Give her of the fruit of her hands, and let her works praise her in the gates. -Proverbs 31:31
I made biscuits for breakfast this morning.
I have to say that I have just about got it down. Maybe it's that dash of sugar. Or maybe the amount of milk, making the moisture of the dough just right.
Still there is something lacking.
I have often said that one of the things I miss most about Ms. Joycie are her biscuits. The best in the known universe. And it's not just me. Anyone who has ever enjoyed one of those biscuits will tell you the same thing (can I get a witness up in hyere?).
I've also said that one of the reasons God called her home was so she could make biscuits for Him!
Hmmm. So I may have figured out two of the twelve manner of fruits found on the tree of life (Revelation 22:2). Chocolate, of course. And now, Ms. Joycies biscuits!
But the point of this is, I think I have also figured out what made her biscuits so awesome.
Love.
I know it's a cliché that the special ingredient in this, that, or the other thing is love. Hear me out.
The Song of Solomon speaks of the joys of the marriage bed, where a man and a woman bring a dedication, a desire, a love into the relationship.
Proverbs 31 also speaks of the love a godly woman brings to her home and all who live there or visit there. Each verse from v. 10 through v.31 speaks of this love in all its various aspects.
Love seems almost to emanate from the pores of such a woman. So that when she makes biscuits, for example, this love passes from her fingertips and into the texture and substance of the dough.
Oh my!
Uh, pass me a biscuit, will ya?
Monday, November 16, 2015
Wednesday, November 11, 2015
Why Are You Always Running in Place?
Your hair is in my face, and laughter's in your eyes
And as the memory fades, all that's left is to cry -Sandy Tolar
I thought my job was to be the strong one. I thought I was pretty good at it, too.
Very strange to realize how much you depended on the one who depended so much on you.
When someone is such a huge part of your life, I guess the tendency is to focus on that. If you're not careful, to focus on that exclusively.
The thing is, there's a great deal of pleasure to be had in dwelling on the good stuff. It's more than gratitude, though there is that.
Maybe it's a forgetfulness of other things that call for your attention. Maybe some of them not so pleasant, but which must nonetheless be attended to.
So when the prop is knocked out from under you, so to speak, there is a necessary redirection or re-ordering of your priorities.
This is good in that (a) it fills the empty place left by loss and (b) it allows you to consider what may have been previously neglected.
To be granted a "re-do," sort of.
It is refreshing to observe the blessings in vocation, to set aside discontentment and see instead the good. Where in the past, I was so jealous of my time, to now have "all the time in the world."
How selfish it is to desire only the good things God has given us and not want to give of ourselves. That time I so zealously guarded to my own ends I may now share outside the walls of my home.
Aren't idols found in the strangest places in our hearts?
Isn't God so merciful to allow His children second (and third?) chances to get it right?
What next I wonder?
And as the memory fades, all that's left is to cry -Sandy Tolar
I thought my job was to be the strong one. I thought I was pretty good at it, too.
Very strange to realize how much you depended on the one who depended so much on you.
When someone is such a huge part of your life, I guess the tendency is to focus on that. If you're not careful, to focus on that exclusively.
The thing is, there's a great deal of pleasure to be had in dwelling on the good stuff. It's more than gratitude, though there is that.
Maybe it's a forgetfulness of other things that call for your attention. Maybe some of them not so pleasant, but which must nonetheless be attended to.
So when the prop is knocked out from under you, so to speak, there is a necessary redirection or re-ordering of your priorities.
This is good in that (a) it fills the empty place left by loss and (b) it allows you to consider what may have been previously neglected.
To be granted a "re-do," sort of.
It is refreshing to observe the blessings in vocation, to set aside discontentment and see instead the good. Where in the past, I was so jealous of my time, to now have "all the time in the world."
How selfish it is to desire only the good things God has given us and not want to give of ourselves. That time I so zealously guarded to my own ends I may now share outside the walls of my home.
Aren't idols found in the strangest places in our hearts?
Isn't God so merciful to allow His children second (and third?) chances to get it right?
What next I wonder?
Sunday, November 1, 2015
I Met Her in Church
She looked at me with eyes of love as the choir sang Hallelujah....
-The Box Tops
I lay in bed, on the near border of Sleepytown, and an image flashed in my mind.
I stood in the aisle at Grace Pres. next to my accustomed pew and glanced over to see my wife, sitting in her accustomed place. She was looking very beautiful in a long black dress, you know, the one with the flower print, and she looked up at me with that little smirky-smile that she had, you know, the one that said, "Come sit next to me and we'll share secrets and enjoy one another's company for a bit."
These brief glances of an image can be quite detailed, it seems.
What a wonderful God we know and love and serve, who can create minds able to store and recall (even at the oddest moments)
memories of amazing intricacy, intimacy and precision.
Who created us for relationships and sent to us people to fill our lives, to bless us and be blessed by us.
Who called us into the ultimate relationship, with Himself, and invites to see these others as He sees them, through eyes of love.
The fact of the matter is, I met my wife someplace other than in church. But I can never ever doubt that the Lord sent her to me just as surely as if we had met in Sunday School.
I thank God for bringing us to the point of cherishing and appreciating each other. And I can say to my Lord as I once said to her:
"Thanks for the dance."
-The Box Tops
I lay in bed, on the near border of Sleepytown, and an image flashed in my mind.
I stood in the aisle at Grace Pres. next to my accustomed pew and glanced over to see my wife, sitting in her accustomed place. She was looking very beautiful in a long black dress, you know, the one with the flower print, and she looked up at me with that little smirky-smile that she had, you know, the one that said, "Come sit next to me and we'll share secrets and enjoy one another's company for a bit."
These brief glances of an image can be quite detailed, it seems.
What a wonderful God we know and love and serve, who can create minds able to store and recall (even at the oddest moments)
memories of amazing intricacy, intimacy and precision.
Who created us for relationships and sent to us people to fill our lives, to bless us and be blessed by us.
Who called us into the ultimate relationship, with Himself, and invites to see these others as He sees them, through eyes of love.
The fact of the matter is, I met my wife someplace other than in church. But I can never ever doubt that the Lord sent her to me just as surely as if we had met in Sunday School.
I thank God for bringing us to the point of cherishing and appreciating each other. And I can say to my Lord as I once said to her:
"Thanks for the dance."
Friday, October 9, 2015
Miles Upon This Road
Too many smoky nights
All those regretted mornings
Leave me
Thinking of you
Wondering where you are
Hoping you're still out there
Wishing
on that same old star. -Sandy Tolar
If someone handed you lyrics that spoke to your heart, as these do to mine, how could you not frame a melody around it?
Music can take us to places in the heart where we could not or would not go unaided.
Hidden places, places we weren't aware existed.
Walled-up closed-off places I would never go to again, unless music carried me there.
And words which reach up off the page and pierce so deeply, when set to the proper melody, bring us to the rarest of all places: where joy, grief and amazement combine into an unutterable emotion.
It can happen in church, when we sing "It is Well With My Soul." Or when I hear Roy Orbison sing "Crying."
Or when I play this freshly composed song.
This music.
This gift from God.
My creator has made music.
I will imitate my Creator.
And I wonder if this unutterable emotion will be that which I feel (only magnified many times over) when I shall behold the face of my Savior and the mountains and the hills break forth into singing?
Friday, October 2, 2015
If Today is Friday, What Day is it in Heaven?
When the trumpet of the Lord shall sound and time shall be no more. -Hymn: "When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder"
Perhaps I shouldn't be thinking of this.
October 3 is Ms. Joycie's birthday.
I have seen many posts wishing a happy birthday to someone's loved one "up in heaven."
I'm sure you have reflected, as I have, upon how blessed we are to have that assurance, not only for ourselves, but also for our dear departed, those who have gone to be with the Lord.
I know that when Christ returns, time as we know it will cease to be. After all, how can you number the days of forever?
But what about now, for those already standing before God's throne? For we who remain, our works and days continue. But are there (to speak in a temporal manner) calendars on the walls of any of those "many mansions?"
You may think it a silly question. Still, as I ponder the matter of heaven and its many mysteries, I wonder; how is time reckoned in that place, if at all.
I suppose, as we move about in the present reality, that we attempt to comprehend these things in terms of our experience. May I not sin in so doing.
Heaven is outside that experience and so, for now, I wonder.
And I look forward to finding out.
For now we see though a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then I shall know even as I also am known. - 1 Corinthians 13:12
Perhaps I shouldn't be thinking of this.
October 3 is Ms. Joycie's birthday.
I have seen many posts wishing a happy birthday to someone's loved one "up in heaven."
I'm sure you have reflected, as I have, upon how blessed we are to have that assurance, not only for ourselves, but also for our dear departed, those who have gone to be with the Lord.
I know that when Christ returns, time as we know it will cease to be. After all, how can you number the days of forever?
But what about now, for those already standing before God's throne? For we who remain, our works and days continue. But are there (to speak in a temporal manner) calendars on the walls of any of those "many mansions?"
You may think it a silly question. Still, as I ponder the matter of heaven and its many mysteries, I wonder; how is time reckoned in that place, if at all.
I suppose, as we move about in the present reality, that we attempt to comprehend these things in terms of our experience. May I not sin in so doing.
Heaven is outside that experience and so, for now, I wonder.
And I look forward to finding out.
For now we see though a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then I shall know even as I also am known. - 1 Corinthians 13:12
Tuesday, September 29, 2015
The Army of the Dead
And he said to me, "Son of man, can these bones live?" And I answered, "O Lord GOD, you know." -Ezekiel 37:3
Dead.
Dead as a hammer.
Dead as a doorknob.
We have seen dead, whether it has been a loved one, a family pet, or simply an animal lying crushed beside the road.
Can you imagine this death as being the state of your soul?
If the wages of sin is death and if, in fact, we are steeped in sin from before birth (as Psalm 51 indicates), then surely spiritual deadness is the state in which all humanity find themselves.
Unless.
There is Ezekiel's vision of the dry bones. There are Jesus' words to Nicodemus in John 3.
There is a life-giving Spirit.
Who hovered over the waters at Creation.
Who rested upon Christ at His baptism.
The Spirit who filled the Church at Pentecost.
This is the Spirit who gives life to dead hearts and transforms them from dead stone into living flesh.
So the question for each professing child of God must be: "Do I possess this Spirit and does He reside within my heart?"
I must ask: "Does my professed love for Jesus find expression in love of His Word, in love of His Church, in love of His children, my brethren?"
These things of the Spirit must work themselves out in the affections of my heart and in service rendered to the Master and His kingdom and His saints.
Does this once dead heart live?
O Lord GOD, you know.
Dead.
Dead as a hammer.
Dead as a doorknob.
We have seen dead, whether it has been a loved one, a family pet, or simply an animal lying crushed beside the road.
Can you imagine this death as being the state of your soul?
If the wages of sin is death and if, in fact, we are steeped in sin from before birth (as Psalm 51 indicates), then surely spiritual deadness is the state in which all humanity find themselves.
Unless.
There is Ezekiel's vision of the dry bones. There are Jesus' words to Nicodemus in John 3.
There is a life-giving Spirit.
Who hovered over the waters at Creation.
Who rested upon Christ at His baptism.
The Spirit who filled the Church at Pentecost.
This is the Spirit who gives life to dead hearts and transforms them from dead stone into living flesh.
So the question for each professing child of God must be: "Do I possess this Spirit and does He reside within my heart?"
I must ask: "Does my professed love for Jesus find expression in love of His Word, in love of His Church, in love of His children, my brethren?"
These things of the Spirit must work themselves out in the affections of my heart and in service rendered to the Master and His kingdom and His saints.
Does this once dead heart live?
O Lord GOD, you know.
Thursday, September 24, 2015
Home to Roost
...and be sure your sin will find you out. -Deuteronomy 32:23b
I have sinned. No surprise there.
Is it not true that we live in daily repentance? Of course we are grieved over our falling short of God's glory. It's one of the things the Spirit does for us.
But of all the grievous things, perhaps the most painful is to have a long-hidden sin surface at an inopportune time.
As in when we are admonishing with someone else over the same sin.
First comes the sickening remembrance.
Then, the inevitable and necessary "Forgive me, Father."
Do you think that God allows such sins to be covered over by our self-righteousness and unrecognized in our deceitful hearts? And He does this so that the sting of conviction might be more acutely felt and repentance all the more immediate and sincere?
Think David as Nathan spoke, "Thou art the man!"
And I am reminded of another verse, "...let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed unless he fall (1 Corinthians 10:12).
If I were to draw a conclusion from all this, I suppose that it would be:
That as we work together in Christ, confessing our sins, and sharing our struggles, we learn from each other's mistakes, always forgiving and offering encouragement to one another.
What goes around comes around, they say.
There is enough forgiveness in our Savior to go around.
And as we send it forth, may it come back to us.
I have sinned. No surprise there.
Is it not true that we live in daily repentance? Of course we are grieved over our falling short of God's glory. It's one of the things the Spirit does for us.
But of all the grievous things, perhaps the most painful is to have a long-hidden sin surface at an inopportune time.
As in when we are admonishing with someone else over the same sin.
First comes the sickening remembrance.
Then, the inevitable and necessary "Forgive me, Father."
Do you think that God allows such sins to be covered over by our self-righteousness and unrecognized in our deceitful hearts? And He does this so that the sting of conviction might be more acutely felt and repentance all the more immediate and sincere?
Think David as Nathan spoke, "Thou art the man!"
And I am reminded of another verse, "...let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed unless he fall (1 Corinthians 10:12).
If I were to draw a conclusion from all this, I suppose that it would be:
That as we work together in Christ, confessing our sins, and sharing our struggles, we learn from each other's mistakes, always forgiving and offering encouragement to one another.
What goes around comes around, they say.
There is enough forgiveness in our Savior to go around.
And as we send it forth, may it come back to us.
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