I've never been funny.  I can't tell a joke and make it come out right.  However, I read something the other day that I thought was humerous, so I think it's worth a laugh--so I'll give it a try.

This man was researching methods of reaching and talking to God, so he decided  to travel the country and ask pastors at different churches and denominations about that.

First church he went to had a solid gold telephone hanging on the wall with a sign underneath: Price, $100,000.  Direct line to God.

He traveled the country, and at every church, there was a solid gold phone with the same sign.

When he reached Oklahoma, he entered a local church where the gold phone on the wall said: 25 cents for a direct line to call God.

He asked the pastor, "Why do all the other churches in the nation charge $100,000 to call God and you only charge 25 cents?

Well, son...Oklahoma is God's  country.  It's a local call.

I'm sure my fellow Oklahomans will agree with that.

I did something last night that I have never done before.  I made bread from scratch using a starter.  The starter was foaming, bubbling and just right.  I got it from a friend (Donna) who stayed here with her husband and children for a week last month when her father was ill. They came to help their mom who lives across the street.

Making bread was a momentous event, because I do not like to get my hands dirty and will avoid anything that might get under my fingernails.  Wet dough gets under your nails and is like glue.  But I persevered.

I got through the first stage of kneading fairly easily by using a dough hook on the Kitchen Aid mixer.  Dumped it in a greased wooden bowl to rise.

But this morning, I had to hand knead it and I am definitely an amateur. I had sticky dough everywhere.  I am going to have to revise this step or I will never attempt making bread again.  There has to be a knack to it.

Two loaves are rising in the oven.  Donna said that if you put the dough in the oven with the light on, the light generates just enough warmth to help the bread rise.  By noon, I will have fresh baked bread.

I am an official Oklahoma pioneer woman.  Bout time?

I have given up on my publisher.  She wanted my book.  She bought my book.  She spent a bunch of money and enormous amounts of time on my book.  But she won't publish it...because I am not able to sit in bookstores and sign books due to Covid. 

It costs a tremendous amount of money to advertise books and they don't want to spend money until the time is right...I understand.  But it has driven me nuts working with a publishing company.  I'm ready to get the vaccine!!! And get into the bookstores.

As a result, I have had time to finish another book, edit it a zillion times and print it myself.  (Not self publish--I'm not going to self publish.)  I went to UPS and had them print ten copies and bind them.  One for each of my kids (The book is a fictional-factual rendition of Ken's Korean and Marine life from the time he was seventeen until he was twenty-five.)

The other six are going to Jeanette and Carolyn--who both held my hand, listened to me read portions over and over again and tolerated my mood swings, and Joe Mike Bacon--who taught me how to fly an OE, F-9, SNJ and the Corsair over the phone. The rest to editors and publishers.  

I was euphoric to see something in print.  Now I will now finish the book about my grandmother coming in a wagon from Tennessee to Arkansas, and the one about my brother's 37 years in China. 

Did everyone go outside and watch the "Star of Bethlehem" on Monday night.  I took a photo with my phone, but it didn't come out well.  Oh, well, I'll take another one in a thousand years.

Jeanette's sister Shirley said, "Maybe the star means that Jesus is coming back.  I don't think I'm going to clean house!"  She thought she might be leaving the house on her way to glory.  Why clean when you are vacating.

I'm ready for Him to come.  The world is a mess.  You wouldn't know how big a mess it is unless you have lived during the perfect time of the world.  

That would be the 1950's in America.  Nobody used curse words--at least in a group--I didn't even know what the curse words were.  You could walk home from school by yourself, and if you were late, nobody worried about where you were.

If you talked on the phone, you sometimes had to talk to an operator first to verify that it was you who actually was speaking.  We had party lines, so if it rang once, twice, or three times you would know who it was for.

Everyone listened in.  You weren't supposed to, but who could resist hearing the latest gossip. 

 Isaiah 9:6-7

6 For unto us a Child is born,
Unto us a Son is given;
And the government will be upon His shoulder.
And His name will be called
Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
7 Of the increase of His government and peace
There will be no end...

Thank you Lord God for your unspeakable gift.

Merry Christmas to all my friends....I'll be back on Monday

 Becky and six friends get together every Christmas week and make cookies.  

Actually, everyone makes two or three kinds of cookies and they go to Becky's and arrange twenty or a zillion plates of assorted cookies to take to friends and family and tie a bow around the see-through wrappers.

I got a plate.  Which I can never possibly eat all of them.  It allows me to assort them on three or four smaller plates and take them to my neighbors.  My neighbors think I am a wonderful cookie cook.

I take the praise for a minute or two and then confess.  I'm too honest to let it go on for long.

Becky also has a Valentine Party every year (except this year she didn't because of the virus.)  She bakes six or seven cheese cakes, six or seven fabulous cakes, pies, candied bacon, brisket, etc. etc.  and on and on.  It is over the top.  I hope she does it again this year and we are all done with covid and have our vaccine.

Pat always has a Christmas brunch.  But not this year.  Everything is not exactly right this year.  I'm ready for 2021.  God bless next year please.

Luke wrote his gospel, and although he is the only writer that got events in exact order of when they happened, he left out the entire story of the wise men.  But told of the baby in the manger and the shepherds seeing the angels who told them about the birth of Christ.

Matthew, on the other hand, left out the entire story of the shepherds and the angels appearing to them and the message they brought, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.  

But he told about the angel appearing to Joseph and telling him that Mary was pregnant with the Messiah.  And he wrote the story of the wise men, and about Herod hearing of the birth of a King and killing all of the babies that might be that king.

Luke told Mary's story.  Matthew told Joseph's story.  Mark and John told neither one of those stories.  They started almost immediately with the story of John the Baptist.

In a few days, we will celebrate the birth of that child, who grew in wisdom and died for us.  My friend Carolyn said, "He started up being swaddled in a manger, and ended up wrapped in cloth and placed in a borrowed tomb.

Glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace, good will toward men.

I have finally given up on keeping my Lincoln, 1999 Town car.  Craig has taken it to a detailer--which it doesn't need.  Nobody has ever sat in the back seat.  Inside is pristine.  Only thing wrong with it is that the garage door came down on the back bumper and scratched it.

We bought it when an elderly couple--who bought it new--traded for a new one.  Ken had a 99,  with a lot of miles.  I called the Lincoln dealer and asked him to find me another 99 exactly like the one we had with low miles.  He did.  Ken loved that car.  

He was 84 years old at the time and I didn't want him to have to mess with learning new buttons and switches.  He was having a hard enough time dealing with being sick.  I drove him to Tulsa and we bought it.

It has been sitting in the garage ever since.  I drive it occasionally, but not enough to justify the space in the garage.  

I'm starting to feel that way with a lot of things I have.  They just take up space.  Pretty, but useless.

Becky always had the right idea.  Spend your money on experiences, not things.  Those are the things your kids remember.

The stages of life determine who your friends are.  We do things, meet people there, and journey through raising kids together, teaching at our churches, going to soccer, football, baseball games.  We do "life" together.

When I moved to Edmond, I left so many friends in Pryor that I had made during my lifetime.  It was the right thing to do for the sake of my daughters who were trying to fill in the gaps when I needed help, but it left a huge hole.  And when you move in your late seventies like I did, everyone you meet already knows each other and you aren't a part of who they were, who they are, who their kids are...and so on. You are nobody.

It's tough.  I immediately memorized the names of everyone in the church department where I went to class and every Sunday morning would greet them by name, ask about their week, and generally act like I owned the place.  They started to think I did.  Asked me to play the piano for the department and assigned me to teach a class.

But I didn't really have a friend until Jeanette adopted me.  It was an unexpected blessing that I didn't expect to find.  She calls me every day at 10:15, stops by the house to check on me.  Calls when she is going to the grocery store to see if I need something, and is generally a light in my life. It is an absolute joy to have a friend who likes my company--I can be a bit much sometimes.  And I love her company as well.  She is now mine.

My son in law, Craig--Becky's husband--is the only person in my family that thinks in sequence like I do.  Not that there is anything wrong with the way others in the family think, but I have always been able to communicate with him in the manner in which I like to process thoughts and ideas.

He is a Chemical engineer.  I am a mathematician.  It works well for communication.

So today, he took me to the lawyer to set up my affairs in a trust.  I had already put his name on everything I own.  I trust him implicitly, and have for years.  He is always there when I need someone.

But of course, the appointment was early, and I haven't got my morning crossword done--which upsets my daily sequence of events.

By now, I would usually get a text on the phone from Rebecca Perkins:  "You forgot to post," she would say.  She keeps me in line.  But I haven't heard from her and actually remembered on my own.

I have all of you friends who add to my life.  I am so blessed.  Everywhere I have a hole in my personality, one of you fills it up with kindness. 

America is bankrupt.  We owe mega more trillions than we can repay.  I have always thought it was interesting how many people don't understand where money comes from.

You have to invent something, manufacture something, find something in the ground or air that produces something people need.  Once you have done that, you hire people to help you do it.  That is called a job.  A job.

And as you earn a wage helping someone who has come up with an idea to create something, you spend your money and someone else along the line earns the money you spend because they manufacture something and hire more people to help them.  The economy is stimulated.  Simplified, the GNP.  Gross National Product.

Problem is, when the government borrows money, it has to be repaid in some way, and the way you do that is take a part of the job earners wages.  That's a tax.  There are only two ways to get that money...tax the wage earner, or tax the corporations who have built the jobs.

There used to be a happy medium...that is no longer true.  Corporate headquarters aren't stupid.  They move offshore where they can't be taxed, which means more debt for the earners to pay--and poverty increases to the point that people don't have enough money left to buy food.  I am not a democrat; I am not a republican.  I am an American.  We need to get our act together.

The dentist called and said if I could be there by 8:30 they would fix my broken temporary crown.  

Messed my my sequence and I forgot to post.  I'll do better tomorrow.

I't's finally settled.  We are going to be a "Mask up" class.  Everyone thinks that's best--except one--and she can join by phone.  It relieves a lot of pressure on me.  I don't have to be the bad guy and say, "You have to wear a mask."  My educational director said all the over 50 age classes but mine were wearing masks.  So.  It's done.  Masks, or connect by phone.

Since it's almost Christmas, we are learning the Christmas story through the eyes of storyteller Luke, about Mary and Zechariah.  What it felt like to be those people.  The human aspect.  Zechariah and Mary saw an angel, Gabriel--who said that he stands in the presence of God.  And that God had sent him to them personally with a message.

I have had to rethink something that I have always held as truth...and that was that in the old days, the Holy Spirit "came upon" people.  But after Pentecost, the Spirit that Adam lost and Christ restored "Dwelt within man."  But here, we find in Luke 1:15 that "...he (John the Baptist) shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother's womb."  Which means God is sending someone holy from the git-go.  And in vs. 41 it says, "Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost.  In vs.67, "Zachariah was filled with the Holy Ghost."  All before Pentecost.

They believed in Jesus and were filled with his spirit before he was even born.  Those three people prepared the way of the Lord.  John, Elizabeth, and Zachariah.  Two very old people past childbearing age, and their son--John the Baptist.

My Sunday class is meeting by phone--add a person call.  I like it better than Zoom.  We tried that and nobody liked it.

I don't know why the group phone call seems better, but it seems to be working.  Some members go to the church, dial (I'm a girl who used to dial the phone) everyone up and off we go.  I'm ready for this to be over, however.  I want warm bodies with smiling faces to teach!!

When you stay home everyday by yourself, you run out of things to talk about.  Amazing how some of us thought we were self-sufficient and have found out that we are actually social creatures.  Me.

They say I'll be first on the vaccine list after doctors and nurses, etc.  I don't see how the vaccine can be worse than the virus.  Bring it on.  

People say the trials were too short.  There were the same number in the trials, same three trial stages...they all just dropped everything else they were working on and expedited this vaccine.

I asked my brother (Dr. Swan) which one I should get.  He said get the first one I can--that's what he is going to do.  So if you are one of the ones who are  nervous about it, wait and see what happens to us.  We're in.

 I asked my friend Carolyn why did she think that God didn't heal someone we had been praying for. 

She said, "He did.  He just took him home to do it."

That's the best answer I've ever gotten to that question.

My friend Carolyn is a Humanities, Drama and English whiz.  She taught junior high and high school English for over thirty-five years, and  produced and directed multiple dramatic stage productions.  Every year. With excellence.

Every time I get stuck when I am writing something, I can call her and say, "I need a word.  One that means..."  She always has the word I am looking for.  Right off the top of her head. 

Since I am a mathematician, science kind of creature, I tend to think sequentially.  If--then kind of logic.  She thinks in flowers and bouquets.  Together we make one total complete pair of thinkers.

We've been friends since I was in the ninth grade.  She was a year behind me.  Who knew that we would still be friends sixty-eight years later.  Somewhere in my youth or childhood...I must have done something good."  (Sound of music)

Over a thousand dollars later, (half of what the big companies want) all the dead limbs that broke in my two humongous oak trees have been removed.  Watching my tree guy climb a four story tree was breath-taking.  He tied himself to secure branches as he climbed, then used a chain saw, bracing his feet to limbs as he pulled the cord to start the saw--it scared me to watch.  It took two weeks to get it done, and he had a helper.

You don't know what a tree is worth until you are about to lose one.  In this case, I wouldn't want to lose the trees!!  You can't replace trees like these. My oaks are the oldest, tallest, biggest on the block--or in the entire neighborhood.  It gives you a real sense of what the tiny acorn--less than a half inch in diameter--can do.  With the help of God.

The assistant raked the yard and filled over two wheelbarrows full of acorns.  The street, driveway, and sidewalk to the front door were covered with them.  You couldn't take a step without crushing dozens upon dozens of them.  This was an epic ice storm.  I never have seen anything like it.

I'm think I'm ready for tornado season.

 

Luke is the only Gospel writer that got things in the order that they happened.  He went to the source for what he wrote.  He interviewed the eyewitnesses.  Otherwise we wouldn't have the stories about the birth of Christ.  He had to have interviewed Mary.

Elizabeth and Zechariah would have been very, very old when Luke talked to them because--they were both shocked when Gabriel said they would have a son.  Zechariah asked, "How can that be?" Perhaps Luke  got their story from Mary who was young when she went to see Elizabeth.  Mary was probably fifteen or sixteen. She wanted advice from her older relative.

Luke has stories that the other three Gospel writers don't have.  And he is the ultimate story-teller of the Bible.  He wrote about everything up to the Resurrection, and couldn't stop writing.  He continued his story about what happened next in the book of Acts. It is the only history book in the New Testament.

He was invaluable to Paul, who calls him, "Our beloved Physician."  Luke tells the story of sailing to Rome with Paul, and of what happened along the way.  He uses the words "We" and "Us."  No other writer does that.  Most likely, Luke was keeping a diary as he traveled with Paul, because the accounts are so vivid.  We can trace Paul's journeys through Luke's accounts.  We owe Luke a debt for sharing his travels with us. 

What happened to this year.  I've never seen a year go by so fast.  I've never seen a year go by so slow.  But then, I've never seen a year like this one before. 

I received a note from a friend I've been praying for who has fought cancer for nine years.  It was a goodby letter to all of her friends.  She said the fight was over and she was getting ready to leave us and go to God.  It was uplifting and heartbreaking all at once.  We never want our loved ones to leave us.

I was reminded of another friend, Linda Pace from my hometown of Pryor.  She asked to speak to the entire church, came to the front in a wheel chair with a big floppy hat on, took it off--and told us that she was just changing her hat for a heavenly crown.  Everyone was in tears when she finished talking.

There have been so many people who have left us this year.  So many families are going to be missing a loved one this Christmas.  But....this life is short compared to the next one.  We just need to make sure we are part of that heavenly family before we leave this one.  Because that is forever.

Jesus is the reason for the season.

Sunday, I will begin to teach the book of Luke.  I have no idea how many times I've done that, but you learn something new every time you open the word of God--you are at a new stage of life, and you read words that you know those words weren't in there the last time you read it!!!

I am also reading a book by an author that only uses the Hebrew words for the people in Luke.  It is difficult.  If I didn't know what they meant, I'd give up.  I'm sure he must be a Christian Jew because of the emphasis he puts on the Jewish feasts and the time line between them.

Much of those feasts were, and are, based on the cycles of the moon.  Through those feast days, he plots a time line of Jesus' ministry.  And it is much more science based than the theological time line.  He puts Nasa's millionth of a second time base to use in counting the days between events.  It is more exact and shortens the time of his ministry.

I'm thinking about that.

When you study in preparation to teach,  you always end up with more in your head than you can deliver in an hour.  But that's ok.  

I lost a crown Saturday.  I took it in to my dentist yesterday, to have it glued back on.  No such luck.  They sent me to an endodontist--who got me in immediately, (that never happens--usually you wait months).  By the time I left, I glowed like an alien from another planet.  They took one zillion X-rays.

The hard part of X-rays is, "Hold still."

Today, they are going to try and save my tooth.  Hallelujah.  The crown was put on back in the military when I was 26 years old.  Fifty-six years ago. So that's a record.  The dentist who put it on said, "Let me know how long this lasts."  I would, but I'm sure he's probably not with us here on earth anymore.  I actually remember his name.

The dentist wanted to know what kind of anesthetic I wanted.  "None, just novocain." I told her.  My first fillings were in the old days (of torture) in the 40's.  Dull drills.  Slow drills.  Painful drills with no novocain.  And a dentist that kept saying, "Hold still."  Those are awful words.

How much is a tooth worth?  I'm going to find out.  At my age, it's worth a lot.  Much more than a new car.  When I walked into the endodontist's treatment room, I could estimate her equipment was in the zillions.  State of the art.  So you know she is paying off loans on it all.  Oh, well.  I'm glad she is there when I need her.  It took her years and years to get that degree.

All to save a tooth.  Thing is.....it's my tooth.

 I'm glad the election is finally over.  At least I thought it was over.  I am tired of the ranting on both sides.  Everybody wants to convert you--by telling you what is wrong with your thinking.  So far, all I've heard is what is wrong with the "Other" side.  Not what is right with their side.

When I want to listen to rational Republican theories, I call Larry Larmon.  When I want to listen to rational Democrat theories, I listen to Bob Webster.  They can intelligently discuss issues.  Berate others and denigrate people--well, I stop listening.

There isn't much discussion of issues anymore.  People just attack people.  Belittle their beliefs and call them names.  I find that distressing.  The media on both sides spout propaganda.  Exaggerations and falsehoods.

If you tell the same lie over and over again, people begin to believe it.

I am two things.  A Christian, and an American.  That's it.  I come from a time when Americans were united for the common good.  WWII.  Political wrangling didn't exist.  You didn't spout, you simply voted.

I'm ready for Jesus to come back, set up his kingdom and rule.  I don't think the world knows how to do it peacefully.  They just divide up sides and make fun of each other, or riot, or start wars.  It's sad.