When I left Pryor, I had a beautiful armoire chest--carved walnut with a beveled mirror inlaid door.  My friend Kathy (Mitchell, at the time) was in the habit of bringing me hot home made yeast rolls every couple of weeks, (yes, there are friends that do wonderful things like that) and loved the armoire.  She asked what I was going to do with it.

"Sell it," I told her.  "I want it," she said.  "How much? she asked.  "You can have it for what I paid for it fifteen years ago."  (I bought it for ten cents on the dollar as to what it was worth.) Definitely not an even trade for all the bread she baked me through the years.  Thank God good friends don't keep score.)  She came and got it.  It looks fantastic in her house.  It makes me happy to see it got a good home, and every time I stop at Kathy's house I get to enjoy looking at it.  I tell you that story to tell you this next one.

Becky's estate sale was last weekend.  There was a beautiful piece of stained glass for sale.  Kathy, who lives in Pryor, saw it in the on line Swan estate pictures and bought it over the phone.  The stained glass was mine; Becky sold it for me.  What's the chance of that happening?  But Kathy and I have always liked the same things.  After the estate charges, I was able to buy a gorgeous carved walnut headboard for a bed in my house that hadn't had a headboard for the last 25 years.  It came out practically even.  I had seen the picture of the headboard--on line for the same estate sale as well.  What goes around comes around.  Kathy is happy.  I am happy.  But next time I have an antique for sale, I'm going to call Kathy first and save her some trouble!

I love my friends. They are one of God's greatest blessings.  You don't get to choose your relatives, but you choose your friends, or they choose you.  One way or another they are precious treasures and a gift from God.  I've been friends with Kathy for probably fifty years.  Carolyn for sixty five.  Becky Bacon for thirty?  Sally, for twenty five?  And the list goes on and on.  Jeanette, my newest soul mate for three years.  If I forgot to name you, you know who you are.  Count it up to my old age and know that I adore you--every one.  
Proverbs 18:24 "One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother, (sister).  All of my friends are friends of God.

My Mac is now a magnet.  I can't wait to get to it every morning and find out what is going to happen next in my second manuscript.  I've read all the "How To" books that say you need  a title and an outline.  Huh-uh.  All I ever have is a beginning and an end.  If I know where I'm starting and where I'm going, I just write.  

It's like the Christian life.  I know where I started...I gave my life to God and was redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ himself.  I know where I'm going...to spend eternity with Him and those I love.....forever and ever.

  The stuff in-between is called life.  Bad stuff, good stuff, dull stuff, exciting stuff.  Broken heartedness, joyfulness.  We need to live as if today was our last day here.  You don't know how many days you are allotted.  Make it the point of the life you are living to change someone by your story.  Where it began.  Christ. They desperately need a beginning as well.  The ending is optional--you get to choose where you start; where it ends is up to God.

It seems to be working.  I'm still not out of stories from my past.  I was surrounded by such unusual and interesting people.  Parents, husband, children, friends.  It has given me an encyclopedia of things NOT to do.  Things that you "aren't going to like" the way they they turn out.  Someone in my extended family has done it.  I bet they have in yours as well. 

It has also given me a multitude of things that turned out to be wonderful.  You don't live eighty years without a bunch of stories.  Eighty one in March: 3-26-1938.  That's a long long time.  Scott texted me today and called me an Energizer Bunny.  I spoke to a friend we had from 1964 yesterday. (Neurosurgeon that lived next door on base that I haven't seen since)  He said that a long life was usually determined by attitude.  It was an interesting observation for a brain surgeon.  I think you could say I have "attitude?"  What kind--that's the question.

"Brethren, I don't count myself to have apprehended; but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things that are ahead,I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."  Phillippians 3:13-14.

Today my brother put me on antibiotics.  You are supposed to take one pill four times a day.  Pneumonia.  But Bill knows me, so he said, "You'll forget at least one of those times every day, so take two pills three times a day.  You will probably get that done."  He's right.

It's great to have a doctor in the family.  Bill stays sharp practicing on family and friends in Pryor.  At first people don't believe he will advise them for free, but he did that for 37 years in China.  He likes to stay current.  He just loves practicing medicine.

Problem is, sometimes he practises by diagnosing himself.  So his son, Matt, who is a physician as well, has to chew Bill out every now and then because, "A doctor is his own worst patient." 

I have a magazine with a picture of Bill going up some stairs in Macao, China.  The headline is "Bill Swan, Macao Maverick." He certainly was and isn't conventional.  When he arrived in Macao he caused ripples in the Baptist Convention establishment by insisting that Baptists quit building hospitals over there and concentrate on basic health in villages.  

"People aren't, and won't, come to your hospitals.  They can't afford hospitals. The problems here are TB, and basic diseases Americans have eradicated or can treat. Just send me doctors that can remove cataracts--doctors that want to donate a couple of weeks of their life, and we can reach people for the Lord."  Healing the blind.  It made an impact.

When and where was the last Baptist Hospital built?  Money now goes for black bags and stethoscopes where the return is realistic, and lives are changed.  In out of the way villages.

I'm glad God didn't call me to go to some third world country.  I would have been terrible at it.  I think God knows what he is doing.  He gives us gifts.  It's up to us to use them.  Bill and his wife Janet gave their lives to the Chinese.  And changed the face of medical missions overseas.  No more big hospitals that most of the people will never enter.  Better the black bag that visits the jails and back alleys searching for sick people and leading them to Christ.

I worked all day Friday at the estate sale.  Becky has one around every three weeks.  She got me a chair to sit in.  If I have a comfortable chair, I can write tickets all day long.  Which I did.  I wrote an entire book full of tickets.  People were buying stuff right and left.  I had taken my Sudoku book with me and didn't have time to work any of the puzzles.

The way you do a sale like that is put a sales person in every room of the house. Sometimes we have  nine or ten people working.  As buyers leave the room, you record the price of what they have in their hands.  They take their ticket to the check-out to pay.  The check-out line was 10 to 15 people all day long.

Becky brings all of us lunch.  Home cooked which is lovely.  She floats from room to room answering questions.  It is a lot of fun.

But I was in a bedroom next to an open door to the garage, and got chilled and ended up sick.  I spent the next two days in bed, then it went to my chest, and today the doc put me on antibiotics.  I'll live, but it's hard to just do nothing all day.

That was my weekend.  Except for praying.  Every minute of those three days I was praying for Carol Neighbors.  She went from bad to worse, and didn't recover.  Those of us who loved her are brokenhearted.  Those of you who knew her--pray for Scott and her daughter, Megan.  Carol was so young.  It happened so fast.  One day she was here, and then gone.

Someone asked me a couple of Sundays ago why bad things happen to good people.  I don't have an answer to that.  I wondered why Ken had to go to Viet Nam and leave me with three children?  Why did I get breast cancer?  Why did my baby Amy die?  Why did Ken's kidneys fail?  Those kinds of questions will drive you nuts if you are not a child of God.

Faith is a funny thing.  You have it or you don't.  You believe in God's ultimate plan, or you don't.  In all of the bad things that have happened to me, I have been able to say, "God's will be done."  I believe that, or times like Carol's death wouldn't be able to endured.

I've come down off my cloud and into reality.  I know nothing about contracts.  I have seven days to figure it all out before I sign one.  But one thing happened as a result of the publisher offering to buy the book.  It motivated me to get busy and finish a second one that I was half through with.  The publisher wants that one as well.  So I have been burning up the Mac keys.  For the first time ever, I've been running out of "charge" before the day is over and having to plug my computer back in.

Motivation is a peculiar thing.  You either have it, or you don't.  When I moved into this house, I was on fire gung-ho to hang pictures.  But once I got the part of the house that I
actually live in done, I couldn't drum up the motivation to finish the rest of the house--because I never go back there.  Pictures are still lying on the bed spread in the second guest room.  

Becky Bacon is coming Sunday and Monday, so I finished her room months ago.  She comes in the door and heads to "her" room.  I got that room done--motivated by the fact my friend was coming to see me.  Motivated by having a friend come to my home.

There are four bedrooms in this house.  One little old lady like me doesn't need four bedrooms.  But that's the way the house came.  Take it or leave it.

I have been praising God for my good fortune of finding a publisher.  I have prayed for that to happen, but was shocked when it did.  Why do we doubt the power of God?  "Oh ye of little faith...", Jesus said.  "If you had the faith of a grain of a mustard seed..." 

I am rambling today.  I will get my thoughts together next week.  "We are saved by faith, not by works...lest any man should boast."  And here is the best thing about faith...when you exercise the faith God has given you, it grows.  Like a tiny mustard seed grows into a gigantic plant.

Yesterday the most wonderful thing happened to me.  I am still euphoric.  Floating on a cloud of happiness. Giddy.  I got a call from a publisher, followed by conformation, that they are going to publish a book that I wrote.  I will sign the contract on March 1, and receive an advance.  The money is not the thing that excites me.  It is the fact that a publisher thinks that what I have written is noteworthy, and wants the world to read it. Hours and hours of time finally validated. Carolyn said, "You are now not just a writer, you are an author!!

When you are a writer, validation is everything.  I just hope the people who buy the book will love it.  My friend Rebecca  Perkins is the only one who has read it.  She encouraged me not to give up, on the days when I thought it was going nowhere.  Her encouraging words meant the world to me.  

Sometimes we forget that the people around us need encouragement.  We get so caught up in our own world, our own problems, that we don't look out from our world--and consider that the people around us occasionally need a round of applause.  An confirming word.  A smile.  Take someone to lunch.  Tell them you think they are wonderful, thoughtful, fun or any other complimentary thing you can come up with.  Don't gush.  Just be a friend.

I've told you about my mom's TL's.  Tell Last.  At the supper table, we traded good things we had heard about someone that day.  But we got to Tell Last--they had to first tell something good they had heard about us as well.  It was very effective in teaching us to LISTEN, and pass on the good we had heard about someone as we went through our day.

My son Scott is the very best at this.  He sends my blog to everyone he knows, and when he gets a response that is complimentary, he will E-mail me and say, "TL, mom."  When I can't come up with anything, he is always ready to give me a TL on credit.  I owe him at least a dozen credits at last count.  

Scott's love language is praise.  And he is certainly a great praiser himself.  He makes me smile.  It is a wonderful thing to be appreciated.  It is a wonderful thing to be loved.  

Being a grandmother is a gift.  You get all of the good, and don't have to enforce, or discipline the bad.  It's easier--because when they do something wrong or inappropriate, you can just talk about it.  No threats.  Just guidance.  And hugs.


Bible School is a must for children.  The things they learn will be good.  The history of moral values are in the Bible, and parents need all the help they can get.  Christian, Jewish, or not.  Most religions endorse good.  And the stories in the Bible are classic literature.  Give your child the advantage of education in one of the oldest writings of man's history.

I saw my grandson Brady on Sunday.  His brother turned four and there was a party.  I asked Brady if he wanted to go to Bible School with me again.  "Yes.  I want to go."  If, as a grandmother, you can engage them in such activities, you will build memories for them.  

I clearly remember going to my grandmother's house when I was four.  I can draw you a template of her house.  Every room.  But I can't tell you much about where I was living at the time--in our house.  Grandmother's house is vivid in my memory.  There was an outhouse!!.  And in the kitchen, there was an ICE-box.  I can hear her saying, "Janie, please close the icebox or the ice will melt."  At least a dozen times a day.

The word "refrigerator" hadn't been invented yet.  Or if it had, nobody had one.  The ice man delivered your ice.  In Pryor, the ice house was just west on main street across the railroad tracks.  You only went there if all the ice in your box had melted--because someone kept opening the icebox door too much.  Generally, you only opened the box to take what you needed for the day.  If you wanted ice for something, you had to chip it.  Everyone  had an ice pick.

I lost mine when I moved to Edmond, so I went looking for an ice pick at appliance stores.  No luck.  Next, I had Becky look for one in her estate sales.  I figured that if anyone my age was having an estate sale, they would have an ice pick.  I finally found one.  When I was growing up, everybody had an ice pick.  Nowdays, not everyone knows what one looks like.

While Ken was in Nam, I started a women's Bible study group in my home.  We ended up with a crowd that filled the living room and dining room.  I used Billy Graham's study group guides, and supplemented them with the Scripture stored in my head.  

I had been in a group in Beaufort that used those booklets.  They were very effective.  Short, and to the point.  I haven't found anything in the last fifty years that were as good.

The group learned scripture.  And in subsequent years they used scripture that they  had memorized as they became teachers and directors in our church.  Today's literature has too many words that are just fluff--the Bible itself is never fluff.

If you don't have anything to say that is from the word of God, or life experiences, you won't be able to teach someone else.  And that is what Christianity is all about, teaching others to share their faith as opportunities arise.  And when you are prepared, opportunities will arise.  God will present them to you.  You don't have to go knocking on doors.

Jesus said, "Go, and make disciples..."

It is critically important to put your children in Sunday morning classes, and Bible School.  They will absorb things in their minds that will be, "...a very present help in times of trouble."  Introducing God into their thoughts will be a comfort to them as they mature.  They may not understand it all, but God's words "...will not return to Him void..."   You are not in the game of teaching moral values by yourself.  God is in it.  It's His plan in the first place.  "Faithful is he who called you...who also will do it."  Children are like sponges.  The things they learn early will stay with them.  At my age, memorizing is agony.

The last two summers, I worked in my church's Bible School.  I had never done that before--I always worked with youth, or adults.  Children are definitely not my gift.  But my grandson turned five, so I took him. I wanted him to have the experience of Bible School.  And learn scripture.  So that someday, when he needs it, God's words will return to him. (Continued.) 

When I married in August, I promised my folks that I would start college in Pensacola in September--the next month.  It was especially important to my mom that I do that. 

I've written before about my Gran and Pops having only gone to school through 8th and 2nd grades respectively, and how they saw all five of their children graduate from college.  It was a big deal in my family that we go to college.  They stressed the sacrifices that had been made for all five of them to accomplish that.  To get a college degree during the Depression had been very difficult.  It was expected that I too would start immediately after high school.

But I didn't to do that, because Ken was due for orders, and I figured that I wouldn't be able to finish the course work before we moved.  As it turned out, I didn't fulfill the promise to my folks until Ken was sent to Viet Nam--nine years later.   Four children, and ten moves later.  I was twenty-seven years old.  I certainly wasn't an eighteen year old kid anymore.   

He was gone for thirteen months.  I had been involved in a Bible memory class before he left when we were in Beaufort, South Carolina.  It was the first time I had memorized Scripture since Bible School days as a child, with colored cards.  I was using a system by the Navigators that gives you a key word, and subsequent memory verses on that subject.

Faith: "Faithful is He who calls you, who also will do it."  
          "You are saved by faith, not by works, lest any man should boast."
          "Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God."

Many of the verses I learned were repeats that had gone fuzzy in my memory.  Going over them again made them meaningful.  It had been at least fifteen years since I had learned some of those verses as a child.  Now they were like concrete set in my head.  Now, I knew what they meant.  Now, as a Bible teacher they could be applied.  They were no longer just random words.  They were real promises from God.  In those nine years since I married Ken, I had grown up and become  adult.  Ten moves in nine years.  It will make an adult out of anybody.  At every move, we joined a church and taught Bible classes.  (Continued)  

How I had gotten myself into such a fix was a long story.  My new husband had spent a tour as a fighter pilot in Korea, then returned to the training command in Pensacola to teach cadets how to land on a carrier.  Five days a week he waved them aboard and qualified--or disqualified--them in the final stage of flight training.  

Ten landings on the carrier and they were qualified.  On a pitching, rolling deck.  Some of them didn’t make it. He washed them out before they killed themselves, or more seriously, killed their instructor.  As long as there was sunlight, Ken was working on the carrier.  Waving "nuggets" aboard.  Every night he came home dead tired.  After four months of this, I was so homesick that I got on a bus and went back to Oklahoma.  

The only thing Ken said to me was, "Are you coming back?"  

Of course I was coming back.  I'm not a quitter.  I just needed a break.  As the pilgrim said in "Pilgrim's Progress,"  I had fallen into the "Slough of Despond."  I had been in Florida for four months, and was desperately lonely for something that was familiar to me.  I was a fish out of water.  I was not an adult just because I got married.  I was a kid living in an adult world.  I had very few coping skills.  I had never had to cope before. 

I hadn't had a clue--when I married Ken--what being plopped down into a military world was going to be like.  I knew nothing about the military.  I had grown up in heaven.  A small Oklahoma town where everyone knew everybody else.  Pensacola, Florida was not heaven.  

So...I spent our first Christmas in Oklahoma without Ken.  I had been there for two weeks when he called and asked that question again, "Are you coming back?"  I was.  I had learned during those two weeks in Oklahoma that I really loved him and that he was my home now.  That wherever he was, was where I had to learn to exist.  And that if he wasn't with me, Oklahoma would never be my home again.  I was just going to have to buckle up and become an adult. I needed a manual:  "Marriage for Dummies."            (Continued.)

At eighteen, I married, left Oklahoma and moved to Florida to start a strange new life.  My husband was a Marine--an instructor at Pensacola Naval Air station.   He was nine years older than I was, with an established reputation and career.  I, however, had neither.  I left the sheltered safe haven of the Oklahoma Bible Belt for life as a military wife.  

I had no concept of how to cope.  I had never bought anything in a grocery store in my entire life--which didn’t matter because I wouldn’t have known what to do with it anyway.  I couldn’t cook.  I didn't know how to do much of anything that was useful.

Most of the officer’s wives were college educated, well traveled and self sufficient.  I wasn’t.  I was the youngest officer's wife on base.  I had no friends.   My family was in Oklahoma.  I was in Florida. It might as well have been the moon.  My existence was pretty miserable and very lonely.  Ken worked from sunup to sundown.  I was alone most of the time in a strange place where I didn't know a single soul other than my husband.  And I saw very little of him.

I was so young.  I Graduated High School in May, married in August and was standing in a receiving line serving coffee to the troops in September.  Welcoming new families to the Marine Corps.  Supposedly an adult; but in truth, still a kid...“Be not afraid for I am with you.  My rod and my staff will comfort you..."  My brain bubbled up scripture.

We joined a church and within weeks, I was teaching a class of Junior girls.  Which didn't seem to bother anyone.  An eighteen year old teaching sixteen year old girls.  But it was the scripture stored in my head that enabled me to do it.  I found out that when the scripture said, "My words will not return unto me empty," that it was actually true.  When I needed a verse on that days lesson, one would pop into my head.  Bible school had grounded  me in scripture.  God supplied the rest.

Scripture started to become real to me.  "I am an ever present God in times of trouble."  And teaching a class of young girls was troubling.  I began to realize that not everyone came from families that believed in God.    (Continued.) 

How I had gotten myself into such a fix was a long story.  My new husband had spent two tours as a fighter pilot in Korea and returned to the training command in Pensacola to teach cadets how to land on a carrier.  Five days a week he waved them aboard and qualified--or disqualified--them in the final stage of flight training.  

Ten landings on the carrier and they were qualified.  On a pitching, rolling deck.  Some of them didn’t make it. They were washed out before they killed themselves, or more seriously, killed their instructor.  As long as there was sunlight, Ken was working on the carrier.  Waving "nuggets" aboard.  Every night he came home dead tired.  After three months of this, I was so homesick that I got on a bus and went back to Oklahoma.   (Continued)

So went the days of summer.  Bible School in the morning, swimming in the afternoons.  In the evenings we caught fireflies and stuffed them in Mason jars to watch them twinkle.  Tore off their tails and pasted them on our arms and faces and waved our arms around in the dark night.  Poor fireflies.  It didn’t occur to us that it might be sadistic.  Summer was magic.  

Eventually, all of the Bible Schools were over and regular school began.   Tucked into the recesses of my mind were all those Bible verses I had learned.  Waiting. 

Admittedly, the weight and full meaning of those verses escaped me--I was too young to fully comprehend the deepest content contained in the words.  I don't know that the words meant anything to me at all, other than a means of getting another colored card. 

However, the simple messages were etched into my permanent memory, and stayed there untapped through the following years. When you memorize scripture, it goes into your memory bank.  Stored up for the future.  Waiting.  For when you need it. 

In Isaiah 55:11, God says: "So shall my word be that goes forth out from my mouth; it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it."  If something is in your head, in your brain, God will bring it to mind. 

I grew up.  Married and moved a thousand miles away from my small town.  It was in these emerging adult years that the words of the verses would come to me.  

“There has no temptation taken you but that which is common to man..."  

"Get wisdom and with it get understanding..."  

"Thy word have I hid in mine heart that I might not sin against thee.”  They were in my brain.  Simmering. Ready to be used, or to share with someone.   (Continued...)

The part of Bible School that I liked the best was the colored cards.  Red, blue, purple...ten in all, each with ten scriptures on each card.  If you memorized the scripture on one card, you got the next one.  I wanted them all.  It was like getting a special prize.  

Ten simple scriptures on each card, along with their address in the Bible. 

“Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.”  Then on to the next one: 

“The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want...” 

And the next, “In all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct thy paths.”  

The “thees” and “thous” and “thines” rolled off my tongue like King James music. 

No mistakes.  Each scripture had to be exact--perfect to the last “therefore.”  I learned them all.  Exactly.  Every dot and tittle.  Ten days, ten scriptures a day.  One hundred scriptures every summer.

Through the years, the scriptures got harder.  In kindergarten class, “God is good,” would do.  But by grade six, you had to memorize the whole verse.  “The Lord is my shepherd,” at age five was enough.  But that evolved into the entire 23rd Psalm by the time I was in the sixth grade.

I memorized a lot of scriptures by the time I was twelve.  At least six hundred.  They weren’t Methodist, Baptist or Presbyterian verses.  They were Bible verses.

I would repeat them over and over so that when I recited them to the teacher, they were perfect.  I wanted the next colored card with ten verses.  I wasn't an athlete.  I never won a race or hit the basket in basketball.  The Bible cards in bright colors were my trophies.
(Continued...)

Here's a story I wrote years ago:  (I'll finish it during the week.)

Summer.  Freedom.  Swimming.  Bible School.  That’s how it went each year in the Bible Belt.  Even those families who weren’t particularly religious took advantage of the two weeks of free child care that the churches offered.

Everyone from kindergarten through sixth grade went to Bible School.  (Seventh grade through graduating seniors helped the teachers.)  Some of us went to all the Bible schools that were offered in our small town--and filled them up.  Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Baptists, and Church of God agreed on at least one issue--there seemed to be a consensus that all children needed to be in Bible School.  

The pastors of all the churches staggered the schools so that everyone got to go to all of them.  Churches that disagreed on doctrine had no problem agreeing on Bible School in the summer.  After all, the Bible stories were the same in every denomination.

Children flocked in.  They marched to the anthem, pledged allegiance to the Bible and the flag.  We loved it.  The local parks were used for playtime, and teachers trained for months to find better ways to make the two weeks meaningful as well as fun.   Popsicle sticks were turned into art; milk cartons, paper towel tubes, and oatmeal boxes were transformed into trains, buildings, piggie banks, or whatever else could be imagined.  

The point was to learn about the Bible and to have fun at the same time.  And  everyone in those midwestern churches agreed on two issues.  One, there was good.  And two, there was bad.  And a good dose of good was good for you.  Every kid needed a dose of good.

And everyone agreed that Bible School was good.

Continued....

I said I would start the story today, but it is so long, I will have to break it into segments and write over five days.  So, since it is a "continued" story, I'll start it on Monday.

I promised that I would never write over six inches at a time.  I'm going to keep that promise.  I don't know how it comes out on your end after I post it, but on mine, it's six inches.  If it's longer than that when I write it, I edit it until it is six inches.

One of the things I learned, from teaching math at NEO A&M for twenty years, was that the human brain had a listening-learning condition.  Fifteen minutes and humans go brain dead.  Learning is hard.  Being entertained is easy.  Next week, I'll entertain you.

So I'm through with talking about Genesis for awhile--until the next time I get the itch to go back there.   I know that all of you aren't as interested in the Science of Genesis as I am.

Writing religious stuff can be difficult.  I've read a bunch of it, but I find that I skip a lot of passages because they are so...I don't know the word.  I have the attention span of a gnat.  If I want to know something, I just go to the back of my Thompson's Chain reference Bible.  It cuts to the chase, and gives me every scripture on whatever word or subject I am curious about.  And they are written out so that I don't have to look a bunch of stuff up.

My TC looks like shredded paper because I have worn it out.  All the edges are frayed.  (It's the Bible that I got in '66--that Ken and Joe flew to Falls Creek when I forgot it)  My notes are in the margins.

I'm embarrassed when someone asks me if I've read "so-and-so."  Which is the latest thing in inspirational print.  I always have to say, "I haven't gotten around to it yet."  I don't tell them that I probably never will.  I like Pereitt'is books.   They are religious sci-fi.  "This Present Darkness."   Sometimes I feel like I am a religious misfit.  Other people like inspirational books.  Daily plans to read, etc.   Like I said before, I have the attention span of a gnat.  I need a book to cut to the chase.  I don't need a lot of adjectives.  Just gimme' the facts...I'll put them in my Bible margins.  Actually I like factual-fiction or fictional-faction.  Those kind of books sometimes hold my gnat attention.

I got my Mac cleaned up yesterday.  It was a mess.  Craig, Becky's hubby,  did almost all of it.  However I took it to the Apple store--in a mall--for a final look.  The mall thing is difficult for me any more because you have to park a long ways off and walk a mile inside once you get inside the door. 

Nothing on the screen looks the same.  Writing doesn't look like it did before.  I've changed fonts, size, width and depth, and still can't get this Mac-thing like I want it.

I guess I will adjust, but I don't like adjusting.  I want things to stay put.

Besides all that, I had a nail in my tire.  My friend Jeanette came to the rescue and we dropped the car off at Discount Tires.  Then we went to Red Lobster and blew our diets.  I love to blow my diet.  And when I do, I want to eat everything on the menu.  It was fun.  Today I am back on track.   Dull.

And because of the scam, I had to cancel two credit cards.  Which took five (yes, five) hours.  I kept getting put on wait, (with music you can barely stand) then transferred to someone else and put on wait, then finally getting a human I couldn't understand, then asking for another person who could speak English, and going through the entire wait, music, and transfer to another human I couldn't understand.  Over and over again. 

I finally told them to speak one word at a time.  That was interesting.  None of them understood what that meant.  But in their defense they tried.  I think that learning English as a second language must have been done by learning phrases.  Two or three words that go together.  It took waiting until the next day to get it all done.  

I was so tired from all of it, I fell in bed to take a nap and didn't wake up until the next morning.

A friend of mine in St. Lewis (Gale), asked me to write another story about growing up.  So tomorrow, if I can get this Mac to agree, I'll try.  God willing and the sun comes up.

 

I got hacked.  It took over five hours to clean it up and I don't even know right now if it's okay.   Tomorrow I will take my Mac to the Apple store and make sure.  If they keep it, I won't be posting for a couple of days.

The fourth chapter of Genesis ends with Cain being expelled.  Chapter 5 lists the genealogy of Adam from Seth to Noah.  Chapter 6 is the account of God's anger at how wicked the people had become.  "Now a population explosion took place on the earth... God said, My Spirit must not forever be disgraced in man, wholly evil as he is.  I will give him 120 years to mend his ways."

Noah was a righteous man the Bible tells us--living among an evil people. Left to their own devices, most people deny God and embrace sin.   I can't imagine how difficult that must have been for Noah.  It feels like I am living in a wicked America--but I have Christian friends and a church full of good people.  I am not alone in my devotion to God.  Noah was.

The people didn't repent, so Noah built a floating thing called an ark.  And once again the world was going to get wet.  There is some indication that it hadn't rained before that; a mist went up to water the earth. Gen. 2:5-6

Noah must have been ridiculed, taunted, scorned, laughed at and called names.  But he kept building the boat on dry land, in a place where there was no water.  Year after year he was taunted by the people.  Year after year he kept on doing what God had told him to do.

And that is what you and I are called to do.  Keep on keeping on.  Doing what is right in the face of ridicule, opposition, and taunts for believing the Bible.  We are different.  We are following God's precepts.  We are trying to become better and better by obeying God's standards.  We are not perfect, but we are depending on God's Spirit to correct and guide us in the right direction.

I hope we don't end up on a big boat in troubled waters.  I hope those who live in wickedness mend their ways.  I don't want them to drown.  I just want everybody to accept Christ before it is too late.  I don't think God is going to give us 120 years to mend our ways.

God said, "Why are you hiding?"
Adam replied, "I didn't want you to see me naked."
"Who told you that you are naked?" God asked.  "Have you eaten from the tree that I warned you about?"
"Yes," Adam replied.  "But it was the woman you gave me who brought me some to eat..."  (In that one sentence, Adam blames Eve--then God, for giving Eve to him.)  Shift the blame.
Then God asked the woman, "How could you do such a thing?"
"The serpent tricked me," she replied.  In other words, "It wasn't my fault."  Shift the blame.

The nature of us all.  Shift the blame.  And therein lies the problem with our sin.  We have excuses.  Repentance has no excuses.  You have to own up to your own disobedience.  And vow before God that you will give your "will" and your "won't" to Him.   We want to shift the blame to another person by saying "I'm sorry, but..."  But.  Being sorry isn't repenting.  It's that you got caught and next time you will be more careful before you do whatever you want to do.  And the word "but" isn't in true repentance.  "But" just gives God the reason we did it--and He isn't impressed.

God changes our "want to."  When you are truly repentant, you don't want to disobey His directions.  It is a love agreement.  He loves you first, then you love Him back and do what He asks of you.  And when you love someone, you don't want to hurt them.  (I personally don't want to embarrass Him.)

"The Lord God clothed Adam and his wife with garments made from skins of animals."  Then he banished them forever from Eden.  He set mighty angels at the east of Eden and a flaming sword to guard the entrance to the Tree of Life.  I don't know if this is allegory or not, but the intent of the sentence is to bar the gate.  And not until after judgement day will man have access to the Tree again.

God made death the payment for sin.  Some animal was killed to make garments of skin.  And from the time of Moses, sacrifice was made of sheep, goats, doves...and eventually, Christ Himself.

And so it is today; a sacrifice for sin was made by God Himself.  He died for the sins that we should die for.  He took our place.  Hung on a cross.  And died.  And conquered death...he lives eternally.

There were four (types of) trees in the garden of Eden, and there were four rivers.  2:10, "And a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from thence it was parted, and became...four heads."  Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel, and the Euphrates.  They are still there today.  And because we can place them on the map, we have an inkling of where Eden was.

Through mitochondrial DNA (from placentas of living women) Scientists have traced humans back to one woman that they call Eve.  She was black, and her representation made the cover of Time magazine on January 6, 1987.  It was also covered by Newsweek.  It caused a minor uproar.  However we don't know if that was "Our" Eve.  The cover story noted that there were other women before this "Eve" but that this woman was our common "mother."  They did not say she was the first woman, only that we all descended from her.

It does substantiate that there were women before 6000 years ago--before Eve.  Maybe one of them was the wife that Cain took when he moved to Nod?

Enough about that.

"Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast...he said to the woman:  God said you shall not eat of every tree of the garden?"  Eve answered, and like most of us women she added a little to her story to make it more interesting.  "God said you shall not eat of it, neither shall you touch it, lest you die."  Which is not what God said.

The serpent said, "You won't die...you will be as gods, knowing good and evil."  Count on the devil to twist the truth.  Eve should have listened to Adam's direction from God, but the serpent was so pretty--how could such a pretty thing lie?  So she ate.  Then gave some to Adam--he didn't hesitate.

Out there in your world, Satan will make things appear to be pretty, fun, delightful and acceptable.  But if they are contrary to God's Word, they deceive.  You will reap the results of what you have done.  Maybe not immediately, but there will be a payday someday.  You can count on that.  God is holy, and we are called to be holy.  We are fast becoming a ridiculed minority; We are God's children.

Back to Genesis 2:18.  "And the Lord God said, it is not good that the man should be alone; I will make a help meet for him.  Vs. 21, "And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam and he slept.  And God took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh...and from the rib...he made a woman and brought her to the man."  God brought her to the man and Adam said "Wow."

 God further said that the man should leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife and that they would be one flesh. (vs 24)  And Adam said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.  She shall be called Woman because she was taken out of Man." (vs. 23)

Certainly God meant for a man to have a woman, not another man.  Sex is a drive like hunger and thirst.  We are born sexual.  How we fulfill that drive is a learned behavior.  Sixty years ago, Dear Abby decided that you were "born" that way.  That idea spread and now we normalize deviant sexual behavior.  But if deviant sex of any kind is decided at birth for a person, then we must accept that pedophiles are also born that way.  Which we absolutely don't accept.  James 4:17  "If, however, a man knows what is right to do and yet does not do it, he commits a sin."  How does society determine what is right?  There's the problem.  As a Christian, we accept God's guidance.   God intended for man to have a wife.  And a woman to have a husband--not a substitute for the human sexual drive.

But finding a woman to love and spend your life with is difficult, and sex among men is easy.  Sex is a powerful drive.  It will be satisfied some way.  But saying that you were born that way--such as homosexual, pedophilia, or some other alternate behavior--is not an acceptable answer.  We like what Dear Abby said because it allows us to overlook and accept deviant behavior in those people we care about.  Problem is, God doesn't--and He would not condemn a behavior that you couldn't help.

I don't know how you correct a deviant sexual drive once it has been satisfied.  Sexual satisfaction has a tendency to repeat itself.  The drive takes hold and is satisfied by whatever arouses it.  That becomes your norm.  What we as Christians must be careful of is condemnation of the person rather than condemnation of the behavior.  The problem I have is public advertisement of the behavior.  You shouldn't have to have a parade to publicize what you've been doing, carrying a "Gay-Pride" sign defining your sexual orientation.   Pride?  I don't think so.  Good grief!