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August 12, 2014

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Of Hazelnuts and Truth

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It’s always exciting to see how long the hazelnuts on our bushes can last before the squirrels take a shine to them.  It has become a bit of a competition, a kind of them or me sort of mind battle.  This year, they won a little, but I had the last hurrah.  I discovered last night to my horror that they had stripped one of the bushes almost completely of every last nut.  However, that gave me the heads up and so my husband and I got out there and saved the rest.  How sad for them to discover the empty bushes later last night when they were hoping for a nice hazelnut feast overnight!

Sometimes life is like that, a kind of competition.  God graciously gives us truth and there are those who would like to strip it from us.  We absolutely must keep watch to make sure that the truth is not stealthily taken from us during the night.  These are dark days even though the sun shines so brightly that it burns our skin.  It’s so easy to be lured away from what is real and good.  While we’re checking our smart phones for the latest updates, the truth could be stripped from us and we wouldn’t even know it.

Let’s watch. Let’s fall head over heals in love with the truth. Let’s make it our life.  No one and nothing can take away something that has been intricately woven into the very fabric of our lives.

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August 5, 2014

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A simple hike leads to this stunning panorama

I’ve changed the picture at the top of my page.  There is a little story behind the photo.  Recently, my husband and i went camping for a week in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.  We love hiking but at the outset of our vacation our hiking legs usually need an upgrade.  On the first day, we went on a lovely and not too demanding hike to the top of Mount Willard.  The view from the top is outstanding and I recommend it highly.  The second day we went to Arethusa Falls.  It was about as demanding as the first day’s hike and the beauty of the falls was incredible.  On the third day, we just began hiking without really knowing our destination, but God knew where we were going.  After about an hour and a half of hiking we had to choose: continue upwards to the summit of Mount Jackson or head downwards to see another falls?  Well, we prefer to do our hard work of upward climbing first, so we headed up.

The description of the “moderately difficult” climb did not prepare us for the rest of the hike up the mountain.  It was NOT moderate, at least not in my definition of the word.  Very near the end, we met a man with a young boy coming down and the man encouraged us to go on because, as he said, “It’s only a few minutes to the top.”  I thought, “If a kid can do it, I can too.”  Hehe.  Those few minutes necessitated scrambling over enormous boulders with only a few small branches on the sides to hang onto.  But then … we reached the top.  John went first and told me to try to make it.  He said it would be worth it.  At the top was a panorama perhaps a hundred times more beautiful than the picture you see at the top of my page.  There were no trees, so you could see 360 degrees around.  Mount Washington rose in the distance and the valley that we had come from meandered much further below us than I had imagined.  We took a lot of pictures and gaped in awe of God’s creation that remains so beautiful in spite of what man has done to it.  The wind began to whistle and the clouds foretold a possible change in the weather and so we had to tear ourselves away from that gorgeous spot.  I think that it will always remain in my mind as the most amazing and beautiful view I have ever seen, the view of a lifetime.

A simple hike on a normal day.  We started out, not knowing where we were going.  Life is like that.  We start out not knowing our path or where it will lead us, but we keep on climbing.  I would like to encourage everyone out there to keep on climbing.  Choose the way up.  It may be difficult, even more difficult than you had anticipated, but when you get to the top, the view will be more beautiful than anything you could have imagined.  God can show you things in this life that will stay with you forever.  Those views will encourage you through the hard times and lead you onward.  Take the risk.  God is so worth it.  He is the summit of all summits, the panorama of all panoramas.

 

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January 2, 2014

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Reading the Bible in one year

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

A wonderful new website to help us read through the Bible in one year!  Very nice that the mayor of a small town in Texas would like to promote the Bible this year.  What a great way to begin this new year!

http://www.thebible2014.com

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July 5, 2013

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Support of traditional marriage

In this morning’s paper there was an opinion piece by Mr. Stan Simpson.  In the article Mr. Simpson wrote about the troubled life of Aaron Hernandez, the Patriots’ football player accused of murder.  The major thrust of the article was about the difficulty that Mr. Hernandez had because his father died when he was a teenager.  Mr. Simpson used that case as a lead in to discuss “the crisis in masculinity.”  In his discussion, he quoted a minister and former football player who said that “Forty percent of all children go to bed without their biological dads in the house.”  Such a statistic is tragic.  We all have images in our minds of daddy coming home from work and greeting the children, taking them fishing or helping them learn something such as car repair, carpentry or even math.

Journalists are fond of bringing up such statistics without thinking logically about what the full scope of the issue entails.  The foundation of the whole issue presupposes a traditional marriage between a man and a woman.  Our society is in the process of eliminating support of traditional marriages and yet authorities in that society decry the problems that are created by eliminating traditional marriage.  These days if you support traditional marriages, you find yourself on the firing line.  I find that audaciously hypocritical.

Stable traditional marriages between a man and a woman are known to produce stable and responsible children.  Troubled marriages, single parenthood and other difficult situations statistically bring about greater numbers of troubled children who become troubled adults.  Our society is disintegrating from its core, which ought to be stable traditional marriages.  You can’t trash marriage and then complain when the results of trashing it show up in society.

By the way, I don’t think that the Hernandez case is a good example to use as a lead in to this topic.  He and his brother went to school with my children.  A lot of people have a lot of different opinions of what went wrong in Mr. Hernandez’ life.  In the end, only he and God and maybe a few close associates know what really went on.  It would be better to simply leave it alone and let the courts work it out at this point.

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June 14, 2013

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Parables

Jesus spoke in parables so that those who loved him could understand and learn valuable lessons, and at the same time those who didn’t know him would just think that it was a story.  People loved his stories, whether they understood them or not.  However, those parables teach us priceless lessons.  How?  Through correspondences.  From the parable of the mustard seed, we understand that the mustard seed corresponds to faith because it is so small, but becomes something much larger.  We also understand the pearl of great price, the story of the ten virgins who took oil in their lamps and many others.

Today, our world is telling us a story.  It smacks us in the face each and every day, but do we understand it?  Do we see beyond what is happening naturally around us?  One of these modern day parables is the food we eat.  The food we eat corresponds to truth.  Jesus said that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from God’s mouth (Mt 4:4).  What are we eating?

The world is being flooded with junk food.  What an appropriate name!  It appeals to our taste buds by including plenty of salt, fat and sugar, but it is making us sick and even killing us.  More insidious is the food that looks real, but has been completely adulterated.  It is either poisoned with herbicides and pesticides or it has been changed genetically from the way God perfectly created it.  The result?  Cancers and more diseases.  Not only is it killing us and making us sick, but we are addicted to it.  We love it!

Looking at it as a parable, we have to see that people are dying from a lack of knowledge (of the word of God).  “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge (Ho 4:6).”  People don’t believe that they live by every word that comes from God. (Mt 4:4)  They accept falsity rather than truth, they change the truth into something more ‘acceptable’ in our times, and they look for soothing words to appease their consciences.  Read Jeremiah 23:16, 17.  That is real spiritual junk food with all the elements necessary to make our souls fat and lazy, overpowered by the sugar high given to us by smooth and  ‘sweet’ words.

Let’s get back to the real Word of God.  It will nourish us and when we see the beauty it brings to our lives and how we flourish from living it, the world around us will change with us and reflect the new reality that is ours.  Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.  When that becomes reality, the natural elements of this earth will show forth God’s kingdom.  There is no junk food in God’s kingdom, only delicious food that nourishes our bodies and spirits.

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June 13, 2013

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Hearing and listening to God

I was thinking about the word ‘hear’ lately.  God is so kind.  He always listens and hears what we say to Him.  When I listen to my friend, he or she speaks while I listen.  Then I speak and he or she listens.  So, do I listen to and hear what God has to say?

He hears us:

  • Ps 18:6 In my distress I called upon the LORD, and cried unto my God: he heard my voice out of his temple, and my cry came before him, even into his ears.
  • Ps 34:4  I sought the LORD, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears.
  • 2 Co 6:2  (For he saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted (Is 49:8), and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee: behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.)

Let’s hear Him as Elijah did:

  • 1 Ki 19:12  And after the earthquake a fire; but the LORD was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.
  • De 12:28  Observe and hear all these words which I command thee, that it may go well with thee, and with thy children after thee for ever, when thou doest that which is good and right in the sight of the LORD thy God.
  • Jo 5:25  Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear th evoice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live.
  • Jo 10:27  My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.
  • He 3:7, 8  Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness.

It’s a two way street, a sweet conversation.  Speaking, listening – listening, speaking.  In this noisy world, it’s hard to calm down and really listen.  It is so worth the effort.  When our life honors Him and He hears our problems, He pulls out all the stops when He answers.  The rest of Psalm 18 describes His answer when there is a just cause.

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January 20, 2013

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A God given but perhaps much overlooked ability in men

A MAN’S FOCUS

About a month ago, my husband asked me to drop some tool off at his job.  He is a contractor and works outdoors most of the year.  I got the tool and headed over to the house where he was working at the time.  When I arrived, for some reason I just didn’t feel like getting out of the car and so I parked right in front of the house where he could see me.  The front yard was small and he was working about thirty feet or less from where I was.  He seemed intent on his work, but shortly he looked up and looked towards the car.  I thought he had seen me, but immediately his head turned back towards his work.  A few seconds later, he again turned his head towards my car and then began to come down the ladder.  I assumed that he had seen me, but when he reached the bottom of the ladder he walked across the front yard, not fifteen feet from the car, to the other side of the house where his helper was working and he began to do something else.  Finally, in frustration, I dialed his cell number.  I watched as he fumbled around trying to get the phone out of his pocket while still wearing his gloves.  He still had no clue concerning my presence even though I was sitting in the car fifteen feet away from him.  “Hi honey, I’m right here in front of the house.”  “Where?”  He finally looked up and saw the car.

Even though I teased him about not seeing me, it caught my attention and for several days brought about deep wonderment and meditations about how focused he was on his work that he did not even see me just a few short feet away from him.  As he worked, I could see his mind calculating every necessary movement and piece of material to complete the required task.

Later that same week, he and I were sitting down after a hard day of work, enjoying the evening news.  I know that it was a Thursday night because on Thursdays the reporter for sports on our favorite channel always has a short report that he calls ‘Kevin’s 7.”  In it he shows clips of the best and worst moments in sports for the week.  As I watched men hurdling their contorted bodies straight into a crowd in order to grab a basketball away from their opponent or football players leaping over other players and plowing through heavily muscled blockers in order to reach the end zone, I realized what it is that makes men so good at what they do.

Women pride themselves in being multi-taskers.  Some men might do the same.  However, the strength of men is in their ability to focus completely on what they are doing.  In sports, it shows up as a total focus on that ball and whatever it is that they have to do with it.  The basketball player focuses his whole being on getting that ball into the basket.  The baseball pitcher focuses everything that he is on getting that ball over the plate in just the right spot to get a strike.  In work men are able to excel at whatever they do because their whole mind, and as a result their whole body, is in sync with what they are doing.  Women sometimes act as if they are superior to men because they are good at doing many things at once.  Maybe some men feel bad about that.  Doing many things at once is a necessity for a woman because of the kind of life she has, but thank God for a man who can channel all of his energy, thoughts and actions into what he is doing at any given moment and because of that ability can bring great things to pass.

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December 16, 2012

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An end of the year letter for 2012

This is the letter I will be sending to family and friends this year:

I started to write an end of the year letter a few weeks ago.  I even got several paragraphs written.  It has all become rather meaningless over the last few days in the light of the heart-wrenching tragedy being experienced by other families in Connecticut right now.  So, I hope you won’t mind if I send you a few paragraphs concerning some of the thoughts that come to mind over this tragedy instead of a letter about my life and about what my kids are doing these days.  We’ve been busy this year, we’re all fine, and that’s about it.

And God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.  Genesis 2:7

It is the breath of God that came into Adam on that day and the same breath that continued to breathe through Adam’s children and grandchildren on down through all the following generations.  Without that breath of life, he was just a lump of dust.  It’s the same with us, his many times great grandchildren and that makes us all the children of the living God.  So, what gives?  The events of this year, and especially the events of the past few days, make us pause and reflect on what on earth is going on.

You could say that there are many causes.  You could blame assault rifles and violent video games and the absenteeism of working parents who are too busy to take care of their children or to teach them the values that they themselves were taught, or were supposed to have been taught.  However, the fact of the matter is that many of God’s children either don’t know or have forgotten who they are.  They are not living like children of an awesome and loving king, God.  They’re living like derelict bums.  That is the tragedy.

It is as if the world has taken on two natures.  Part of humanity seems to be speeding towards God, hoping to find Him more each day, but increasingly more numbers are enticed by the glitz of a worldly life and are as a result speeding in the opposite direction, becoming more unlike Him every day.  To become more like God, one becomes more beautiful and more brilliant and if that’s true, then the opposite must also be true that those who are heading in the wrong direction are becoming more and more insane and hateful.  We can see that in the news on a daily basis.  Perhaps that is the meaning of “the valley of decision.”  We must all go through it and decide for ourselves which way we will go.

We have been greatly blessed in our family to have our parents and children and grandchildren finding God and seeking after Him.  We have discovered the immense power of prayer and how things absolutely change because of it.

Over the last few days, I can see how God grieves for the innocent lives snuffed out meaninglessly by one so selfish and callous.  Some call such people disturbed and say that there could be a personality disorder.  We have experienced a relative with what may have been called a “personality disorder,” but he didn’t pick up a rifle and shoot people.  In fact, through the power of prayer, he spent his last years on earth a happy and well liked person.  Prayer can do that.

This nation and this earth are in their valley of decision.  We need to turn our prayers to our greater family, the brothers and sisters with whom we share the same breath of life.  We are all brothers and sisters and it’s so sad that our brothers would hate us enough to want to kill us and more importantly that they would hate their own eternal Father.  They have no clue how much He longs for them to turn back to Him.  Above all, we need to maintain faith: faith that God will lead us if that’s what we’re praying for, faith that we will continue on this path, and faith that our children will find a way to reject this world’s evil when their day comes in that valley of decision.

Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision …  Joel 3:14

So, may we all spend this season joyously in that we know who we are, gratefully because we know who it was that saved us, and yet a little bit more soberly since we know that there is yet so much lacking both in us and in our country.  Let’s pray that we all in our nation and our brothers and sisters in other nations will humble ourselves as it says so beautifully in the Scriptures:

If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.  2 Chronicles 7:14

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November 21, 2012

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Thank God for the fleas

There is a line in “The Hiding Place” by Corrie Ten Boom that is never too far from my mind.  While imprisoned in a concentration camp, Corrie’s sister insisted that they had to thank God for the fleas.  Corrie had a hard time with that but did it a bit begrudgingly to satisfy her beloved sister.  When you think of their situation, that took a lot of faith to carry on and even thank God for the fleas.  Eventually, they discovered that the Germans did not want to enter their particular barrack because of those fleas and that is what gave them the little bit of liberty that they had to teach others the Word of God.  With hindsight, Corrie was so grateful for those fleas and for the opportunity to help others at a time when they were in such dire circumstances.

God sometimes allows ‘fleas’ in different areas of our lives.  To us they look like dirty little inconveniences, problems, difficulties and heartaches.  However, our thoughts are not God’s thoughts.  He sees things from His eternal viewpoint.  It’s in the valley of decision and difficulty that the purest metals are forged.  Our darkest days have the potential to bring the greatest growth.  No one would voluntarily choose heartache, but we are all capable, by faith, of thanking God for the fleas in our lives and then of waiting patiently for the time when (and if) He chooses to reveal the reason for them.

It’s easy to thank God for our abundance and our all too apparent blessings, but have we thanked God for the fleas lately?  Have a wonderful Thanksgiving and if there are fleas in your life, remember that God loves you with an everlasting love and is always doing everything He can to bring you closer to Him.

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November 20, 2012

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The Trouble With Advertising

We are surrounded by a non-stop, twenty-four hours a day barrage of advertising.  As Christians, why should this bother us?  Or should it?  The purpose of our lives is to live a life of “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  Advertising is a constant distraction trying to grab our attention away from the things that are real and true and instead, get us focused on the natural, temporary things of this natural world.  The whole point of an advertisement is to get you to covet something enough so that you will spend whatever it costs to buy it.

Recently, I had a ridiculous conversation with my telephone company.  I called them to ask them to stop sending me advertisements for more of their products and services.  I felt it was a waste of paper and money.  Hohoho.  How silly of me to want to save them some money.  After a long and drawn out conversation, the woman finally agreed to stop sending the offending messages and then in the same breath she said that she noticed that I qualified for a special package.  She rattled off all of the wonderful services I could get with this package faster than I could take in what any of it meant.  Then she boasted that I could even get this wonderful package for three dollars less than I was paying at the moment!  I said that if they were really intent on receiving less money, I’d be happy to oblige them and promptly signed up for the package.  As soon as that transaction was complete, she started in on something else.   I said, “Enough!” and hung up the phone.  In the end, it saved me three bucks, but I had to wonder about the sanity of these people.

Then just the other day, I had to call my cell phone provider.  For some reason I was receiving daily ads on my cell phone since the time that I had bought it.  My daughter had the exact same phone and didn’t get any ads.  I had tried several times to have these ads either stopped or blocked from my phone at different branches associated with my provider.  Nothing seemed to work.  So, I called the main number.  After punching in the usual string of numbers required to ‘access’ my account, guess what was playing as I waited on hold for the next ten minutes?  Yes, more ads.  The woman was finally able to find the cause of the ads – an app that someone had downloaded onto my phone.  Who put it there?  Not me.  It’s not a smart phone and I don’t have any data plan.  I just use the phone for calls and texting.   Anyway, the case was solved and … no more ads.

I think that for the most part, we are so accustomed to ads that we don’t even realize that we are constantly being assaulted by them.  Yes, it is an assault.  It’s a war out there to buy your business.  No matter where you are, someone wants you to buy something more.  As a  frugal Christian trying to live an uncovetous life here on earth, I think that I try to ignore it all but lately it really does feel more like a knock down drag out assault.  It takes a consciously herculean effort to ignore it.

When I go into a store, I have to almost put blinders on in order to stay focused on the particular item needed.  Some stores, especially the ones that give you carriages (imagine that, carriages in a clothing store!), seem able to persuade consumers to buy bushels of extra items even though they entered the store for just one thing.  Maybe it’s in the layout or some kind of subliminal message in the music they’re playing.

I believe that it is an issue for Christians because it keeps us thinking about natural things, natural desires.  It makes us discontent with the things that we have and creates a constant desire to always have more, more.  Most importantly it takes us away from our true purpose here on earth, which is to live the God life, the life which He put inside of us.  It keeps us from connecting with that part deep inside of ourselves that would raise us up out of this earth’s natural crust and help us to discover that we are truly children of the Most High.