“I Can Only Imagine” What a World It Will Be With God in Charge. God's Bountiful Country. Update.

For “Scripture Sunday”:

“I Can Only Imagine” What a World It Will Be With God in Charge

“The inspiring story behind the famous song brings hope for a future when God will right every wrong!

     Ümit Bulut/Unsplash

Our world is broken. There is so much pain and suffering. Our world is in need of intervention that only God can give.

I recently watched the movie “I Can Only Imagine.” It’s a wonderful movie about a wonderful song by the same name. I did not want to watch it at first because I felt it would be too emotional for me (I worried the plot would hit too close to home for me on account of my own painful childhood experiences). However, it only inspired me, because it reminded me of how awesome our Father in heaven is!

The movie is based on the true story of a young man, Bart Millard, who grew up in Greenville, Texas. Bart’s mother walked out on him and his dad after they divorced when he was 3 years old. Bart suffered emotional and physical abuse at the hands of his father.

Many times the young boy thought his dad was going to kill him. In an interview, Bart said of his upbringing: “I ended up living in fear for most of my childhood… If he got embarrassed or cut off in traffic or whatever, he would take a swing at me… I was like his punching bag.” Bart grew up like that with no family support.

Then when he was a freshman in high school, things took a drastic turn for Bart. His dad became terminally ill with cancer, which caused him to repent of his ways and find God. Bart and his dad mended their relationship.

Millard took care of his dad and literally became his nurse. It was his dad’s new faith in God that transformed his life. “That’s when things really changed, because it went from us really not having much contact to talking for two or three hours every night until we fell asleep,” he says.

“I got a front row seat to see this guy go from being a monster to falling desperately in love with Jesus,” Millard says. “By the time he passed away when I was a freshman in college, not only was he my best friend, he was like the godliest man I’d ever known. And it’s literally changed the trajectory of my life.”

Years later Bart Marshall Millard became a songwriter who is best known as the leader of the band MercyMe. He wrote the song, “I Can Only Imagine,” which is the best-selling contemporary Christian single of all time. You can read more of his inspiring story here.  The movie is worth watching as it explores the themes of forgiveness and healing.

How many of us have gone through tough times and we hope for things to change? Alternatively, we may even think the phrase, “I can only imagine…”.

The truth is, God is your hope!

God is and was my hope. God was Bart’s hope. God was his dad’s hope that transformed him before he died so he could be the father he never could have been on his own. And God transformed a severely abused young Bart into someone who totally trusts Him, going on to write songs that worship Him and encourage others. God is our healer!

He is our Father who loves us so much! The movie inspired me because I know my Father in heaven brought me through so much just like Bart. And He is still there with me every day. But He is not just my Father, He is a Father to all of us! He will love you when you feel no one else does. He has the power to deliver you from whatever you are going through.

Our world is broken. There is so much pain and suffering. Our world is in need of intervention that only God can give.  Psalm 147 says: “ He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name. Great is our Lord and mighty in power; his understanding has no limit. The LORD sustains the humble but casts the wicked to the ground … His pleasure is not in the strength of the horse, nor his delight in the legs of the warrior;  the LORD delights in those who fear him, who put their hope in his unfailing love” (Psalms 147:3-6, Psalms 147:10-11). I encourage you to read the whole chapter of Psalm 147.

“I can only imagine” what a world will be with God in charge. The great news is it will happen! I earnestly pray for His Kingdom to come when ”He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death, or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Revelation 21:4).”  From: https://www.ucg.org/beyond-today/blogs/i-can-only-imagine-what-a-world-it-will-be-with-god-in-charge

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God's Bountiful Country

An Amazing Fact: “The most densely concentrated area of life on the planet is the tropical rainforest. In fact, researchers found that just a 4-mile-square patch of rainforest contains as many as 1,500 species of flowering plants, 750 species of trees, 125 mammal species, 400 species of birds, 100 species of reptiles, 60 species of amphibians, and 150 different species of butterflies. A single pond in Brazil is home to more fish species than can be found in all of Europe’s rivers, while the fish species in the Amazon River outnumber those in the Atlantic Ocean! But of the estimated 5 million species in the rainforest, only a small percentage has been named, much less studied.

The rainforest is also a cornucopia of produce, with over 3,000 varieties of fruit. Fruits like avocados, coconuts, figs, oranges, lemons, grapefruit, bananas, guavas, pineapples, mangoes, and tomatoes all originated in tropical rainforests. Even so, the rainforest’s bounty is largely undiscovered by the Western world: of the 3,000 varieties, Westerners only use around 200.

In addition, the rainforest contains a pharmaceutical gold mine. Nearly half of our medicinal compounds come from the plant life in the tropical rainforest, including drugs for childhood leukemia and heart disease. Yet these riches are largely unmined, as less than 1 percent of tropical plants and trees have been tested by scientists.

Rainforests are a living dynamo of animals, plants, and medicines, but instead of discovering and enjoying its bounty, man is destroying it at the rate of 1 acre every minute.

While rainforests used to cover fifteen percent of the Earth’s land area, today they cover less than seven percent.

In the book of Jeremiah, God expresses His displeasure over how Israel treated the Promised Land: “I brought you into a bountiful country, to eat its fruit and its goodness. But when you entered, you defiled My land And made My heritage an abomination” (Jeremiah 2:7). The book of Revelation makes it plain that God will eventually “destroy those who destroy the earth” (Revelation 11:18). As the Earth’s caretakers, shouldn’t we do our best to preserve His bountiful country?

BIBLE TEXTS
And the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that thou shouldest give reward unto thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and them that fear thy name, small and great; and shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth. Revelation 11:18”

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Please click every day to save a piece of the Rainforest: http://theanimalrescuesite.greatergood.com/clickToGive/trs/home?gg_source=ctgtabs&gg_medium=sitenav&gg_campaign=ars

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Today’s clicks so far have funded the value of 962,632.4 square feet of land.* Thank you!

Last year, visitor clicks funded the protection and preservation of 10,321 acres of of habitat, home to tens of thousands of plant and animal species.

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Update.

In between the rainy days, Zack managed to mow the grass and clip the hedge. The every day maintenance of this place is partly what gets me down, I hadn’t expected it to take up so much of my retirement, or I would never have added to it over the years.   Less is more!

Like so many people, my junk is owning me, so I am trying really hard to get it all sold and donated, but it seems neverending.  My daughter is having to cope with too much of other people’s stuff right now, so I had better get this place whittled down to the bone and sold.  They don’t accept U-Hauls at the pearly gates, or the other place!

The new roof on the canvas 10 x 20’ garage doesn’t fit because they sent the wrong one, even though it is marked right on the box.  Maybe a packer put the wrong one in the box. The company said that they will send someone here to take it down and give me a refund.  We will see if that happens.

As I am still ferrying Lauri around, I haven’t been able to list much stuff for sale. Monday, I took her way down south, nearly to The Woodlands, to Costco. She bought more of those organic green hockey pucks, organic hummus and organic already-peeled hard-boiled eggs there.  I would rather buy locally and cook the food myself, then you know exactly what is in it.  But to each his own.

Zack and I contact-cemented the Formica on the other two countertops, but we haven’t done the backsplashes yet. The next day Zack didn’t show up, so as Lauri needed to go south near the Conroe Outlet Mall to pay a bill that she had forgotten, I picked her up.  I went to the “L’Eggs, Hanes, Playtex” store in the Outlet Mall and was measured and fitted for some new bras.  Just hadn’t taken the time to do that for quite a while.  Wow, how clothes have gone up in price!  Lauri wandered around the really upscale second hand store “Jazzy Junque” next door.  They have some lovely things, mostly furniture, and the proceeds are for handicapped kids.

I knew that I wanted to go to the Conroe church again to see Diane, and hopefully, her husband Les, as it was “Father’s Potluck”, but he still wasn’t feeling well.  They have been having troubles, and I hoped that going to church might help them.  He is the super-duper hero who fixes the computers free for the folks at the Willis church.  For the potluck, as I am fighting for room in my fridge’s freezer, I took out several containers of already-cooked food, mostly veggies and some rice, thawed it all out in a big pot on the stove. That concoction, with a few added spices, became Dirty Rice and was put in two crock pots, one for each church again.  I don’t spend much on groceries, but I just seem to have an abundance of food all the time, so I might as well share it.  Lauri needed a ride to my usual Willis church before I went in the other direction to the Conroe church, so I dropped her, and a crockpot, off.

At the Conroe church, Diane’s grandchildren stayed in the nursery while we studied out of the Beth Moore book again.  That didn’t quite make sense to me as Beth Moore is a Sunday preacher, and this is a Sabbath keeping church, just like Jesus went to.  Then the service with the singing, announcements, prayers, more singing and the Message which was about Romans 5. “The Benefits of the Gospel of Christ”, and closing prayers. 

At the Father’s Potluck there were pictures of some of the men when they were young strung on a line and numbered.  We had to guess who was who!  All the food was great and it was so nice to reconnect with old friends.  Then I drove back to Willis church to pick up Lauri and take her home.  Hopefully she will get her TX Driver’s License on Monday.

It was a good thing that I had made some room in my fridge’s freezer, my little deep freeze suddenly stopped freezing.  I caught it before any of the meat defrosted, but some of the frozen veggies got soft, so I cooked them in my big pot.  I had to crank up my little 2-door counter-height fridge, turn it up all the way, packed it full, and just hoped that it can cope.   Now there are towels and bins catching the water from the defrosting deep freeze.  When that is done, I will turn it on again and take it’s temperature.  I have had it many years, so I hope it isn’t ready to retire.

Zack and I tried to get some more stuff sorted out for donating, selling or just chucking out today.