Coming to the Still Waters

  Do I have faith to make it back to Poudre Lake 9 miles " up " the trail?  The only consolation is I will be walking over very familiar trail and I made some mental notes of trail markers to be accomplishments on the way back.  A campsite sign, a large log along the trail and such help me to know my position and points of possible rest.  Here is an example of one. Our passage is so good because Jesus points out to His disciples someone who has "great faith."  He has done this before pointing to the centurion in chapter 8.   He will do this again when He points to the widow who puts into the offering her last two mites.  Jesus is giving His disciples people to look at who have what they don't at the time.  Jesus keeps reminding them that they have " little faith ."  They have faith but it is not as full as the faith of these.   It makes us evaluate our own faith.  Would Jesus say we have "little faith" or would He say that we have ...

  Sometimes we say, "The camera cannot do justice to what I am seeing."  The photo above is a representation of that statement.  I am on the saddle above Timber Lake to peek over on the other side to see Julian Lake and Longs Peak in the background.  Although I am very thankful to be able to take this picture and save it for future viewing, what I captured in my eyes with all the depths of color and perspective cannot be matched.  I had to be there, in that spot, to appreciate the full extent of what I was experiencing.   This is true of Jesus also.  When we rely on just others perspectives of Him, we will come up short to our time with Him.  When we rely on sound bytes and summaries of Jesus' life and not walk through personally the line by line of words and deeds, we will come up short of experiencing His full character.  Jesus gets painted in many different ways and we tend to lean to one painting of His life over another but to get t...

It was a great week with all the family in Colorado.  We are very thankful that our family has become a group of families and their great interaction with one another is what warms our hearts. I wasn't thinking about this when I was arranging the tiles of this table game we have but after taking a picture of it, it would be a great reminder to pray down the list of our 10 grandchildren.  Each one is precious and unique and we want to be supportive grandparents to them in whatever we can.  The most important way is to be examples of those who are following after Christ. A trip up the mountain trail led me to this perspective that ties in with the passage we covered on Sunday.  12,000 feet of elevation and I was able to see Longs Peak in the distance, one of Colorado's 14ers and also all of Parika Lake below me.  Jesus sent away the multitudes that He just feed and went up the mountain to be alone with His Father and pray.  From this vantage point He could se...

  This isn't 5,000 men plus women and children as in the passage last Sunday but this is our 5,000+ for the week.  It is amazing to be all around the table at once.  There are now 20 of us.  We have went from addition to multiplication in our family as each of our 4 children are now having their families.  Our 2 year reunions have been highlights of our lives and this one was spent in Colorado.  This picture featured the 20 rainbow trout the grandchildren caught at a local kids' fishing pond. Jesus is going to present 2 amazing events back to back for his disciples.  In this big feed they are ready to pass off the responsibility to someone else.  They tell Jesus to send the crowd away and their solution is that those people can fend for themselves.  They use the word " only " and calculate what was possible with the money they may have had.  The disciples were identifying and pointing at the need but they were not going to get involved ...

  Doesn't she look like a true mountain woman eating here bison/cranberry jerky?  This is a recent trip up to Lulu City on the Colorado River Trail that was only in existence for 5 years and the population of 200.  Only 3 sides of one cabin remains.  For awhile it was just us and the wildlife on the trail but this is the time of the year when people migrate to the park. We love family.  My brother and his wife, Tom and Tammy, swung into Grand Lake for a couple of days and also shared a worship experience at SCC.  This was the trek up from the Alpine Visitor Center to get our photo at the sign.  Seek to keep family ties strong.  Seek to restore them if they have been severed.  Pull out the super glue and piece it back together.  With both mom and dad gone now, my next connection to them are my siblings who carry on similar experiences of our time on Lehman Road so many years ago.   We ventured into chapter 14 of Matthew this pas...