Prayerful Pondering

by Pat Luffman Rowland

Author: Pat Luffman Rowland

  • For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD (Isaiah 55:8 ESV). It feels good when we know we are using the gifts God has given. There is a sense of completion in our work. But what about the times we see our service as something here, something…

  • Sometimes I think about Mother at the oddest times–like when I’m in the kitchen and reach for a box of raisins. Just for a moment, I can remember the taste of raisins from Mother’s kitchen. She added them to the Christmas fruit salad, sprinkled them into her homemade cinnamon rolls, and baked them in pies.…

  • A life-long friend, Larry Darby, sent an email more than a year ago encouraging me to write about the sacrifices made by our dads and others like them in WWII. “Tell the story of how they had nothing but a hard life and a good family around them and came back from war that same…

  • “Drip down, O heavens, from above, And let the clouds pour down righteousness; Let the earth open up and salvation bear fruit, And righteousness spring up with it. I, the LORD, have created it” Isaiah 45:6 (NKJV). _____ A grey cloud hovers overhead. It is the promise of drink for dry ground and the uplifted…

  • . . . take root downward and bear fruit upward. (Isaiah 37:31 ESV) My grandmother’s Bible was a treasure beyond any price. I had hoped as her oldest grandchild that I might inherit it, however I never discussed that with my grandmother or my mother and so in the end it didn’t come to be.…

  • Sometimes I think about the day my grandfather was told he had a terminal illness. Daddy had called to let me know Papa was being admitted directly from his doctor’s office to the hospital. I told Daddy I would meet them there. When I got to Papa’s room, he was sitting on the side of…

  • A recent Guideposts story on job perspective really gave me pause. A man who had lost his job and had been unemployed for seven years was offered the job of janitor at his church. While he was grateful, his wife was not. It would require both of them and she felt it wasn’t important and fell…

  • I don’t understand bullying. Why deliberately set out to hurt someone? And why is it a behavior seen too often in children? One of my earliest memories is of a shiny little red purse I had at about age 4. I dropped the purse and the few coins I had in it spilled out. An…

  • “I don’t know when we will be able to get you help or even if this job will survive the hiring freeze,” said my boss. “There are two other positions I can offer if you don’t want to take the risk.” It was 1984 and I was in a newly created position, that of patient…

  • “. . . [Mary] you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age” (Luke 1:30-31, 36 NIV). _________________________ In reading Luke 1, I always…