As we transition into a new season, whether we are in the northern or southern hemisphere, many of us get involved with the ritual of putting some things away and getting other things out that we need for the new season. Most of us entering autumn are stowing away the summer gear we used over the past few months. We’re shifting our closets from cool sleeveless tops and shirts to long-sleeved types and sweaters. Unless we live in a part of the world where weather remains stable all year long, we will repeat these tasks several more times as winter approaches, spring tiptoes in, and then summer returns.

Grass clippings scattered about the patio will soon be overrun by falling leaves in every shape and color. Apple cider will eclipse lemonade, and many will delight in the option of pumpkin spice lattes at their favorite coffee shop.

These season shifts nudge us to discover pesky places where clutter builds up and dust hides from us. Even if we are a tidy housekeeper, most of us will have those places that are not routinely checked for things that need to be cleaned up or cleared out.

When I was growing up it was one of two times a year when my mother would do a deep cleaning and touch those untouched places so easily overlooked or ignored. There would be window washing, cleaning under the stove and refrigerator, and moving furniture to discover the dust that had been missed during routine cleaning. Clothes would be pulled out of cedar chests where they had been stored and protected from moths who relished discovering an extra meal if they could find it during those summer months. It meant she would also sometimes discover something she had not known was there. Perhaps it was a few loose pieces of change from a pocket, an earring she had not been able to locate, or a card she had addressed and then could not find when it was time to send it. The season that happened in the autumn was one I seldom was asked to be part of as I returned to school and had limited hours to help, but I enjoyed the benefits and the fragrance of that deeper clean any time I walked in the door.

We have lots of those pesky places in our homes that don’t get addressed as often – kitchen drawers that open and close with less and less organization inside, back corners of refrigerator shelves, and the top shelves of cupboards where our best dishes grow a film of dust from their infrequent use.

But there are other pesky places we often miss that live inside of us as well. Many of these remain hidden and out of view of those around us and some we keep so well covered that we can ignore them for long periods as well. Those are those attitudes that don’t quite line up with our best selves, the nagging habits we accommodate because we like them despite knowing they are not good for us, and our selfish preferences that stand opposite our stated desire to put others first.

Perhaps these are like the little foxes that spoil the vines spoken of by King Solomon by the Old Testament book bearing his name.

These are those little things (sometimes pet sins too) that we accommodate without much thought since we have already labeled them “little” and see them as not so harmless without recognizing they erode and grow if left with that mindset. We forget when they snagged us up in times past because we didn’t pay attention; we were living too close to the enemy who seduces us into such thinking.

After all, we were busy. We had so many things to do, those meetings at school and church, coffee dates with friends, and a need to just kick back and relax and stop thinking about who we were to be and what we were to be about. We really weren’t being lazy. We just needed a break from all those things.

Sound familiar?

If we are honest, most of us have been there and might be there now as well. Maybe it’s that Newton law thing about a body at rest tending to stay at rest versus a body in motion tending to stay in motion. After all, who would be looking at those places in our home or in our hearts?

As I have been reading through the Old Testament book of Judges again, I see parallels to these ways of thinking and the significant impact on Israel after Joshua had died. The people who had followed those heroes of the faith like Moses, Caleb, and Joshua had let those evidences of what God did and what He required fall into the background and before long they were like pesky places left untouched and unaddressed.

Little pesky places and things became pet habits and God got shoved to the background as little things grew to little idols that soon meant the people were trusting themselves instead of God. Strongholds developed that could only be defeated by One outside of themselves.

By the end of the book of Judges we come to that haunting verse that reads, “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”

A note in my study Bible about all this reads as follows: “we abandon God when we do only what seems good to us: creating private religion, abandoning our personal calling, pursuing our individual desire, and choosing personal preservation over justice.”

Doing what is right in our own eyes sounds very much like today despite Judges being written about 550 BCE.

Many of us were captivated by the images of the death of Queen Elizabeth II – the music, respect, reverence, and awe – and when a new king was crowned with more imagery as well. They remind me that Jesus whom we love and revere if we believe in Him is not only Savior, but King. His Kingdom extends far beyond any earthly realm of any period of history. And Scripture says He will return for those of his Kingdom when the world has gone mad, forgotten Him, and living as they please in an ever-darkened way.

Whenever He comes, He will not concern himself with the condition of my cupboards, but rather the condition of my heart. Perhaps it is what we see around us that should remind us that it’s time to take care of those pesky places in our hearts that we have ignored for some time and to prepare our hearts to hail Him when He comes.

I so often wish I could have God’s view.

He sees in the moment and He also sees the long game ahead.

But I am sure He knows that it is better I don’t see in that way because it’s in the not knowing that I learn to know Him better and trust Him more. And that’s what He desires for me…to know Him more deeply and intimately.

I was recently recounting a story about my dad to one of my grandsons who had never met nor known my dad because he died before this grandson was born.

My dad was a humble quiet man with a dry sense of humor and a lifelong love of learning. His family needed him to leave school before high school to run the farm with the help of his uncles. His father had died when he was only 5 and his older brother had fallen from the barn roof when my dad was 13. Those deaths left him as the only male with his mother and four older sisters.

My dad had loved learning and for the whole of his lifetime until he died at 84, he felt “less than” for not having a better formal education. It also made him determined that any child of his would have a college education.

As I was approaching the end of high school and college was just ahead, my dad looked at the dollars needed for that four-year education and could not sort out how to make his dream for me become a reality. He had only earned modest salaries despite working hard for the whole of his life. So he went to talk with a local banker he knew who had been an advisor and mentor of sorts for his thoughts about how he could possibly send me to college. He was sure the numbers didn’t add up.

The wise man at the bank listened to my dad’s words and also to his heart and said, “Roy, don’t look at the whole four years and what that total is. Just look at one quarter at a time and take that as it comes.” My dad took his counsel and each quarter the Lord provided the money to handle tuition, room and board, and books.

God saw the moment and the long game and grew my dad’s faith in the process.

Twelve years later when I was actually going to need the teaching certificates I earned in college I needed to take several additional courses to update those certificates. I was already married and we had two children. When my dad learned I would need to do extra coursework, he called and asked me the cost. Then he said he was going to pay for it because he had committed to pay for my education.

It can be so easy for any of us to want to walk by sight instead of by faith, but that is not the Lord’s design or plan for us as his children. He gives us what we need in the moment.

Yes, we are to be good stewards, but our times and seasons are in His hands. He knows what we will need when we need it whether that is money, courage, hope, healing, or something else.

I think it is why the story Corrie Ten Boom’s tells lingers in my memory. She told it to her sister Betsy when they were facing the horrors of Auschwitz after her family was discovered to be helping Jews escape the persecution of the Nazis.

Corrie reminded Betsy that God would give them what they needed. To illustrate that she reminded her sister about how they would ride the train with their father in Holland. She asked Betsy when their father would give them their tickets and Betsy said they didn’t get them until it was time to get on the train. He knew they might not hold onto them or forget them when they were needed if given in advance.

When Moses was leading his people out of Egypt to the Promised Land, they all feared starvation as they walked into the wilderness. They walked in that wilderness for 40 years and every day He provided manna until the day they entered the Promised Land. Oh, yes, there was grumbling about the manna, but He sustained them and their clothes did not wear out either.

“The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.”

Psalm 18:2 (ESV)

When He gives us what we need in the moment, it isn’t always what we may want but He sees the moment and the long game.

Pat Springle wrote a powerful book about trust some years ago entitled Trusting: The Issue At the Heart of Every Relationship. One of the things that echoes in my mind that he said early in the book was this:

“…only God remains 100 percent trustworthy, as well as totally outside of their (our) control.”

There are many things we purchase or use that carries a caution warning to “Handle with Care.”  The warning is a reminder that what we are going to use is meant for good, but if it is not handled properly it can also cause damage.  Those who created and designed these tools appear to know that ‘common sense’ is not really common!

There are so many other places where such a warning label could be helpful. Certainly a newborn infant should come with one even though most people know the caution, but I think children who go off to school should wear such labels as well. Those who teach or train our children should not sacrifice standards of excellence and moral codes of conduct, but the warning would be appropriate regarding the child’s heart, learning style, disabilities, values, and family life.

The label might be good to attach to a marriage license. The person we fell in love with and seek to marry isn’t perfect and as days and weeks go by there will be many opportunities to discover flaws or weaknesses not noticed previously. What a time to extend grace and remember, “handle with care.”

That label would serve well in friendships as well. Healthy friendships with clear boundaries can weather many things and a variety of moods and passions, but we should never forget to “handle with care” the heart, soul, and secrets of the person.

That label would be appropriate as well for members of our ministries or those in our churches, not because they are fragile but rather because if they serve under our leadership we have a duty to “handle with care” the essence of who they are.

You see we can so easily forget that each of us has some level of power that needs to be handled with care. You may not feel that way and you likely do not experience it in all situations or all people, but you have it.  Why?  Because when God created you, He gave you power.

“Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

Genesis 1:26 (NIV)

At the outset we were commanded to rule and subdue the earth and its creatures. Those words − rule and subdue − mean power. We were made in God’s image and He entrusted power over those things noted in the passage. We were and are to reflect Him.

The passage does not say we are to have power over each other, however. But when that terrible fall took place as a result of listening to a beautiful being who seduced us with God’s own words and perverted them, our image was marred and we took on the image of Satan instead of the image of God. After all, Satan was and is a power and glory grabber who seeks to have power over the One he cannot have power over, so he will settle for any one of us he can ensnare whether a Christian or not.

Sadly it is easy for us to love power. If we have it, it reduces our sense of vulnerability in one or more areas and vulnerability tends to make us feel small or frightened.

Power comes in many forms and sizes. Some power is physical. We see that in sports arenas all the time, but we also see it on playgrounds and in classrooms where the taller and bigger kids take charge over the smaller and weaker kids many times.

Other power comes in words and how we use them. Our words can speak life or death.

“The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.”

Proverbs 18:21 (NIV)

Power can come from positions of authority. We see that as students from teachers, employees of employers, drivers from law enforcement and speed traps on the highway, members of organizations from leaders of those same organizations. Positions carry with them some power and that is not usually an issue except if it is abused and those under those positions are used rather than served and collaborated with. Such positions are evident in any rule-governed entities whether political or ecclesiastical.

Because of the marring of God’s image in us, we can misperceive power. We can believe that the one in power over us also has integrity and then grant them even more power. We can hope they have integrity, but it is not a guarantee.

When we fail to accurately discern good and evil in relationship to power, we open ourselves to abuse and more so when or if we remain silent in the midst of it.

It can be easy to look around us and point fingers at those we believe are misusing or abusing power, but that is the wrong place to start.  We must start with checking in the mirror to see if our own image reflects God first and if our character looks like his.

We need to start the with psalmist:

“May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.”

Psalm 19:14 (NIV)

We can also learn much from Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by pausing long at the one he lists in fifth place:

“Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”

Power is not so much good or bad, but how we steward whatever power we’ve been given is what is essential.

We also need to remember we will give account to the One who gave us power.

And He is all powerful.

By mid-September students everywhere have returned to classrooms and if it were marketed simply as “reading, writing, and arithmetic”, most would scoff. (Some may not know the word “arithmetic.”) They would wonder where the STEM programs were and what computer programs were being utilized. It tends to be easy in our modern era to deride anything that is more than a few years old as antiquated and by implication, “less than”. I get that! I spent 15 years of my life teaching in a public educational setting in the 1980’s and early 1990’s and was blessed to have one of Apple’s first computers in my special education classroom. That is more than 40 years ago and behind the times in many ways by 2025 standards.

My education did not start that way as a child. I had the rare privilege of spending grades one and two in rural Ohio in a one-room school where eight grade levels managed to be taught by one teacher with fairly amazing results. (For many homeschool mothers today that would not be surprising.) I confess that I learned a great deal by overhearing the lessons of students in older grades.

The school I attended was the same one my father had attended years before me, but the curriculum had changed by the time I entered first grade at age five. My father’s class used the famed McGuffey readers and other texts authored by McGuffey as well as Ray’s arithmetic books, texts that educated and trained thousands of students in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I cherish a few copies of those very books that I have on my bookshelves that belonged to my dad and his sisters.

Few (except homeschoolers) would consider using these texts today since they went beyond basic academic subject matter. Stories in reading texts were meant not only to teach reading, but also a set of moral principles and values, love of country, and respect for parents.

When I review the contents of these books on my shelves, I see words and concepts that might cause some contemporary students to stumble not only due to vocabulary words that are no longer common but also due to the level of thinking and maturity evidenced.

That old fashioned generation without smartphones, high tech computers and scientific calculators managed to build the economic engine of the United States. They did so by grounding it on moral, biblical, ethical values and principles as a sure foundation along with academic standards we all now benefit from and take for granted or even shun.

Perhaps we have gone too far, however, in this modernization and started to see something was lost in the process. Homeschooling seems to be one response to an educational system that set aside the very values we all once cherished. Many ridiculed this movement when it started but despite the critics, students who are homeschooled are standing tall in their accomplishments equaling and often exceeding the academic performance of their public school peers. The subjects taught them are quite inclusive and include things like rhetoric and dialectic skills as well as numerous languages, math, sciences, history, geography, music,  and arts. Many are taught in various co-op formats where students have spirited interaction around subject matter taught by highly educated mothers (and sometimes dads).

As I reflect on the return to studies by millions of children around the world, I am especially grateful for mothers (and sometimes dads) who are investing time, skills, and numerous resources to homeschool their children. These parents are unsung heroes who sacrifice a great deal in an effort to hold a high standard of academic performance as well as skills such as thinking, evaluating, organizing, time management and more. In the mix they base everything on moral principles that respect God, country, family values, and authority. They are not wimpy followers who are socially inept, but leaders who have been challenged to consider consequences and take responsibility for not only learning material, but also their own behavior and choices.

How do I know this? Our daughter and daughter-in-law have homeschooled all six of our grandchildren in Maryland and Tennessee. Our oldest granddaughter earned a scholarship and graduated with honors from an excellent university with a BSN a few years ago. Our oldest grandson earned a trustee scholarship to a highly ranked private college in a pre-medical program, studied abroad in Chile as a college junior, graduated from medical school and is currently in his third year of medical residency. Another graduated from college with a business degree and uses his creativity and marketing to help make the world a better place developing an innovative business as an entrepreneur. Our middle granddaughter is carving out her own path in the world as she tries a variety of niches. Our youngest granddaughter also earned a trustee scholarship at a highly ranked private college, served as a teaching assistant to two professors, keeps up with violin, karate, had a major role in a fall musical, had a semester abroad in Paris and will graduate in December with a double major, a minor, and a job offer following an internship this summer. Our youngest grandson is currently a mechanical engineering junior at a small private college, plays a beautiful cello in the college orchestra, enjoys karate, family time, and spirited discussions on a wide variety of subjects.

These six have played on basketball, soccer, and swim teams. The one who played high school basketball was on a top nationally ranked team. Among them we have singers, thespians, pianists, a drummer, a violinist, and a cellist. None of them are socially inept or backward. All have held various jobs and completed internships with more to come.

Today I salute my daughter and daughter-in-law for equipping the next generation with the academic skills and moral fiber to make a difference in the world and for eternity. I am so proud of both of you.

Perhaps the admonition in Proverbs 4:7 ESV says it best:

“The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom, and whatever you get, get insight.”

Before any of us answers that question, I think a long pause is probably best. At first glance most of us may give the answer we think is best or the one we have used for the longest time or even hope is true, but is it the most honest and representative of who we are?

If we are still dealing with brokenness or unhealed wounds, too often they will be what define us. We may wish that were not true, but often it is. That person, ministry, business, or organization that was the cause still overshadows much of who we are. We tend to struggle with relationships, trust, an accurate self-assessment, and more. We have lost track of how to “let go” of what happened and “hang on” to the hope and healing the Lord offers us even if we believe in Him.

If we are in the midst of loss and grief, our sense of how we fit in the world and our relationships is muddy at best. We look through most things in our lives through the veil of the loss. We are not ourselves or at least not the self we were most accustomed to.

If we look to others for our sense of self, belonging, acceptance, etc., we will spend too many minutes exhausting ourselves trying to turn ourselves into a pretzel that may or may not be appreciated by others or reflect what is in our heart. And who are they to be given that much power? Why do we give them that power?

If we have just received a promotion or accomplished something we have worked hard for, we tend to define ourselves now as … you fill in the blank.

Make no mistake. Whatever we choose to define us has power over us.

It’s easy to get disoriented in our self-definition because never before have definitions been so freely and commonly used about us and toward us. Sadly the definitions are commonly one word. They become labels.

How can anyone be summed up in one word?

That one word quickly becomes a label and whether it is positive or negative, it still proves a snare because it doesn’t look at the whole of who we are and it is highly unlikely it looks at our hearts.

To know another person’s heart or even our own requires a considerable length of time listening and observing. Absent that, we too often assign what we hope or believe is true, even if it isn’t.

The truth is that it is still too easy to look at the surface, at the appearance. More and more we look at Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook moments, or the headlines shouting at us from every device. Sometimes we make an instant decision about someone or something without even recognizing that we are doing so. Yet those decisions not only define that person or thing, but begin to define us as well.

When we do so, we do it at our own peril.

We see that clearly repeatedly throughout scripture when God chooses the least likely, the most ordinary, the flawed, the youngest, or the oldest to work out his purposes and plans.

Then in 1 Samuel 16:7 (NLT) we see the issue identified clearly when Samuel is looking for whom he should anoint as king:

But the Lord said to Samuel, “Don’t judge by his appearance or height, for I have rejected him. The Lord doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”

Do we recognize that our choices and decisions grow from what is in our heart?

We may believe we are not so obvious, but those things give us away every time.

As I was reading Jennifer Dukes Lee’s book, It’s All Under Control, I was reminded of the solid truth that points to who defines me:

“If our relationship to Jesus is our defining one, then every decision – big or little – passes through that filter. So instead of saying yes to prove our love and devotion to people or to Jesus, we are allowed to experience the freedom of saying no, based on the fact that we have nothing to prove. We already are beloved.

Our actions in life will always follow our choices. Our first decision is choosing our primary identity. Our calendar is not our primary identity. Our caregiving is not our primary identity. Our productivity is not our primary identity. Being ‘awesome’ is not our primary identity. As daughters (or sons) of God, our primary identity is Jesus. His power, then, extends over us, our work, our priorities, our everything.”