To win our review copy of The Bible for Minecrafters, tell us your New Year’s prayer.

This is not a New Year’s prayer as such, but my motto for the year 2016 is “DEVOTE YOURSELVES TO PRAYER.” We find that motto in Colossians 4:2!

Flowers at Lake Taupo

“BECAUSE OF THE LORD’S GREAT LOVE WE ARE NOT CONSUMED, FOR HIS COMPASSIONS NEVER FAIL. THEY ARE NEW EVERY MORNING; GREAT IS YOUR FAITHFULNESS.” –  Lamentations 3:22-23

About feeling at home in this world I have been thinking quite a bit lately.

THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO ARE FEELING AT HOME IN THIS WORLD.

Who are the people?

Maybe you are one of them?

Do I meet every day people who feel at home on earth? I don’t know and from now on I will ask them, when the opportunity arises.

THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT FEELING AT HOME IN THIS WORLD.

Who are the people?

They admit that they are aliens in this world.

The Collins English Dictionary teaches me that an alien is “a person who is a citizen of a country other than the one in which he or she lives.” An alien is “a person who does not seem to fit in with his or her environment.” Alien means “foreign” and the meaning of foreign is “dealing or concerned with another country.”

They admit that they are strangers on earth.

The Bible calls them “God’s elect.” Please read that in First Peter 1:1.

In First Peter 2:10 Peter urges the “aliens and strangers in the world to abstain from sinful things, which war against the soul.”

In Genesis 23:3,4 Abraham says, “‘I am an alien and a stranger among you. Sell me some property for a burial site here so that I can bury my dead.'”

I can say with the anonymous hymn writer who gave us the hymn, “This world is not my home, I’m just a-passing through, …” : “AND I CAN’T FEEL AT HOME IN THIS WORLD ANYMORE.” (You find that sentence six times in the hymn, at the end of the three verses and at the end of the chorus.)

“2016 kann Werner Dekarski (Neuseeland) auf 50 Jahre im WEC zurueckblicken!” lese ich im Magazin des WEC, Weltweiter Einsatz fuer Christus. (1.2016)

Am Strand in Neuseeland

Und wie erstaunt bin ich darueber. Wenn ich das da nicht gelesen haette, haette ich das ganz vergessen, wirklich.

Aber das ist nicht alles. Noch andere sind da erwaehnt. Und es steht da auch, “Ihr alle habt in diesen Jahren an vielen verschiedenen Orten Segensspuren hinterlassen.” Ja, 50 Jahre sind viele Jahre, und ich war auch an vielen Orten und es ist mir auch wirklich ein Anliegen ein Segen zu sein, auch ueber 50 Jahre hinaus.

Am Schluss steht, “Wir danken euch herzlich fuer euren treuen und engagierten Einsatz.”

Wie schon gesagt, dass ich auf 50 Jahre im WEK (Weltweiter Einsatz fuer Christus) zurueckblicken kann, hat nicht viel Bedeutung fuer mich, aber dass ich auf fast 68 Jahre an der Hand des Herrn Jesus Christus zurueckblicken kann, hat Ewigkeitswert!

“‘Family is the most important thing in life,'” I am reading in one of the letters received not long ago.

Some members of my physical family live in New Zealand

THERE IS THE PHYSICAL FAMILY.

I can tell you a lot about my physical family, and you can tell me a lot about your physical family.

THERE IS THE SPIRITUAL FAMILY.

C. H. Spurgeon is saying something about the Spiritual Family in his MORNING AND EVENING  Daily Readings today.

Today is January 6 and he says there in the MORNING:

“IF YOU ARE ONE OF HIS FAMILY , HE WILL BIND UP  YOUR WOUNDS AND HEAL YOUR BROKEN HEART.”

Some people have only a physical family, but I have not only a physical family, but also a spiritual family.

For me the Spiritual Family is more important than the Physical Family.

The place was chosen by the driver of the car to apply sun block, and the car was stopped.

We had just left Waihi, when the sun cream was remembered.

Waihi is the name of a town in the Hauraki District. The place is 21km southeast of Paeroa. Waihi means “Gushing Water”. Unfortunately we stayed there only  a few hours. What can I says about the place, where we stopped the car? You will agree that it was the ideal place to stop, when I tell you that people enjoyed there their picnic.

WAIHI, where we had to be rescued

What a place! A place for picnics, for applying sun block … and a place for calling State Roadside Rescue, because our car did not move anymore.

The place was chosen by us to apply sun cream, but I believe that the place was chosen by the Lord to supply us with a new battery. (It was also a Sunday!)

No more needs to be said.

Flowers at Lake Taupo

“Now the [two] men turned from there, and went toward Sodom; but Abraham still stood before the Lord.” – Genesis 18:22 (The Amplified Bible)