Good Thursday morning! I pray you have not gone stir crazy at home yet. Keep looking outside and walking around outside when you get the chance. Should be beautiful weather during the weekend. And remember through it all “Keep Smiling.” Jesus would want it that way!
It is excruciating not being able to minister during these unstable days. No one knows what to expect or what is coming next. Josh and I have done our best to keep in contact with all of you during this crazy time in our church and in our lives. We hope to be able to get back to some type of normalcy sooner rather than later.
One of the things that Peggy and I have been doing to get out of the house is to do “ride” therapy. We love to just get in the truck and start driving up in the foothills of the mountains. Last weekend we went for about two hours and only traveled about 60 miles. We drive slow and most of the time when someone comes up behind us I will pull over and let them pass. As we were riding around last weekend we came upon a new development just east of Marietta. It was called Riverstead. We drove through the open gate and saw plenty of home sites that were numbered and available. We saw a few homes being built and one already finished. As we went down one road Peggy saw the one she liked best. She got out of the truck and took a picture. It was a beautiful panoramic view from 3 sides of the Blue Ridge Mountains. She got back in the truck and said, “Let’s buy this lot.” Of course she was joking, but it is okay to dream.
Later that evening when we got home she looked up online the website for Riverstead. Sure enough she found it and began to investigate. As we sat in our chairs at the house she began to laugh. At first she said the lot she wanted was already purchased, but the one next to it was available. I asked her how much they wanted for the lot. She said sarcastically, “Not much, just $250,000 for 1 acre.” I answered sarcastically, “Well, I’ll just write a check and send it to them this afternoon. How much do we have to spend on the house we are going to build on our lot?” She answered, “It must be at least a $300,000 house.” “Oh, well,” I said, “we will just take that out of petty cash and start building next week.” We both had a good laugh.
There is nothing wrong with dreaming. Most of us know that dreams are very rarely reality. It is fun to dream about the future and the what ifs in life. There is no way Peggy and I could even get close to purchasing something at that price. It would be a beautiful place to wake up every morning, but not reality.
This little jaunt down dreaming lane has got me to Just Thinking! There is one thing I dream of that is not fantasy. It is reality. I dream of heaven. I talk of heaven. I know that one day when my life is over here on earth that heaven is waiting for me. I know it is there because Jesus said, “I go to prepare a place for you and if I go to prepare a place for you I will come and get you that where I am you can be also.” Then when ask how the disciples would go, Jesus said, “I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me.” So I know that one day I’m going to heaven because I believe and trust in Jesus to take me there. As we confess our sins and ask Jesus into our lives we are rewarded with the promise of heaven. So my dreaming about heaven is a promise of God. It is not a made up fantasy in my sleep.
When I think of heaven I think of a place where Jesus is. A place with no sin. A place where there is no imperfections. No cancer. No sickness. No death. No hunger. No viruses. Don’t ask me to explain it all because I can’t. But I can’t explain how an airplane gets off the ground, but I have trusted them to take me places in the air. Heaven is a real place that I can’t afford, but am privileged to be able to go. Jesus paid the price for me to have a mansion there and I am ever in His debt. There is nothing I can do on my own to deserve what God so freely gives to me.
There is a chorus I used to sing and the title is “Heaven is a Wonderful Place.” The chorus goes like this, “Heaven is a wonderful place. Filled with Glory and Grace and I’m gonna see my Savior’s face. Heaven is a wonderful place. I’m gonna go there.” Then you repeat the line several times. My prayer is that if you are reading this that you are sure that you are going there, too. In 1 John 5:13 it says, “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know you have eternal life.” Do you know? You can. Just confess you sins to Jesus ask Him to forgive you and come into your life and He will begin preparing you place, also.
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