On the Homefront
For those of you that know me well, you
know that I’m ultra-patriotic. If you
ever want to see my temper riled, mention the Vietnam War, and you’ll be sure
to get an earful. Yes, I admit, the
apathy and ingratitude our troops received for their sacrifices in the war angers
me greatly.
As
I mentioned in my May 18th post, I realize that not all of us are
called to serve in the armed forces; I could never be a soldier despite the
fact that I have the kind of heart that drives a soldier to enlist. Instead, I try to use that patriotism to work
behind the scenes in the background of our military. Our soldiers need our support, not our
apathy. Their morale needs and depends
on us.
There
are so many ways to support our troops if we’ll only take the time to carry out
our good intentions. As I’ve said
before, good intentions are never enough.
Prayer is one of the easiest but also the most important way to support
our soldiers and their families. I
encourage you to get off your La-Z-Boy though and go the extra mile. There’s so much more you can do. Prayer is important, yes, but as the Bible
says in James, “faith without deeds is useless.” Imagine with me a city. Its roads need repairing, houses need to be
build, crops need to be planted, the children need to be educated… you get the
point. It needs some work. One man sits down on the curb of the road and
prays, “God, please fix our roads,” and sits watching for all the cracks in the
road to disappear. The farmer stares out
at his field and prays, “God, please help my crops be planted and grow,” and he
sits on his front porch watching for seeds to miraculously fall from Heaven and
shoots of corn to start sprouting up from the dirt. The teacher prays, “God, let these children
become brilliant students,” as she looks out at her class staring blankly at
the chalkboard where “2+2=?” is written.
The builder looks at his empty lot and prays, “God, let this house be
built,” and he turns to the pile of boards lying there, expecting to find them
suddenly nailed together in the form of a sturdy house. If everyone in that city only prayed and
never set to work, do you think that city would ever get the improvements it
needs? Of course not! We all know that kind of reasoning is
ridiculous. Prayer is not an enchanted wand we wave, and the name of God is not some abracadabra we say and then sit back and watch for the rabbit to hop out of the hat. Nevertheless, the man who
has faith without deeds is no different than that city.
You
can accomplish a lot through prayer, and through prayer, you can find the
strength you need to serve, the discernment to know how to serve, and
the guidance to know where to serve, but you cannot actually perform the
act of serving through prayer. Why? Because it is an act. The Lord instructs us in many books of the
Bible to serve. No ifs, ands,
or buts. Serving is not a choice,
it is a mandate. Many people don’t like
to think of God ordering them to do anything because, after all, we have a
right to make our own choices and He has given us a free will. Yes, but essentially, as children of God, we
have relinquished that right. “Do you
not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you
have received from God? You are not your
own; you were bought at a price.
Therefore honor God with your body.” (1 Co 6:19&20) When we make the commitment to follow Christ,
we sign away our right to our own will, just as a soldier becomes property of
the United States government when he enlists into the military. For us to continue to walk in our own will
would be like a soldier refusing to execute his commander’s order because he
has a right to make his own decisions.
As
I said, serving is not a choice we have.
Forgive me if I sound harsh, but it’s something we have to do whether we
like it or not. If you like it,
congratulations! You understand the
heart of Christ. If you don’t like it,
well, learn to like it. God is not going
to fulfill the mandate of serving for you, and to ask Him to would be like a
father telling his child to clean the garage, and when the child turns around
and asks his father to do the chore for him instead, the father cleans the
garage himself. I hope you agree with me
that there’s something wrong with that picture.
Our bodies are designed for work and mobility. Don’t ask God to exempt you from serving; an
opportunity to serve is a blessing. Take
responsibility for your own task and do it with a cheerful heart, “Serve
whole-heartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men…” (Eph 6:7) And remember what Jesus said, “.... I tell
you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine,
you did for me.” (Mt 25:40)
In
my opinion, supporting our troops by serving them and their families is just
one of the many ways that we can serve.
Here are a few examples of ways that you can support our soldiers. As one soldier testified, our troops love
getting care packages. There are
websites online (one being (mygiftbaskets.hubpages.com)
that are a great help to giving you tips and ideas of what sorts of things to
send to our servicemen and women. Do
some research- type it into Google- and I’m sure with today’s technology, you
can easily find an organization that sends care packages to our troops
overseas. Take a few minutes of your day
from your schedule and write a letter or a card to a soldier, thanking them for
their dedication and sacrifice. Adopt a
soldier at www.adoptaussoldier.org. Donate to organizations like Folds of Honor Foundation
(www.foldsofhonor.org) that support
our soldiers’ families. Contribute to
the patriotism in our country by taking responsibility for the morale in your
own community. Work to have an American
flag flying outside of every public building in your city and to have every
tattered or faded flag replaced with a display of Stars and Stripes that gives
its country honor and not disgrace. Don’t
be timid and allow fear of others and their opinions to keep you from doing
what you feel led to. Be bold. If you’re gifted with creativity and have the
ability to sew, make a quilt for a soldier.
I have already begun the project of sewing a quilt to donate to an
organization. There are so many such
organizations out there, two being www.qovf.org
and www.aquiltnhand.com. Again, just type it into Google. It’s as simple as that. Get creative.
There are so many more ways if you only look for them.
As
a clarification, I have not done much research on the organizations whose
websites I have provided links for above, so I advise you to read up on them
and make sure they’re on the up-and-up.
Many people who
read this will agree with me on the need to support our troops, but will do
nothing about it. They will leave the
responsibility to fall upon others’ shoulders.
I encourage you not to be one of those people. The Lord has blessed us with life and another
day to live for Him and make a difference in our homes, our communities, and
our world. He has called us to
serve. Don’t waste another day marked
only by good intentions. Get up and get
active in making a difference and a change.
Somewhere a soldier needs you.
“Each
one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully
administering God’s grace in its various forms… If anyone serves, he should do
it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised
through Jesus Christ. To him be the
glory and the power for ever and ever.
Amen.” 1 Peter 4:10&11
And continuation to the story (see May
18th post):
Entering her
mother’s sewing room, Lauren took a seat beside where her mom sat at the sewing
machine. “Oh, Mama, it’s turning out
beautiful,” she remarked. Reaching out a
hand, she carefully fingered the fabric of the quilt her mother was working on.
Having
stopped the sewing machine, her mother smiled as she surveyed the quilt she
spread out across her lap, the heavy folds billowing down. “Well, it’s certainly turning out nicer than
I thought it would,” she agreed. “After
I send this one off, I’ll start another one with a diamond pattern this time.”
“I
know the soldier that gets it will appreciate all the work you’re putting into
it,” Lauren assured her with a smile.
We’re all doing fine here at home. I wish you could’ve seen Chris’s face when your letter came in the mail. He was so excited. Tomorrow I have another doctor’s appointment. The baby’s fine though. It’s just a check-up. Yesterday she had hiccups for the first time. Lily’s becoming a little steadier on her feet and doesn’t fall as much now.
I think about
you all day, Honey, and you’re always in my prayers. Every night Chris includes you in his bedtime
prayer. If you only knew how much you’re
missed.
Pausing from her
writing as her thoughts drifted to the foreign soil overseas, Amy smiled as she
instinctively reached a hand down to her middle, now enlarged in her pregnancy.
“Mommy, don’t
forget to send Daddy my picture,” a little voice piped up from beside her
chair.
She turned her
gaze to where her son handed her the picture he had drawn. “Of course I’ll make sure to send it to him,”
she assured him. “Daddy will love it.”
“I wanted to
make the truck green, but Lily sat on my favorite green crayon by accident and
cracked it,” Christopher added, studying the picture his mother admired. “I didn’t have much of it anyways so there’s
wasn’t enough to use afterwards. That’s
why I had to make it blue,” he explained.
Amy smiled. “Well, I know Daddy will like it no matter
what color you chose to make the truck.
The fact that you drew it for him makes it special.”
NOTICE: I’d like to begin a prayer request listing at
the end of my posts, so if there’s anything you’d like prayer for, please let
me know through a comment box and I will add it to the bottom of my next
post. For privacy purposes, when I share
your prayer request, I will include only your first name. And I encourage you to let me know of updates/
outcomes of the prayer needs you shared and I will publish them in my post for
the other Heart-chords readers to view.
~We’ve all
heard of the phrase “pulling on her/ his heartstrings,” but heart-chords? I was struggling to decide what to name my
blog. I wanted it to be a name that was
both creative and meaningful. As I
pondered, my gaze fell upon my acoustic guitar where it stands in my bedroom,
and the Lord reminded me that our hearts- our lives- are instruments. They are constantly in song, but what melody
our heart plays is each of our own decisions.
They can play a melody for praise or for entertainment. A musician selects his songs according to his
audience. So do we. Whether our audience is the world or the
Lord, our song will be different. This
blog is designed to first, increase my awareness in finding God and His
guidance in my every day and second, to share the music lessons He teaches me
in tuning my heart to learn the chords of praise He longs to play on my
heart-instrument. Music is a powerful
tool. Use it for His glory. “He
put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in
the Lord.” Psalm 40:3
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