My sister Lisa came last Saturday and helped me hang more pictures and shelves.  It is a job to get them level unless someone holds them up where I can make sure they are right.  And of course, on all the little Italian carved gold shelves, we put lots and lots of doo-dads that I hadn't yet found a place for.  She also hung two huge pictures over the fireplace and arranged more stuff on the mantle.

Stuff.  But it's mine, and I like to look at it and remember where I was when I bought it.  Or who gave it to me.  Cranberry glass.  Elfinware.  Turquoise swirl.  Royal Dalton.  Stuff.

I've been smiling ever since she went back home.  It's like I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.  God willing, the next time I move it's going to be six feet down.  I can't go through this again.  In my life, I have moved 24 times.  Enough already.

This morning at Bible study, the subject was Abraham and his wife Sarah.  They lived in Ur, and God told Abraham to pack up his stuff, and all the people who would go with him, and move.  Move a long, long way off.  Knowing that he would never see his parents or home again, he obeyed.  He and Sarah took off into the unknown.

I can only imagine how Sarah felt.  What did she get to take with her?  What memories did she have to leave behind.  Imagine how sad that her mother must have been.  I am reminded of the homesteaders who headed West in covered wagons.  The hardships they endured.  The families they left behind.  They say that there was "stuff" scattered all along the wagon trails heading west, that had to be abandoned.  We women do like our stuff.

Jesus said, "Take...no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.  Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." Matthew 6:24.  Or in my words: One day's trouble is enough for one day.  Everyday we have to decide what to leave behind. And I'm not talking about stuff.  Ken is gone, but I have to keep on living the rest of this life.  You can't stop living because things change.  But it doesn't say you have to like it.

My dear friend Becky Bacon called me this morning to say, "Don't ever stop writing--it is such an encouragement to me."  I can't begin to say how much that meant.  I don't see her anymore since I moved.  Since I haven't figured out how to get feedback,  I sometimes feel like I am hollering into a canyon and the only thing I hear back is the echo of my own voice.

I would post my Email address, but every nut case on Google would send me those goofy messages--you know the ones I mean.  I am sure there is a way to hear from all of you, but if you don't have my phone or Email, well, I don't even know you are out there.  If I was a computer literate person, I could figure it out.  But I'm not.  And until someone comes to help me, I will just have to wonder about all that.  I hope you enjoy it, but who knows.

From 1964 until 2000, I would pick someone each year to pour myself into and teach them everything I could about the Bible.  Becky Bacon was one of those women.  I got started doing that after someone did that for me.

I read Dawson Trotman's testimony, "Born to Reproduce," and started handing the pamphlet out to the classes I taught.   The pamphlet is a challenge to reproduce yourself one person at a time in the Christian world.  That way, every year, you have doubled your effectiveness.  It's exponential.  If all of those women I shared with reached one more person every year, the number of women reached would be 2 to the 36th power.  That's a lot of women who reached one more person in a year.

You can't reach the world.  But you can reach one person.  If everyone did that, in twenty years that would be over a million people.  In thirty years, over a billion.  Pour yourself into one person.  Teach them everything you know about the Bible.  It's not that hard.

As for finding someone to teach, God takes care of that. 

Yesterday, I cooked the first roast beef I have made in my new house.  Becky went to the store and bought it to cook, but then she used the operative words, "You make so much better roast than I do, would you cook it?"

She has fed a couple of older people for years, and now that the wife has died, she continues taking food to the man and wanted to take him roast beef.  Sometimes it's beans and cornbread, or pasta casserole, or whatever.  We could all do better at that.

So I did the roast.  Peeled and mashed some potatoes that I had.  And added carrots to the meat before I removed it and made gravy.  It turned out perfect.  Delicious.  She took a plate to her friend, I took two plates next door to my friends who have been really good to me since I moved here.  Becky and I ate, and she took a plate home to Craig--and it was all gone.   That is how you cook a roast.

Craig took us to eat a couple of nights ago--Mexican--and every time we finish eating at this place, there is so much left over that I put it in a to-go bag and take it home and make roll up burritos and freeze them.  And there are usually 7 or 8 of them.  Which I like to eat for breakfast.   

Yesterday I gave you part of a verse about the clothes we wear.  Those verses also concern food.  Matthew 6: 25-26 "Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what you shall eat, or what you shall drink...Is not the life more than meat...Behold the birds of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Aren't you better than they are?"

I spend way too much time thinking about food.  I would probably be considered a thin person, but I eat constantly.  That is why I told you a week or so ago that I hope we get to eat in heaven.  That line in the verse that says, "Take no thought...for what you shall eat..." meant: Don't worry about where your next meal is coming from.   Surely it doesn't mean I can't think about eating.....!!!!!

   

For the first time in my life, I have a closet that holds both my summer and winter clothes at the same time.  I don't have to drag everything down the hall to another closet when the season changes.  You probably are thinking that I have too many clothes.  But that isn't the case. 

Everyone has those things that they only wear to weddings.  And then here are things that you only wear to funerals.  There are a few Christmas things.  The rest of it I wear.  Except..............the things that are too small.  They shrank???  I can't let go of them because they represent a challenge.  Surely I can get back down a size.  Or two?

Jesus only had a robe.  That's it.  He didn't have a closet.  He didn't have a house.

Every season, back when I was changing closets in the spring or fall, I would take the things I had worn that year to the other closet first.  Then the things that I still really liked would get moved next.   The rest of it, I would send to the mission.   But this year, I didn't have to take everything out of the closet and trot it down the hall since I have been able to get it all in one closet.  So I am going to have to come up with another system of figuring out what to discard.

I've always thought that God has given me what I have, and when I don't need it, I need to give it away.  Someone can use it.  I've ended up with empty closets and empty cabinets in this new house.  That's a good thing.  Less is more.

I think Jesus got it right. Matthew 6:28-29, 31, "And why are you worried about clothing?  Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these...Do not worry then, saying...What will we wear for clothing?"

Yesterday, I quoted Ezekiel 36:26 "A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh."

This is such a super verse from the Old Testament.  It was a promise--to all of the people that lived back then--that hope was on the way.  That God was going to give us a better way to deal with our nature--that part of us that is always tempted to do wrong. 

He was not going to hold us to a list of ten commandments, but was going to change our nature so that we want to do what is right.  That's called regeneration.

God said that He was going to change our nature by putting His Spirit into our minds and bodies so that we can think better.  So that we can change our habit patterns.  So that we can actually keep growing in a God-direction.

So instead of getting discouraged with ourselves, we have hope.  

In Matthew 7:12, Jesus said it like this: "Therefore all things whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do you even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.

That's it.  All of it.  He was telling the Jews that that was the entire content of the law.  And that was the point of a Messiah.  That was all you needed.  An indwelling Spirit. 

"...the glory of this mystery...which is Christ in you, the hope of glory."  My heart, Christ's home.

The last "You have heard it said" in Matthew 5 is: 
        Matthew 5:43, "You have heard that it has been said, You shall love your neighbor, and hate your enemy."
       And the last "But I say unto you," is an indictment for all of us.  Matthew 5:44-46, "But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you..."  I bet everyone in the crowd that day was shocked.  They had never in their lives heard anyone say something like that.  Just think:
1.  Love your enemies
2.  Bless them that curse you
3.  Do good to them that hate you
4.  Pray for those who despitefully use you
5.  Pray for those who persecute you
        Isn't it interesting that we take some of Jesus words to heart, and others--like the five instructions Jesus gave the crowd that day--we tend to skip over.  We don't like any of those things He said.
       And the next sentence out of Jesus' mouth was:  "That you may be the children of your Father which is in heaven...For if you love them which love you, what reward have you?  Don't even the publicans do the same?"  What He said is that doing those things shows that we are God's children.

The law was impossible to keep.  But Jesus was telling them--and us--that there is an even higher law:  The law that God writes on our hearts.  Something we carry around with us all the time.

Ezekiel 36:26 "A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh."
When we accept Jesus as God and Savior, he changes our hearts.  Otherwise it would be hopeless.

I met one of the women I was assigned to mentor last night.  Whoever put us together must have spent some time with it because it is a good fit.  We have things in common, and what she needs as a Christian, I happen to have the ability to provide.  I was worried that I would get someone who had needs that I wasn't equipped to deal with.  This is going to be interesting.

I ended last week in Matthew 5:17, "Let your light shine...".  And didn't follow up with the rest of Chapter 5, which is really interesting.  Matthew is making a point--to the Jews--that their laws didn't do the job that they were intended to do.  Their laws only showed them where they had failed.

Matthew quoted Jesus, as Jesus sat on a hill preaching to a huge crowd--and the Pharisees were in the group.  Pharisees were men who had pledged their lives to keeping the Mosaic laws, and what Jesus  is going to say will infuriate them.  He is going to tell the crowd that there is a way to live that is better than the law.  And Jesus spoke with authority.  The Pharisees were supposed to be the authority of the Mosaic law.  And Moses was an iconic figure in their traditions.

Who did this Jesus guy think he was anyway?  Didn't He know who they (the Pharisees) were?  Didn't he know that there was nothing greater than the Jewish Laws given by Moses?  This was blasphemy in their eyes.

Six times, Jesus said, "You have heard it said...".  And eight times Jesus said, "But I say unto you...".  He was contrasting the Mosaic laws with a new message-- His message.  And the problem for the Pharisees was, that when Jesus said, "But I say unto you ...", everyone was listening to Him.

Jesus has put the first link in His death sentence.  He is beginning to make a "chain" of events that will cost Him his life.   You don't mess with city hall.