Ruby's daily devotionals — short morning reflections on Scripture and the small mercies of an ordinary day.
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"Far be it from me that I should sin against the LORD by ceasing to pray for you." — 1 Samuel 12:23 I was thinking this morning about something one of the boys in my class said back in the spring, before school let out for the summer.
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"Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all that fills it; let the field exult, and everything in it. Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy." — Psalm 96:11-12 The garden has reached the part
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"But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you." — Matthew 6:6 The mornings are getting longer and I have started getting up before I need
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"Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up the other." — Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 There was a time before the children when it was just the two of us and neither of us knew
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"Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs." — Mark 10:14 I walked past the fellowship hall this morning after church and the door was open and the room was empty and
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"God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good." — Genesis 1:31 Saturday evening and I am on the back porch in the dark and the fireflies have come. They were not here last week. They are here tonight. They came the way everything
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"So teach us to number our days." — Psalm 90:12 So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. I have been sitting with this verse the way you sit with a visitor who has come to stay and will not be
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"She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue." — Proverbs 31:26 My mother used to say that you can tell what a woman is carrying by the way she hangs laundry. I did not understand this when I was young. I
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"As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease." — Genesis 8:22 The garden has entered the part of June where it needs me every day and I have accepted this. I was out there before
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"For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation." — Psalm 62:1 There are mornings after something that feel like the first page of a new week, and this is one. The anniversary was yesterday and it was what it was and this morning
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"Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God." — Ruth 1:16 I cut roses this morning from the side of the house and put them in a jar on the kitchen table. They
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"Unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." — Matthew 18:3 Church was quieter this morning without the children downstairs. The Sunday school class is done until September, and the fellowship hall was empty when I walked past it, and the