Insightful Musings on the Scriptures

by

Raymond P. Sparre
Northwest University class of '67

Good morning, special ones.

I didn’t realize till yesterday afternoon that Thano had a dental appointment. It was later that I learned that it involved extracting a wisdom tooth. Later still I learned that it was not just one wisdom tooth, but three. Apparently, the third one was a stubborn doozer. Thano spent 4.5 hours in that dental chair. That’s equivalent to major surgery. Jill wondered if Thano would have a shoe tread imprint on his forehead.

I’ll join Becki today going to her first follow-up appointment with the surgeon following her hip replacement. She continues to do well with it all.

I actually visited the doctor yesterday…checking out a sinusitis condition. They think I might live a bit longer. We’ll see.

I felt that it was hard to improve on my capsule of thought from 2010…so I didn’t try. There are, however, several other valid ways to jump from that reading in Mark 1.

Blessings on this—your gift of another day.

Love, Dad/Ray.

I sense we are touching on a very important principle in the life of every true child of God. Please don’t let this get by you. It has to do with seeking a daily solitary place for the purpose of communing with the Father. That priority motivated Jesus to avoid the interference of distractions and rise before others.

Life is full of circumstances that will prevent a retreat to an actual solitary place. In some cases, there may be none available. That’s when the earnest believer will do well to be creative toward securing the next best thing. However that private communion with the Father is achieved is not as important as that, by some means, it be achieved. The weight of Jesus’ example should be enough to motivate us to seek and maintain this priority. If He, the Son of God in flesh, sensed a need to be “shut in with God in a secret place,” how much more should we?