From the Home Place

March 23, 2026

Well, the ‘ol weather app shows that we are starting our morning at 35 degrees, headed for 64. There will be an east breeze at 10-20 mph. The best report of said app is that we will be blessed with 12 hours and 17 minutes of daylight today. It looks like a good day for an outside job that will allow a feller to soak up some sunshine.

Speaking of an outside job, yesterday afternoon I was blessed to help two friends do some repair work on a widow lady’s yard fence. We had to dig holes; our ground is so dry that it is like trying to dig through cement. We had to use pry bars to chisel our way down deep enough to set posts. It was difficult work, yet very rewarding work. It was such a joy to get to work with those two other men. One of them is older, the other younger than me, yet all three of us were able to work side-by-side digging holes, pouring cement and talking about life. What a blessing to get to be a blessing!

Both of these dear men have been a great blessing in my life, so for me, it was awesome to get to return some of the blessing. There is just something special about being around people who love Jesus and enjoy working hard to bless someone else. Perhaps, that is a portion of what the Apostle Paul meant when he stated, “Work out your salvation?” I know he was speaking literally of working out the result of our salvation, but to some degree that is exactly what we were doing yesterday.

Three men who could have each enjoyed a good nap, were working shoulder to shoulder to be a blessing to someone else. I am of the opinion that if we are going to claim to be a Christian, that such a decree requires us to be willing to give up some of our personal comfort for the good of others.

Remember the old missional statement, “People do not care how much you know, until they know how much you care.” What a grand statement. In our culture we tend to value knowledge over caring. For some reason, we are good at telling others how to fix their life, but not always good at just caring about the person. You see, the beautiful part of us three men fixing the fence of a widow lady, was that while we were laboring on the fence, each man’s wife was visiting with the sweet lady who owns the fence.

As such, the greater blessing wasn’t the fence repairs, it was our wives making time in their schedules to show someone else that we were all there because we care. They spoke encouragement into a lonely life. The shared wisdom and the greater gift of laughter. Each present wife, shared a portion of life with a widow, almost as if each dear wife was looking into her own future.

There is nothing like a good dose of future reality to help us appreciate present relationships! You see my dear friends, we are each just passing through this thing called life, and the older one gets, the more precious each day is. Oh my, the difference it would make if each of us would figure that reality out at a younger age.

When we are young, we seem to have a sense of immortality. We feel that we have the time to accomplish all of life’s possibilities. But then one day, we begin to realize our mortality, and that we have a limited time to just live. Yet the great thing of such a realization is that what time we have left is best invested by investing into the lives of others, the true wealth of life.

Look back at all of the funerals you have attended. When a person is remembered for only the vast amount of wealth they accumulated, it is truly a sad memorial. But when people share of how the deceased had been a personal friend who blessed the lives of others as an overflow of loving Jesus, that is a life well lived and greatly celebrated!

So, when your life closes, will those who gather at the memorial remember a person of great monetary wealth, or will they remember a great friend who impacted their lives with kindness? For as Jesus stated, we can either have money or friends, of which God is one, but it is really tough to love both. If I might rewrite Joshua’s statement, “As for me and my house, we will love on other people because we have first loved Jesus.”

Digging into the lives of others with you, Neal