Crooked Made Straight

Excerpts from devotional by Os Hillman.

"The crooked roads shall become straight, the rough ways smooth" (Luke 3:5).

I love the Global Positioning Systems (GPS) in the new cars. A voice comes on and tells me how far I have to go and when to turn. However, sometimes I get off course and the voice says: "Recalculating route." The GPS is telling me I have gone off course and it is now recalculating the route based on my wrong turn. Sometimes we can make wrong turns in our spiritual lives. We think we are going the right direction only to discover it was never God's will to enter that relationship, make that business deal, hire that person - the examples are limitless.

There is an amazing thing about God. He can make our crooked places straight. He has an ability to make whatever blunder you make turn out right. It may mean there might be some consequences to those decisions, but He will always allow your actions to work together for good for those called according to His purposes if we repent and seek Him fully to make things right. These lessons can even contribute to greater wisdom in our lives if we learn from our mistakes.

God's omnipotence is always one step ahead of our incompetence. Do you think He knew you would make that misstep? Absolutely. Do you think your life was planned even with that misstep figured in? Absolutely.

Isn't it comforting to know you cannot plan God out of the equation no matter how bad you mess up? He will always turn crooked places into straight places for those who are humble and contrite.

Do you need a crooked place straightened out today? Ask Him to straighten the course so you can flow in His perfect will for your life.

Muslim Demographics - YouTube Video

This video is quite eye opening. You'll just have to watch it to see. Makes me pray for many children, even though I'm already 34!

Time for Thyme

I have fallen in love with the herb thyme. It may be a little hard to tell from the picture, but it is covered with tiny, pink blossoms. I just love it. I've also planted more thyme, of a more compact, creeping variety, both in my herb garden in the back yard and then also surrounding a small pond that I actually dug out and created over the weekend in front of the house. One type is called lemon thyme and it is green and yellow and when you smell it, it's just like lemons - heavenly!!! I'll try to post some more pictures later, but enjoy this one first - and make some room in your garden for thyme!

Master Gardener

Wow! I can't believe it's been four weeks since I've posted something to this blog. You can blame spring time. I've been spending quite a bit of time outside trying to make some order out of the chaos that is my yard. I enjoy it sometimes and feel quite overwhelmed at other times. The planning part is my favorite, and dreaming, but actually getting out and getting it done is sometimes a challenge for this lazy girl. Although there are many things I enjoy about the great outdoors, I've always been more of an inside girl - watching TV, working on the computer, cross stitching, some other project. Gardening has not quite become therapy to me yet, but I hope that someday it will. I want it to. I love the idea of successfully growing my own vegetables and fruits. I want all kinds of berries, fruit trees, herbs, etc. And then I want to successfully cook with it. These days that sounds like a novelty so it's hard to believe that less than one hundred years ago that way of life was still mostly the norm. You grew veggies to survive, not merely as a hobby. I've actually toyed with the idea of taking a course to become a South Carolina Master Gardener. The next class starts here in August and runs through November, just four hours a week. It is during a weekday morning however, so I'd have to figure out how to make up those work hours at my job. It's doable and I'm still praying about it. After you complete the course it is required that you do 40 hours of community service in different ways spreading the knowledge that you've acquired. I can see myself really loving being able to teach others about different aspects of gardening, as teaching is definitely one of my gifts. So, we shall see. Maybe some day I'll sign my blog - Melinda Nye, Master Gardener.