"Bless Your Heart"

Heavy traffic stretched our normal 12-hour trip home to 14 hours. We thank God for keeping us safe, as well as thousands of others. We saw a couple of minor accidents, but nothing serious. It’s amazing how crowded the highway can be and yet travelers remain safe.

Since Chuck prefers to drive, I used almost all the daylight hours of the trip to read hundreds of newsletters from SIM workers. (I save them to read while traveling.) This is my favorite way to find story ideas for future magazines. This time I also found ideas for my life.

A gifted journalist who serves in South America has been back in the States for a few months. She has invested some of her time for Bible study. Recently she’s been studying the word “bless.” She passed along many Scripture references and great ideas. She closed her letter with this: “What does it mean to say . . . ‘God bless you’? I think of it as, ‘May God be present and active in you.’” She’s discovered that to bless someone is to “speak good things on them,” rather than speaking words that would discourage them. She says, “This sort of blessing has the power to heal wounds and the power to set someone on a good path. In essence, it is to believe in them.” I’ll be watching today for a chance to “speak good things on” someone. How about you?

A new worker in a remote valley in South America writes in her letter about discovering desperate needs there: drunkenness, wife and child abuse, occult practices, poverty, and more. She writes, “As I made my way down one of the ranges that surround the valley, I asked, ‘Is there any possible way I can change the situation? How do I fight it?’” I could empathize with her feeling of helplessness. Then she settled on a wonderful answer, a rule for living that can’t fail.
Love God.
Love people.
Tell people the truth.
Pray.

We can all do that, with God’s help, can’t we?

We are thankful to be home, filled with wonderful memories. I’ll get blood drawn early this morning for a CA 125 test, and then we’ll both tackle the work that’s waiting after a week’s absence. Thanks for your love and prayers.

Love,
Carol