain on your
family. You have put all the
financial pressure on your husband. I couldn’t
stand this, I didn’t want to hear
any more so I tried to replace the lid
but it wouldn’t go back on. I backed away
from the box but the insults grew
louder. You are of no use to anyone. No one
has a need for you and your
broken body. I’m certain I screamed as I ran from
the box. The faster I ran
the louder the voices became. I raced through my mind
trying to find a
place to hide but there was nowhere to go. I kept running until
I ended up
in a small corner of my heart. I hid there, covered my ears and
rocked
myself trying to make the voices go away. But the voices keep pounding on 
me, drilling those ugly words into every pore of my being. I don’t recall how 
long I set there in that tiny corner of my heart but then one day things
started
to change. I could still hear the ugly screaming voices but I could
also hear a
faint whisper. It was different than the ugly screaming voices.
This voice was
soft and gentle. I couldn’t hear it well over all the other
voices. In my
frustration I yelled for silence so I could hear this soft
voice. Finally I
could just hear this calm voice telling me I was special,
made for a purpose.
The other voices said the opposite of this kind voice.  
This kind and gentle voice said the nicest things, you are my child. I 
have a plan for you. There is a work for you to do. The more I listened the 
better I could hear this beautiful voice, it soothed me. Finally one day the 
voice told me to get up, stop hiding in my heart. Go put the lid on that
box and
destroy it. I tried to leave but I found I was unable. During the
time I had
hidden in my heart it had become hard. Trying to move around was
nearly
impossible. The calm voice said you can’t do this alone but I can
help you……if
you will let me. After a great deal of struggling I finally
conceded to the
voice that I needed help. I ask the voice to help me soften
my heart so that I
could move around easier. As my heart softened I made my
way out of my heart and
I headed directly for my mind I was closing that
box once and for all. As I
neared the box I started becoming afraid again.
I can’t do this. The soft voice
started talking, repeating over and over
again. I can do all things through
Christ who strengthens me.  Then I 
started repeating it as well, I started believing. I became stronger by the 
moment. I became aware that it was God; he was building me up as I learned to 
lean on Him and not rely on my own strength. Finally the lid got put back
on the box. I realize the
ugly voices were the voice of Satan, and his
voice was quieted. I could still
hear the low grumble of his voice but the
sweet voice of God overpowered his
ugliness. If you have boxes of ugliness
sitting around in your mind rely not on
yourself but on God. Alone we can
do nothing, through Christ anything is
possible. I can do all things
through Christ who strengthens me. Philippians
4:13. I don’t know for sure
if the box was destroyed but I do know that if the
lid ever comes off again
I know that God and God alone will help me conquer it.