Beverly Joy Roberts

Spring is yard work time, and I've sure done my share of yard work these past months.   I've shopped at a few stores so many times for yard stuff that I think the cashier may know me by name.  When I go through the checkout line after shopping, it doesn't matter if the items I'm purchasing are two hanging plants and a pair of gardening gloves or three bags of cement with 8-foot pieces of lumber, it almost never fails that the cashier will ask, "Do you need help carrying that to the car?"  I normally say, "No, thanks."  Not because I don't need the help, but because I'm rather impatient waiting for help to arrive.  On the few occasions that I have enlisted the help of the store, they usually direct me to go wait somewhere for the promise of help to arrive.     Waiting...doesn't usually bring out my better qualities.    Yet, I have waited...and waited...and waited.  I think you get the picture. But when the help final

There's a song I've sung since I was a kid, and I still sing it with the preschool class I teach on Wednesday nights.  It's called  Building Up The Temple.   Do you remember that one?   The children love this song because the hand motions are fun and the words repetitive.  When singing this song, I look to the left and to the right with my hands cupped on the sides of my mouth to say, "Sister, won't you help me.  Brother, won't you help me."  And the children smile and giggle with delight. With children, as young as three and four, there is joy in service.  The thought of being a helper, contributing to the betterment of the group, and doing a good thing is very appealing. How about us?  Do we have the same joy when called on "Sister, won't you help me.  Brother, won't you help me.  Building up the temple of the Lord?" In Romans 15:1,2 in The Message Bible it says it like this... Those of us who are strong and able i

We have a dog and she's pretty special... to my husband .  Okay.  He's crazy in love with the dog, but I'll save that for another devotional. Recently, we were getting ready to leave town for a few days, so I moved the dog's dishes to the kitchen.   This would make it easier for our daughter-in-law to manage the feeding and watering of the dog while we were gone. I placed the dog's dishes under a bench in the kitchen to keep them near, yet not to easy for little hands to reach.  The moment I sat those dishes down in the kitchen, our 20-month old grandson walked over to the bowls.  He stood and observed them, one bowl with water and one with dog food.  He knew immediately that those two bowls did not belong under that bench. As I watched him, he did an amazing thing.  He pointed his finger at the bowls and shook his head, No! No!  I was shocked…and proud.  I said, "Good boy.  That's right.  Don't touch the dog's food. No! No! "

The worship service was beautiful.  The music was playing, voices were lifted up in praise all around me.  My eyes were pinched closed and my hands lifted.  The lyrics of the song were intermittently mingled with words of praise. Then the unthinkable happened. Right there in the midst of all that glorious worship, my mind was making a list of things I needed to do later that day.  I'm sad to say, this was not my first experience with a wandering mind in church, but the real shocker was what happened next which was an absolute first. I was praising the Lord, and all the sudden my mental list reached my lips and became mingled with my praise.  I kid you not.  It was horrifying. It went something like this, "Thank you, Lord.  I worship your name.  Send  that  email."  As the words exited my lips, I opened my eyes in dread hoping no one heard me.  A real sense of shame flooded my heart.  How could I allow this to happen? The story of Martha asking Jes