Quail Lake Community Church

Daily Devotional #1,626

I was given a wonderful gift of a memory stick the other day. My cousin had put in a number of pictures that she had access to, and I spent a long time looking at photos of my parents and our family. There were also a number of pictures of my grandparents and the house they had on the farm. That house was a place of so many wonderful memories and many of them were kept there in those photos. I thought about how we would go out to my grandparents’ house and my brother and sister, and I would run around and play with all of our cousins. We would have great chicken BBQs and if we were really good, Mom and Dan would let us stay and watch Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color! When I was a little guy, we would pile in the back seat of the car and drive home to our house and the dark car and the running around and playing would lead to all of us falling asleep in the backseat. There were times when we didn’t even wake up when we pulled into the garage and on those nights my dad would pick us up and carry us to our beds. When morning came, we would wake up with our shoes off and a blanket over us and realize we were home! And I would ask “How did I end up here home in my bed?” And Mom would say “Your father picked you all up one at a time and carried you to your rooms.” I’ve thought about how wonderful everything about those times really were...even waking up in my own room. One day that will happen to me again, in a different way. All the excitement and wonder and activity of life will have just worn me out. And I will close my eyes one last time on this earth. But then I will wake up in a place prepared for me. And maybe I’ll ask, “How did I get here, to this place that is mine now?” And maybe there will be someone who will smile and say “Your last night is over and so your Father in heaven picked you up and brought you in here so that you could wake up to this place that you’ve never been, but in your heart has always been the home you’ve waited for. And in that moment, I will feel like a child again, filled with the excitement and adventure of a life that will never end. I hope you will do the same. Your reservation is made for you the moment you invite this Jesus of the Bible into your heart. And his promise to you will be that I have prepared a place just for you...and when the time is right, I will come and get you so that you can be with me...forever.

Here’s our Bible verse for today...

2 Corinthians 5:6-8 NLT So we are always confident, even though we know that as long as we live in these bodies we are not at home with the Lord. (7) For we live by believing and not by seeing. (8) Yes, we are fully confident, and we would rather be away from these earthly bodies, for then we will be at home with the Lord.

Remember I’m praying for you!
With love, PJ