{"id":23730,"date":"2018-08-22T03:30:38","date_gmt":"2018-08-22T10:30:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/?p=23730"},"modified":"2018-08-21T16:33:10","modified_gmt":"2018-08-21T23:33:10","slug":"august-22-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/2018\/08\/22\/august-22-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"August 22, 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div><\/div><\/div>

\u201cA merry heart does good, like medicine\u2026\u201d\u00a0<\/em>Proverbs 17:22<\/p>\n

A Merry Heart<\/strong><\/h2>\n

One of my nieces is adopted. She came to our family right before she turned three.\u00a0 We were excited to share all of the \u201cfirsts\u201d with her as the latest member of our family. Eagerly we waited for birthdays and holidays, while creating some new traditions.<\/p>\n

A friend of the family wanted to buy her a bicycle for her first Christmas with us. I don\u2019t think he could have been more excited if she had been his own kid! We all knew what he was planning to get her, and we waited in anticipation.<\/p>\n

Finally, the day came. We made a big deal out of placing her in the living room, while our friend went to the porch to retrieve it. Into the room he wheeled a perfect, tiny bike. Little white tires rolled smoothly across the floor, held steady by training wheels. The light gleamed off of its shiny pink paint. A small white basket adorned the front, and fluttering with the movement was the pi\u00e8ce de r\u00e9sistance: streamers on the handlebars!<\/p>\n

I kept looking from my niece to the bike, not wanting to miss a single detail. Excitedly, she bounded off of the couch, joyfully screaming, \u201cA WATER BOTTLE!!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Well. This was not the response we were expecting. I looked at the bike again, and along the bar was a holder, complete with a little pink water bottle. She loved water bottles, especially when they had the toddler-friendly pop top. While we were focusing on the shiny, she honed in on what was familiar and loved.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m thankful that the adults let her rejoice over the water bottle, rather than pointing out that she was \u201cmissing the big picture.\u201d Her joy brought us much laughter that day. She did eventually get excited over the bicycle too, but her process was different than what we thought it would be. May we never squelch the joy in others, even if it looks different than what we anticipated.<\/p>\n

I shared this story in the hopes that it would bring some much-needed laughter during our community\u2019s difficult time in dealing with the Carr Fire. Bless you, sisters.<\/p>\n

\u201cFather, thank You for laughter. Thank You for children, who are such a great example of finding joy in the simplest of things. Thank You for a community that is rallying so strongly in the midst of tragedy. Please keep showing us how to minister to the victims of this fire. Please protect all of those who are battling the fire, and those working to rebuild.\u00a0 In the precious name of Jesus, Amen.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>

<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-women"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p92wjD-6aK","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23730"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23731,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23730\/revisions\/23731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}