Saturday, July 11, 2020

Orange Moon Cafe "The First Orange Moon Devotional?"

The Special of the Day.... From the Orange Moon Cafe...


(a repeat from 2014)


"The First Orange Moon Devotional?"

  

 

    "My grandfather has a farm.  I go to his farm every spring.  He has some chickens.  He lives in Atmore.  I like my grandfather's farm very much. 

- Glen Davis, Mrs. Wilburn's class, Grade 2. 

(From "The Woodcock Whirl," my elementary school newspaper, April 1965)

    

    First, I know what you're thinking.  "Wow, Glen was a much better writer back in those days!"  I concur, and only hope to one day regain lost glories of style, brevity, clarity, and content. :)

 

    The reason I suggest the essay may have Orange Moon #1 involves the effect my grandfather's farm had - and still has - in my life.  I not only spent time there in the spring, but also visited during the summers and Christmas seasons.  For many reasons, I look back on those times as spiritually formative, particularly because my paternal grandmother was a very religious woman.  A bit on the stern side in spiritual matters, she nevertheless showed me the love of Christ in ways an eight year old boy needed to see.  When I think of her, I realize she helped to form in me the truth of how serious a matter faith in God involves.  As we often suggest in these messages, salvation in the Lord Jesus offers the freest gift ever given.  It came to us, however, through the highest cost ever remitted - the suffering and death of the Savior.  We must therefore receive the gift with utmost seriousness if we are to genuinely avail ourselves of God's grace.  "Let us have grace, that we may serve God acceptably, with reverence and godly fear" (Hebrews 12:28).

 

    The content of my 2nd grade essay does not mention my grandmother, but rather "my grandfather's farm."  I view this as an oversight (or perhaps a savage assault on my literary masterpiece by some ruthless elementary school editor!).  I seem to have been taken with the chickens (the same editor must have slashed mention of the cows I actually liked much better).  Most importantly, I affirm the affection that remains in my heart.  I passed this on to my family, to whom mention of "The Farm" elicits the same sentiment that fills my heart.  We all view my grandparents' farm as a gift from God to our family.  Long after their passing, we often visited this place of my childhood that became a place of my own children's childhood.  Something awaited them there in the 1980s and 90s, just as it had for me in the 1960s.  I believe it to have been God, although I didn't realize it when penning my first essay.

 

    The words from so long ago feel very "devotional" to me.  I know the effect my grandparents, their farm, the chickens (and the cows!) had on me.  The Lord certainly met me there, touching my heart in ways that led later in life to His entrance into my heart.  So, I'll consider my 2nd grade masterpiece as "Orange Moon No. 1."  And, for your sakes, I'll seek to return to those "lost glories" of better composition, even as I give thanks for more important glories that will forever remain in my heart through the grace of the Lord Jesus and His influence on my grandfather's (and grandmother's) farm.

 

"Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set."

(Proverbs 22:28)


Weekly Memory Verse

"Of Thine own have we given Thee."

(I Chronicles 29:14)

























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