Hi everyone,
I was talking to my brother-in-law yesterday about how quickly our kids are growing up. His are older than ours, and he was saying how difficult it was to trust them to drive. I could understand that, not because I don’t trust our oldest son as he’s learning to drive, but how my parents couldn’t trust me to drive at all until I was almost 18. But I think what I feel most worried about is how our kids have their own phones and access to the internet and all that.
I feel compelled to say that their phones were all hand-me-down phones and their numbers are actually a whopping $0 a month (that’s not a typo, it was the deal that came with our home internet package), or I’m not sure if they’d have phones at all (actually they probably would have, but maybe not for this long… it’s been about 3 or 4 years for all three of them).
Anyway, what I find funny about at least our daughter having her own phone is that at the tender age of 11, she still doesn’t get how. I mean, she knows how to watch videos and play games, but somehow she doesn’t use the phone as a phone (i.e. to communicate with others… namely her parents).
So instead, she uses her mom’s phone a lot. And often she would text me from it, and then qualify the message by saying something like “this is your daughter btw”.
Yeah, like the spelling and grammatical errors didn’t give it away… I mean I could almost hear her voice when I read those texts, especially with the long line of emojis that follow them. It’s pretty obvious I’d think to anyone, even if they didn’t know how she talks normally.
That’s my kids for you.
Here are the readings for next week:
Acts 9:36-43
Psalm 23
Revelation 7:9-17
John 10:22-30
And a video of these readings being read:
Earlier in John chapter 10, Jesus promises us that those who know him know his voice. We might wonder how that’d be possible as we’ve never heard him audibly speak before. In this part of John 10, the people ask Jesus to speak to them plainly because they aren’t sure what to believe. And maybe we can relate to that.
Often we might not know what to believe. Sometimes we’re unsure if we are following the right path or principle. Sometimes it’s unclear if it’s Jesus talking to us or if it’s something else entirely.
The thing is, we are given tools to discern. We are given clues to help us figure it out. We are given God’s very Word in the form of Jesus to show us the way.
The way of grace. The way of peace. The way of love. That’s Jesus.
And that is our Good Shepherd. Leading us and guiding us throughout our lives. Of course, we might not always get it right, but know that we can’t be wrong when we act with grace, peace, and love. Because that is where we can hear Jesus’ voice, where we can see Jesus present among us, and where we can know God.
This is a gift, to know that our God is with us and leads us with a voice that might not be audible, but can be very apparent. So let’s open our eyes, ears, and heart to see, hear, and feel God with us!
Thanks be to God! Have a great week, everyone!