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Discussion Forum : Devotional Thoughts : Hospitable friends - God's gift to us

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MJones
Member



Joined: 2008/10/31
Posts: 320
Missouri

 Hospitable friends - God's gift to us

Edit - I apollogize for the length. I don't intend to bore you with details our friends, but to stir thoughts you have of your own.

There is a family we have known for over 30 years. Their house was the hangout. There wasn't anything about the house, it was actually quite plain and small. But you were always welcome. They never seemed to cook for just their family, they just cooked. If you happened to be there during meal time, you were eating with them.

Many years ago they bought a farm. They had a barn, few horses and a run down hunting shack. On occasions when old friends came back to visit, that is where we ended up. We might end up on a cot in the screened in front porch, but we had a blast.

It had been 15 years since we had been there. But in typical fashion, we get a call on Tuesday that our former pastor and entire family are coming there for the holidays and they wanted us to come down sometime while they were there. We went Wednesday afternoon.

The old shack is gone. In its place is a lodge like log home, beautifully decorated with very nice accomodations for about 24. To accomodate the usual large numbers, they converted the garage into a large eat in kitchen. A detached building was built to house all the toys.

The pastors wife stood at the stove for what seemed to be hours frying fresh oysters and fish they had brought from the Corpus Christi area. It seemed like we were eating the whole time were there.

The family is musically talented and eventually with the aid of keyboards and base guitar, we were in the middle of what seemed like a Gaither homecomeing.

I could not help but to think of some of the '[b]deep[/b]' spiritual thoughts that I sometimes attempt to express on this website. I enjoy doing and it is evident that others do as well. It is one of the enjoyable things about the site; to an extent, we are like minded in that we enjoy communicating thought.

I'm sure I'll continue, but I think somehow that experience tempered me. I could not help but to feel in the middle of it all, as 3 generations met to have fun and ended up in a gospel singing, how the serious and intense nature of my writing took a back seat to it.

I write this for a couple of reasons. One, we all have families like this in our lives. I believe the Lord let me see, they are His gifts to us. Some of us may enjoy the deeper things of God and that is a good thing to enjoy. But there is more to life and on this Thanksgiving day, I am thankful that the Lord saw fit to give me such an enjoyable time away from the deeper things.

The other reason I write it, is that in light of the fact that we all have families like this in our lives, I write to encourage any who might read this, to not neglect being a part of their gatherings. It had been 15 years since we had seen all of them. We would all do well to maintain ties with all our family and friends.


_________________
Mike Jones

 2008/11/27 11:01Profile
White_Stone
Member



Joined: 2008/10/25
Posts: 1196
North Central Florida

 Re: Hospitable friends - God's gift to us

Hello MJones,

My husband and I spent over 15 years living 'on the road,' hand to mouth. Living and traveling in a long string of various vans, old campers, buses & bread trucks, filled with all our worldly possessions and usually up to 3 dogs. We were musicians.

There were a few of these 'gems' scattered throughout our travels. We viewed them as Oasis's, sometimes we considered that they may even be Angels. Truly their generous and sharing natures were of a marvelous making and we thanked God for them.

Best Regards,
white stone


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Janice

 2008/11/27 11:43Profile





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