Guard Your Heart
Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.—Proverb s 4:23 (ESV)
Blessed is he who has regard for the weak.—PSALM 41:1 (NIV)
“Here’s a schedule of people who will bring you dinners for the next two months,” the email read. “Receive and be strengthened.” With that note, my husband Lynn and I became care receivers, a new role that humbled us and made us feel incredibly grateful. I had been diagnosed with Stage IV ovarian cancer just six weeks after Lynn was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor.
That was years ago, and I partly credit our survival to the many ways a team of faithful caregivers surrounded us, not only with comfort food, but with a solid circle of prayers and other creative ways of blessing us. Like the tulips.
One beautiful autumn morning as I neared the end of a grueling year of chemo treatments, I opened our door to find three friends with shovels and a huge pail of tulip bulbs.
“We’ve come to plant these bulbs so you will have blossoms in springtime,” they said, and then went to work. Now, every spring when I see a few surviving tulips, I’m reminded of my Johnny Appleseed friends and so many other caregivers who planted seeds of hope that continue to bless us today.
Lord, thank you for showing us how you love people through people.
Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.—Proverb s 4:23 (ESV)
So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.—1 Corinthians 10:31 (NIV)
And the Lord answered me: “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it.”—Habakkuk 2:2 (ESV)