Saturday Thoughts

 This was the sunrise yesterday morning...I love how the trees frame the sun to make it look as though it is entering the earth through a doorway...

And as the sun enters through the doorway...or a gate, perhaps...an "Eastern Gate"....it spreads its light around and dispels the darkness...

bringing us a renewed hope and peace for the new day...

I look forward to the day that The SON Himself, our Messiah, will enter through the Eastern Gate , and dispel all the darkness for us forever.  

Today is Saturday, a day to rest, play, clean house, cook, bake, get caught up on things left undone all week...prepare for Sunday, the Lord's Day...the true day of rest, worship. spending time with the Lord, with our friends at church, our family, a day to rejoice, a day to pray, a day to prepare our hearts for whatever comes next...For some, it will be another ordinary week...off to work or school, or whatever other appointments you may have...and for way too many it will be a week to continue to pray for deliverance from the mud and mire of the storms of last week...a week to try to put some semblance of normalcy back together if at all possible...for many, it won't be possible. Many have no homes to clean, no kitchen to cook in, no beds to sleep in, and still no electricity even if they do have their homes...And sadly, for too many, they have lost loved ones, they are still looking for loved ones who are lost, they are lost themselves, in sorrow, exhaustion, and the feeling that nothing will ever be the same again.  And it won't. Life will never be the same way as it was a little over a week ago.  Lives have been changed forever...and many will never be the same again.  

Ah, but then we look at the weather report, and there is another storm on the horizon! One that is headed straight for the Florida peninsula!  Thankfully, it doesn't appear to be headed back up to Georgia and the Carolinas, but it is definitely headed for the Florida Gulf coast, the mainland, and then across the state to the Atlantic coast, and most likely it will bring a LOT of rain and wind with it, so we all need to be prepared no matter what part of the state we are living in!

I don't want to sound like doom and gloom here...that's not my nature. But I am being realistic and facing facts...there's a whole lot of tragedy and sorrow going on around us. And it's not just here in this part of the country, but it is in many other places too, and especially around the world in Israel and Ukraine and other places of much unrest and sadness. 

More than anything, we need to pray for one another, for those in dire distress and need of much help...and try to do whatever we are able to do to lift up the fallen.  

Today we took a little walk and I noticed something in this location that I had not noticed before:

It is an old sidewalk, leading to a bare spot in a lot, where once an old house stood.

I just couldn't help myself. I had to walk down this path and stand in the spot where the house once stood.

I looked across the new 4-lane highway that now stands in the way of the once much grander view this house had of the little lake across the way. They had to move the house to make room for the highway.

I know you'll think I'm silly, but as I stood there in that spot, I thought about all the many years that grand old house had stood there, (over 100 years, I believe), 

This was the house that stood there, and this picture was taken when we happened to be passing by back in 2018 and saw them actually moving it to its new location.

And I thought about all the years families had lived in this very spot, living their lives, raising their children, going through all the motions of living from the time it was built in 1890...can you imagine? They must have had a horse and buggy here too!  And they probably didn't have electricity at first, and had to do everything the old-fashioned way! Right here on this very spot, people lived, loved, worked hard, probably had a nice garden, taught their children to be good citizens and hopefully to love God and their fellow man, then laughed and cried, maybe even birthed babies, lived and died. Right here in this spot.  And somehow I couldn't just walk away without saying something about that...it felt like hallowed ground.

This was the view out the other side of the house, which probably looks a lot different now than it did then. There used to be a train track right out there in the middle, and the trains would come and go every day into this little town. It was all a lot different then than it is today, and maybe even better then than it is today...but then again, maybe not. Progress can be a good thing...but that's still a matter of opinion.  

I wrote about this old house HERE, when it was literally moved from this location to a new lot when they widened the highway.  The house now belongs to the Florida Dept. of Transportation, and is still waiting to be sold or auctioned off of something. I feel sad that it is still sitting there, waiting for new owners, new people to call it "home", and make its walls ring with laughter once again.

I picked a little bouquet of flowers from the old house lot, and brought them home with me as a kind of memorial to the memory of that house and the life it once "lived".

I thought about all the people who have been displaced from their homes because of the storm last week...many will never see their old homes again because they were totally washed away. The places where they stood may be caked in mud or covered with rocks and boulders from the many mud and rockslides that took place in the mountains...or here in Florida they may be washed away from the storm surge of the ocean waters and totally destroyed...and lives are changed forever.

But the memory lives on in the hearts of everyone who ever lived and loved in those homes...the memory is something that doesn't just go away overnight.  Even when a person gets a brand new home to replace the one that was lost, for whatever reason, it's never quite the same. 

I guess I'm a bit nostalgic tonight, but I write this to honor those who have been through so much heartache this past week, and for those who have lost homes, and a way of life that will never come back the way it was, and then for those who lost loved ones, and life is changed forever.

May God comfort the hearts of those who are hurting, grieving, and still in shock.

May He give you strength to keep moving forward, to have the courage to keep trying and not give up.

Amen.