Bellmead, Texas \u2013 the home of my early childhood. Thomas Wolfe was correct, you can\u2019t go home again, but you can go through what\u2019s left of home again. I did that recently. The house where we lived is no longer livable. Many of the houses my grandfather built are gone. The family grocery story is no longer a grocery store. The school I attended is old, dilapidated, and no longer a school. Life was simpler then. I learned to ride a bicycle \u2013 without a helmet. I drank from a garden hose without fear of disease. I rode in the grocery store delivery truck without a seat belt. That\u2019s right, we delivered groceries to the homes, went in the back door, and put the milk in the refrigerator. I watched in amazement when a cow gave birth to a calf, just outside my bedroom window. The place where my cousins and I played football after Christmas lunch was grown up in weeds. Social media meant face-to-face conversations at the Post Office, Barber Shop or Caf\u00e9. Every night, the Lone Ranger did good deeds and ended his radio program by riding off into the sunset with a hearty \u201cHi-Yo Silver! Away!\u201d Those days live only in precious memories. Life has moved on. I wonder what Jesus expected to experience when he took His disciples back to his boyhood home of Nazareth. I doubt He was expecting His home town to be \u201coffended at Him.\u201d(Matthew 13:57) At least no one in Bellmead, Texas appeared to be offended at me. I doubt if anyone even remembered me. But I did go through what was left of home again, and thanked God for the wonderful gift of memory.<\/p>\n
Join me this week in praying for the following global requests:
\n\u2022 Pray for Gayle in Romania as she speaks to three different groups of women on March 7th and 8th in honor of Women\u2019s Day.
\n\u2022 Pray for those who minister to Middle Eastern refugees, who have to find food, water and shelter for their families and brave snowstorms and extremely low temperatures while living in tents and other sub-par housing.
\n\u2022 Pray for the approximately 83,000 Dutch living in France. At this point there is no known engagement with the gospel in their heart language in this setting.
\n\u2022 Pray for those who serve on University campuses in metro Vancouver\/Vancouver Island: Matthew & Heather; Ashley & April; Craig & Ellen; Peter & Michaela; Suzanne; Rich & Debbie; Victor & Candice; Kim; Samwoo & Geaun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bellmead, Texas \u2013 the home of my early childhood. Thomas Wolfe was correct, you can\u2019t go home again, but you can go through what\u2019s left of home again. I did that recently. The house where we lived is no longer livable. Many of the houses my grandfather built are gone. The family grocery story is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1509\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}