Star-fish

     We had an amazing light show last night and it included awesome sound effects! A sudden storm hit our area, and since I live in Arizona, we were glad to get the rain, but the thunderstorm that joined the rain was aggressive. The cracking of the lightning and the booming of the thunder was like none I had experienced, it was so close! In fact, fire trucks sounded and drove behind our home to check on an attic fire that apparently the lightning started in our subdivision's clubhouse. Fortunately, no one was hurt and the fire was put out quickly with little damage.      It made me wonder how many of us "see the light" of Jesus in the lives of others, but initially ignore it. Then one day, boom, a storm of tremendous power hits our lives and devastates us. Then we have a couple choices to make, one, we can blame God for the storm, cover our ears and run in the opposite direction. Or, two, we can see God's power in the storm, open our hearts and run to Him...

     My husband left a message on our kitchen "white board," (I used a picture frame with glass in it and put a typed note in the place where the picture should go, so we can write on the glass with dry erase marker and leave notes for each other) to "look at the cactus bloom." We have an Argentine Giant Cactus in our front yard that blooms in the spring for only a few days. The blooms are an amazing iridescent pink and they only last 24 hours. The blossoms open at night, so that their pollinators of choice, bats and moths, will come by for a visit and help them become fruitful and multiply (Genesis 8:17).       The Bible tells us in 1 Peter 1:24-25 (NIV), "For, 'All people are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord endures forever.' And this is the word that was preached to you." We can see people today who are "the flowers [that] fall" once thei...

     Recently, I have had a couple of nightmares where a person was pursuing me. My fear was so great a couple nights ago that I was abruptly awoken by my husband turning on the light and frantically asking me, "What's the matter? Are you alright?" I apparently was making crying noises in my sleep, although in my dream I was attempting to cry out for help, but couldn't scream. After we settled the issue of what was happening, I curled up next to my husband so I could get my heart to slowdown and mind to quit racing. He wasn't angry that I woke him up, he was glad to have stopped my fearful dream and held me tight until I was ready to go back to sleep.      In a recent Bible study, by Jennifer Rothschild, called Psalm 23 The Shepherd with Me , she talked about the word "follow" in Psalm 23:6. This verse reads, "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever." According to Rot...

     The dog got me up early, as she's been sick lately, and I let her outside only to see a man about 40 yards away wearing a helmet and pulling on a safety harness which was attached to the bucket of a large boom truck. His job as far as I could tell, after observing him the last couple of days, was to clean up the palm trees around our clubhouse. He would ride the bucket up over 50 feet to strip the dead ends of the palm fronds that had been left behind by previous tree trimmers.      I don't like heights, so nothing about riding that lift seemed like a good idea to me, except the fact that the man had a helmet on and a safety harness to protect him in case the boom jerked or descended abruptly and flipped him out of the bucket. My dad was riding in what he called a "cherry-picker" years ago and the person manning the bucket truck moved it suddenly and tossed my dad out onto the street like a rag doll, landing face first. Amazingly, besides some serious...