Robin and I sneaked away for a four-day vacation in New Mexico the first part of this week. It’s a place that’s been part of our family’s life for over 35 years. Our kids grew up “going to the cabin” every chance we could. It is a place that feeds our souls. A sanctuary, where all the mental clutter seems to fall away, and today’s relentless invasion of information is held at bay.<\/p>\n
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I’ve written before about Robin’s dad, Don Salter. He was a colorful and remarkable man. He designed, and then built the cabin singlehandedly. Oh, we all pitched in here and there, but not enough to claim any credit. He did it all. It was an amazing gift of love to his family.<\/p>\n
It left a big hole in our lives and hearts when Don went to wait and watch from the heaven side of the veil. His cabin is such a portrait of him. More than that. We’ve always hated to leave, because we love it so, but now it hurts when we drive away, because it feels so much like we’ve been with him when we’re there.<\/p>\n
It was just the two of us this time, instead of our growing noisy clan. So instead of games and happy chaos, it was quiet walks, one little jaunt over to Red River, and lots of reading.<\/p>\n
I started reading a fascinating book called The Forgotten Way<\/em>, that has made me really examine the way I think about love.<\/p>\n I am blessed with lots of love in my life. Being surrounded by people you love, whom you know love you, is blessing beyond reckoning. My heart aches for people who don’t have that, and what this book has made me think about, is the reality that we have opportunities every day to be a conduit of Jesus’ love to people all around us.<\/p>\n That sounds simplistic, I know, but if you step back just a bit and think about it…<\/p>\n We Christians proclaim to the world that God the Holy Spirit indwells us. And we know that God is<\/em> love. So maybe a way to think about being filled with the Holy Spirit<\/em>, is to realize that we who are in Christ are\u00a0filled<\/em> with love<\/em>.<\/p>\n Maybe all that is needed for that love to flow out to everyone around us…is to be willing. I’ve been inspired to try to do that more often. To be willing to love.<\/p>\n I haven’t finished reading the book, so I don’t yet know if I want to recommend it, but it did remind me of this, and I’ve been kind of delightedly chewing on it ever since. You know those four verses of the thirteenth chapter of 1st Corinthians that we hear recited at every wedding…the ones where God tells us how to love? It’s worth looking it up and reading from a different perspective.<\/p>\n Because those verses also describe exactly how God loves us.<\/p>\n Jesus made it so easy for us in so many ways. Moses recorded over 600 laws in addition to the Ten Commandments.\u00a0 Jesus fulfilled the whole Law completely and left the world with just this one, recorded in 1 John 3:23: This\u00a0is\u00a0His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus\u00a0Christ, and\u00a0love\u00a0one another<\/em>…<\/p>\n And He even provides the love.<\/p>\n You can come and soak up some this Saturday at Ragtown. My brother Glenn as Peter the Rock<\/em>…goodness!<\/p>\n Blessed Assurance! Jesus Is Mine!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Robin and I sneaked away for a four-day vacation in New Mexico the first part of this week. It’s a place that’s been part of our family’s life for over…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5422,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ragtown.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5417"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ragtown.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ragtown.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ragtown.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ragtown.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5417"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ragtown.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5424,"href":"https:\/\/ragtown.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5417\/revisions\/5424"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ragtown.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ragtown.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ragtown.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ragtown.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}