Check Your Messages

This is My Son, whom I love; with Him I am well pleased. Listen to Him! — Matthew 17:5 NIV

My oldest grandchild texted to let me know she and her roommate had made a gluten-free lemon poppy seed cake for me and wanted to bring it over. I didn’t get the message because I rarely have my notifications turned on.

When I finally discovered the message, my husband and I weren’t even close to home but somehow I could almost smell that cake from miles away. The thoughtfulness of those young people was even more satisfying than eating the cake would have been.

They’d looked up a recipe online, shopped for the proper ingredients, and pulled off what I discovered the next day was more luscious than I had imagined it could be. I almost missed it and the opportunity to bless those young people in return because I hadn’t been tuned in to the messages coming my way.

I can almost see Jesus nodding His head over the similarities to the messages He sends me. He’s speaking — through His Word and the impressions on my heart and those little nudges that I sometimes blame on my conscience — but I don’t always pick up on His signals. Oh, You want me specifically, not just people in general, to be slow to anger? The inclination to make conversation with the woman behind me in the grocery line — that was You? I guess I missed it.

Although I’m not intentionally ignoring Him, if I don’t remember to leave my “notifications” on, I risk missing a sweet connection with Him.

~ Cynthia Ruchti

Faith Step: When your phone or other device pings today to let you know someone is trying to reach you, pause long enough to check your connection with the messages Jesus is sending.

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Redeemer

But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and He will stand upon the earth at last.— Job 19:25 NLT

I opened the small black box Aunt Joyce had mailed me and gasped. “Honey, look at this,” I said to my husband, Kevin. The pendant I held up to the light was crafted in two different colors of gold and was shaped like an angel in flight. “What a lovely gift!”

Aunt Joyce had recently been cleaning out her jewelry box and came across the angel. It was a uniquely fashioned gift from a friend many years before. She told me, “Since you’re my angel, I feel you should have it.”

I wiped away happy tears as I thought of the miracle this gift represented. When I was fourteen, I lived with Aunt Joyce and Uncle Dwayne. They gave me a stable home during a rough patch in our broken nuclear family. At first Joyce, Dwayne, and I lived in harmony. But my teenage insecurities and my aunt’s ways soon clashed. When I returned home to my parents after only seven months, the feelings between Aunt Joyce and me were anything but angelic.

Over the decades, Jesus changed both our hearts. I grew up and acknowledged the world didn’t spin to please me, and Aunt Joyce softened. We became friends — good enough friends that she considered me her angel. Wow.

My favorite quality of Jesus is how He loves to take the broken places of our lives and fix them. But He doesn’t simply repair wounded souls. He mends and heals and makes them better than before. I believe the word for that is redeemer.

~Jeanette Levellie

Faith Step: Find a drawing or painting of an angel. Thank Jesus that His power to redeem your brokenness is greater than every angelic force in the universe.

Excerpted with permission from Mornings with Jesus 2022, copyright Guideposts.

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Your Turn

Listen. Keep your eyes open and your ears attuned for the Lord’s voice in your life. What is He saying to you? Undoubtedly, they are words of love, comfort, and care because He is your Redeemer! Come share your thoughts with us on our blog. We want to hear from you! ~ Devotionals Daily