Heart Hope by Olga

Do you believe in Heaven and Hell? Most people probably do in some form or fashion. But what do we actually do about it? It was meant to be a quick trip to Wal-Mart to pick up bright colorful paper napkins to go with my paper plates for small group at my house tonight. (After all every good Southern girl knows that when you have company you are supposed to bring out all of your finery and since I was going to use the unacceptable paper products, I thought that they should at least be cute.) However God had other plans…surprise… surprise…surprise. Headed down Highway 6, I took the wrong turn, but figured I would just take the side road to get to my destination. But after missing the second turn off I pulled into City Market instead. Well, I mused, why did God want me at the grocery store instead of the big discount store? Entering the supermarket I ran into a young girl from church and had a quick conversation—that probably wasn’t the divine appointment. A few minutes later I saw a...

A friend of mine recently traveled to Mexico and came back with an unpleasant gift—“tourista”—better known as diarrhea. The sickness was probably acquired by drinking a soft drink with ice. It sounds harmless, but the effect on the body is terrible.  Why do travelers to other countries end up sick from eating and drinking when citizens of that country are not affected by it at all? The natives have become resistant to the harmful bacteria since they ingest it daily, but our immune systems cannot handle the influx of microorganisms.  Since we are citizens of another place--Heaven, there are certain places that we should not go and partake of the “food,” since it can be harmful to us. The food could be seen as the sinful activities of this world which may seem harmless when we first consider participating in them, but afterwards we see clearly that they have had an adverse effect on us.  If we choose to keep going back to the harmful things eventually we will become i...

Have you ever felt out of place or like you didn’t belong? Or have you wished for a place where you could be exactly who God created to be? Do you wonder why you are different from those around you? I can answer “yes” to all of those questions.   It has been confirmed that I don’t fit into this world. While eating lunch at a local sandwich shop, there was a table of six middle-aged women. It seemed that they were probably visiting the valley from who knows where, because they were taking pictures at the non-descript delicatessen in the area.  I wasn’t trying to listen in on their conversation, but due to the proximity of the tables and the volume of the dialogue I couldn’t help but overhear it. The women were giving each other advice on how to get rid of a hangover. (I had a really good suggestion—not to drink so much, but didn’t think they would welcome me jumping into their discussion or appreciate my idea.) Like I said earlier, these ladies were not youngsters that you...

A great summer morning, good friends and a beautiful mountain to hike—it just doesn’t get any better than this! While walking along the path to Shrine Pass God showed me how our lives often parallel the hike I was on. Since I had not been on this trail before, I started out with excitement and curiosity. Our lives are a lot like this, aren’t they? We begin our journey with great expectation about how wonderful it is going to be—free from hardship and hurts, but we quickly find out that things might not be just as we think they should be along the way. As I walked the path, there was beauty all around, but there were other things that could come in and steal the moment from me. There were gnarly dead trees that had been damaged by the wind, weather or fire and were really no longer good for anything. Some people end up like these stumps and logs. They allow the junk of the world to come in and kill and destroy the very life within and then become hardened and dry, not useful to anyone o...