Two Tissue Boxes

My wife has already started her springtime allergy coughing.  I have a box of Kleenex by her recliner that I take into the bedroom at night and then back into the living room in the morning.  I push her wheelchair, go back to get the Kleenex box - back and forth - it gets annoying.  I just realized today that I could get two Kleenex boxes and save trips!  Duh!  She will use no more Kleenex, just two boxes opened at once.  Why didn’t I think of that earlier?!  Like when our children were babies in their cribs at night.  They would lose their one pacifier and cry in the night.  I would have to get up, turn on the light, locate the missing pacifier, insert it into the crying baby’s mouth, turn off the light, and try to get them back to sleep so that I could get back to sleep.  Years later, my daughter was smarter with her children.  She would put them to sleep with a pacifier and then sprinkle five or six pacifiers strategically around the crib so that when they woke up without their pacifier, they would roll over and find another one, put it in their mouth, and go back to sleep on their own.  What a clever idea!  Solomon said in Proverbs 3:13, “Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding.”  That man will also sleep well … with two boxes of Kleenex and a handful of pacifiers nearby.

Antique

In 2017 my mom moved into Dominion Assisted Living in Hixson, Tennessee and my brother was cleaning out her house in Maryland.  He asked me if there were any things that I might want.  I told him that I wanted the antique shoe-shine box, and he sent it to me with a few other mementos.  The problem is that I made that box in ninth grade shop class ... fifty-seven years ago!  I made the little green pottery piece on top in seventh grade art class for Mrs. Wright.  I made it and then called it a toothpick holder, which my mother kept for fifty years.  It was ugly but made by her son.  So, if I am the one who made the antique shoe-shine box, what does that make me?  You guessed it; I am an antique too!  David said in Psalm 71:17&18, “O God, thou hast taught me from my youth: and hitherto have I declared thy wondrous works. Now also when I am old and grayheaded, O God, forsake me not; until I have shewed thy strength unto this generation, and thy power to every one that is to come.”  My prayer is that my children and my grandchildren will know that there is a God in heaven because of His faithfulness to me.  May it be so!

Point of View

This morning I was late taking my wife to dialysis.  No real problem.  They should be grateful to see us at all.  As I topped the hill approaching Battlefield Parkway, the light was green.  “Great!” I thought, “This’ll save me a minute.”  But as I got closer, the light turned yellow and then red.  I had almost made it!  Rats!  But as I waited at the light a little disappointed, I noticed another car on my left whiz by on Battlefield with the green light.  And he might have been saying, “Nice!  The light just turned green, and I can keep moving!  I don’t have to slow down!  I just might be on time to work today!”  I was disappointed at the light change, but the other driver was pleased at the same light change.  Jesus said of our Heavenly Father in Matthew 5:45, “… he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.”  The dear Lord knows what He is doing, even down to traffic lights.  Years ago, I drove ten miles to college each day, and I had thirteen traffic lights to pass through.  Yes, I counted them all!  And again, I was often frustrated when any of them were red.  That is until I realized that the dear Lord was stopping me for a reason.  It could have been that God was stopping me and protecting me from a drunk with a hangover who was driving recklessly up ahead.  I just didn’t know.  Hey, trust your heavenly Father.  He knows what He’s doing in your life, even down to the traffic lights.  And … it helps to leave a little earlier tomorrow morning.