Sitting near the gate at the San Antonio airport, waiting for a flight to Mexico, I discovered that I had left my Kindle in the security check bin, and went to retrieve it. At the desk I was asked the title of the book I was reading, to make sure I was really the owner. When I answered, the security officer never looked at the Kindle, but handed it to me.

I returned to the gate in time for our flight, thinking about the Kindle, and remembering that several years ago my older brother had told me that “some day” I would be able to carry a whole library in my purse. I had thought, “Why would anyone want to do that? It’s a foolish notion.” Now I was carrying a library onto the plane and feeling very glad at the thought of having retrieved it.

The land you are entering to take over is not like the land of Egypt. . .where you planted your seed and irrigated it by foot as in a vegetable garden. But the land you are crossing the Jordan to take possession of is a land of mountains and valleys that drink rain from heaven. It is a land the Lord your God cares for; the eyes of the Lord your God are continually on it from the beginning of the year to its end.

(Deuteronomy 11:10-12)

The changes that the Spirit of God brings into our lives make our lives different from what they were before. Until those changes come, we cannot imagine what they will be, just as we cannot imagine what a difference a new friendship will make in our lives. In Deuteronomy God carefully explains some of the changes in store for the people who had come from being slaves in Egypt. He outlined the kind of differences they would experience when they placed their relationship with Him at the center of their lives.

The apostle Peter expressed the new life that comes with a relationship with Christ: Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In His great mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. (1Peter 1:3-4) God told the early Hebrews that their new life would not be like their old life. The new life would have the Person of God in Christ at its center: Behold! I make all things new! (Revelation 21:5)

Love in Him,

Prue