Treasuring Life's Blessings

This morning during our praise & worship time (singing) at church, my eyes started welling up with tears as they started a song. I couldn't quite figure out why.....until it dawned on me, it was one of the songs that was sang at Noah's memorial service. I have often wondered what songs were sang that day because I can't remember. I was in such a fog just trying to get through the funeral that I couldn't even tell you who all was there along with a lot of other details. In the bulletin from Noah's service, it only mentions a time of singing and didn't list the songs. During the song this morning with tears streaming down my face, I leaned over and asked Kevin if this song was from Noah's service and he said yes. Pretty crazy how your subconscious/body can take you back to poignant time when triggered by something like a song, even if you can't seem to recall it. Needless to say, I just stood there crying like the day I did when it was played at Noah's memorial service. *sigh* That's how it goes with my life now, there are often many things that out of the blue will just bring me to tears. All I can do is go with it & hope those around me at the time can be understanding.

Today our pastor gave a visual illustration during his sermon that I thought was really neat. Granted, I am not going to do it justice trying to explain it here (sorry Pastor Adam). But I thought it was worth sharing. During his lesson, he mentioned that too often we start with grace but yet live as though our relationship with God depends on good works and effort (Gal 3:1-5). He had a fake tree on stage and a basket of apples. The point behind this was to show that so often we do things as Christians because it's our "duty", not because we desire to. That instead of letting our fruit grow on our tree that shows growth in Christ inwardly  (John 15:4-5), we hang the fruit on our tree ourselves instead to show "works" outwardly. So let's say we get up in the morning and go drag ourselves to do devotions because we "have" to. We glance through them and do our duty....aka, hang our apple on the tree ourselves. But what eventually happens to fruit that is hung on a tree instead of grown on a tree? It rots, it doesn't last. And what did we gain from that? Nothing, all we did was "works". He said we won't grow this way, that all we are doing is confirming outwardly but staying stuck inwardly.

Sure it's easy to just go do some "works" to look good or because it's the thing you "should" do, but what is that going to accomplish long term? We should be doing things because we truly desire to. He gave another example that if he showed up one night at home & knocked on his door with flowers in hand for his wife. She answers and he says honey I'm taking you out for the night. She asks why? He answers and says because it's my husbandly duty. Ouch! Sure it's what he should do but he's just "hanging his apple on the tree". Answer #2 he gave stated he is taking her out because he loves her. Ok that is better....but answer #3 was because he loves her and there is no other person in the world he wants to spend time with. His point behind these different answers was to illustrate how we are either hanging our own apples out of duty, or a real, true desire to do things out of love for Christ. (1 John 5:1-5).

So.....are you hanging your own apples on your tree or are you growing them??

If you'd like to listen to his lesson from today, it can be found here under February 27th (though it's not posted currently, I imagine tomorrow it will be).

Here is the song from this morning that made me tear up since it was sung at Noah's memorial service.