Crocus Hill

We were up to Devils Lake on April 17 to celebrate my Mom's 90th birthday. Of course, we went to the Cove for lunch. It was great! Then we drove around the lake...well, some of the lake. It has become very large and we would have to get up very early in the morning to drive around ALL of the lake. We did drive out to the side of the lake where my grandparents had their farm and where my mom grew up. Of course, the farm is long gone and the shore line is now just a few feet from the farm house's previous location. It was once about 2 miles away! We drove around what was left of the farm land and pastures and had the thrill of climbing Crocus Hill, a place my mom eight decades ago picked the lovely harbinger of Spring. It was with a haunting joy that I huffed and puffed to the top.

We found an old dump hay rake and each took a turn sitting on it. I imagined my grandpa making hay on a hot July day and I could almost smell the sweet fragrance of fresh-cut grass.

Making hay and Crocus Hill...what a sweet treat. What a joy to spend the day with Mom.

The Cross Triumphant

I just completed reading aloud to my student, Alex, The Cross Triumphant, another fabulous publication from Lamplighter Publishing.

Written in the 19th Century this little gem describes clearly the law/grace debate and sets the story in the last 3 1/2 years of the great tribulation period just before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. I really grew to care about the young rabbi turned believer and felt deeply the horror of those last days just prior to the end of the Jewish age.

It was really worth reading.

Pastor Monty Strikes Again!

I am re-reading some of my notes from Resurrection Sunday and came across a few quotes I attribute to my shepherd.

• In dying we live.
• On the cross the Innocent is condemned.
• Our Benefactor is put to death.
• The Righteous One dying for the unrighteous.
• The Lord of Glory hanging on a cross!

Under my 'Remember this:' I have written:

The cross shows us the horrors of sin and God's inflexible justice. It was absolutely necessary so that we might be saved. There was no other way. In fact, the cross displays God's absolute holiness, His absolute justice, and His overwhelming mercy.

It is good to be reminded about these things...and more frequently than just on Resurrection Sunday.

Thai Chicken in Coconut Milk

Next weekend I am preparing a gourmet luncheon for the students attending our daughter's photography class. The menu is: Thai chicken in coconut milk; rice; tomato chutney; spring garden salad with tangy bacon dressing. Sounds good, doesn't it? I think I could really get into catering fancy meals. We will be serving the class at my home on depression glassware (chop-house plates, salad plates, fruit bowls and dainty cups and saucers for tea or coffee.). Mmm, mmm, mmm!

Hallway of Memories

This past fall we visited Colorado Springs for an annual nationwide meeting of home school leaders. My mom worked at St. Frances Hospital in Colorado Springs during WWII so we decided to see if it was still in existence. It is, but most of it sits unused. This is a picture down one of the hallways my mom must have walked many times during those years. It was an eerie feeling to visit the empty building that was likely full of memories for my mother. I could almost hear the soft tapping of her nurse's shoes on the marble floors.

Table set for Resurrection Sunday Dinner.

Sanctifying Power of Suffering

In Sunday School we are talking about the sanctifying power of suffering. Oh, yeah! When we are tempted to pray with all diligence for the easy life--adequate money, excellent health, hosts of friends, to be smarter than a fifth grader, etc.- then we would do well to remember that the suffering allowed/sent into our lives by the Most High God, the Chief Shepherd, the Lord of Hosts, the Bread of Life, the Lover of our Souls is allowed/sent for the purpose of conforming us to the image of the Son. Yet I/we pray with perseverance to be released from the suffering not caring that it is working in us a kind of glory. Shame, shame on me.

I have never considered myself a sufferer, but I have had some pretty hard knocks in life. Most of my own doing and one can hardly blame God for those. But what niggles my brain is the fact that God may send (has sent?) to me suffering, not of my own doing. Well, to be honest, I'm not too keen on that idea. And yet, I have to say, I want to be like Jesus (I want to want to anyway!), but I fall far short...far, far short.

Even so I have this comfort knowing that the Christ who began a good work in me will complete it and someday-and this a good part--I will be free of suffering after it has done its good work in me. And the best part is that someday I will never sin again.

With trepidation and resistance mixed with a bit of whining I say, "Dear Lord, bring on the suffering if this is what it takes."

And I will trust You. I will trust You. I will trust You.

Someone is sitting in my pew

Wouldn't you know that in both Sunday School and worship service the pastors have been speaking about humility and how we ought to think of ourselves. How the cross walk is really a life of never-ending denial of self.

Pastor Monty preached about how apart from God and His Spirit we are not really in our right minds. He referenced the Gadarene demoniac that Jesus healed. AfterJesus had driven out the demons from this man, he was once again in his right mind.

When we think too highly of ourselves we are not really in our right minds.

Thinking too highly of ourselves leads to pride. Romans 13:4 states, "I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned." Wrong thinking about self invariably leads to pride. Pride.

How are you doing with that? Try a little test: the next time you walk into a full or filling room, whose seat are you looking for? The little old lady with the cane? The hard-of-hearing gentleman? The family with the little kiddoes? Not me. I'm looking for my seat. My pew. Pride.

It seems just a little suspicious that these issues, the cross life, the daily denial of self, ought to be the subject of discussion in Sunday School and in church. And God is definitely in on it because this Sunday, just to prove a point, when we walked into the sanctuary someone was sitting in our pew. Our pew. Pride.

How should we think of ourselves? Pastor Monty directed us to Romans 1 to find out what the unsaved mind is like.

1. We are depraved
2. We are filled with evil
3. We are haters of God
4. Our minds are darkened
5. We are worthy of death
6. We are enemies of God

I don't think we want these traits to be a part of our character anymore. I'm trudging along but I'm not there yet. Sadly, too often I am still looking to see if anyone is sitting in my pew.

_____________________________
"Looking to the cross drives away conceit." Pastor Monty Loudenslager

Pleasure in God

Our recent Sunday School classes have been enlightening and deeply thought provoking. We've been studying the pursuit of God and the ultimate pleasure found in this pursuit. A couple Sundays ago we discussed the general contemporary church's response to sin which seems to fall under three catagories:
1. Portray sin as so ugly and unappealing that we will choose not to pursue it
2. Come up with a lengthy list of dos and don'ts, taboos and such
3. Consider the yearning to sin as the problem

From personal experience and from reading of the lives of others, clearly none of these are fully effective against sin. The answer: to make the pursuit of God so pleasureable that earthly pleasures will pale in comparision.

Other thoughts:
1. Holiness ought to be pursued because it leads to joy.
2. Pursuit of God leads to superior pleasure.
3. Low-grade daily addictions rob us of true pleasure in God alone. (daily addictions include but not limited to...eating, t.v., computer use, exercise, shopping etc.)

(Many of these thoughts are the product of the speaker's reading Jonathan Edwards' works: Personal Narrative and Youth and the Pleasures of Piety.)

I ran across this quote for a project I was working on and I'm posting it here because I've always thought that just because someone is viewed as an 'expert' or just because someone has a lot of letters after their name this does not mean they have a corner on the truth. Oooh, I've met too many in lots of fields that believe this. So here's the quote:

Our research has yielded (and we have systematically catalogued and footnoted for the first time) thousands of examples of expert misinformation, disinformation, misunderstanding, miscalculation, egregious prognostication, booboos, and occasional just plain lies. And based on our preliminary findings we can say with some confidence that the experts are wrong without regard to race, creed, color, sex discipline, speciality, country, culture, or century. They are wrong about facts, and they are wrong about theories, they are wrong about dates, they are wrong about geography, they are wrong about the future, they are wrong about the past, and at best they are misleading about the present, not to mention next week.

Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky, "Introduction to the Original (1984) Version," The Experts Speak: The Definitive Compendium of Authoritative Misinformation, rev. ed. (New York: Villard, [1984] 1998, xxvii.

I can almost see you nodding your head and hear you saying "You got that right!"

Just a little reminder to each of us that summer will come again, the sky will dazzle us with blue, the zephyr will kiss our cheeks, the birds will sing for pure joy, and we will smell the rich earth beneath our feet.

Morning has broken, like the first morning.

Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird.

Praise for the singing, praise for the morning,
Praise for it springing fresh from the Word.