Stepping Stones

A Monthly Devotional, by Michaela Popielski

Hey guys. So for this devotional I think I will talk a bit on creation. Creation is probably one of the first things we learn in Sunday school along with Jesus is good as well as the son of God. But creation I think has a bit more to it than that. Yes God made it and it’s good, but I was walking around my family’s property and thought about how beautiful it was. It was in the 60’s in March you can bet people were outside soaking it up while it lasted. Warm and sunny isn’t always common. Usually it’s raining. Which isn’t bad either. Anyway, I was sitting on a fallen tree on the side of a pond and realized that I never fully appreciated how beautiful and wonderful nature was. I have always loved being outdoors but this year it’s meant more than ever. The way I see it, with nature, nothing can go wrong. It’s peaceful, beautiful, and overall so free. Nothing or anyone really controls it but God, and with that thought in mind it’s made nature even more amazing than ever. And the sun, moon and stars, constellations, storms etc.

But as with all good things there are things that no one really likes. For example, I could live without snakes. I hate snakes but without them rodent population would probably go crazy which I am not a fan of either. But it’s a classic case of taking the good with the bad. Snakes and rodents suck, but without them, or at least snakes, there would probably be more diseases spreading but I can’t be sure. I don’t know what good rodents are other than cat snacks and snake food. But there is a reason God made them even if they are vermin. Same with storms. They can be beautiful but also dangerous. That thought it made me think about another thing; human nature. It’s in a way the same thing but it’s not. For example, God made us and our families and we’ve probably wondered at one point why God placed us with our family. Especially if you have siblings. Siblings tend to fight occasionally or often depending on the situation or individual. But it’s another case of good with bad. Yeah it may stink having siblings but if you are close with one of them then you have someone to talk to. If you aren’t close with anyone in your family then God will always listen. So yeah, we can wonder why certain people are on this planet or we could wonder what good rodents are, but in the end we still need to trust God which I struggle with sometimes when I get overwhelmed. Well, I guess I’ll stop yakking and let you guys get to the verses. Enjoy! Michaela.

May 1. Job 26:13; Heb. 1:10-12; 2 Chron. 2:12

May 2. Job 26:7; Isa. 45:18; Ps.32

May 3. Isa. 10; Ps.115:15

May 4. Ps.74:1-23; Hosea.10

May 5. Jer. 6:16/8:7; Ps.102:25-27

May 6. Isa 37:16; Jer. 51:15; Num. 16:31-32

May 7. Job 14:19; Job 37:10; 1 Chon 16:26; Isa. 11

May 8. Lev. 17:11; 1 Sam 12:17; Job 28:26; Ps. 135:7

May 9. Jer. 51:16; Hosea 11

May10. Deu. 4:32; Job 4:17; Job 10:9; Job 33:4

May11. Job 35:10; Ps. 100:3; Ps. 139:14; Matt. 19:4

May12. Ps. 8:3 1; Cor 15:41; Ps.82:1-8

May13. 1 Cor 15:41; Isa.12; Amos 4:13

May14. Job 36:27-28; Job 28:26; Hosea 12

May15. Amos 5:8; Acts 14:17; Ps. 104:10; Ps.104:10

May16. Acts 14:17; Ps.83-84

May17. Job 37:6; Ps.104:32; Nahum 1:5 Ps.94

May18. Lev.24; Mark 10:13-31

May19. Isa.13; Hosea 14

May20. Eccl.1:6; Matt. 14

May21. Hab.2:18; John 17:23-25; Ps. 23

May22. Rom. 1:19-21; 2 Pet. 3:3-5; Matt.13:34-36

May23. Heb.9:10-12; Heb.9:25-27; Eph.1:3-5

May24. Gal.6:10-12; Hosea 15

May25. Luke 2:26-56; Rom.8:18-20

May26. Ps.65; Num.20

May27. Isa.14; Deu.9:22-24

May28. Ps.69; Deu.1:31-33

May29.Judg.11:19-21; Hosea 16

May30. Deu.28:51-53; Ps.55

May31. Isa.15 1; Sam.27:11-12

28 Comments

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  1. Love it!!! I think it is very well put together! Creation is wonderful–even if there are bad parts to it. I don’t know how many times a snake has slithered over my toes while hiking and I’ve screamed–and sworn that I’m never hiking again. LOL I love nature. Thunder storms are incredible, and I love the water, grass, wild flower…It’s all beautiful!!! I picked wild flowers today just because they were incredible to look at, all covered with dew and just…perfect! I’ve gone stargazing with my family and the constellations are some of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. I really do like this devotional–you’ve got a lot of good ideas and they really help me think about things I would ordinarily take for granted!

  2. Glad you like it. And I love storms too! Me and my sisters in the summer usually star gaze. Or play flashlight tag. The rain we’ve been having this past week is wonderful. Usually I walk in it but if its storming to where its dangerous my parents won’t let me go out. And I love nature too obviously. In the summer a back field we have is usually full of daisy’s and goldenrod. Its really pretty.

  3. You have a back field? That’s awesome! When my family lived in Missouri we had a field in back of the house and my mother’s dream was to plant it with wild flowers. I was just picking wildflowers the other day! I was walking on the trail and there were all these beautiful pink, purple, and white flowers–they were too beautiful, I just had to pick some! I brought them home and put them in a vase and they stayed beautiful for a couple days. They still had raindrops on them from a storm. Speakings of storms–we live in an apartment (that’s an adventure, let me tell you. Moving from a house to an apartment is a bit of a jump! LOL) but it’s a sub-level apartment so are windows are at ground level…which means when it rains I swear the raindrops hit our windows worse than any others because we don’t get protection from the overhang on the roof. So I get to hear the raindrops hitting the window…which is great until it pours and hails…then it’s kinda hard so sleep. LOL 🙂

  4. I love hearing the rain hit the windows. Though hail is another matter all together. I do not like hail. Where I am at we have had rainy weather for the past 2 or 3 days and there are more to follow. I’m actually able to sleep through storms now. But its scary trying to drive in it. I had to take my dad work one time and it was raining steadily, not too heavy, then the minute we left it started pouring so bad I couldn’t see. I had to stop until it let up. It scared me. Also, my mom loves gardening. She put in raised beds last year or the year before and she had a huge supply of veggies. Especially tomatoes. And was it a big adjustment from house to apartment?

  5. Driving in hail can be scary. Last year when my family still lived in Milwaukee, we were driving and it started hailing so hard that pea sized hail obscured all the windows. It sounded like it was gonna crush the car!
    You mom likes to garden? My mom does too! We used to have a big garden patch…I did not have a green thumb. All my sunflowers seemed to wilt. I’m not sure what I did wrong! LOL that, and I keep killing the lavender plants…gardening isn’t my thing, but I love having plants around. The only plants I don’t kill are trees–we grow a couple in pots, and those are still alive! 🙂 Do you like gardening, or is that just your mom’s thing?

  6. I kinda like it but its more my mom and little sisters thing. I like flowers but I prefer to have nature do everything. When I lived in the town before he one i am in now, our garden was huge. We had a lot of stuff. I liked it when I was younger but I grew out of it so to say. If I want my room to smell floral I just buy scented reed diffusers. Its quicker and last longer.

  7. reed diffusers are a good idea! I wish I could do that, but I have a feeling my little sister or the cat would knock that over. LOL I share a room with my two sisters, and the cat (I call her Bub) who always sleeps on MY bed…I don’t understand that. LOL so yeah, it’s a little cramped sometimes. My family is rather musical come to think of it, so there are instruments taking up any extra space. 🙂

  8. I use reed diffusers because my mom won’t allow candles in my room and my cat who lived in my room would have knocked it over. And my family is musical also. One of my younger sisters plays piano and the other taught herself guitar and my oldest sister and dad used to play violin. SO we have instruments around our house as well.

  9. Music is so much fun! I play electric guitar and harmonica, so I’ve got a couple guitars and an amp taking up space, and my sister plays piano (keyboard) so that takes up even more space. She had a violin, but I dunno where it went. She couldn’t really play it. And my brother does DJ stuff…I can’t work that, so it’s just weird buttons to me. 🙂 Do you play an instrument?

  10. lol No. I didn’t get the musical gene. I used to take piano but I didn’t have the patience to practice and I just wasn’t into it. Same with guitar. My fingers aren’t long so it was a bit of a struggle to curl my fingers on the fret board. I got the outdoor/farmer gene instead. I like listening to music though and I sing decently but thats as far as it goes.

  11. LOL Yeah, I used to take piano lessons too. I can play a fair number of songs by memory, but I lost interest. My hands are small too, so I have some trouble with guitar, but electric fret boards are smaller and the action is less, so it’s not so bad. 🙂 I love the outdoors–I was just on a walk enjoying the sunshine! Do you farm? My grandparents on my mother’s side own a farm and I love helping with the animals and milking cows…except when the cows kick me, then I get very angry. LOL

  12. Its a small farm. Only goats chickens dogs and cats. We only have a few goats though. Some are being sold. Me and my sister are in 4H so the goats are really for us. When I used to live in Jasonville we around 20 goats. Then downsized when we moved. I’m the goat person one of my sisters take care of the chickens the other feeds dogs and cats. My mom does most of the gardening though we help her when she needs it. So I guess we do farm but its a very small one compared to other farms.

  13. Cool! My grandparents just do cows and pigs for the most part and grow lots of crops. I’ve never really been around goats, what are they like? Do you milk them?
    Ugh, chickens! I can’t understand the chicken thing. My aunt raises chickens and I try to stay far away–for some reason I just can’t take the smell. Oh well. My little sister doesn’t seem to be bothered by it. She loves collecting eggs. She even likes the turkeys…which don’t like me. Been chased by those a couple times. LOL I can laugh now, but as a child, being chased by a huge bird is no joke!

  14. Goats are like mini cows. And yes I do milk them. Its a pain but it needs done. And my sister loves chickens. Me, I want to fry them up and eat them with gravy. I hate poultry unless its cooked. My great grand father used to have a dairy cow farm. My mom has fond memories of that place. And I’ve been chased by a really mean rooster a few months ago. We butchered him first. He tasted really good.

  15. LOL! Serves the rooster right for chasing you! I’m with you on the poultry thing–a good chicken is a cooked chicken! LOL I like cows, so I guess I’d probably like goats. Cows are normally pretty nice…stupid, but nice. The calves are so cute! Except when they try to eat my shorts–you can’t wear white on a dairy farm…the calves try to eat them. Very interesting. LOL

  16. I never knew that. Cows kinda scare me anyway. They’re tall and I’m not.

  17. LOL yeah, they are kinda big. LOL Try having your toes stepped on by one…ouch!

  18. I’ve had a horse step on my foot out of anger and it hurt. That horse was a diva.

  19. LOL! OUCH! That had to hurt pretty bad–nice word for the horse though–diva–haven’t heard that one in a while. My sister loves horses…which is unforunate for me, becuase I don’t like riding them or smelling them. Last time I was on a horse it tried to buck me…that might have something to do with the not liking horses thing LOL I hope my sister doesn’t have the family riding skills–I almost got bucked, and my older sister got dragged through the forest by a horse with a bad sense of direction or just a need to be mean to her rider. LOL

  20. lol Wow. My sister has been bucked off once (she isn’t a horse person) and I’ve been bucked off I think 4 times. It wasn’t bad but my back hurt for about a week. But that happens. Just don’t break your neck and you’re fine.

  21. Wow–You’ve got some guts. If I’d actually been thrown off, I would never have gotten on again. I prefer motorcycles–then it’s my fault if I fall off. LOL But my dad doesn’t want me riding motorcycles…I can’t blame him.

  22. I want to try 4 wheelers. There is a place about 20 minutes from that sells them but my parents don’t like that.

  23. 4 wheelers are fun! I’ve driven one before on my grandparents farm–It was fun, but it was kinda scary. I drive like a hooligan apparently, and I almost flipped it taking a corner too fast. If you do ride one, just remember that just because they have four wheels doesn’t mean they won’t flip!!! My cousins, uncles, and grandpa have flipped them before and come out worse for the wear…

  24. there have been ambulances up and down my road because of flipped 4 wheelers. a news van was there one also. i live down the road from a state riding area so 4wheelers are common. also golf carts. those are common also.

  25. Yeah…there have been deaths from flipped 4 wheelers up by my grandparents farm…and a fair few of them too. It’s too sad. 🙁

  26. It is. Most people don’t wear their helmets and the trails can get pretty dangerous. Before my dad said no, me and my sisters would sometimes go climbing on the trails. There was one about approximately 100ft high more or less and almost straight up. I think only a few people have tried that and I don’t think any of them made it to the top before gravity and scientific impossibility got them. And the big hills on the trail can be scary. They rate them I think easiest to hardest with the numbers 7, 14,21,28. I could be wrong though. Its been a while since I’ve been in there. Either way its not safe. Most people riding 4 wheeler’s don’t have time to stop so its dangerous in there sometimes but it doesn’t keep some idiots from trying it. But thankfully that’s rare. Most people use truck and jeeps fixed with special tires for that stuff. One of my dads friends broke his jeep axle riding in there.

  27. Yikes! No thank you–I’m all for adventure, but I like to stay reasonably safe. It makes me nervous to be driving out in the country where the crops grow so close to the road you can’t see intersections–I know people who’ve been in car accidents taking those interesections…not everyone comes out of those alive.

  28. It takes practice. It mainly about timing and how good your vision is.

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