Bibledoorajar: Food at no cost

     Tomorrow many of us will take the time to honor the memory of those who sacrificed themselves for the good of the many. On the Main Street of our little town, a sign reads: "All gave some, some gave all." It is good to stop and think of what we have received at no cost to us personally.
      God gave the people of Israel manna to eat at no cost. It was a gift from Him and He gave it freely over and over. Jesus was given by God as Bread from Heaven. He was(is) a gift at no cost. God has ensured that His Word has been sustained in the world by seeing that it has been translated into many, many languages and dialects. Spiritually eating is available to us at no cost. If eaten appropriately, the Bread of Heaven sustains us until we can eat again.
     Tomorrow I will spend Memorial Day with a family who will remember those of their family who served in the.military. One of the main ones on their mind will be the aunt who sacrificed her life in Italy as she cared for wounded soldiers at Anzio. The incoming missed the Red Cross on the tent apparently or perhaps the enemy just did not care. Her fellow nurses called her Tex. She died instantly.
     But tomorrow those of us who are Christians will also remember the ultimate no cost sacrifice that God's Gift made for us. He freely died for you and me that we might survive if we choose to feed on Him and the truth found in His Word.

Happy Memorial Day

Bibledoorajar Thinks of Memorial Day

I awoke this morning thinking of all who had gone before me and what they had given to secure my future. I read a story about a 90 year old woman who traveled to the WWII museum in New Orleans.
She hoped to see a picture of the boy she dated in High School and to whom she had given a diary just before he joined the Marines. The diary never made it back to her but years later she was surprised to find it in the museum, a memorial to the young soldier's life. He had said in the diary that it would be a memorial to his days in the Marines. One of the first things he wrote before he was shot between the eyes by an enemy sniper, was that he hoped whoever found the diary would return it to that girl who filled his heart in high school and to whose memory he  had clinged. That girl, now 90, had hoped to see a picture, maybe of him working with some of his fellow Marines, but instead she found his memorial to his life and her enduring influence on it.

We often disregard our connection to others and how the doings of our lives affect them and us. We discount many things that under the Divine become "dots" that connect much more than we realize. The Bible tells that human connections, if bad, can lead to Divine retribution, if good, to Divine blessings. Laban took advantage of Jacob in many ways thinking he would prosper. And he did prosper because God was prospering Jacob, not because his wily ways garnered the blessings. Laban's ways perplexed Jacob, but he waited patiently for God to make plain His way for him. Jacob was in a strange land and pressing questions about whether he should leave began to be a part of Jacob's thought processes.

Today, we think of all those whose thought processes led them to agree to put their lives on the line for our freedoms. We honor God for all the ways He blessed during these horrible encounters and for all the thoughts that turned to Him in times of trouble. I hope many of them are written in God's book of remembrance--the Lamb's Book of Life. Have you considered whether yours is recorded there as an everlasting memorial to His goodness?