"A Life Well Lived"
In February, we lost one of our young marrieds. Devin and Mati McGovern were married for 4 years, 4 months and 4 days. Last year I drove to San Antonio for Mati's citizenship ceremony; less than a year later Eric presided over a 37-year-old friend's funeral with his wife and our friend, widowed at age 33.
We miss Devin so much already. He was a wonderful person and can't hardly be forgotten. But "it's not goodbye... it's just see ya later." THAT means there is a reunion to look forward to! I cannot wait to see how God is going to continue to use Mati to minister to and through others as He unfolds her future while healing her broken heart. For God is the Master of transforming broken hearts and shattered dreams. Only He can put us back together again.
"To grow spiritually, our commitment must be reviewed and renewed often. As we rededicate ourselves to God, our lives become altars to Him." - from a stack of handwritten note cards Devin's wife Mati found in his car.
We kicked off 2010 with Pastor Tim's new series, Recovering God's Image In Me and took it online via Facebook. Thanks to all those who participated directly and indirectly. I pray you will unearth God's treasure in you and share it with others. And keep the conversations coming. I love connecting with y'all and marvel at what you've faced in life and how you've tried to navigate in order to move forward. Don't give up. Remember... some people change!
Check out our veteran REALife group members' new additions, or "Munchkins On Loan" as they call them! We are so proud of newlyweds Mike and Stephanie Whitson for their leap of faith into instant parenthood. We know God will bless their efforts to re-direct little lives at a time when they need it most. Share in their adventures via their blog: http://www.munchkinsonloan.blogspot.com/
"RE-MEMBERING involves putting ourselves back together, recovering our identity, reclaiming the wholeness of our lives. When we forget who we are we do not merely drop some data. We dis-member ourselves, with unhappy consequences for our work and hearts." - Parker J. Palmer
1-5 Keep and live out the entire commandment that I'm commanding you today so that you'll live and prosper and enter and own the land that God promised to your ancestors. Remember every road that God led you on for those forty years in the wilderness, pushing you to your limits, testing you so that he would know what you were made of, whether you would keep his commandments or not. He put you through hard times. He made you go hungry. Then he fed you with manna, something neither you nor your parents knew anything about, so you would learn that men and women don't live by bread only; we live by every word that comes from God's mouth. Your clothes didn't wear out and your feet didn't blister those forty years. You learned deep in your heart that God disciplines you in the same ways a father disciplines his child.
6-9 So it's paramount that you keep the commandments of God, your God, walk down the roads he shows you and reverently respect him. God is about to bring you into a good land, a land with brooks and rivers, springs and lakes, streams out of the hills and through the valleys. It's a land of wheat and barley, of vines and figs and pomegranates, of olives, oil, and honey. It's land where you'll never go hungry—always food on the table and a roof over your head. It's a land where you'll get iron out of rocks and mine copper from the hills.
10 After a meal, satisfied, bless God, your God, for the good land he has given you.
11-16 Make sure you don't forget God, your God, by not keeping his commandments, his rules and regulations that I command you today. Make sure that when you eat and are satisfied, build pleasant houses and settle in, see your herds and flocks flourish and more and more money come in, watch your standard of living going up and up—make sure you don't become so full of yourself and your things that you forget God, your God, the God who delivered you from Egyptian slavery; the God who led you through that huge and fearsome wilderness, those desolate, arid badlands crawling with fiery snakes and scorpions; the God who gave you water gushing from hard rock; the God who gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something your ancestors had never heard of, in order to give you a taste of the hard life, to test you so that you would be prepared to live well in the days ahead of you.
17-18 If you start thinking to yourselves, "I did all this. And all by myself. I'm rich. It's all mine!"—well, think again. Remember that God, your God, gave you the strength to produce all this wealth so as to confirm the covenant that he promised to your ancestors—as it is today.
19-20 If you forget, forget God, your God, and start taking up with other gods, serving and worshiping them, I'm on record right now as giving you firm warning: that will be the end of you; I mean it—destruction. You'll go to your doom—the same as the nations God is destroying before you; doom because you wouldn't obey the Voice of God, your God.
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