Pastor’s Corner

Well happy Thursday it’s a day of renewal today when our Savior has given us. I apologize for not posting a devotion yesterday but my device wouldn’t post even though I wrote it twice. So here goes hopefully I will be able to post this time.

Our meditation today is found in Prov. 14:10 “Each heart knows it’s own bitterness, and no one else can fully share its joy.”

This is probably one of the most significant proverbs on the feelings and responses of each individual person.

This brings me back to when I was 9 or 10 and my cousins and I were working with our fathers on installing a bell in the little country church that my Kansas family attended. We were missing one part to be able to hang the bell.

The part was heavy and needed my uncles to lift it into the truck. But the little truck couldn’t hold hold us all so they left my twelve year old cousin to watch over us. There was a strip mine filled with water about 1/2 a mile away so we decided while waiting we would see who could throw a rock across the pit. We all tried but failed to throw a rock to the other side of the pit, so Ronny the oldest cousin climbed over the fence and threw a rock the hardest he could but he threw it with such great force that he tripped and fell in. Once he hit the water below he yelled for us to help him. My younger cousin climbed over the fence and tried all kinds of things to reach Ronnie and then he fell in. I heard them yelling for help but I knew I dared not climb over the fence. I decided to go back to the church for help.

By the time I arrived back at the church my uncles drove up, they took the bell rope and tryed to reach the boys but is was too short. The freezing water was having its damage on my cousins one of the uncles drove back to a neighbors house to phone the fire men to come.

By the time they arrived my cousins were dead. My two uncles and I were so sad and depressed for the next year, when we would go to visit I would sit in their laps and hold them.

My Uncle John never got over the loss, and the doctor said he died of a broken heart. I woke up sometimes sweating hearing my cousins yelling for me. Even today when other people are facing hardships and sadness I remember my deep sadness and am filled with compassion for them, especially young children.

Later on a man named Walter came our church and he came to my side and would invite you over to his families house and farm for weekends when we had no school. He said it was because he had no boys, but later my parents admired that when he saw me sad when the thoughts of the loss of my cousins came to me. He would ask to have me over, we would milk the cows together and he would assure me that they were in heaven and wouldn’t be mad at me.

As I grew up I learned to bring this sorrow to our precious Lord and to express my care for others when they were filled with sadness.

Everyone has times of sadness and are in need of others caring for them. So we must be careful not to get caught up in our own busyness and fail to reach out to others.

So Go With God and He will bring comfort to others around us by our caring for them. Satan doesn’t want us to care in that way for he

is happy when we are hurting while no one cares. So let’s be winners in this life and give Satan a black eye by caring for others in times of sadness.