As a young mom, clutter was always a battle. The Second Law of Thermodynamics – that all closed systems tend to drift toward a state of disorder – played out daily in my home! (I’m married to an engineer, can you tell?) I cleaned up the house and my four little ones and their mass of toys would bring disorder sweeping in right behind me.
One of the biggest culprits of this toy mess, and my biggest love-hate relationship was with Legos! I loved the creativity they generated in my kids, but hated the chaos on the floor of their room, particularly when I had to walk through there. Barefoot. In the dark! Ouch!
Each morning the Lego bin was dumped. In every spare moment – before school, after school, all day on holidays and weekends – cities and machines, craft and people of all sorts were meticulously assembled by my little horde of creators. Over the course of the day there were frequent requests of “Mom, come look at this one!” After supper was prime Lego play time, no school and often Dad would join in the fun. There were pirates and natives of tropical islands, British soldiers and space explorers and of course every conceivable building, device, or mode of transportation these Lego people might need. As you might imagine, when bath and bedtime approached it was war. “No! Don’t make me put them up!” “Whyyyy? I just got finished building it!” Sound familiar?
After too many bedtime showdowns, I realized something had to change. I’d been going to bed every night wound up from dealing with the kids. As the saying goes, “Necessity is the mother of invention,” so I came up with a solution.
Now, I’m not a “perfect house” kind of gal; I want our family to be able to actually live in, play in, and enjoy our home. My goal for picking up the toys was a safety issue. If the kids got sick in the middle of the night, or if there was a fire or other emergency, the children needed to be able to safely walk out of the room and their dad and I be able to safely walk in without crippling ourselves or falling over toys. It dawned on me that all we needed was a safe path through our personal Legoland.
The next night I introduced new procedures to the kids. They could henceforth leave the creations they had built spread out all over their room as long as there was a cleared path between their bed and the door. They readily agreed. That first night I helped clean up in order to show them what I considered a decent “clear path.” After that it was smooth sailing. Each night 10 minutes before bath time “Clear a path to your bed!” would ring out from Mom or Dad, baths would proceed without frustrated gripes (at least the gripes about having to pick up toys), and bedtime became peaceful.
So what does all this have to do with anything spiritual? I think it gives us a glimpse of the love of the Father.
As I saw my children, made in the image of Creator God, creating their Lego landscape, I saw sheer joy and love. Joy in creating them. Uniquely. Joy in talking with them. Joy in planning the whole script of their Lego lives and moving them from here to there. Joy in giving them new homes and cars and hats. Joy in being with them first thing the next morning and spending the day with them. Joy in protecting them from the crawling baby brother. Joy in preserving them from mom who would require destroying (putting up) things each night. They loved the creative process, loved what they made, loved interacting with it, and loved showing it off to others.
Just think about the loving care that went in to creating everything we know. Creator God spent thought and energy and love and passion preparing this world we take for granted. What must have gone into his ideas for making the earth a ball and dangling it in space with beautiful heavenly bodies and spinning it and making it of dirt and rocks and water and air? What creative joy did He get out of making volcanos, clouds, hurricanes, and caves? Did He do all 
those majestic things just because one day He would delight in our joy and awe of seeing and experiencing these amazing sights? What about the variety of plants? Couldn’t he just as easily have made one kind of plant to cover the whole earth that fed us all, created all the oxygen, and did everything else He wanted plants to do? And the animals? Again, huge variety. Did He make slugs sticky so little kids would say “Ew!”? Did he make rugged elephants to reveal His strength, downy chicks to show His gentleness, peacocks to reveal His beauty, 
marsupials to remind us He takes care of us when we’re helpless? And did He make giraffes just so one day in 2017 He could watch us with joy all come together online to wait on the birth of a giraffe for weeks? On and on I could go. But the question is still Why?
Ladies, just as we get joy from the creative process and the things we make, Father God gets great joy through us, His created masterpiece. What creative joy there must have been when He dreamed up just who we would be and gave us our particularly unique physical appearance, personality and abilities. He enjoys talking with us and being with us. He receives joy each day as He sees us live out the script, the plan, He has set in place for our lives. He rejoices every time He gets to give us something He knows we desire. He loves seeing each of us first thing every morning and spending His day with us. He enjoys protecting and preserving us from the things that might hurt or destroy us. He loves the whole process, from bringing us into being to relating with us to showing us off. He just simply loves us.
We were created for God’s good pleasure and to bring glory to Him. I encourage you today to bask in His love. Then live out your day in His love. We love because he first loved us. (1 John 4:19) When we know we are truly and deeply loved by our Creator, we will operate differently in this ole world.
For this is what the Lord says—he who created the heavens, he is God;
he who fashioned and made the earth, he founded it;
he did not create it to be empty, but formed it to be inhabited—
he says: “I am the Lord, and there is no other.
I have not spoken in secret, from somewhere in a land of darkness;
I have not said to Jacob’s descendants, ‘Seek me in vain.’
I, the Lord, speak the truth; I declare what is right.
“Gather together and come; assemble, you fugitives from the nations.
Ignorant are those who carry about idols of wood, who pray to gods that cannot save.
Declare what is to be, present it—let them take counsel together.
Who foretold this long ago, who declared it from the distant past?
Was it not I, the Lord? And there is no God apart from me,
a righteous God and a Savior; there is none but me.
“Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth;
for I am God, and there is no other.
By myself I have sworn, my mouth has uttered in all integrity
a word that will not be revoked:
Before me every knee will bow; by me every tongue will swear.
They will say of me, ‘In the Lord alone are deliverance and strength.’”
All who have raged against him will come to him and be put to shame.
But all the descendants of Israel will find deliverance in the Lord
and will make their boast in him.
Isaiah 45:18-25
As he was home recovering, we received a call from the hospital where he had gone after his accident. The nurse advised that the radiologist had read his scans and that he had a lesion on his right kidney, unrelated to the accident, that needed to be checked out. Seriously??!! Are you kidding me??!! Did God allow he accident to discover this??!! OVERWHELMED!
We were advised to come back in 6 weeks for my husband to have a repeat CT scan to determine growth or changes and go from there. It was a long, long 6 weeks! OVERWHELMED! In the interim, some days fear consumed us and some days we had incredible faith. And our firstborn got married during this time; we had a lot going on for sure. Six weeks passed and we went to the urologist unsure of the outcome. OVERWHELMED!
The doctor was laughing and smiling so big, I think because he too knew the truth and he too was overwhelmed. Whatever your life looks like today, stuck in a season of pouring rain from the circumstances of this life, grab hold of the Savior. Hang on precious one because the sunshine is coming!
Today as I gathered up another bag, I entered the unused bedroom in the basement that contains the leftovers of my mom’s life. Once again the aroma of her face cream, the sight of her old kitchen utensils and the stuff of her life – her address book, her phone, her purse – all threatened to undo me once again. Then I caught sight of her sifter. That precious old kitchen utensil! The one I begged her to let me help with from the time I was 5 years old and that I had seen her use hundreds of times in the past brought a smile. And I thought – I’ll take that upstairs and clean it up and use it in my kitchen. So now it sits soaking in my sink.
He has a plan for us, just like I have a plan for that sifter. You see, this week is my eldest’s 30th birthday, and I intend to teach some of my closest loves (my grandsons) to use “Peppymint’s” sifter as we make their dad a birthday cake. I’m planning a celebration, and that sifter is central to my plan! No, it won’t be noticed by many. And yes, it will end up sitting in my cabinet except for maybe a few days a month when I happen to bake. But it is not forgotten. It is not useless. It is crucial! It is cherished! And so are you!
Well, there was one thing I knew without a shadow of a doubt and that was how to present The Four Spiritual Laws. That afternoon in my own room I went through The Four Spiritual Laws booklet and prayed to receive Christ. I have always felt that I was the first person that I ever led to the Lord. I was baptized to publicly profess my salvation. Was I saved? Yes! There was then, and is today, no question as to whether I am saved. I know that I know.
agonizing wound. I remember, for me, it was the “Be thankful you’ve got three healthy kids at home” reminder. I was thankful. But I missed this precious soul I would never get to meet this side of heaven. I needed to remember this child and grieve this child—even if I never held him or her physically, I held the dream of them in my heart. Reorienting my life without THIS child would take time and tears.
He brought the peace only He could give. He reminded us of His good gifts, even in the midst of our hurt and pain. He reminded us that He uses these moments of grief to draw us closer to His heart. When we find fellowship with Him in the darkest, most broken places of life, we find His love more extravagant, more remarkable, more dependable, more real, more tangible, than we ever have before.
I believe prayer is one of the simplest yet most profound and powerful parts of our life with Christ. It is beyond our understanding in many ways. Prayer is so simple that a little child can do it, yet so powerful and profound that it intimidates lawyers and doctors. It can be sporadic or a disciplined pursuit. Prayer is earthly words spoken that are then acted on by all the power of our Omnipotent Creator. It is at the same time practical and mystical, in that it is a practical action we are instructed to do by scripture, yet it has spiritual ramifications that are beyond our comprehension. Prayer sets in action the spiritual forces in the heavenly realms and is eternal. When we pray a prayer it is never lost floating around in space. Revelation 5:8 tells us “And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people” and they are there in heaven eternally before the Father.
I am Sam.
Priceless 
