The Bible for Women

Weekly Devotional

BE A PUMPKIN!

I have received the following from several family members and friends this month and wanted to expand on how we can be like a pumpkin.

"Being a good person is like being a pumpkin. God lifts you up, takes you in, and washes all the dirt off of you. He opens you up, touches you deep inside and scoops out all of the yucky stuff -- including the seeds of doubt, hate, greed, etc. Then He carves you a bright new smiling face and puts His light inside of you to shine for all the world to see."

Many of us will be busy this upcoming season cooking, baking, and enjoying our families. some of us will become quite industrious and make a pumpkin pie from scratch ( I will be using canned pumpkin)! Some of us will spend some time scooping out pumpkins because our little ones are so fascinated with sticking their hands in the gooey seeds and insides of the pumpkin.

I do believe in making every activity a teaching moment, a learning moment. While we are busy with our hands in the pumpkin, let us be reminded of how something that seems so yucky can become something so scrumptious and beautiful. We won't be thinking of that goopy mess from the pumpkin when we are topping that delicious dessert with whipped cream and filling our tummies with that sweet goodness. And yet, that pie did start out as a goopy mess.

Sometimes our lives are goopy messes. Maybe we did not intend for them to be that way, but they did. We made a mistake, we got caught up in a sin, we ripped apart a friendship, a marriage, a relationship. The important thing to remember is that it is never too late to mend our broken lives. It is never to late to restore ourselves to the family of God and it is never too late to put our arms around the Savior that so eagerly awaits our return.

Let us ask God for His grace, his mercy and that forgiveness that he so willingly offers, and turn that goopy mess of our lives into something wonderful. God will guide us. The blood of Christ will wash that mess away. We have our Christian family who will help us. Let us do as Paul tells us in Romans 12:1-5,

"I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. For I say, through the grace given to me, to everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith. For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another."

May God bless your week. Margie