Encouraging Words Devotional

Do you have a millennial living in your house—someone between the ages of 22 and 37? Or perhaps they’re your employee. Want to motivate them? Then ask them one question, says a popular business newsletter.  The question is this: What is your dream?

Remember when you were a kid and you’d done something wrong? You knew when you got home you’d have to face your parents—and take the consequences, so you took the longest route home, dragging your feet all the way. You were miserable.

In her book Calm My Anxious Heart, Linda Dillow tells about a young bride who married a Marine, thinking that living in foreign countries and traveling the globe would be romantic and exciting.  Two years later, lonely and deeply discontented, she poured out her complaints in a letter to her mother. She had no friends, she said. She couldn’t speak the language and didn’t think it was worth it to learn because at any time her husband might be transferred to another country. Worst of all, she said, her groom was never home.  She ended the letter saying, “I can’t take this any longer. I’m coming home.”

There’s an old proverb that goes, “He who answers before listening—that is his folly and shame.” Yet, how many of us do just that! When people are talking to us, we’re watching for that split second when their lips clamp shut so we can start talking and give them the benefit of our great wisdom. In fact, sometimes we just interrupt.  I guess that’s because what we have to say is so much more important than what they are saying, right?

You’re confronted with a crucial decision and you don’t know which way to go. You search your Bible—you pray—you look for God’s direction but you can’t seem to find an answer. You cry out, “God, I was following You. Where did You go? Where do I go now?” The crisis you face is like a vast ocean in front of you—and you know there are no paths to follow in oceans! You feel like a blind person groping your way.

You’ve probably heard the saying, “People don’t care how much you know--until they know how much you care.” It’s true, isn’t it.

In his painting “The Helping Hand,” French artist Emile Renouf portrays an old fisherman seated in his rowboat with a little girl next to him. Both the old man and small child have their hands on the large oar as they make their way across the water.  From the look on the little girl’s face, you can see that she is intense in her efforts to help him row the boat, although, of course, it is really his strong arms that are doing the work.

Jan Johnson says for a long period of time she was plagued by what she calls “the committee that lives in my head.” She said there were four people on the committee, and in her thoughts they were continually harassing her.

Before we began eating our meal together, my Dad bowed his head.  I can still hear his deep voice as he prayed,

For things we like to eat,

Thy loving gift of food,

We thank Thee, Lord, today,

For Thou art kind and good.

Amen.[i]

[i] Mary Alice Jones, Editor, Prayers for Little Children (Chicago, IL: Rand McNally Company, 1937), 59.

Some of us cope well with change, and some of us don’t. For some people a move is an exciting challenge; they can hardly wait to see what is around the next corner. For others, moving to a new location is a frightening experience tearing them loose from all that is familiar and secure.