I find most paintings of Jesus objectionable.  They are way too "sweet" looking.   If you have ever been to the Louvre in Paris, there are thousands of wimpy, effeminate paintings of Jesus hanging on a cross.  Or draped across his mother's lap.  The halls are filled with those kinds of paintings.

I have always contended that Jesus didn't look anything at all like any of those pictures.  I can't imagine men like Peter, like James or Thomas following a wimp.  Jesus said, "Follow me," and they left their fishing nets, their way of life, their families and followed Him.

Jesus had hands with calluses.  He had spent his life as a carpenter. His fingers were familiar with splinters.  He was a working man.  The Bible says that there was nothing about him that was attractive.  And yet, paintings continue to portray him as pretty.  Peter wouldn't have followed "Pretty."  Peter was a man's man.

Isaiah 53: 2-3  "He grew up...like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground.  He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him.  He was despised and rejected by mankind, a a man of suffering and familiar with pain.  Like one from whom people hide their faces.  He was despised, and we held him in low esteem."

Jesus was rugged.  Strong.  He had been probably been cutting down trees and lugging them to Joseph's work room for over twenty years.  Cleaning off bark.  Using an ax to split wood.  He was not  pretty.  He was not a wimp.  He carried a cross to his death.  Bleeding, bruised and broken.  And he did it because he loved us.  He wanted to die for us.   He wanted to pay for our sins.  He was God.

Every year in Oklahoma, some species of blooming flower or tree outdoes itself.  This year it it the Bradford Pear trees.  They are covered with huge white blossoms.  So thick you can't even tell that the tree has limbs.  They look like huge vanilla ice cream cones.

In the garden of Eden there were four types of trees.  Genesis 2:8-9  "And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.  And out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is (1) pleasant to the sight, and (2) good for food; (3) the tree of life, and (40 the tree of knowledge of good and evil."

vs. 17 "...of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it..."  And of course Adam and Eve did the one thing God told them not to do.  Original sin was born.  They suffered spiritual death and separation from God.  God cast them out of the garden lest they should eat of the tree of life.  They would have been zombies!! The living dead.  Dead in sin, living forever in that condition.

The other two trees are solely for our good.  One type was for food.  They didn't eat meat at that time.  As a matter of fact in Gen. 1:29, God tells them that the tree that bears fruit and that bears seed will be their meat.

The other tree was for our pleasure.  Pleasant to the sight.  Dogwood, Redbud, Bradford Pears, Cherry, Peach, and on and on and on.  God meant for us to be uplifted with joy at the sight of beautiful trees.  And I am.  Many of them have no purpose except to bring us joy.

Spring is here.  Psalms 104:16-17 "The trees of the Lord are full of sap;...where the birds make their nests..."  I have a Japanese Maple right outside my back door.  There is a robin who builds a nest in it every year.  Or maybe it is one of her babies coming back to the place where she was born.

Spring is God's way of saying he's going to give us another chance.  Winter is over.

Wednesday night the neighbors came running to my house.  The siren had gone off.  Everyone watches the weather in Oklahoma and when you get a funnel close by, people start looking for cover. When the siren blows, you really start looking for cover.  I'm sure this won't be the last time.  The tornado season is just beginning.  My new house doesn't have a shelter, but the next door neighbor came over and invited me to come use his if I want to.   I won't move before May.

I had a really large safe room built into this house.  Everyone on the block knows they are welcome.  And they come.  So it turns into a party.  They bring their kids and their dogs.  And we crowd into a ten by six space and lock the door.

After five or ten minutes, it gets hot and humid.  That's when I leave and let everyone have more space.  I have big covered porches on the front--and the back--of my house.  I usually sit out there when we have a storm...and watch.  I love the rain.  And of course we had hail.  I used to be very afraid, but for some reason I'm not anymore.  It seems more interesting than frightening.  Of course Doppler Radar has made all the difference.  You can watch it on TV right up until it is a mile or two away from you.

It scared my neighbor's boxer dog.  He jumped the fence and came into my house with everyone else.  I don't know where his people were, but he seemed happy to be with us.  My dog Squig is a chicken-dog.  He is afraid of rain.  And thunder and lightening send him into the stratosphere.  He hunkered down in a corner and shook.  For an hour or two.  I feel sorry for him.

Psalms 147:7-8a  "Sing unto the Lord with thanksgiving; sing praise upon the harp unto our God: Who covered the heavens with clouds, who prepares rain for the earth, who makes grass to grow..."

We'll take the rain here in Oklahoma any way we can get it.

Today is my birthday.  They keep coming and that is a good thing.  I am seventy-seven and I still have my wits about me.  What more could you ask for.  My mom and her sister had Alzheimer's disease, so I figured I was doomed.  But thank God I'm sane.  Or at least I think I am.  I guess you wouldn't know it if you weren't.

Phillipians 2:5 "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus..."  I figure "that mind" is the mind of a servant so we should try to be willing to help where we can.
Pillipians 2:7 "But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant..."

I memorized Pillipians 2: 5-ll years ago.  It is a great passage.  I had gone to a study of a book called "The Mind of Christ" and had told the leader of the class that I wasn't much on filling blank spaces into workbooks, but that I wanted to memorize the passage and would if there was someone to hold me accountable.  He did.  And I did.  Read it.  It will take thirty seconds.

It's a good thing I memorized scripture when I was young.  As you age, it is a lot (LOT) harder.  I can still do it, but will have forgotten it by the next day.  So I have to write the scripture out and paste it on the steering wheel of the car, or the kitchen counter and go over it, and over it, and over it.  The scriptures that I memorized when I was young just pop into my head.  Not so now.

But you can't stop keeping on keeping on.  Otherwise you're done.  And I'm not done yet.  You aren't either.  God has plans.  You may never know what they are or where you fit into His plans, but He has them nonetheless.  And you are a part of it.  I personally would rather know what His plans are ahead of time, but it doesn't always work that way.  Just keep doing what is right.  Keep sharing Christ with those you come in contact with.  And I don't mean that you should whack them over the head with a Bible. There is a song that says, "Let others see Jesus in you."  That's a good place to start.

When you are trying to connect with people, remember, they don't want to hear how much money you make.  Or how perfect your children are.  Or how big a house you live in, or how new a car you drive.  They don't want to know the expensive name brand of clothing you are wearing.  Those are not the things that people want to hear.

They want to know what went wrong in your life and how you overcame the problem.  We love stories in which a person rose above adversity.  How they survived and with the help of God, dug themselves out of the mess they were in.  How God turned tragedy into peace.

My friend Carolyn tells everyone, "Nobody will ever blackmail Janie.  She tells everything about herself.  There's nothing left to blackmail her with."  That's true.  I try to tell stories about myself that show how good God is.  How forgiving.  How loving.  How he takes our failures and gives us peace.  What good does it do to brag about your successes.  That helps no one.

So, for the family who has lost a child, I can listen and understand because I have buried one of my children.  For the person who has lost their health, I can listen and understand because I have been there.  Sometimes God chooses to heal us.  Sometimes he doesn't.  We simply share what God has done in our life.

People need hope.  They need to know that God is alive and well, and is still active in the lives of his children.  They want to hear, "Once upon a time.... and everyone lived happily ever after."  You have stories like that in your life.

Share them.

Looking back over my life, I have found that I don't remember all the days that everything went right.  My best stories are of when things went wrong.  Those are the things that I remember.  The day that Scott knocked his front two teeth out.  The day that Becky put the sterling butter knife in the light socket and permanently burned a black notch in it.  The day that Pat was riding her horse Rusty and he ran under a tree and got knocked for a loop.  Luckily no broken bones.

The day the horse got out of the fence and I was running down the highway with a broom trying to get him back in the pasture.  (Eight months pregnant at the time.)   The day that Ken was hurting so bad he couldn't stand up, wouldn't go to the doctor, and both boys (Jon and Scott) had to practically drag him out--his appendix had ruptured.  Ken always said, "Pain is just weakness leaving the body."  I think he would have just gritted his teeth and died rather than admit the pain was more than he could stand.

The day I dropped a pan of cornbread that I was trying to put in the oven and batter flew everywhere. On me, in my hair, on the cabinets, on the floor.  What a mess.  The day Jonathan left for college and didn't tell me he had a snake in the closet that he had been feeding for months.  Good grief.  I could have killed him.  The day we came home from vacation and a water pipe had burst in the bathroom and flooded half of the house.

Are your memories like that?  I have millions of them.  All simi-disasters.  But the good days, when everything went right have faded.  The good days that I remember are special ones like when Ken came home from Vietnam--alive.  Not in a box.  When Scott made All-State in baseball and Jon made All-State in football.  When Pat played Lucy in the play "Charlie Brown."  When Becky was selected as a National Merit Scholar.  There are lots more of those kinds of wonderful memories.  But most of life is a blur.  It trickles through your fingers.

Cherish the day that God has given us.

The people who owned the house before me were pink flamingo kind of people.  My sister removed around fifty bunnies, turtles, flower stepping stones,...etc. from the back yard alone.  There must have been a dozen flower pots filled with dirt.  No flowers.  And solar lights.  They were everywhere.  When she was through, I was able to plant flowers, bulbs and peonies around the Koi pond.  We got it running.  It has a waterfall.  It looks nice.

I'm glad God didn't make us all alike.  It would be so boring.  According to the number of species of flora and fauna, God loves variety.   He didn't make a prototype and then quit.  All the way from hummingbirds to pink flamingos--both birds.  And a million variations in-between.  Even people look  different.  That's how we  recognize them.  By their differences.

I have never been attached to a house.  They are just places that hold all your stuff, and more importantly--all your people.  We moved so much that I had packing down to a science.  I moved 24 times.  That doesn't count the moves that Ken made.  This move will be 25.  I can be happy just about anywhere if the temperature is right.  That assumes that it is clean.  Or that I can get it clean.  I don't want to be hot, cold, or dirty.

Phillipians 2:4 "Look not every man on his own things, but every person also on the things of others."  I am really blessed that there are so many people helping me get my "things" in order.  Becky's husband Craig has lined up all the contractors.  Painters, tilers, electricians, carpenters...etc.

All my people are certainly looking on the things of others.  On me.

I picked up my sister in Tulsa the other day.  We worked on lining the shelves with paper in my new house.  Thank God for sisters, daughters and cousins.  My cousin Ann helped me the last time I worked on this project.  Everyone is helping.  I can't stay down there more than a day or two before I'm ready to go home.

Some people say that home is where your heart is.  I think home is where your stuff is.  Most importantly--where your recliner is and where your bed is.  Give me my chair and my bed and I am a happy camper.

Jesus didn't have a home.  He slept where ever he was for the last three years of his life.  In Matthew 8:20 he said, "...foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man doesn't have anywhere to lay his head."

He wasn't complaining.  He had a job to do and buying a house wasn't on his agenda.  He had places to go, and people to see, and a message to deliver.

I'm spending way to much mental energy on this new house.  I need to be done before it drives me crazy.  When you are concentrating on something like this, your mind isn't free to do the more important things that you need to be doing.  I don't think God is interested in the color of carpet I put down.  I don't think he cares one way or another whether I hang drapes or use blinds.

It's amazing how much time we waste on things that have no eternal value.  I can do better.

1 Peter 3:15 is one of my favorite verses and I humbly take it to heart in my own life.

"But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts; and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asks you for a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear..."

Sanctify the Lord God.  Hallow his name.  Talk to Him.

In your hearts.  I told my friend Carolyn the other day that I loved her like my own sister.  With all my heart.
"You only have half a heart," she laughed.  "The other half is Dacron mesh."

"True, but the parts that I have left are full of love!!"

Be ready.  Preparation by reading and memorizing God's words.

Always.  You never know when you are going to get a chance to share.

To give an answer.  Know what you know.  Don't be a Christian wimp.

For the reason of the hope that is in you.  Hope.  It's one of the big three in Paul's letter to the Corinthians.  Love, faith, hope.  I am full of hope.

Hebrews 11:1 "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."  The substance of my faith is founded with hope.  Lots and lots of hope.

Robins are everywhere.  Daffodils are popping up their yellow heads.  Dead looking trees are starting to have a touch of green.

Next week is my birthday.  I always know it is coming because of the Oklahoma redbuds.  They bloom on my birthday every year.  My entire family knows this, at least one of them reminds me when the first buds appear on the trees.

My son Jonathan called me one year on March first and said, "Happy birthday, Mom."
"It's not my birthday for three more weeks," I told him.
"But the redbuds are blooming."
"That's because you live in Houston.  I'm hundreds of miles north of you!!!  But thank you anyway."

I'm so glad spring is here.  Those of us in Oklahoma can't really complain about the weather this winter.  Everyone on the East coast got the bad stuff.  We only had a few bad days.

I don't complain much about the weather anyway.  It needs to freeze to kill the bugs in the ground.  The other morning, it had come a frog-strangling rain and when I got up, there were dozens of foot long earth worms all over my bathroom tile floor.  They were drowning and had squeezed under the door sill looking for somewhere dry.   I rounded them up and found a place outside under an eave where it wasn't very wet.  I didn't think or I would have saved them for my garden.  At least they lived.   I'm sure the robins got some of them.  They were huge.  Almost the size of a small snake.

 Song of Solomon 2:11-13a "For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;  The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come and the voice of the turtle dove is heard in our land.  The fig tree puts forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grapes give a good smell..."

Take a deep breath.  God is doing his thing again.

We are believers in the story of Christ because of the eyewitness, written accounts, of dozens of people who were there at the time and because of the consistency of their reports.  We do not walk blindly into faith.  Although that will work because it is faith in Christ that saves.   We base our faith on the collection of letters and stories of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter, James and Jude, to name a few.  If we were in a court of law, the case would be settled by their testimony.  Although separated by time and space, their stories mesh perfectly with each other.

Not to mention the dozens and dozens of prophecies that were written in the Old Testament that were fulfilled in the life of Jesus.  I have mentioned before that it would be statistically impossible for all of those prophecies to be fulfilled in one man--but they were.  In Jesus.  He hit every point.  That alone should be enough to make a believer out of you.

But the world makes fun of us as if we are stupid.  They think we believe in fairy stories.  That's because they have never read the books in the Bible.  People will read and accept almost anything.  But the most important written account in the history of the world is seldom read.  Even by Christians.  We must read it.  Our lives depend on it.

John wrote:  "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the Word of life;" 1 John 1

Peter wrote: "For we have not followed cunningly devised fables...this voice which came from heaven, we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount.  For the prophecy came in old time not by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." 2Peter 16a, 18, 21.

We believe the story of Christ.  We believe in Him.  He is our salvation.

My first memory is of a sound.  The "Click-clack" of my ball-bearing roller skates on the cracks in the sidewalk in front of our house.  I was three.  And yes I could roller skate.  My dad bought me the skates because I was constantly jumping up and down and he thought skating might give me something to do.  It did.  I roller-skated through my sixties.  And yes I can do loops and skate backwards.  I love to skate.  But now, my daughters "yell" at me if I even think about doing something where I might fall.

My two grandsons, Steven and David, got me on a dirt bike in Billings, Montana--on a trail with drop-offs.  I managed to stay on the bike.  I don't think I would do that again.  They also got me on a ski-slope for the first time.  I was over fifty at the time.   I am definitely not going to do that again.  Later, we hiked into Yellowstone and through woods and fields to a hot spring to swim.  No one else was within a million miles except bears.  It's amazing what your grandchildren can get you to do.

I am a chicken.  Left to myself, I would never do anything exciting.  I am one of those people who find reading a book entertaining.  And staying in my pajamas and puttering around all day.  Left to myself, I would probably stay inside forever--but I have to get dressed to go outside and garden.  Which I love.

Right now, I am making pleated drapes for the new house.  I haven't seen it in a month.  They say the painting is all done.  Under counter lighting and can lights are in the kitchen.  I'm anxious for it to be finished.  New counter tops, carpet and tile work still have to be done.  I bet I don't get moved before May.  I have to get my garden in.  I don't want to go through the summer without a garden!!!

John 18:1 "...He went...where there was a garden, into which he entered, and his disciples."

That's what gardens are good for.

Contrary to Jewish belief, which put faith in being a child of Abraham, Peter wrote: 1Peter 1:23 "For you have a new life.  It was not passed on to you from your parents, for the life they gave you will fade away.  This new one will last forever, for it comes from Christ..."

1Peter 2:9 "...you have been chosen by God himself--you are priests of the King, you are holy and pure, you are God's very own--all this so that you may show to others how God called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light."

Heavy.  Chosen by God.  Priests.  Holy and pure.  God's own.  All for the purpose of showing others the way to God.

I don't know very many people who call themselves Christians that live up to that.  Holy and pure means you have a clean mouth.  A clean life.  Being a priest means that you are prepared to explain the Gospel to others who need it.

We don't think of ourselves as priests.  But Peter says we are.  We are--priests.

Christianity comes with a huge responsibility.  We do what we do because we belong to God and that is what he expects.  We are His plan to save the world by sharing.  He has left the Gospel to us.

We must do better.  A better job of sharing the good news.  Christ is risen.

Live it.  Speak it.  Let's not keep it a secret.

I've been rereading first Peter.  I love the guy.  John is nice, kind, loving.  Thomas is honest to a fault.  James is direct and exact in his writings.  But Peter is real.  He just tells it like it is.

He is writing to the Jewish Christians that have been driven out of Jerusalem, scattered due to persecution.  Trying to encourage them.  In verse 3b-5 he says:  "...Now we live in hope of eternal life because Christ rose again from the dead...and God, in his mighty power, will make sure that you get there safely to receive it because you are trusting him...So be truly glad!  There is wonderful joy ahead, even though the going is rough for a while down here."

I told you once that on the last day of Ken's life, he asked how he was going to get "there."  Not "was" he going to get there (he was very sure of his salvation), but "how."  I think that being a fighter pilot, he was wondering about the coordinates of the flight.

After he was gone, I was reading in his Bible and found the verses in 1 Peter 3-5 had the words "...will be sure you get there safely,"  underlined.  Ken's question had been from curiosity, not from a lack of trust.  I had told him that he was going to God soon and Ken had said, "Maybe God is coming to me."  I think he had it right.

Anyway.  Peter expresses things in a simple way.  I like that.  He continues the passage in verse 8 by saying, "You love him even though you have never seen him; though not seeing him, you trust him..."  That describes us.  We have never seen him.  But we love Him and trust Him.

The world doesn't understand that.  But our faith is not blind or ignorant faith.  It is faith in the historical record of the life of Jesus as given to us by men like Peter, James and John who knew him.  In the resurrection--witnessed by thousands.  That's how we're going to get there.  He conquered death for us.  

My friend Becky Bacon called with a funny story.  Seems that she and hubby Joe had gone to some lecture in Tulsa that was almost entirely Jewish.  When it was over, they bought a book and asked to have their book signed by the author.

"Name," he asked?

"Joe and Becky Bacon," she replied.

"Oh no, I can't put that name in this book.  Not bacon.  This is a kosher book."  So he signed the book to Joe and Becky.  Quiet kosher.

I guess that means that the word, "bacon" is as bad as the product?  I got a kick out of the story.

Personally I have never understand why pigs were unclean in Jewish law.  I think Ham, and pork, and bacon should be a separate food group.  And I can't cook beans, greens or much of anything else without bacon drippings.  Yes, I know.  Cholesterol.  I am probably going to lose a few days off my life.  But if I don't have drippings, I use butter.  Which is just as bad.  I don't even buy margarine.

But my blood pressure is low (very), my cholesterol numbers are always perfect, and my weight is normal or below normal.  So I'm sticking with the drippings and butter.

Matthew 6:11, "....give us this day our daily bread."  I love bread.  With butter.

Ken was always gone.  Cuba, Spain, Greece, the Philippines, Japan, Laos, Okinawa, Vietnam, Korea..often a year at a time.  That was the reason he decided that when he got married that his wife had to be self sufficient.  I am definitely that.  He got what he wanted.  It worked for fifty-seven years.

Most men might be threatened.  Not Ken.  When I was hesitant, he encouraged me.

So now, people ask me all the time how I am doing.  Am I afraid to stay by myself?  I find that question very odd.  I learned to stay by myself when I married him at eighteen.  I am never afraid.  My children make fun of me--the time there was a crash in the backyard at four in the morning and I went to investigate.  I opened the back door and a man was leaning against the glass.

A normal person would probably have screamed.  But I just closed the door and asked the man his name.  "Mike," he said through the glass door.

"Mike, you need to leave.  I'm calling the police."

Come to find out, Mike was drunk and lost.  He had broken into five houses that night trying to find where he was going.

I guess I should have been frightened but I wasn't.  I figure you just take care of problems as they arise and deal with them.  Most of the time everything turns out okay.

Proverbs 3:24  "When you lie down, don't be afraid.  Lie down, and your sleep will be sweet."

That's what I do.  It may not work for everyone, but it works for me.

We had three little girls by the time I was twenty three.  We had them fast and furious because Ken was nine years older than I was, and he wanted a family.  Which was fine with me.  We decided on three children.  I saw no reason to wait.  But when our third daughter died, there were only the two girls so we decided to try again.

The entire time I was pregnant, I argued with Ken over what we would name the baby if it was a boy. I wanted to name him Kenneth Scott.  But Ken said there were too many Kens in his family and was adamant that we name him David Scott.  We had decided to call him Scott anyway.

It was a boy.  And since I was the one who filled in the birth information, I named him Kenneth Scott.   Who looks at a birth certificate anyway.  So for a few weeks, everything was huncky-dorrie.  Until the certificate came in the mail and Ken opened the mail.

"Strange," he said.  "Someone, I wonder who, got this boy named the wrong name.  And since I'm sure it wouldn't have been my sweet wife, I guess I'll just call him Sam."  And he did.  For the rest of his life, everyone called our son Scott except Ken.  Ken called him Sam.

Years later, when Scott had his second son, he named him Sam and told his dad, "Dad, this is Sam now.  And I am Scott."

Ken looked at his new grandson and said, "I guess I'll call him Sam Junior."  He never called Scott anything but Sam.

Ken never said anything to me about what I had done about the name.  One of the requirements that he had for a wife (Yes, he had a list) was that she be able to stand on her own two feet.  I could certainly do that.  I think a boy should be named after his father.  Our oldest son is.  Kenneth Scott.

It's no wonder that Sci-fi is so popular.  Seems like everyone knows there is "Something" out there, and fantasizing keeps you from having to deal with God.  Who is real.  It's easier to accept UFO's and aliens and speculate on what is out there.  ET come home.  Speculation doesn't require anything.

The problem with God is that He expects something from us.  Sci-fi doesn't.

Not many people want to deal with God.  Or his expectations.

"In the beginning..."  Now there is something to speculate about.  There had to have been a beginning.  The universe is expanding.  Expanding from some moment in time.

"In the beginning, God created..."  I often wonder about how that happened.  But since there is no way to go back there and watch God as he is creating, I just accept that He did it.  It beats aliens.  It beats ET.  It beats UFO's.  It means that there was a purpose to what He did.

I know that time is irrelevant to God.  How long it took didn't matter to Him.  But eventually, He created man.  Why?

1 John 1:7a "If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another..."

Fellowship.  The Bible says we are created in the image of God.  Could it be he just wanted fellowship with us?  Eternal fellowship with those who love Him?

John 3: 16 "For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son.  That whosoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."

With Him.   Fellowship is what love is all about.

 And while we are thinking of the vastness of the universe, the vastness of space--which we can only measure in light-years for lack of a better way to measure it--remember, He is the light.  John 12:36 "While you have light, believe in the light that you may be children of the light."

John 1:1,4-5  "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God...In him was life; and the life was the light of men.  And the light shined in the darkness; and the darkness  comprehended it not."

Romans 1: 20-22 "For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and God-head; so that they are without excuse:  Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.  Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools..."

They became fools.  It is all visible to the human eye.  You have to look.  You have to ask the eternal question, "Where did all of this come from?"  And then you have to decide:  Accident, or Creator.  It seems evident.  But those who do not want to answer to a Holy God, those who do not want to come under the authority of a creator, "become vain in their imagination, darken their hearts, and profess themselves to be wise."

How foolish.

"The invisible things are clearly seen."

When I watch the Discovery channel, sometimes they show the universe--space--and everything that is in it.  That we know.  They used to think that it all started with the big bang, but I heard the other day that they (scientists) have changed their minds.  Something about having used a formula that was inaccurate.  So now they will have to come up with a new theory.  They keep changing their theories.

Problem is, the science books in schools are ten years behind.  And they just keep on keeping on with what they are teaching because they have no alternative until someone tells them otherwise.  They are waiting on the newest theory to trickle down.  Whatever it is.  So they can teach it as a fact.

I started cutting out articles where scientists recanted what they had previously said.  That was back in the early 60's.  I have dozens and dozens and dozens of articles.  But not many people care about that.  It is just easier to spout the latest dogma.

When I think about God, I keep him small.  It's wrong and I try not to do it, but when I consider the universe, I can't wrap my mind around it.  He is far too vast, too large for me to contemplate.  I try.  But I am so small in comparison.  He is so big.

Psalms 19:1  "The heavens declare the glory of God and the earth shows forth his handiwork.  Day unto day utters speech and night unto night shows knowledge."  He speaks to us in the universe.

God is speaking, but instead of starting their theories with the assumption of a creator, scientists start their theories on the latest piece of information that has come their way.

I picked out granite for my countertops on Monday.  There were so many different slabs of polished stone in so many variations of color.  I walked through the warehouse and was in awe at the beautiful rock that God had hidden in the earth for us to discover.  That's what we are doing with his wonderful universe.  We are discovering what he has done.  "The glory of God."

Today, I get to go home.  The weather has warmed up so that the ice in Oklahoma City is melting.  I've been here a week getting everything together and got trapped.  It was pretty bad.  But not the kind of bad that builds up ice on tree limbs and breaks them.  Just the kind of ice on roads that will kill you if you try to drive in it.  Oklahoma weather at its finest.

I met a lady who was telling about an interaction with a Muslim person that she had met.  He said, "We believe in one God."   She answered, "So do we.  We believe that there is only one God.  I know that you think that we have three Gods: the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit--but they are one."

"How can that be?"

"Think of it this way:  Water can be liquid, steam, or ice.  But it is still water--in different forms.  We believe that the Father became a man--Jesus--died for our sins, rose again and indwells us in the form of His Spirit.  Three forms of the same God."

Muslims aren't allowed to research other religions, so if they learn something about Christianity, it's because we have found an appropriate way to share something with them.

1 Peter 3:15 "But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asks a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear..."

You can't share if you haven't done your homework.  The key words in that scripture come in the form of a command:  "Be ready always".

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Today I signed the contract on the new house.  It's done.  Now I have to sell the one in Pryor--where I am staying until it sells.  There is enough work to be done on the new one to keep workers busy for a couple of months anyway.

Becky should be back from Morocco day after tomorrow.  She can help me make decisions on paint colors, etc.  She makes four trips overseas every year.  I don't get it.  I have traveled, but it is wearisome to me.  The thought of getting on a plane and flying for seven or eight hours sounds like torture.  However, it didn't when I was fifty.  Twenty five years makes a big difference.

Pray for the Christians that have been captured.  You know that they are afraid.  My brother and sister have our church praying for some Chinese Christian friends of theirs who are in jail--simply because they are believers.  The judge threw their lawyer out of court so they were not represented.  We are so blessed to live in a  country where we have religious freedom.

I forgot to post this last Friday.  I have been a little bit scattered.  I will do better.

"I will be glad and rejoice in your unfailing love, for you have see my "troubles", and you care about the anguish of my soul."  Psalms 31:7

It's a good thing God cares.  Because I have spent the weekend fairly "troubled" trying to get everything done with carpenters, painters, tile men, etc.  I'm not anguished yet, but if I get there, I can count on the unfailing love of God.