Category: Devotionals

THE HONEYSUCKLE VINE

We kids loved to play around in our yard. Our mama had a variety of flowers and plants.

We had a rose bush right outside the back door that we called the Edward rosebush named for our little brother. With tiny red roses and thousands of tiny sharp thorns, it was hazardous, but we learned how to get close enough to pick the tiny rose. Pulling each little petal, we licked our little fingernails and put the petal on, to pretend our fingernails were painted red.

The clover was all around the yard, soft and sweet, so we lay in the yard going through the clover, looking for that lucky four-leaf clover. We picked the white flowers from the clover, split the stem, and linked them together to make a necklace.

Mother had honeysuckle vines too. I think she probably planted it on purpose, but soon found that it tried to take over the fence row. I can remember her working in the heat of the summer trying to chop out the honeysuckle to keep it from breaking down the fence. Once the honeysuckle took over, it tended to kill out the bush it was growing on.

We kids loved the honeysuckle too. We picked the little flower and sucked the nectar out of the neck of the flower, and sometimes wondered why Mama was working so hard to get rid of such a pretty flowering vine.
“ By faith Moses, when he became of age, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter,  choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin.” Hebrews 11:24-25 NKJV. Yes, sin does have pleasure for a season, but after a while sin breaks everything down and then kills.

When we make the choice that Moses made, we will become the person God intends for us to be. Moses first refused to enjoy the pleasures of sin and then he chose to join the people of God as their deliverer, even if it meant giving up all the things he could have had in Egypt.

What a good way to live. Refusing sin and choosing to follow God.

I find myself quoting my mother a lot lately. Like when someone had a run in her hose, mother always said, “Just keep them looking at your face.” Or she would say, “No one will ever notice on a galloping horse.”

Mother loved to quote the Bible, “And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye alo to them likewise” Luke 6:31. Or “To him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin” James 4:17.

There is no arguing with a mother who quotes the Word of God to you.

With all the rain that we’ve had lately, it brings memories of the Bull Creek floods of 1959, 1960, and 1999 in Vinita, Oklahoma. We lived through them all.

In about 1947, Mother and Dad bought a piece of property on North Second Street that was backed up by Bull Creek. Granddad and Dad built a 2-room block house on the new property. My mother who is 97 this year still lives in this home, which was added onto in the late 1950s and again in 1980s.

In the early spring of 1959, the creek started rising while we were in school. My sister talks about walking home from Riverside Elementary School, wading water, holding onto the bridge rail hand-over-hand on the sidewalk over the creek until she reached the end of the bridge.

I remember carrying a little girl we babysat for out of the house in water up to my chest and walking with her in my arms up to the north end of the block where the ground was higher. Quite an experience for a 10-year-old girl.

We were flooded again in 1960 and I remember putting my feet on the floor into water up to my ankles.

Our last flood was in May of 1999, the day after the tornado of Moore, Ok., which so many people remember. When Mother was interviewed after the flood, she said, “I’m fine. I just feel bad for those people in the tornado. They lost everything. I still have my stuff, it’s just wet.”

Each time we were flooded, the creek got up 3 feet high in the house. God has taken us through all the floods. He’s never failed us yet.

Isaiah 43:1-2 NIV says, “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.”

We’ve got a promise from God that He will be with us in the flood.

When I was going through a divorce back in 1974 and desperate for God, I attended church one Sunday morning. As I walked through the door, one of my friends from work motioned for me to sit by her. As far as she knew, I hadn’t ever gone to church, so I knew she was surprised and questioning.

I shared her hymnal when we stood for congregational singing and sang each song, barely looking at the words. After the service was dismissed, she told me how glad she was that I had come that morning and then she said, “I just have one question. Why do you know all the words to the songs?” I was caught. I had been trying so hard not to be that little girl who was raised in church, but in times of trouble, the words to the songs came back to me.

Start singing Amazing Grace in a crowded bar and before long, you will have every drunk in the place crying in their beer. They learned that song in Sunday School or Vacation Bible school, taken by a grandmother or aunt that wanted them to experience the songs and stories of the Bible. it is the most recorded song of all time.

But now we have a new generation who don’t know the words of the hymns by heart. Many of this generation have never been in Sunday school or Vacation Bible school. They don’t know the words to Amazing Grace or Blessed Assurance or Onward Christian Soldiers.

I love the new music that is being used in most churches, including ours. The songs with the Word of God in them resonate and burn themselves into our hearts. I love to sing songs that cause me to look to the Lord and worship Him, but time will only tell if those songs become the classics which are sung around the world in every language. A classic must be singable, without words and music to go by.

We won’t have to try to memorize them; we will sing them by heart, because the true classic song speaks to our hearts.