Encouraging Words Devotional

When I crawl in bed at night, sometimes my mind doesn't want to turn off--like a computer that has too many files open at the same time. The houseguests who are coming this weekend, the latest terrible shooting on the news, packing for an upcoming trip, the phone call from a friend whose son is at the point of death, a list for shopping that needs to be done first thing tomorrow morning. My mind flits from one to another. Oh, no, they're not all bad thoughts. It's just that there are so many of them.

My friend Dr. Richard Smith tells of counseling a woman who had been gang raped as a teen. Although she was a believer and said she had forgiven the men, years later the trauma still haunted her.

Do bedtime stories really matter? I mean, does it make any difference in the life of your kids whether or not at the end of the day you take the time to read them a story? ISIS thinks so. Islamic State has recently published a guidebook instructing mothers to tell their children bedtime stories about--get this, martyrdom and heroic jihadists.[1] When I read that, it made me shudder.

[1] Ammar Al Shamary and Gilgamesh Nabeel, USA Today, "Islamic State's New Killers," March 12, 2015, p. 1.

She flipped over the page of the calendar. The new page--February--stared back at her, decorated with its lacey hearts and pink roses. Valentine's Day? Love? Even though she was still in her late teens, she could not relate. In her despair, instead of going downstairs for a drink, she turned to her computer to reach out to a voice she had heard on a Christian radio program: "Guidelines, A Five-minute Commentary on Living." She wrote,

My friend Sonya Goodson posted this on her Facebook page: "I have crossed many bridges that I never came to . . . ."

Here's a thought that challenges me: "Prayer is bringing your wishes and worries to God; faith is leaving them there."[1] The "prayer" part is easy, but the "faith" part--that is, leaving our worries with God, is quite another matter, right?

[1] http://goo.gl/8qr7z3, accessed 7-27-2016.

"Just do the next thing" was the advice author Elisabeth Elliot gave to her daughter, Valerie, when she called on the phone one morning at a point of desperation. Homeschooling her eight children, Valerie had reached the end of her resources. "What do I do, Mom? I just can't go on."

Sometimes when you open Facebook Notifications on your phone or computer, you see a face you've never seen before--that is, until you glance at the name and realize it's someone you know well. The person has simply posted a new Profile picture--and you didn't immediately recognize who it is. Chances are it's a girlfriend of yours who has taken a new selfie in a stylish pose that she thinks makes her look prettier than the previous shot did. Come on, let's be honest: who ever posts an ugly picture of herself on Facebook?

Courtney Ellis tells of the time her family was driving down the highway when a deer darted out from the bushes, colliding with their car before her dad even saw the animal. The airbags deployed. The car was totaled. But fortunately no one was seriously hurt.

In a little book called "Diamond Dust," I found an anonymous quote that caught my attention. Here it is: "If, in spite of all your tears and prayers, God has left you in a dark place, perhaps it's because He knows there are still treasures to be found there."