Category: Devotionals

I recently held a letter in my own hands written by my great grandmother Mary May (Slankard) Hightower in 1929 to her son and daughter-in-law, my grandparents. It was in a box of papers that looked like they would disintegrate and fly away if I breathed on them. I carefully unfolded the letter and brushed the dust off with a soft-bristle paintbrush, then placed it in an acid-free archive-quality clear plastic sleeve to protect it.

My Granny Hightower died when I was 4 and sometimes I think I can remember her, but it might be because I have seen so many pictures of her and heard so many stories about her.

My other great grandmother didn’t go be with the Lord till I was 17, so I knew her well. She was tiny, barely 5 feet tall, with a little bun on the back of her head and the disposition of an angel.

Our family has a wonderful heritage of faithful Christian believers for generations. Mother is almost 94 now, one of eight children born to a Christian couple who married 101 years ago and dedicated their family to Jesus. Their eight children all came to know Jesus and now Mother and her two remaining sisters are dedicated Christians.

Families in Jesus’ day took great pride in tracing their genealogy back to Abraham. They repeated their genealogy from one generation to another

Heaven has families. Adam and Eve. Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel. David and Abigail. Mary and Joseph.

Luke 3:23-24, 31-32, 38, “Now Jesus Himself began His ministry at about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, the son of Heli, the son of Matthat…… the son of David, the son of Jesse, the son of Obed, the son of Boaz….the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.”

Just think how it is going to be meeting all those ancestors in heaven. I’ll know them too, because their DNA is in me. We have the same blood, the same ancestry, but more than that the same great heritage, the same Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Your ancestry is important to God.

At the telephone operators’ reunion, it always comes up.

“Hey, remember how Lavon pulled out in front of that semi (when we were car-pooling to Tulsa and it was my turn to drive) and she had her cigarette in one hand and her Pepsi between her legs? Everyone screamed. “Gun it, gun it! Lavon, look at his eyes!”

“I don’t have time to look at his eyes,” Lavon yelled back, with a few choice words thrown in.”

That was back in my rebellious days. I wasn’t living for the Lord. I wasn’t doing anything so wrong, unless you want to count smoking and cussing.

We sure had a lot of good times together, those girls and I did, but I had some hard times, too. Sometimes one of them took an extra turn driving because I didn’t have the money for gas or my old worn-out car broke down. There were two in particular that always seem to end up on the same shift that I did, so we almost always rode together, and they had to listen to all my sob stories all the way to Tulsa and back. There were times we all didn’t like each other very well, and sometimes we had our quarrels, but now I can’t remember any.

As I look back now I can see that God put us all together for a reason. Those girls were my support team. Jesus surrounded me with Christian women who could lead me back to Him. They showed me Christian love and never gave up on me.

“A man who has friends must himself be friendly: but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.” Proverbs 18:24 NIV

I had one other friend, my Best Friend, during that time that never left my side, even though I wasn’t living a lifestyle befitting a child of God. Jesus was always with me. He had told me He would never leave me or forsake me, that He would go with me to the end.

 And when it seemed like the end had come, there Jesus was waiting to welcome me back home into the fold.

Until a couple of years ago, all I had ever heard about the Mayans was the archaeological discoveries made in Central America. Then suddenly everywhere you turned you were being told about the Mayan calendar which announced the end of the world in the year 2012.

We here in the US use the Gregorian calendar, which starts the new year on January 1^st , 2012. I don’t know what day the Mayan calendar starts the new year on, but I guess some archaeologist has determined the dates.

The Hebrew New Year, the holiday they call Rosh Hashanah, begins in the fall, this year September 28^th. It will be the Hebrew year of 5772.

Let me ask you a rhetorical question. If the God we worship, the God of the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is going to tell us about the end of time, which calendar would He use to predict it?

God has been speaking to us for many thousands of years through His word, the Holy Bible, Old and New Testament. Is He suddenly going to start speaking to us through the Mayan cave inscriptions?

He has been using the Hebrew calendar for thousands of years to time all the events of His people. Is He suddenly going to point us to the Mayan calendar to schedule the return of the Lord Jesus Christ and the end of time?

As the New Year begins according to the Gregorian calendar in January, year 2012, and we celebrate a new beginning, let us go back to The Book of beginnings, the Bible, and the original calendar that God set in place.

Colossians 2:16-17 NIV, “Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.”

Christ Jesus Himself is our Beginning, our New Year, our Sabbath, our Holy-Day. We celebrate Jesus.

Let’s look forward and press on with Christ.

Most of my Christmas decorations I received from Grandma Lewis. We have her ceramic Christmas tree with lights and little mice peeking around the tree limbs. It’s always the first Christmas thing you see when you enter my home.

We also have Grandma Lewis’ angel from the 1940’s. Pretty face printed on paper, pasted on cardboard, with a fiberglass fuzzy skirt and silvery wings. It was probably very inexpensive when she bought it, but treasured by the family as they placed it every year on top of their Christmas tree. We have it packed away as a keepsake, since it is falling apart.

When I was first married, I bought cheap Christmas balls, icicles, strings of lights that burned out and were so hard to fix you just threw them away in disgust and bought new ones every other year. I have a few Avon collectible Christmas ornaments and things the kids made in church or school. But it’s funny, I don’t seem to have very many special tree ornaments to cherish like many folks do.

I have a few ceramic decorations to set around on shelves and tables to decorate. I have pretty Christmas tablecloths and placemats, which are just a nuisance in our family when we sit down at the table to eat.

And now it is Dec. 17 and my decorations are sitting in boxes in my living room and my tree is bare, but I’ll decorate before Christmas Eve just like we did when I was a kid, and then enjoy my tree till the day after New Year’s when I will box it all up till next year.

Maybe this is a good excuse to go shopping for new ornaments and decorations at the After Christmas Sales.

Reflecting on my family life, I realize that to our family Christmas means plays and programs at church and school, practicing for weeks, learning the songs and practicing the music and the speeches.

Instead of shopping and decorating our homes, we spent our lives singing Christmas carols and performing the Christmas story and that is really what Christmas is all about anyway.

She rode into town on a donkey, nine months pregnant. Her husband hadn’t wanted to make this trip, but it was a commandment by the government that each family go to the town of their ancestry to pay taxes, and since Joseph was a descendant of David, they had to go to Bethlehem.

Bethlehem was normally a tiny town, but with the influx of taxpayers, all the inns were full. Joseph must have knocked on every door in Bethlehem trying to find a place to spend the night.

Mary knew somehow that she would have the baby tonight, even though this was her first child. Within hours of the time that Joseph found them a place to stay in the stable, Mary delivered her first-born son, the baby Jesus.

As she held him in her arms, her mind went back to the day the angel Gabriel appear to her and said, “Behold you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name JESUS. “ Luke 1:31

Jesus, what a precious name. Yet there were many men in Israel named Jesus, a common name, also called Joshua.

Jesus is the English version of the Greek word, “Iesous,” pronounced ‘ee-ay-sous’.

The Hebrew word Jesus, or Joshua means ‘Jehovah is salvation.’

Joshua in the Old Testament was a type of Jesus. He led the people of Israel, those who would follow him, over the Jordan River into the Promised Land, while Jesus led His People, those who accept Him as Savior and follow Him, into the Promised Land of salvation.

Yes, there might even have been other men named Jesus who lived in Israel, there is even one mentioned in the Bible, but there was only one Jesus who was born to a virgin Mary in Bethlehem that night, to fulfill the many prophecies of the Old Testament and the words of the angel Gabriel, the messenger angel sent from God.

There was only one Jesus who died on the cross for me and for you. It was Jesus of Nazareth, son of Mary, son of God, Emmanuel God with us, the Wonderful Counselor, the Prince of Peace, the King of Kings and Lord of Lord, Christ the Lord.

You can’t just walk into the President’s Oval Office, dressed in any old paint-stained clothes or with your hair all wild from sleep. The Secret Service will stop you at the gate, long before you ever get near the White House. There is a certain protocol for a visit with the President of the United States.

Even so, the Courts of Heaven have a protocol for the worship of God Almighty. The required uniform? The garment of thanksgiving and praise.

I wear a uniform, of sorts. During the week, I wear blue jeans and T-shirts, but I dress up for God on Sunday. The last thing I put on before I walk out the door to go to church is a smile and an attitude of praise.

It starts with a heart-felt “Thank you,” for all the Lord has done. If you woke up this morning, you have something to be thankful for. He has given you the very air you breathe. Giving thanks get you through the first gate into the outer court.

The next step is to bless the Lord with your praise. If you find it hard to think of something to say to the Lord, pick up the Bible and read Psalms 100 aloud. Praise gets you into the inner court. Psalms 100:4 says, “Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise.”

And the final step in this protocol of the kingdom of heaven is to come with a sacrifice. In the Old Testament an animal sacrifice was required, but since Jesus gave Himself as the ultimate sacrifice, we must enter by His blood.

Hebrews 10:19, 22 says, “Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus. . . let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith.”

The blood of Jesus gets you into the Holy of Holies, into the presence of the Lord Himself, where the worship takes place. The only way to obtain the blood of Jesus to bring with you is to receive Him as your Lord and Savior and be born again, then you will be spiritually covered by His blood.

It is fitting that we wear our best when we come together to worship God, considering Who He is, the Creator of heaven and earth.

The God of the universe deserves the best we can give Him.