His eye is on the .....

This last week or two have been hard for my physically. I have had an illness for 13 years that has left me with chronic pain. But this last little while, the pain has been worse. It is right after I eat, a couple of hours after I eat and again in the middle of the night. Sure spoils a good meal or good sleep.
A side effect of the increased pain this week has been self pity, especially the last three days. I cry at the pain, partly because I fear how bad it may be as it progresses and partly because I am weary of pain. Then I cry because I just want it to be GONE for good. Poor Me!
This morning is a case in point. I was up at 5:00 AM with pain. So I walked Buddy, had a snack and pain pill and time with the Lord , yet felt overwhelmed about the day ahead. Could I endure? But, then, I said to myself, I love Sundays and would not want to miss out.
As I walked Buddy again before we left for church, God spoke. Not in an audible voice but none the less He spoke. As we neared the park, I saw a humming bird high in the sky, near the light post. Just as quickly the Spirit whispered in my ear:
“ His eye is on the hummingbird and I know He cares for me.”
I added, ‘His eye is on my pancreas and I know He cares for me.’
I actually burst into song as we walked around the park. My spirit was lifted and I was ready to enjoy the day.
You go God!

Don't give up

Well, fall is in the air. Time to plan for your fall garden.
First a quick look around our yard: The marigolds are gone now, a victim of the snails finally. Gone too are the lovely dahlias who succumbed to the petunia moth. I guess she couldn’t find enough petunias at our house this year so moved on, taking with her the verbena too. The impatiens are leggy and will be the next to go, making room for pansies and primroses and cyclamen, soon.
A quick story about our pesky crape myrtle. It has not produced much for several years and this year Jon was going to remove it. But, before he got to it, it came out with lovely blooms. About the same time, I read in Luke 13:6-9 a parable that was just our situation. Jesus had been talking about unrepentant people and applied it to a fig tree.
The farmer had a fig tree that did not have any fruit. He told the vineyard keeper that for three years there had not been any fruit, so cut it down.’ Why should it use up the ground?’ The keeper said this year let me dig around it and fertilizes it and it if bears fruit, fine, If not, then you can cut it down.
Like the keeper, God is the God of second chances. I am so glad that when my life seems most messed up and unfruitful, that God gives it tender care. He prompts someone to pray and someone else to write a note. He moves the Pastor to use the word to reach me. I hear a song on the radio or see the personal care God gives my humming bird and I begin to flourish again.
Our crape myrtle got a second chance too and flourished.

Before a fall

We have many sayings in our house that have passed down to our grandsons. Unfortunately, the one about pride was brought to my mind today in a graphic way.
Gabriel and I were in the Golden Arches getting an after school snack. They were either very under staffed or very disorganized. He ordered two chicken sandwiches and a large order of fries. The sandwiches were placed on the try and the server went on break. We waited and waited and waited for the fries. We could see them draining and ready but no one moved to place them on the tray. Finally, after 10 minutes( boy are they lucky we were not secret shoppers) We asked and they looked at us as though we were asking for something not paid for. In fact, she did said” Well, did you pay for them?”
Gabriel showed his receipt and the server finally gave him the fries.
In the time period between ordering them and receiving them we had lots of time to kill. We watched the drive up window for lack of anything else to do.
That is when I saw this teenager in his power pickup cut it too short and hit the curb and have to back up and straighten it out to drive out. ‘Teenager driver’, I said.
Well, I should have kept my mouth shut. Not many minutes later, we were backing out of Starbucks and I hit the curb and have to back up to straighten my car out. UGH!
Solomon was right on when he said “ Pride goes before a fall”. I proved it right again today and Gabriel called me on it. We often use that saying when we are playing a board game but it fit here too.
Prideful old lady driver.

The tale of three hole punches

When Jon set up the office several years ago, I purchased my first non- electric office accessory- a three hole punch. I have used it a lot and been glad to have it.
Recently I needed to use it again and it is AWOL. I have looked high and low, to no avail. It must be with the previously lost birth certificates. I hate losing things. It makes me feel so stupid. It also makes me wonder if I am becoming demented.
So, since I HAD to have something to punch holes, I set out to find one cheap. Micah and I tried Dollar Tree but they did not have any. Then we hit Target’s dollar bin. There was a cute punch that made leaf shapes. Cute and functional and cheap. Bingo!
Well, as you can guess, it did not work or I would not be writing this tale. It was fine on a single sheet of paper but I had something laminated and it was impossible for it to punch a hole. Since I was determined, I used the ice pick and was very fortunate I did not punch a vein and bleed to death on the spot. See, I really am ‘craft challenged.’
To complete the story, yesterday we were at the office supply place to get ink and I decided to pick up a cheap( I should learn, huh?) hole punch. They had one for $1.50. What a bargain! I rushed home to re- punch the ice pick holes since they were not very good.
Yes, you guessed it, it did not work well. ( They don’t make things like they used to. It sure was not ‘made in America‘)
If Jon said it once, he said it 10 times, “Why did you buy such a cheap thing? What were you thinking? Especially after the last one was a flop.” He attempted to punch the holes and only ended up slicing his finger before the whole thing fell apart.
There are several lessons here:
Keep track of your things. God never loses track of us. We are engraved on the palms of his hands.
Don’t get impatient. It makes you do crazy things. God is patient . He has a plan and is never in a hurry.
Use the right tool for each project. God crafts us individually for specific jobs and uses us to our full potential, never expecting one size fits all jobs.
You get what you pay for. God paid the highest price and got us! We must be of great worth to Him.
Maybe you can think of another lesson.

The tale of two shawls

Last winter I drew Ruth’s name for Christmas. She wanted a shawl. I had not made one before so I found the right pattern and decided to make one in leftover yarn to try it out before purchasing the lovely yarn she selected. It came out fairly well, though it hard work figuring out the directions. I was glad that I have done a sample as it turned out I had to adjust it for the real shawl. I decided to keep it for future reference. It is a blah white and very plain. The real thing was lovely and she looked great in it.
This summer my dear friend and knitting teacher created a beautiful shawl for me of aqua yarn with an intricate angel pattern woven in. I could never had created it myself. It is truly a work of art. It holds not resemblance to my trial shawl or even the real one for that matter. The best part of it all is that I did not have to do one thing- it was a gift of love. My only job- receive it with gratitude.
In the spiritual realm I have two ‘shawls’ too.
One is my self righteousness. I work very hard at it- trying to please God by all I do, feeling smug about how I am better than others. But it is not the real thing. It does not please God either.
The other is a gift from God - of Jesus’ righteousness. I don’t have to do a thing- it is free and very intricate. I could never have achieved it myself. It is a free gift of God. All I have to do is receive it by faith, admitting I can’t create it myself. Then live my life it gratitude every day for that gift.
Which shawl do you have? Don’t settle for self righteousness. It is like the emperor’s clothes- leaves you naked.

What were you made for?

The other day Jon and I saw the oddest thing out our window. It was a horse trailer and we do not live in the country. Furthermore, the trailer was not hauling horses but garbage cans!!! Huh? I am not joking. They took a can out of the trailer for our neighbor. I guess her old one ‘bit the dust’.
Just as fire hydrants are not cat beds, horse trailers are not made to deliver garbage cans.
So what was I made for? What were you made for?
God says I was made to display His splendor!
I was made by him and He ordained praise from me even as a child.
I was made to serve him by serving others.
I was made to be channel of his Agape love.
I was to live up to what He made me for and not be like a horse trailer carrying garbage cans.

Things are not as they seem

This last week Buddy and I discovered that the new kitty on our block was sleeping on the fire hydrant at night. How that is possible, don’t ask us. It is a mystery. How can that be comfortable? But needless to say, we have had to alter our early morning and late evening route since that is bedtime for the above mentioned cat.
I passed this information on to Jon so he would know to avoid that hydrant too. You can never be too careful with Buddy and his ‘leash aggression’. Especially since he has a passionate hatred of cats.
Yesterday Jon was talking to one of our neighbors and that new kitten came up in conversation. Jon mentioned that the kitty was sleeping on the hydrant at night. Julia said that she would talk to the owner as that was not right. Poor thing!
Jon was not feeling well at the end of the night last night and decided we needed to take a walk around the block at midnight.( I am still not sure why!) We passed the hydrant and I thought to myself, now we can get a look at the poor cat. To our surprise, there was no cat at all! It was only an optical illusion of leaves and the street light making a pattern like the kitten’s fur. Boy did we feel stupid, well, I did since I started all this.
I guess I had better look closer at things, investigate and for sure not pass on what I did not know for sure.( In my defense, I thought I knew for sure.)
But isn’t that what people do when they write God off? They think they know about him from what others have told them. They think they have it figured out based on the lives of those they think know God. They never take the time to check Him out themselves. If they would, they would find He is all He has said He is and more. They would know Him personally, not just about Him.

Let me help

As a follow up to the hose story, I thought about how my helping was not really helpful. As I mentioned, the place to attach the hose was hard to reach and hard to see. We tried using a flashlight but it was not bright enough. Then Jon found his very old ’trouble light‘. But there was not place to hang it so he was holding it and trying to force the hose on all at the same time. As I told you, I offered to hold the ‘trouble light”( what an appropriate name). hoping to hurry up the repair as I was bored and wanted to be doing something else. In the process of my helping , the cord touched metal and shorted the whole thing out. So much for my help. It only made things worse. Back to using the flashlight, which is not an exact science, to say the least.
Sometimes when God is not getting things around me fixed fast enough, I come along and try to help Him too. And with the same results- disaster.
That makes me think of Abraham who tried to help God out in fulfilling his promise of a son. God seemed slow to him in fulfilling his gift of a son so Abraham came up with a way to help God . Enter Ishmael. That has consequences even today in the Middle east
God says that one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years is as day. to Him. He is never slow as men count slowness. He gets the job done in his time and beautifully too.
In his time
In his time
He makes all thing beautiful
In his time.

Persistence

Over the weekend I had a chance to learn once again about persistence from Jon. On Friday evening I drove into the garage and the hose burst and all the water drained out on the floor. It was a busy weekend but we finally went to get a new hose only to find that one place did not have the right one and the other gave us something close but not exact.
At that point, I wanted to just wait until my son in law could work on it and began to mentally figure out how I would go without my car all week. But Jon was intent on fixing the problem and bought the ‘not exact one’. Then home to put it on. HA! Not as easy as one might think. For one thing, there is a part of the engine (I'm not sure what) in the way so you really can‘t see what you are doing. For another, after Jon trimmed it ,the hose did not slide on easily at either end. Jon used WD40 but it was still a tight fit.
Then I tried to help with the light and shorted it out and he was frustrated with my help, being already overwhelmed.
I said, “You can stop and wait until the weekend as far as I am concerned. I know this is a nightmare.”
“ No, I am going to do this”.
That’s my man. And you know what, He did.
That made me think about the knitting problem that I had. I had messed up the pattern and was saving in for my friend to fix. But Jon’s perseverance made me decide to take it out and fix it, which I did, though it was a tedious project.
God models perseverance. He never gives up on his children, even when they are in a messy state. Even when they disrupt the pattern he had for their lives . He just keeps molding and shaping and repairing them.
I want to learn from the example of the two men in my life.

Running backward

Today ,on my walk ,I saw the oddest thing. A man was running backward, looking over his shoulder as he ran. What was that all about? He jogged by so intently, that I did not feel I could ask him why, that it was a burning question I had.
I know that if I tried to do that, I would fall flat on my face ASAP. How he kept from doing so is a mystery to me.
I thought about how I do that sometimes in my mind. Instead of pushing forward in my life, I focus on what is behind, the past failures, and hurts. I think to myself,’ If only‘…. ‘Why?’… or’ How could they have‘? Doing that is like running backward. The consequent is to fall flat on your face, be humiliated and go nowhere.
Paul challenges me to forget what lies behind and press on to what lies ahead. That will keep me from twisting up my feet and having a painful fall. It also means that I will progress beyond that painful time of suffering or betrayal or failure to the next adventure God has for me.

Smoke pouring out

Yesterday I have a nice afternoon with my middle grandson. We went to the mall with job applications to turn it. We grabbed a pretzel and lemonade and moved on to the rest of my errands. It was a warm day and I ran the AC to keep us cool. Boy do I enjoy my AC.
I came home to return calls , take a walk and eat my dinner. Then I was off to my monthly book club. I arrived at the same time as two other ladies to discover that the hostess was not home. Her husband called her at from a party around the corner and she was gracious enough to come home for us. We had a good time, as usual.
I stopped at the store on the way home for a few things and then drove home. As I entered the garage, smoke began to pour out of my hood, really steam it seemed. UGH! As you know by now, I am not mechanical.
I decided to just close the door of the garage and forget about it for the night.
Today I had to tell Jon and I could see it spoiled his relaxing morning. We just surveyed the situation and if we are correct, it is simply a hose. Jon hopes to replace it and I will be back in business Monday. As an optimist, I do not want to think about the other options just now. I know one thing, I can’t drive it with smoke pouring out or the engine will burn up.
As I was washing up after the diagnosis, I thought again about the smoke pouring out of the engine. That took my mind to a cliché:
“Smoke pouring out of her ears.”
The Spirit referred me to Genesis 4 where Cain had smoke pouring out of his ears. Well, not literally but mentally. God came to him and surveyed the situation and the diagnosis was that sin was crouching at the door of his heart and it was going to overpower him if he did not deal with his anger.
Unfortunately ,Cain did not deal with the situation but proceeded to’ drive his life ‘with anger pouring out and sure enough, disaster stuck- he killed his brother.
So if you see smoke, act ASAP.

New Sox

I am hard on my socks I guess and find that as the summer winds down I am in dire new of some new ones. I was at my favorite discount store the other day and saw a bin of socks. I stopped and pawed through and decided to try just one pair for now. I selected a nice red pair and was on my way.
Yesterday I put them on and right off I didn’t like the feel of them. But hey, they only cost a dollar and I needed them, so relented and wore them. In the evening I was reading and happened to look down at my socks. There on the area just above the toes was a name. As I looked closer, the name was that of a person who had betrayed me about 10 years ago.
How did that name get on my socks??? Who even heard of name socks???
I took them off and vowed to wash them and get pass them on to someone else. Besides I did not like how they felt, I said to myself very self righteously.
But God spoke gently this morning as we were together.
“ This thing is from me.”
“Huh?”
‘These ‘name socks‘. You need to forgive at a deeper level and you can begin by praying for this person.’
Since I do not like to get a whipping from the Lord, I obeyed.
Then a verse in I Samuel came to my mind:
‘Far be it from me to sin against you by ceasing to pray for you.’
I had vowed to pray a blessing on this person after the matter years ago, but it has been quite some time since I had really done that.
Isn’t it just like God to use socks as a prayer reminder???

Cleaning the files

Due to my recent search of our files, I decided to purge them of excess stuff. I love my shredder, but I guess I got too carried away last night, because it got so hot it shut itself off. Boy did I find lots to shred. But doing so makes me nervous, too. What if I shred something I wish I have kept. That will be worse than just losing it.
So Jon and I have been sorting stuff before shredding. His Mom used to do that endlessly it seemed, except she never threw away anything. Just re-sorted it. I try to conquer the mail as soon as it comes in the house. Sort, shred, recycle, or file it ASAP. My old boss said that if you put a red mark on each item that you touched, each time you touched it, the papers would look like they had measles.
I read a story recently about a man who had a hard time throwing things away. He finally told his secretary she could dispose of old useless material. He had reluctantly agreed, but said “ Be sure to make a copy of even thing before you throw is away!”
We laugh at that but that is the way some believers handle their sin. They know that Christ has forgiven them by paying the penalty for their sin but they can’t let go of the guilt. They seem to have copies of their sin in their minds, where it continues to haunt them. How foolish! Paul challenges us to forget what lies behind. It is forgiven and God will never bring it up to us again. Why should we continue to bring it up to ourselves?

Lost

This week I have faced the fact that once again I have lost my birth certificate. I hated to tell Jon since I lost his too awhile back and our marriage license and we had to order all new ones. I found his B.C. and Deborah’s, too in my search but not mine. Where oh where have I put it?
I have to find it because we need it for Jon’s retirement paper work.
So I have gone through some files that were stuffed in the closet. I found old IRS papers that now can be shredded ,as well as old car registrations. I also found some weird things, like Jon’s draft papers, etc. for the late 60’s. Included also in that file was his heart exam in San Francisco that showed a heart murmur that eventually kept him out of Vietnam. There too, I found the info on his kidney surgery from a couple of years ago. No sign of the B.C.
Maybe they did not mail it back to me when I applied for SS??? But I can’t prove that. It has been too long.
I want to give up but my pride will not let me. Also I considered the fact that it will probably cost me $60.00 to get another one. So the search continues.
And, lo and behold, I found it. YEAH !!! Now I have two extra copies filed in other places as well as the original in the SS file with Jon’s.
Luke records three parables that Jesus told about lost things.
A lost sheep, a lost coin and a lost son. In each case, the one searching did not give up until the lost was found. The searchers stands for the Father ,who will pursue the lost ones until they are willing to be found. He never gives up. Each individual is of great value to him. And he paid way more than $60.00 for us.