“Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ”. The end of 2 Corinthians winds down to this handful of statements. “Thanks be to God”, what a declaration for Easter. “Who gives us victory”, by the power of the resurrection. “Through our Lord Jesus Christ”, in Jesus, through His work on Calvary, we have victory.
Do you remember who you were? Without Jesus? Do you think about what you were chasing and what seemed so important to you? Before Jesus? “Thanks be to Jesus” Have a blessed Easter!

We just got back from Arizona for a week of vacation in Spring training Mecca. What a place to get to go in the spring. Baseball and golf, what a way to rest and relax. But to my horror our vacation mates came back to the condo with a 1000 piece puzzle. 1000 pieces! Took everything off the coffee table and went to work. A puzzle! Life is a puzzle! We’re always trying to figure out how to make it work. To put things together so that every one is happy. Why? To rest and relax would you sit down and try to put a puzzle together? That is not rest or relaxing in any way.
In Joshua 21 at the end of the chapter it says this: “And the LORD gave them rest on every side, according to all that He had sworn to their fathers, and no one of all their enemies stood before them; the LORD gave all their enemies into their hand. Not one of the good promises which the LORD had made to the house of Israel failed; all came to pass.”
That is the kind of rest I need, we need. Rest from our enemies, on all sides. From outside and inside. Those forces of culture and life that beat us down. Those things from the inside that drive us away from the one we want to serve and bring honor to. Rest. On all sides. That sounds good. Did you catch the piece that you must cling to, “not one of the good promises”. This is a promise of God to His children. Those of us who have chosen to follow HIM. A PROMISE!

Just back after a week in Arizona at Spring Training. Had a great time reliving my past in the part of the country I grew to love to go to every spring. It would be freezing here in Yakima as I’d depart and warm as can be in Arizona as I would arrive to get myself ready for another season of baseball. I do miss that yearly trip south and the fun that it was to be a major leaguer. Now my life is spring cleaning. Preparing my house and other properties for the coming warm season. It is a lot of work. Much of it not much fun. It is honestly “no brainer” work. Just a bunch of back breaking labor. I’ve grown to love it. It has become a great place for me to talk to and listen to God. A place that helps me realize how much I love the Yakima Valley and it’s four seasons. And how much i believe God is doing a wonderful thing in this valley.
In our life journal today their is a statement that I cling to for this valley as my own, “So Moses swore on that day, saying, ‘Surely the land on which your foot has trodden will be an inheritance to you and to your children forever, because you have followed the LORD my God fully.”
The blessing of following God. An inheritance of the land you have set your feet in. This is my valley, my inheritance, the place I have put my feet down in. And God is blessing it and me as I follow him. He does bless his children doesn’t he?