Category: Blessings

10/3/2025 1 Comment

Treasure in Hand

CBS News carried a heartwarming story about nine-year-old Jameson, the young Philadelphia Phillies fan whose dream was to catch or acquire a big league baseball. His parents bought tickets for seats positioned along the third base line, where the ball girl routinely tossed foul balls on the field up to fans in the stands. Sure enough, in the fifth inning, Jameson got a ball. Later, while watching the game, he overheard a woman ask the ball girl if she could get a ball for her mother, Donna, who was at the game to celebrate her 80th birthday. As you can imagine, youth are the priority, and the chances of Donna getting a ball were remote. So Jameson had his prize, but several innings later, he did something astounding for a boy with treasure in hand.

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7/12/2025 0 Comments

Breakfast at Banning's

Herb and Craig began meeting for breakfast in Tigard, Oregon, in 1992, weekly on Tuesdays. Later, they shifted their meetings to Friday mornings. Other friends have joined them periodically over the years, but it is these two men who have met together for 33 years and counting. It takes incredible commitment, faithfulness, love, and enjoyment to maintain such a longstanding tradition. Very rarely do friends have such a sustained track record.

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3/25/2025 1 Comment

A Fabulous Debt

Our dogs can be obnoxious. Whenever our next-door neighbor’s kids or dogs play in their backyard, Sig and Uzi run along the wooden fence barking with some dog-only-knows obsession. When birds fly overhead or geese land on the pond, they race the length of the yard yapping, trying to create a “no-fly zone.” Phil and Julie never complain. Graciously, they say the noise does not bother them and they like dogs so don’t worry about it.

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3/19/2025 2 Comments

Overflowing Hope

L-R: Bill Wadley, Dan York, Laura Wadley

He had a pretty rough upbringing with three different mothers and two different fathers.[1] His dad was an alcoholic and gambling addict. His 16-year-old birth mom was a drug and alcohol abuser. At the age of five, he had to take care of three half-siblings in the apartment, and if anything was broken or went wrong, he was beaten. He was seventeen before he found out his stepdad was not his real father.

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11/27/2024 0 Comments

Grace-Caused Thanksgiving

Ron York

Dad is bedridden now, and most days, unable to feed himself, requiring care 24/7. Yet despite increased dementia and limited capacity, he smilingly answers simple questions, and his appreciation flows naturally toward those assisting him. He knows and sings the words of Amazing Grace with closed eyes and a swaying head. His eyes twinkle as he joins me in singing the Marine Corps Hymn. A peace within him resonates with the words Paul shared with the Corinthian believers.

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4/8/2024 0 Comments

Woodchoppers

He doesn’t care about me. If He did, I wouldn’t have all these problems. If He did, He would explain why life must be so challenging. If He did, I would be included and be part of a family instead of feeling alone, excluded, and misunderstood. Ferdi wrestles with a whole lot of insecure thoughts and emotions. His Venezuelan birth mom gave him up to an adoption agency. He’d lived in six different foster homes before his 18th birthday. Without ever knowing his real father, he struggled mightily to trust his Father in Heaven, whose Son he had put his faith in as a 26-year-old single dad. Hard living creates hard questions for the man who chops wood and sells firewood to pay bills and put food on his table. The name Ferdi means to be brave, but that is not always easy when life is a giant question mark.

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2/17/2024 1 Comment

How Does a Little Child . . . ?

My father caught me in some forgotten misbehavior when I was a little child. He explained that when we did things wrong, that was called sin, and sin displeased God. I knew about God because we prayed to Him each meal, and Dad, at that time in Naha, Okinawa, always started his day off by reading his Bible, praying, and drinking his coffee. Dad explained that if we told God that we were sorry for our sins and placed our trust in His Son, Jesus, Jesus would forgive us, and we could look forward to living with Him in heaven someday. He asked me if I would like to do that. Of course, I don’t remember his exact words or direction because that was over 60 years ago, but I remember confessing what I had done was wrong and eagerly wanting Jesus to come into my heart.

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1/14/2024 1 Comment

I Am Claiming God's Goodness

At the beginning of each year, I select a passage from Scripture to be my verse(s) for the year. This year, I picked Psalm 65:11.

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9/16/2023 1 Comment

No Love for His Brother

Meditation
Luke 15:28-30—"Then he became angry and didn’t want to go in. So his father came out and pleaded with him. But he replied to his father, ‘Look, I have been slaving many years for you, and I have never disobeyed your orders, yet you never gave me a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your assets with prostitutes, you slaughtered the fattened calf for him.’”

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6/19/2023 0 Comments

Using Discernment

Ann faced a challenging situation in her new supervisory role with a nonprofit company that recently hired her. One of the employees, Calista, who worked on a different team, was giving her a tough time. Calista had applied for the job Ann now held and resented that she was not chosen. She used Ann’s inexperience to belittle her on calls (shared by others in the organization) and was rude when speaking to her. Ann realized she needed Calista’s help, but she first had to figure out a way to win her over, and that did not seem easy. So she asked for prayer from her close friends and asked God for His assistance.

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2/18/2023 0 Comments

A Woman of Noble Character

Five women work for an organization that helps relocate children who have illegally crossed the border to reputed family members living in the States. They take great pride in their work and ensure the safety of the kids they accompany. But then they began to notice a pattern—children they were asked to escort were sent to locations where there was suspected child trafficking and sexual abuse. When they raised concerns and pointed out case study reports that should have kept the children from being “dropped off,” the government overruled their concerns. Their own “Christian” organization, while acknowledging their reports and expressing support, turned a blind eye choosing profit over principle.

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1/25/2023 0 Comments

The Unhindered Way

Meditation
John 14:9—Jesus said to him, “Have I been among you all this time without your knowing Me, Philip? The one who has seen Me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father?’

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1/6/2023 1 Comment

The Lord Will Provide

The old Mary would have freaked out but not the new Mary. The old Mary was extremely insecure with finances and struggled with worry. The new Mary was all about trusting God, and now she faced one of the biggest tests in her life. One of her clients owed her over $60,000 and had missed several deadlines in paying their debt. She had leveraged her credit card to keep her business afloat, and if ever there was a time for panic, it was now. But instead of harassing the client to pay or taking them to court, she was gracious to them and kept her confidence that her business was God’s and not hers. He would provide. First, her hospital wrote off a bill she owed of $170,000! Second, other clients provided much-needed funds. Finally, a different bank gave her a new and better credit line of almost $200,000.

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12/31/2022 1 Comment

Schlep Naches

Schlep naches is a Yiddish phrase that means “deriving pleasure from the achievement of others.” In her book, The Myths of Happiness, Sonja Lyubomisrsky wrote:
The surprising finding is that the closest, most intimate, and most trusting relationships appear to be distinguished not by how the partners respond to each other’s disappointments, losses, and reversals but how they react to good news. Flourishing relationships have been revealed to be those in which the couple responds “actively and constructively”—that is, with interest and delight—to each other’s windfalls and successes . . . Both men and women who say that their partners respond in this “active-constructive” way report the highest levels of satisfaction, trust, and intimacy in their relationships.

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12/23/2022 0 Comments

Practice Hospitality This Holiday Season

Hospitality unites people. It helps us find room to help others in need and is the antidote to hostility and division. This holiday season, especially in these times of intense division, we should all practice this virtue and apply its power to strengthen relationships at home, work, with our fellow citizens, and even strangers. In the Christmas story (Luke 2:1-20), Mary was in labor while her husband, Joseph, sought shelter. The innkeeper had no available rooms, but seeing Mary’s desperate situation, offered the holy family shelter in a stable where the animals resided.

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11/29/2022 0 Comments

Give Her a Coin

First Sergeant Eric Johnson was tired of spending Saturdays inspecting the 98 dorm rooms occupied by his airmen. Most of the rooms were a mess, and it did not seem like inspecting was making a difference in improving standards. So the innovative senior master sergeant went out and bought coins. After the next inspection, he arranged with a warrant officer to have a female airman show up at the company headquarters without explaining why. Everyone thought she was in trouble. When Eric arrived, he announced that she had the most squared-away room, and he gave her a coin with her name inscribed on the back. His action gratified her, and word spread like wildfire through the dorm residents.

Three weeks a month, Eric inspected one floor (about 32/33 rooms). Each week, he gave out a coin with the inscribed name of the airman with the cleanest room.  Soon, he had to put names in a hat and draw the “lucky” winner because the rooms were so clean. It was not long before Saturday inspections passed quickly, and Eric could golf or do other enjoyable activities. Before he left that assignment, Eric hosted a barbecue with invitations to coin holders only to honor and bless them for their efforts.

Meditation
Matthew 16:27--For the Son of Man is going to come with His angels in the glory of His Father, and then He will reward each according to what he has done.

We can learn so much from what Scripture does not say. Jesus did not promise that He would return with His angels in God’s glory to torch lazy Christians and punish all those who performed poorly in the faith. He incentivized all of us to look forward to His return with the promise of reward. We work harder when we know there is a benefit coming. To incentivize is to motivate people to perform beyond what is the norm. Rewarding people for greater effort is far better than punishing them for substandard effort.

Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz observed in The Power of Full Engagement, “Extrinsic rewards have actually been shown to undermine intrinsic motivation.” Edward L. Deci opined in Why We Do What We Do, “When people proffer rewards without intending to control there is less likelihood that the rewards will have deleterious effects.” In essence, wisely use rewards for appreciation and motivation, but not to manipulate or control. Eric changed an entire culture by investing at his own expense in a token coin. Imagine how great Christ’s reward will be to His followers who are willing to lose their lives for His sake, willing to deny themselves, pick up the cross, and follow Him (16:24)!

Inspiration
“What gets rewarded gets repeated.”—James Robbins in Nine Minutes On Monday

©2022 Daniel York  ARR.  Reveration is the weekly devotional ministry of First Cause.  If you would like to receive these devotionals go to www.firstcause.org and click on the “Click here to receive weekly devotionals” box.  Unlimited permission to copy this devotional without altering text or profiteering is allowed, subject to the inclusion of this copyright notice.

Ecclesiastes 12:10-The Teacher sought to find delightful sayings and to accurately write words of truth.  (Holman CSB)

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7/22/2022 0 Comments

Revisiting Grace

There is a thoughtful piece on grace circulating on Facebook that I have amplified and maximized with apologies to the unknown author.

Grace constitutes unearned or unmerited favor. She is seen throughout the Bible. Grace means promotion, not based on qualifications. When she speaks, protocols are suspended. So, King Ahasuerus extends the scepter to his Queen Esther. With Grace at work, laws are set aside for a higher purpose. A hungry David understood this when he ate consecrated bread (1 Samuel 21:6). Jesus commended his insight because “The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). A Samaritan woman with five different husbands was blessed by a thirsty grace-giving Savior. An adulteress experienced no stones from a sin-convicted crowd. When Grace acts, pedigrees and ethnic background are irrelevant, so Joseph, the Hebrew prisoner, became Egypt’s second most powerful leader. When Grace operates, educational qualifications are thrown out. Fishermen become disciples, to the dismay of the religious elite. Grace instills hope in the hopeless, joy in the forlorn, and peace in the agitated. She has your back while she holds your heart. She transforms lament into a dancing melody. She is the warmth that accompanies light, and she is God’s gift to you forever.

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5/30/2022 0 Comments

Remember the 15s

First called Decoration Day, Memorial Day was nationally observed on May 30, 1868, to honor Union soldiers who lost their lives in the Civil War.[1] In 1873, New York officially recognized this day as a holiday, and by 1890, every other state had joined them. After two world wars, the day became an official time for remembering and mourning all service members who died while serving their country.

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4/7/2022 0 Comments

Guaranteed!

Payne lives in the United States but is from Great Britain. Payne grew up as an agnostic. When he came to the U.S., he accepted an invitation to church and heard the minister encourage people to give in support of the ministry. Payne was surprised when the pastor guaranteed that if anyone tithed and did not see God bless their efforts and consequently lost money, he would return their total gift. After the service, he went up to the pastor and said, “Let me get this straight. You are giving us a money-back guarantee if we give and do not see an increase in our finances?” The pastor replied, “I’ve been pastoring for over 30 years, and I have never lost this challenge—so yes, I’m giving you a money-back guarantee!”

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1/28/2022 0 Comments

The Benefit of Help

Jennifer was suffering. Her finances languished after months of just getting past too many bills. Her favorite dog, Lightning, a family fixture for thirteen years, passed away. Her job required her to be vaccinated but she was allergic to the ingredients of the shot. Despite her doctor’s note exempting her, she was getting hassled by her coworkers. Yesterday her car broke down. Just how was she supposed to pay her mechanic for this unexpected disaster?

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