Manna For Moms

Devotions for Moms Like You!

Walking

Megan Breedlove No Comments

We live two blocks from our neighborhood park. The kids love to go there. It has a giant set of toys all connected together, including several slides and things to climb on. It has huge, grassy areas for the kids to run around on. It also has a small basketball court and a covered slab of concrete with two picnic tables. When the weather is right, the paletero often comes by pushing his freezer cart containing ice cream treats. All in all, the park is a great place to be.

It can take anywhere from one minute to thirty minutes to get to it, however, depending on our mode of transportation. When it’s too hot out during the summer months, I usually load the kids into the van for a ride to the park. That’s when the trip takes about one minute. When the weather’s more temperate, we often walk, or the kids take turns riding in our wagon. That’s when the trip takes thirty minutes.

If you’ve ever walked anywhere with a young child, you understand. You can’t just, well, walk there. You have to stop and look at every interesting thing along the way.

Between our house and the park, there are approximately one million fascinating things just begging to be more closely examined. Like…rocks. And that dog over there. And that puddle—wait! Don’t jump in it!—of dirty water.

I used to try to make our walk to the park efficient. After all, it was my job to teach the kids to do things promptly and without wasting time.

Fortunately, it wasn’t long before I came to realize that stopping to look at things, or just walking slowly, wasn’t a waste of time. In fact, it was the whole point.

I had thought that getting to the park was the point, so I wanted us to do business and get there. My children, however, had more wisdom than I did. They realized that the journey was as much part of the whole experience as being at the park was. In fact, they had a better time on our outings when they could experience life along the way, as opposed to when they had to pass life by so they could experience a smaller piece of it for a longer time.

I wonder how our lives would be different if we could learn to enjoy the journey instead of focusing on making it quickly and efficiently from one experience to another.

As moms, it’s easy for us to get so caught up in helping our child reach the next milestone or achieve the next goal that we forget to enjoy our child, and let him or her enjoy us, along the way. We’re so busy trying to keep the house clean that we can’t take time to cuddle our child as he crawls up into our lap. We become so focused on planning for the next vacation, or the upgrade to a bigger house, that we can’t enjoy what we have now.

Where does God fit into all this? He gets squeezed in on Sundays and sometimes Wednesdays. Maybe occasionally, we give a minute or two of prayer time.

What we fail to realize is that the journey with Him is part of the point. Had heaven been the only point, God could have taken us there the minute He saved us. But He has chosen to leave us on this world for awhile. Why? Because He knows that we need the journey. Walking with God here, now, on earth, is not merely a fringe benefit we get to enjoy on the way to heaven. It’s part of the goal.

Will my kids and I still make it to the park even if we don’t particularly enjoy the journey? Yes. Will you and I still make it to heaven even if we don’t particularly enjoy God along the way? Yes. But we’ll have missed the point.

We were made to enjoy God. We were made for a relationship with Him. And we don’t have to wait for heaven to experience that. We can love and be loved by Him now.

If we make it to heaven without having walked with God, we’re missing something.

And missing out on the journey with God matters a whole lot more than missing out on a journey to the park.

Oh, God, grant us a heart that deeply desires to walk with You along the way. Teach us how. Please, God, take us by the hand, so You and we can walk together.

Psalm 42:1—As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God.

Addiction

Megan Breedlove No Comments

Before my first baby was born, I made a decision: I wasn’t going to give her a pacifier. After all, I planned to breastfeed, and I didn’t want her to develop “nipple confusion”. Plus, why would I need a pacifier? If Ellie cried, I would pick her up and nurse her, rock her, or play with her, whatever she wanted. That would take care of the problem.

Things didn’t work out quite the way I had envisioned. I caved while we were still in the hospital. Poor Ellie was crying what seemed like non-stop (we found out later that she was having feeding issues), and nursing wasn’t working out as planned. I decided that having Ellie develop nipple confusion would be far preferable to having me develop lunacy. So I offered her a pacifier. Repeatedly. A few days later, our lactation consultant said, “You know, I almost never recommend that a baby take a pacifier. But I do for this one.”

Ellie took to her “bice” immediately, and she continued her love affair with it until she was almost two, when we weaned her from it by cutting a little bit off the tip. (She put it in her mouth, tried to suck, and realized something was different. “I know, it’s broken,” I said sympathetically. After that, she never tried to suck it again.)

My subsequent three children have also had long, close relationships with their bices. We broke Kenny of his bice habit the same way we had with Ellie, by cutting the tip off. We had to cut a little more off each day for another day or two before he gave up. Lindsey, on the other hand, refused to give up until we had cut off so much that she couldn’t even hold the bice in her mouth anymore. At this point, we haven’t yet weaned Jessica from her bice. We’re working on it.

Well, sort of.

My reluctance is because I always hate depriving my children of something they love so much. Sure, I know that taking it away is best for them, and even helps their dental development. But when it finally comes time to get out the scissors, I’m always nervous.

Will she cry? Will she hate me? Will I ever get any sleep at night again?

Fortunately, there’s nothing morally wrong with being addicted to a pacifier. After all, it’s not like my kids are guzzling vodka from a sippy cup or robbing the local Babies “R” Us. So addiction isn’t the problem. Addiction only becomes a problem when a person is addicted to the wrong things…or fails to be addicted to the right things.

Dictionary.com defines addiction as “the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming, as narcotics, to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma”. If that’s what addiction means, then it’s wonderful, even vital, to be addicted to the right things.

Like God’s Word. The word “enslaved” shouldn’t throw us off, as the New Testament clearly teaches that we are slaves to Christ. So wouldn’t it be wonderful if we were enslaved to the practice of reading God’s Word such that we form a habit, to such an extent that the cessation of reading His Word causes trauma?

Most Christians take God’s Word for granted. Many of us have several copies in different versions sitting on a shelf at home. They’re there for us to read any time we want. Sometimes, we take one down from the shelf and read it. But most of the time, we act as if we’re satisfied just to know that it’s there, available if we ever decide we want it.

Or maybe we decide on a Bible-reading plan, try to make it stick, and fail. I just don’t know how I can make a daily reading plan work, we sigh to ourselves, and days pass, then weeks. Maybe even months.

Our children are far more attached to cheap little pieces of plastic and silicone than we are to the Book that reveals God to us.

We know we should read our Bibles, but it’s head knowledge. There’s no heart yearning to be vitally connected to God through His Word. We treat as optional a book that Christian brothers and sisters around the world have died for the privilege of possessing because they knew its value.

Most of us don’t. In countries where Bibles are cheap and easy to come by, where we can have one any time we want, most of us just don’t get it. Maybe that was Satan’s plan. He knows that where Bibles aren’t allowed, people are willing to die for the privilege of reading one. In countries where they are freely available, people are willing to die without reading one.

Have we truly formed a habit of reading our Bible? If we were forced to cease reading it, would we be traumatized at all?

I pray we can always answer “yes” to both of these questions. But if we ever answer “no”, may God bring us to our knees (literally or figuratively), and may we beseech Him to instill within us a life-changing love of His Word. May we not stop asking until He grants our request, which He will, because it’s within the scope of His will for us.

We’ve heard a child scream when his or her pacifier was taken away or couldn’t be found. May those cries pale in comparison to the cry of our heart to know and love God’s Word. Because through His Word, we come to know and love God Himself.

That, dear sister, is worth far more than a piece of plastic.

Psalm 119:162—I rejoice in your word like one who finds a great treasure.

(I credit one of the devotions in Michelle Adams’ Daily Wisdom for Mothers, Barbour, 2004, for introducing me to the original idea from which this devotional ultimately developed.)

Whatever I Get

Megan Breedlove No Comments

In our dining room, we have our regular table, which is wooden and has six chairs. We also have a smaller, plastic table made for kids, with four little, yellow plastic chairs. One particular evening, I allowed the kids to eat their supper at the little table.

At one point, Lindsey got up and went to the kitchen. She brought a bottle of BBQ sauce and a bottle of ketchup back to the table. “You already have ranch dressing,” I said, taking the two bottles and putting them back in the fridge.

Lindsey began to cry. “But I want ketchup,” she said.

“All right,” I decided. “You may get the ketchup out, but only the ketchup.”

Lindsey stopped crying and walked out to the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator door and stood looking at the bottles and jars on the shelves.

“I changed my mind. Not ketchup,” she said. “Whatever I get, you say ‘yes’.”

We want the same thing from God, don’t we? We want His ‘yes’ to anything we come up with. We want to be able to deliver a request and know that He will rubber-stamp it. Not content with what He’s offered, we want something more, and we want to be the ones who determine what that something more will be.

Consider how you react when God doesn’t grant your requests. Do you become angry? Irritated? Resentful? Do you trust that God, in His superior wisdom, is denying your request to further His own good purposes, or do you secretly feel you’ve been cheated out of something good?

I think we’ve all been there.

We’ve all asked God for things we fully expected to receive, or perhaps desperately hoped we would receive. Then, when we didn’t get them, we felt angry or betrayed.

These emotions reveal our belief that God did not do what He was supposed to do regarding us.

But God is not some genie who is obligated to grant all of our requests as long as we put them in the right format. He’s not some passive celestial figure who exists for the sole purpose of granting us things we can’t secure for ourselves.

No, He is the Almighty Creator of the universe, and He knows far better than we do which requests can be granted, and which must be denied. You may be certain of this: God doesn’t deny requests lightly. If He denies what you’ve asked for, He has a reason why it must be so.

It’s okay to be disappointed that we didn’t get what we’ve asked for. It’s even okay to grieve over His denial of our requests at times. But to get an idea in our minds of what God should do, and then become angry when He doesn’t perform?

That’s sin.

“Will not the judge of all the earth do right?” Abraham asks as He is pleading with God to spare Sodom and Gomorrah.

And indeed, He will.

We could learn a lot from Abraham’s prayer. His prayer was no monologue delivered heavenward, a list of demands couched as requests. He approached God humbly, making his request, clearly acknowledging that God could grant it but didn’t have to.

How do you and I approach God? Do we come to Him pridefully, expecting that He should say yes to whatever we ask? Or do we come respectfully, making our desires known but being willing to accept any answer from His hand?

May our attitudes be not “whatever I ask, You say yes” but “whatever You grant, I say yes”.

James 4:10—Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.

Breaking Easily

Megan Breedlove No Comments

My kids like to pick up things from the yard on the way to the minivan. Something that seemed so perfectly ordinary to me that I didn’t even notice it will snag my kids’ attention and become fascinating.

This particular fall day, it was leaves. Ellie had picked up a few she thought were pretty from our front yard. The leaves were pretty dry, and as Ellie looked at them and examined them on our way down the road, the inevitable happened.

“Mommy, my leaf broke,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Why do leaves break?”

“You see all those little lines in the leaves?” I asked. “When the leaves are on the tree, nutrients flow through those little lines and keep the leaf alive. When the leaf falls off the tree, it doesn’t have anything flowing through it, and it dries out.”

“I guess when things are dry, they break easier,” Ellie said.

She was talking about leaves, but she could just as well have been talking about any living thing. Living things depend on nutrients flowing through them to sustain them. This applies to everything from tiny organisms on up to our far-more-complicated, physical bodies.

It applies to the spiritual part of us as well.

Just as we feed our physical bodies to keep them going, so we must feed the spiritual part of ourselves. If we want to live spiritually, we must have nutrients flowing through us. Our spiritual life depends on it.

We know what kinds of foods our bodies need. But what about our spirits? How do we keep them nourished, healthy, and growing?

There are three primary ways.

First, we develop our prayer life. It’s impossible to live and grow spiritually if we don’t spend regular time with the One who created us. Tragically, many of us truly don’t realize how vitally important prayer is. We tend to think of it as an optional activity, something to engage in if we have the time. When we treat prayer as if doing it is great, but not doing it doesn’t really affect us, we are allowing the nutrients to drain slowly from our veins, and we are becoming dry and brittle.

Second, we spend time in God’s Word. This includes time listening to His Word proclaimed, as well as time in it during our personal devotions. How much and what part of the Bible we should read will vary from person to person. But the fact that we must read it applies to everyone. We may think we know what it says well enough that we don’t need to study it much. That’s not true. The Holy Spirit can make Scripture relevant and meaningful to us, gifting us with fresh realizations about any part of it, even a passage we’ve read many times before. God speaks through His Word, and He doesn’t just do so once, the first time we read it. Thinking we don’t need to study the Bible is either a failure to understand its importance, or simple arrogance.

Third, we fellowship with other believers, both in and out of a church setting. Sure, we can have friends who are not Christians. But we need Christian fellowship as well. We need to worship with others who believe and love the Lord as we do; we need to go through life’s experiences with those who share our Christian perspective; and we need both to give and to receive encouragement in our faith, exhortation, and support.

This coming year, make sure you’re not setting yourself up to be someone who is brittle and breaks easily. Make a plan for letting prayer, Bible study, and fellowship flow through you and keep you vitally alive. God will help you figure out how to make it happen. Then, discipline yourself to do what you know you need to do.

When leaves are dry, they break more easily. When they have the right nutrients flowing through them, they are strong.

Which will you plan to be this year?

John 15:5—I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.

Unlovely

Megan Breedlove No Comments

Four years later, I still vividly remember the moment.

At the time, I had two children: Ellie and Kenny. It was bath night, so I was trying to get them into the tub. The process went smoothly with Ellie. But for some reason, Kenny was fighting me about getting ready for his bath.

He was having a fit as I was wrestling him on the floor to get him undressed and into the tub. He was crying, screaming, and resisting. His little legs were kicking. I was getting more and more frustrated.

And for a second there—and this is the part I remember so vividly—I looked down and saw Kenny lying there on the floor, a chubby boy, eyes squeezed shut, sweat beading his forehead and matting his hair, tears trailing down his cheeks, still resisting my efforts to get him undressed. And I saw him as “just” a big, sweaty boy. For an instant, it was like I saw him apart from the love I have for him, and I saw nothing attractive about him as I looked down at him.

It hurts my mother-heart to realize that even for an instant, I could look at my precious son and see him as completely unattractive. But I think God gave me that glimpse of Kenny as a gift.

It was a poignant illustration of two things. First, I must never look at my son apart from the love I have for him, because the alternative is too awful to contemplate. My love should be the lens through which I see him. I may need to be objective about some of his behaviors so that I can train and discipline him properly, but I should never look at him without love coloring my vision.

After all, God always looks at us with love. He is well aware of our sin, but because of our relationship with His Son, He has chosen to look at us as dearly beloved children, instead of as His enemies. Even when we’re lying on the floor having a fit, and the results of our efforts are dampening our hair and leaving trails down our cheeks, He loves us.

He could have sent us all to hell as we all deserved. But instead, He chose to love us. More than that, He sent His Son to earth as a baby, to grow up to die so that we could be reconciled to God despite all the things we have done and continue to do.

It’s a love that’s not based on anything we do or don’t do. It’s based on a choice God made.

That’s the second thing God showed me through this situation. Our love for others, especially our children, must be based on a choice, not on how we feel at the moment. Love is a choice, and there better be more to my love for Kenny than just loving him because of what he does for me. And, praise God, there was more, because I had chosen long ago truly to love my son.

It’s what we all need to do, for each one of our children. We must make the decision to love unconditionally, no matter what the child does or doesn’t do. Then, we take it a step further by showing them that love, no matter what.

God loves you and me all the time, not just when we look good enough. That, my friends, is the gospel. God loves you despite what you’ve done and made a way for you to be reconciled to Him. That’s what Christmas is all about.

It’s not about the presents, or the tree, or even family gatherings. It’s about God looking down on humanity, who was not worthy of His love, and choosing to love us anyway. It’s about how He made a way for us to come back to Him, despite our sin. It’s about how He loved us, even though we are unworthy of His love, and even before we loved Him.

Praise God that He did.

1 John 4:10—This is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son.

Glad You’re With Us

Megan Breedlove No Comments

Our first Advent activity this year was simple. The kids and I sat at the dining room table, and I asked them whose birthday we celebrate on Christmas. When they responded “Jesus’ birthday”, we talked about how it’s easy to get caught up in all the fun stuff we enjoy about the Christmas season. But the purpose of Advent, I explained to them, is to remember Jesus’ coming. That’s why each day this month, we will do an activity designed to illustrate some aspect of the Christmas story—in other words, some aspect of Jesus’ birth.

Next, we sang the song, “Happy Birthday, Jesus.” I sang it for them first. Ellie knew part of it, and Kenny and Lindsey began catching on quickly. We would learn the song this year, I told them, because it helps to remind us that Christmas is all about Jesus.

Later that evening, I heard Lindsey doing her best to sing the song, in her sweet, three-year-old voice. One line of the song says, “I’m so glad it’s Christmas.” But Lindsey sang it, “I’m so glad you’re with us.”

“No, Lindsey, it’s not ‘I’m so glad you’re with us’,” I heard Ellie say, in all her six-year-old wisdom. “It’s, ‘I’m so glad it’s Christmas’.”

“I’m so glad you’re with us,” Lindsey sang.

I think she has it right.

Two thousand-plus years ago, a baby was born in a stable. There were probably other babies born that day, and certainly, that year. But this baby was special. This baby was not only the son of Mary and Joseph. This baby was the Son of God.

That day, God Himself came down from heaven in the form of a squalling, wrinkly infant, into a stable filled with animals, straw, and stench.

God wasn’t just up there anymore. He was down here.

Yes, God the Son humbled Himself enough to become one of us, at least physically. He Who had made the world now had to have His diaper changed. He Who had existed since before time began now dwelled in time and needed to eat every two hours.

Because of our sin, God would have been completely justified in remaining on His throne and allowing us all to go to hell as we deserved. But He didn’t. He got down from His throne and came to us to show us the way back to Him.

God with us.

The best part of the whole story is that He is still here. If we love Him, His Spirit indwells our hearts.

Now, He’s not only God with us, as if that weren’t far more than we deserve.

Now, He’s God in us.

This Christmas, in the middle of everything else you have to do, take time to stop and remember. Remember that God came to dwell with us, and that now He dwells in us.

Then praise Him for the incredible love, mercy, and kindness He has shown to us.

Remember that He’s not God up there. He’s God down here, and with us, and in us.

Jesus, we’re so glad you’re with us.

Matthew 1:23—The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel—which means, “God with us.”

Helpless

Megan Breedlove No Comments

My daughter, Lindsey, is pretty independent. At three and a half, she’s already been able to make her own PB&J sandwiches for months now. She likes to do things on her own, thank you, or at least give it a good, hard try before admitting she needs help.

I love this about her. She’s so very competent, and she can accomplish far more than she would otherwise be able to because of her can-do attitude.

I remember one time, though, when she was about three and a half months old. I heard her crying and went to see what was the matter. Her bice—our term for “pacifier”—had fallen out of her mouth, and she couldn’t figure out how to get it back in. It was obvious that she was trying to reach it, but she couldn’t. She simply didn’t possess the physical skill.

Oh, she possessed the desire, all right. She knew what she wanted and was doing everything in her little baby power to get it. It’s just that her little baby power didn’t amount to enough. She was helpless to accomplish her desire. So she lay there crying, unable to satisfy herself, dependent on someone else to come help her.

In the same way, we need help from God. We, too, are unable to satisfy ourselves. We can try with all our might to reach our goal, but we can’t fulfill our own needs. We may enjoy considerable success in this life and be able to purchase all or most of what we want. But ultimately, we still can’t satisfy ourselves at our deepest level without help.

That’s why God sent Jesus to earth. He knew we needed help. Beginning with Adam and Eve, and continuing with everyone since, the human race had messed ourselves up so badly that we became completely disconnected from ultimate fulfillment, which comes only through relationship with God. Because of our sin, we had cut ourselves off from God, and we were and are completely unable to get back to Him through our own efforts.

We were stumbling around trying to help ourselves and failing, and God would have been completely just in leaving us that way. But He didn’t. In His grace and mercy, He sent His Son Jesus to earth, to be born of a virgin, live a sinless life, and die an undeserved death, taking our punishment upon Himself. And as if removing the punishment of hell weren’t enough, He also offered us complete fulfillment again through a renewed relationship with Him.

We are still helpless to satisfy ourselves. But God Almighty has offered to satisfy us. He saw us floundering and knew we’d never improve our condition on our own, no matter how hard we tried. So He made a way for us to come back and find that perfect fulfillment that we were made to long for, which can be found only in Him.

Just as I saw Lindsey lying helpless in her crib, God looked down from eternity and saw you and me helpless in time, and He came down Himself to help us.

God Himself left His throne to come down and help you. To help me. To help all who will accept the necessity of His Son’s sacrifice on their behalf and acknowledge His lordship in their lives.

Why? For His glory. But also for the same reason I helped Lindsey: love.

I put her pacifier back in her mouth because I loved her and wanted her to have peace.

Jesus came to earth and lived and died for you and me because He wanted us to have peace.

In our helplessness, He gave us the help we needed. And He didn’t just do it once. He continues to do it today and every day.

What incredible love and compassion.

Isaiah 9:2—The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.

Matthew 9:36—When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.

Preparing Him Room

Megan Breedlove No Comments

A few years ago, I began a new Christmas tradition with my children. Each day of Advent, which begins December 1 and lasts until Christmas, we do an activity designed to illustrate a particular aspect of Christ’s birth. Most of them, I design myself, taking into account the ages and abilities of my children.

One activity they always really enjoy is called the Mall Treasure Hunt. I use ClipArt to create a sheet with eight to ten Christmas-themed pictures, such as a wreath, a candy cane, and a wrapped gift. Of course, I always include a picture of Baby Jesus in the manger. I print out one sheet for each child, and we drive to the mall.

At the mall, the kids’ job is to find each of the items pictured on their paper. Excitedly, they point out the things they have seen, and everyone crosses them off. They’re usually able to find most of the items pretty quickly. But they always have trouble finding one: the baby Jesus.

That, my friends, is the point. Baby Jesus isn’t at the mall.

“Why not?” Ellie asked one year. “Why wouldn’t people want Him?”

I explain that there are many reasons Jesus is not represented at the mall. Some people don’t believe He was anyone special, and don’t love Him. Some people are afraid that if they welcome Jesus, other people won’t shop at their stores. Some people might not know about Him.

On the way out of the mall and then home, we talk about why we do welcome Jesus into our homes. It’s because we believe He’s Who He said He is—the Son of God, I tell them. Because of Who He is and what He did for us, we worship Him, and we love Him.

Then, I ask them what we can do to show Jesus that He is welcome at our house, and to show others, too.

We can tell Him He’s welcome, they say. We can pray to Him and decorate for Him.

What can we do to let others know that He’s welcome at our house? I ask.

That question’s harder to answer. The kids usually give ideas like decorating. Last year, Ellie suggested that we could tell people He is welcome at our house.

Indeed. That’s basically what it comes down to—showing and telling. One doesn’t have much effect without the other. We need to do both.

It’s so easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle of making our homes look beautiful, buying and wrapping the right toys, and cooking the right food that sometimes Jesus gets crowded out of His own celebration. So I encourage you to spend some time thinking about how you will make sure Jesus has a place in your home this Christmas.

What will you do this year to let Jesus know that He’s welcome in your home?

What will you do to let others know that you welcome Jesus?

What will you do to show Jesus that He’s welcome not only in your home, but in your heart?

How will you prepare Him room this season of celebrating His birth?

Luke 2:6-7—While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

Heaven at McDonald’s

Megan Breedlove No Comments

One day a few weeks ago, the kids and I were on our way home from the YMCA. It was near lunchtime, and as they usually do, the kids began lobbying for stopping at McDonald’s for lunch. This time, I said yes.

“Yayyyyy!” they shouted.

I was glad to take them. I didn’t feel like cooking anyway. I also love it when I get major brownie points from the kids for doing something I’m happy to do. Then, too, I still love McDonald’s, as I have since I was a kid. So I drove them to the one we usually visit.

Immediately when we got inside, the kids headed for the play area. I gave the clerk our order, watching as they piled the tray three feet high with our meals. I grabbed the ketchup and straws and a handful of napkins and found a table in the play area.

The kids ate about half their meals, then decided it was time to go play. They ran off, leaving me at the table by myself, which was fine. It was actually rather peaceful. I opened the book I’d brought with me and began to read.

I read for a few minutes, periodically looking up to check for the kids. One, two, three, four. Good. All there.

When it was finally time to go, I slipped a bookmark between the pages and closed the book. I was really beginning to enjoy it and wished I didn’t have to stop reading.

You see, the book was about heaven. I’d just had the chance to sit and contemplate the glorious place that will be my eternal home. No wonder I was reluctant to get moving. No wonder I’d felt so at peace. What could be better than meditating on heaven and the God Who awaits me there?

Incredibly, this magnificent, loving God had given me a taste of heaven right there in the middle of the McDonald’s playland. Sitting there on a yellow plastic bench, my soul was able to commune with Him as I imagined the place He has prepared for me.

If imagining heaven while in the midst of laughing, shouting kids and the smell of french fries was so wonderful, how much more wonderful will it be when I actually get there? I love the life God has given me, but I do long for that day when I will reach the home I was made for and live forever with the God I love.

Until then, I’ll have to read about heaven, meditate on it, and ask the Holy Spirit to communicate even a fraction of its glories to me. I won’t be able to fully understand or experience heaven until I’m there.

But I will be able to sit in a plastic booth and connect with the One who created both me and heaven, because God can bring a touch of heaven anytime, anywhere.

So the next time you go to McDonald’s and eat in the playland, and you see a mom reading a book and occasionally looking up to check for her kids with a big grin on her face, that’s probably me.

Come join me. Let’s think about heaven together. After all, we’ll both be there one day. So let’s learn about our future home. Let’s be grateful that God lets us experience tastes of it now. And may our we respond to these glimpses of our future home with glory and praise to the One Who has prepared it for us.

1 Corinthians 2:9—No eye has seen, nor ear heard, and it has not occurred to the heart of man, what God has prepared for those who love him.

Partial View

Megan Breedlove No Comments

My family is part of a homeschool co-op. One of the biggest benefits our co-op offers is called Tuesday School. Tuesday School takes place on Tuesday mornings and lasts for three hours. During this time, students from K-12 can take a variety of classes and enjoy time with their friends. Also during the same hours, there are “classes” for ages infant through four years. The younger children’s classes are similar to Sunday School or perhaps Vacation Bible School.

During first hour, I am assigned to be an assistant in the four-year-olds class. The lead teacher is an amazing woman. She is unfailingly patient, encouraging, and creative, and she speaks to the children in a pleasant, upbeat voice that draws them to her. She possesses the amazing abilities of being able to attract kids into the activities even when they’re distracted and of knowing how to discipline in a truly positive, constructive manner that doesn’t embarrass the child.

One morning, our class went upstairs for the educational activities time. The teacher gathered all the students in front of her and sat down on the floor with them. She showed them a book she had brought. Each page in the book had a small square cut out of the middle. Through the square, you could see a portion of the picture on the page behind it. The teacher asked the children to guess what the picture was with only a two-inch square of the actual photo to give them a clue. For example, the small, square picture would seem to show a desolate wasteland, but the entire picture would turn out to reveal an elephant.

I enjoyed the activity, even though I got most of the answers wrong. The children enjoyed it, too. They would all laugh delightedly together when someone guessed “tree bark” and it turned out to be a volcano. It was pretty funny.

What isn’t funny, though, is when we make mistaken judgments such as these in real life.

Often, we think we see the big picture, when in reality we are as far off as we can be. We glimpse a tiny snapshot of a situation or of our circumstances, and we assume we know the big picture, when only God does.

We see a job loss and think the big picture is financial ruin, when God knows that the big picture is really learning to trust him.

Our child disappoints us, and we think the big picture is that we’ve failed as a parent, when God knows that in reality, the picture is all about realizing that we are not completely in control of any human being, no matter what we like to think.

Or, most painful, someone we love dies, and we see nothing but devastation, when God knows that what is yet to be revealed is the awful beauty of clinging to Him and being enfolded in His arms when the world all around us goes mad.

It’s hard to see pain in the small picture and not assume that the big picture is nothing but more of the same. But only God truly knows how every detail in life fits into the masterpiece He is creating.

The picture that morning at Tuesday School looked like a desolate wasteland; really, it was an elephant. Maybe the small picture in your life looks like a desolate wasteland, too. But what is it really?

Could it be that what looks like a bleak, empty landscape is really part of a beautiful work of art such as only God can create?

It can be, and it is. You see, God takes what looks like ashes to us and makes something beautiful from them. God doesn’t create or allow ashes in our lives to no good purpose. He always has a plan, and His plan is always to His glory. The full picture He is designing is always beautiful.

So what do we do when all we can see is a two-inch-by-two-inch square, and that square looks useless, painful, or agonizing? We trust the Master Artist. We let Him compose the masterpiece. And we don’t worry if we can’t see the whole picture. One day, we will.

And it will be beautiful.

1 John 3:2—Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

Isaiah 61:1-3– The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the LORD for the display of his splendor.

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