The Geese were flapping their wings very fervently to get south!

I woke to a delightful surprise of a white suit jacket, bought for me by my Benjamin.

It was very cold when we finally got outside.  It wasn't surprising that the haste had cost us the battery of his car.  It had died because the lights were left on all night.   After having gotten Ezra from his friend's house they were rushing inside and the oversight was costing us time.   We had to take my car.  My car needs a fresh gallon of water to make it that distance, But what an amazing providence to have a spare car to get to church.   We haven't always had such a precious alternative.  We did this morning.   One of those mornings that the pressing our way was a precursor to the expectation that God would meet us in our worship.  He did meet us.   God was there the fellowship was delightful and the worship was refreshing, but God's word was the salve and the motivation to take us through the week.   We were instructed and encouraged to expect more from God than we do from the devil.

Genesis 48!

Not fiction.  Jacob blessed both of his grandsons from Joseph.

This was a verse that was my meditation when I was working at Allstate.   I remember sitting on the bench on my lunch hour and it was as though Jacob was sitting right there telling me jokes in my sad moments there.   I missed my children.   Ethan and Christina were most in my minds, although Ezra was just a toddler.  I wanted to bring them with me and show them what I was learning, but there were other things for them and for me.  All of the children are grown now and my meditation of that moment when I realized that Jacob had learned from God that there was more than one blessing from God for his children and that God intended to use his life to bless each and everyone of them in His own way.  

I see God's blessings.  I see God's weaving my prayers and expectations into his answers to my prayers and overruling my shortcomings in his omnipotence.   His word is a light and a lamp and our prayers are the threads in his hand, combining and making one new man out of broken pieces and nuanced threads.  He has been faithful and continues to be faithful.  Halleluia!

Are we following his plans like the geese were, this morning?

Is this Honey Halal?

Judges 14

Samson takes some unkosher honey and creates a war out of it?   A simple question from the parents might have made him think twice.  Is this honey clean?  I wouldn't want honey taken out of a dead carcass, that had been sitting for days.  

I am thinking that he might have sickened his family and that was a problem that a doctor might have been able to assist them with.  I am not sure how many of our intensities might be cured with new medicine or old medicines.  God knows and he uses them anyhow.  I love how God shows Samson's crazes and where they got him as an example of everyone doing what was right in their own eyes.  This seems as if to say.  The laws that they received were all that they could handle at the time.  

Imagine if they really knew how many germs and things could have killed them?  Learning to live in the light of the cleanliness of the time that we live in and search for greater clarity to protect our young from the germs that can kill.

For the love of diaper rash!

 I carried ointment with me today because yesterday somebody's mommy forgot to put diaper rash ointment on the little lady and her shorts were showing the diaper rash as she ran up for a snack.

As a long-term infant care person, I had an instant impulse to get diaper cream on that exposed bottom immediately.

Only, this wasn't the infant room and this was a college woman walking in obvious pain.  What do you do as a concerned mother, when you see that self-care was not experienced and that at least covering the rash with a longer short might have been appropriate?  I was surprised she wasnt scratching it obviously, because it was so enflamed.

I truly love the fact that it is no longer my responsibility to apply ointment to the irritants of these nearly grown people.  Just get their tummies happy and set them on track for the beauty of the day.

Food is a ministry.  Eating is a beautiful enjoyment that God sent to us.  I am still learning how to really enjoy food and eating.  College is the place to begin.  When I was in college I was always hungry.  I had a 1$ food budget and then I would have to walk home.  "From Hunger" I lived on the sugar high's of candy, because it was cheap and quick.  I crashed from high to high.  Walking 5 or 6 miles home from school seemed a small price to pay for eating your travel money.  I love the feeling of reminiscing those easy days and carefree moments of life.  

The warmup is always lighter than the match.

I am soooo grateful for Pastor Martin saying that to us in his preaching.  He said look at how God dealt with you in your youth and expect him to raise the bar for you to jump higher.  He is a coach like that!

He has over and over and over; raised the bar of jumping.  I must decrease!  He must increase!  Can you serve?   Serve this!  Serve this!  Serve this!

And now?

The Joy of Merlin!

Is it mythology to believe that God has magical plans for your relationship with a child?  Is it mythological to aim your future?

I see so many beautiful things, when I look into the well preserved culture of the English.  I always start with Merlin.

I think Merlin believed in the God who created this world and the science that holds it together.  I think God gave Merlin a birds-eye view of his purpose in rearing a child who would become king in a superstitiously blind moment of history or hysterity as I like to call it.

A tiny hummingbird came to visit me, yesterday.  This wasn't the first visit I had from this tiny friend.  Yesterday he was warning me that I hadnt brought my umbrella and that the sky was about to open up.  She knew that I rarely anticipate these changes in the weather and I havent told my little friends about my newfound technological connection to the weather.  The birds help me know that my fledglings are okay.  this young agent brought important intelligence about my Ethan, who has precious little experience with the forces of nature.   The hummingbirds think that I am one of them.  I am sensitive and ever concerned about my younguns, like them.  They can relate to me and often have a message.  It started some years ago.  They have an initiation and they accept and reject their friends much based on emotional status.  They are not concerned about everyone and are very focused, when they become friends with you.

Merlin,  (I return to my subject) had many such relationships with the wildlife that he was blessed to become acquainted with.  He had a religious faith and a scientific experience and it gave him a perspective that God in his providence meant to use for the development of a culture that would affect the world.  The stereotypes of them follow a long way.   I am by no means a Euro-centric worshipper, nor a blind capitalistic believer in all of the folklore of Eurocentricity.   I see God's purposes in His preservations of certain cultures and compare the results to what scripture says and that is why it has long been my study of the Euro folklore that I have been exposed to.

It seems that Lewis Carroll saw the blessings and the forfeiture of the blessing in "Alice".  He seemed to say, "you will stay right in one spot at the tea-party until this hideous blot on your reputation is cleansed.  Child labor laws and pirating and slavery, keep us all one minute to midnight in our cultural experience.

Why, oh why can't we untangle the dilemmas that plague us?  Why go we from one worldwide self inflicted wound to another.   Until we stop expecting the change to come from the state or the regal or the goodness of ourselves we remain in the complete darkness with the foolish virgins.  The impending doom of our own demise right over the horizon of darkness that we are engulfed in.  Let's wake up from this dark dream that we have placed upon ourselves.  What does that mean?

The weaving that Merlin began in his craze or in his genius does not belong to the wise or to the wealthy, it belongs to the church!  "what you bind, what you loose on earth..."  We know it belongs to the church, but we would rather hoard our own resources and claim a family dominion.  So we sit in the dark of our own midnight and refuse to walk into the light of our faith.  We self medicate at the tea-party with the other foolish virgins looking into the darkness, with the light right behind us, within our grasp, if we decide to renounce our own understandings.  God give us grace to learn from the Merlin Alice, Wonderland that we have created.

My point with Merlin, specifically, is that He walked a young fellow from the foolishness of the darkness of his age into an enlightenment that remains with us today.   We all have that privilege who embrace faith and the power of God's Church.  We can walk our children into the light of the faith that we possess.  Not just faith, "Great Expectations" from God that comes with repentance and faith.  

The Silent Set into Sixty!

 Greater than the swish of the net in basketball is the sound of a silent set in volleyball to me.   Some contact with the ball is supposed to make noise. Not the silent set!  Silence,  when the hands carefully caress the ball to prepare for the perfect spike.  It is the perfect setup for the sound of the ball hitting the ground after the spike has been completed.  It is one of my favorite silences, if carefully and successfully completed, breathtaking.

So What? About Wormwood...

 Amos 5:7

Ye who turn judgment to wormwood, and leave off righteousness in the earth,

Revelation 8:11 

And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.

Let X= CS Lewis’ Wormwood = the educations system

Let X+1=Roald Dahl’s Wormwood= the educated in the 1/3 education system Matilde?

Let conclusion be erasing the poisonous wormwood of reciprocating people for the sins of the fathers, perhaps encapsulated in “Cancel Culture”

Prayer and Activism to infuse God back into our knowledge!  this is Not Rocket science?

Reverse Osmosis cleansing of the waters of learning?

The Lord delivered Daniel from an education system that was frought with superstition and taught him to “believe the science” but he didn’t lose his faith in God to learn to believe the science.  God enabled him to preserve the scriptures and the spiritual foundations and advance the culture that God had placed him in and preserve to some extent the lives of the people of God as well.

Where did the Birdies go?

 I saw no birds at the park or outside my home.  I thought I saw a swift hummingbird at Church.  But I am in such grief that they are not around here over this weekend.  Where did they go?

Usually, Mr. and Mrs.  Bluejay come to the courts to emphasize to me the importance of putting my entire effort into my tennis in the eyes of my children that they would learn to develop their wingspans.  

Woefully limp wing muscles on your youngest fledgling, they point out.  You have to show them how to develop this muscle, or they never will fly.  I know.  I confess to Mr. Bluejay, but he wasn't there to tell me that.  

Instead, It was the butterflies that came to coach me.  They said it is the cooling down time.  Why so hard?  Why do you hit it so hard?  Try to find a light touch serve.  They implored.  I must confess that I absolutely have never tried to hit a soft serve in my life.  I may have hit it soft by accident.  But the butterflies said try to find out how softly you can hit the ball and still get the ball across the net.  I tried and it was like being in slow motion.  I did 10 and then when I went back to my hard ball I had such a greater accuracy.  I was appreciative of their inserting their 2 cents.

Butterfly serves would be my practice in regularity and then work up to the hard balls.   I love to slam the ball and I go to the courts to get out some of my anger on the ball.  But there was some merit in finding the lighter alternative.

There were also some lessons about directing my limpwinged and highly tech minded young one.  It is not the same game with him.  He is used to light touches and a heavy hand could crush his spirit.  Lighten up and keep your racquet on the ball for a longer period of time.  Go back to the time of 18 and unders and become a "pusher" again.  That is really hard!