Serve by Design

It’s been a long while since I have participated in a revival service, let alone three consecutive nights long! Our Methodist church had such a renewal experience this week. Personally, it was spiritually refreshing. We had altar calls at the end of the services where there was soul searching and confession of sin. There were also prayers of recommitment to Christ, intercession for healing (physically, spiritually, and relationally!), and genuine prayers for revival both in our church and throughout our city, country, and the world. Image: stock.adobe.com On the first night, we heard Bishop Jonathan Franklin, founding pastor of the Mt. Zion Apostolic Church, and president of the Springfield Ministerial Alliance. He brought a stirring message from the Great Commission in Acts 1:8 and Jesus’ teaching to the disciples at the scene of the pagan temple of Pan in Matthew 16:13-19. Bishop Franklin spoke like a prophet when he said, “Our nation needs prayer! We have evicted God from our nation...

We are blessed to have a few mature trees on our .55-acres of property. There is a beautiful, tall, and stately pin oak tree and an equally sized and healthy silver maple that define the backyard. During spring, the oak produces catkins or tassels that collect on the driveway like manna during the time of Moses! These are messy, quite fragile, and crumbly pollen structures that fertilize the female flowers. While these “mossy gatherings” require about a week of daily sweeping, they are relatively easy to rake or sweep into piles that can be gathered into the yard waste container before they get tracked into the house. From Seed to Maple Sapling! The silver maple produces the entertaining “helicopters” or “whirlybirds” These seeds, with fin-like wings, take flight in the wind and scatter into the yard becoming a food source for squirrels that are waiting for more substantial seeds and nuts later in the fall. Their scattering destinations include flower beds, box garden areas, guttering ...