Yesterday I drove to Tulsa.  I don't think I was ever on the Turner Turnpike between Oklahoma City and Tulsa at this time of year before.  I sure don't remember it.  And I think anyone would remember it. 

The redbuds are in full bloom, and every mile between here and Tulsa was filled with pink.  Literally hundreds and hundreds of redbud trees--mile after mile after mile--were blooming in clusters and rows that took your breath away.

You can really see why it is our state tree.  It was awesome.  Really beautiful.  It made the long boring drive bearable.

I had lunch with an old acquaintance   We went to high school together and had dozens of friends in common.  It's always nice to reminisce about "The Good Old Days."  He kept me laughing at his high school shenanigans.  I finally heard which guys put the yellow ocean marker dye from WW2 in the Claremore pool.  He admitted his culpability, and said he and the other two culprits had to scrub the walls of the pool--after the city drained it--to remove the dye.  At least they didn't end up in jail.  Claremore and Pryor athletes were enemies.

I went to the dermatologist in Tulsa.  It was the only reason I drove.  By the time I got home, I was beat.  I don't think I'm the girl I used to be.  Driving west at the end of the day is never fun in the Oklahoma sun.  I sat down in my chair and fell asleep.  I've heard we old critters do that sometimes.

I'm going to spend today doing nothing.  And as Ken used to say, "I'm going to go to bed tonight with it half done."

Jesus could heal people.  He didn't have to touch them.  He didn't even have to be in the same place that they were.  They could be miles away.  This week in Connection group we talked about the Gentile woman who came to Jesus and asked for Him to heal her daughter.  Mark 7:25

She had three strikes against her to begin with.  First, she was a woman.  Women didn't come up and speak to men the way she spoke to Jesus.  Second, she was a Gentile.  Jewish men were not to have anything to do with Gentiles.  And third, she had left her sick daughter at home where Jesus couldn't touch her.  

Jesus fame--for healing--had spread.  Even to the Gentile world.  Jesus had taken refuge in a predominately Gentile community by the sea, to try and give him and his disciples time to rest.  They had been besieged by people wanting to be healed.  Jesus didn't come for that purpose--although he did heal people.  He came to tell us about the Kingdom of God.  

Any way, he healed her daughter.  Without seeing or touching her.  And then, he healed a deaf man whose tongue was defective and he couldn't talk.  But with this healing, Jesus put his fingers in the man's ears, and his spit on His finger to touch the man's mouth.  Sound's gross, but one of my members commented that Jesus shared Spiritual DNA.  Interesting thought.  Did Jesus have to do that?  Of course not.

He could have just spoken and said, "Okay, you are healed.  You can hear and you can speak."  

Why did he do it that way?  I don't always understand why Jesus did things the way He did.   I just know that He heals people today.  In different ways. 

Some people never learn.  They do the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.  That is the definition of insanity.

Well, yesterday, I saw a sad thing that is going to end up in disaster.  The robin came back to the ledge above the transom and began to rebuild her nest.  It was so sad to watch.  There was no wind to speak of, so I guess she thought the "No Wind" situation was going to be permanent.

She didn't learn from her mistake.  After losing her entire day's work the day before--when the wind blew her nest away, she waited for the wind to stop blowing--instead of looking for a better place to build her home.  All day yesterday, she carried straw to the ledge and built a perfect nest.  

And now that she is finished building it, she is going to lay her eggs.  It will be a miracle if the nest and eggs survive.  There is nothing to anchor it to the ledge. and the ledge is only four inches wide.  The first gust of Oklahoma wind is going to once again take it airborne.  

I feel like I am watching a train wreck.  I want to get a ladder and climb up there and give her some advice.  Or pick the nest up and put it in a tree.  But situations like this one can only be rectified if the robin would listen to me.  

I have seen many train wrecks in my life.  They usually begin in the young years of a teen who makes a bad choice, and continues down the same path over and over again.  Once on the track, they are going to eventually crash.  So many people live in the moment with no thought about the train's destination.

Adults are no wiser. They destroy their lives and marriages with no thought of where their train is headed.  Or how they should build a secure nest.

Today I needed something from days gone by.  Something nobody has anymore.  I needed a clothesline and clothespins.  Those tablecloths came out of soaking overnight in fairly good shape, but not good enough to put them in the dryer.  The dryer would permanently set the remaining stains.

So I carried them outside and laid them over bushes in the yard so the sun and wind could dry them.  Problem was, in Oklahoma, the wind also makes a wind sail out of a linen tablecloth.  The wind came rushing down the plain.  So that didn't work too well.

But it did dry them sufficiently. I just had to watch them to keep them from blowing away.  And the aroma of sun and wind dried linen was awesome.  It stirred a forgotten memory from my past.

Ken was in Okinawa for thirteen months, and I had gone back to Oklahoma to live with my folks.  There were three babies in the house.  Pat, who was not yet two, and Becky--four months old.  And mom had given birth to my sister Lisa 7 days before Becky was born.  (An unexpected bonus child--21 years younger than me.)  All three in diapers.

This was back in the days before disposable diapers.  We took the cloth diapers and folded them to fit.  Yes, they had to be washed. And hung on the line outside in the sun and Oklahoma wind.  During that 13 months, the washer, dryer, clothes-line and stack to be folded were a continuous cycle.  All of us were doing one or the other. 

Those tablecloths that I laid outside over the bushes, had that sun and wind's Oklahoma fresh aroma I remembered from long ago when I brought the clothes in from the line.  I haven't hung clothes out in a million years.  But the lovely fresh scent of clothes on the line is imbedded in my mind.

I am trying to get stains out of a couple of dozen tablecloths.  They are all brand new, never used.  They are gorgeous cut work, embroidered linen from the Orient.  They lady who had them lived in the Orient, and bought them there in every size imaginable including round ones in different diameters.   But she never used any of them.  Perhaps they were going to be presents for members of her family?  Dozens of napkins as well.  She died, and they can't be sold in her estate in the condition that they are in.  They are badly stained.

That's where I come in.  When Becky can't put something in a sale because of the condition of the item--there are strict guidelines--she tries to correct the problem so that the estate gets the benefit.  And since I work for free, that works all the way around for everyone.  The problem is solved with no cost.

So, for the past three days I have used every product known to man trying to remove the stains.  I am working on only three tablecloths, no point in trying to fix the others until I find a product that works.  I am on my fifth bottle of stuff that is advertised to absolutely take stains out.  Each product claims it will remove every kind of stain know to man.  Every stain in the universe.

So far, no luck.  The stains are smaller and are not as obvious as they were,  but they are still there.  I am using my last bottle of cleaning stuff soaking in the washer overnight.  If this doesn't work, then I'm giving up.

Which brings me to this:  There is a song that we sang in Church when I was a child that had a line in it about stains.  It went like this:  "Sin had left a crimson stain...He washed it white as snow.

You don't need Oxy-clean, Clorox, Bix, Nature's Miracle, or any other product when your life is stained.  You just need forgiveness.  And Jesus paid it all.  You can be clean.  You can start over fresh again.  Praise God.  And it's free.

Yesterday started at 3AM.  Sleep wouldn't return.  I was bummed.  I did everything that I usually do when I get up around 6:30 or 7, (the newspaper comes at 4) but by 5:30 I was almost three hours ahead of schedule.

I measure my day by doing small tasks that fill up time.  When you are older, you will understand.  I have a routine.  Anyway, when the sun came up in the East, I saw movement over the double doors to the back yard--because I was just sitting in my chair, trying to figure out what I was supposed to be doing.  Movement was on the shelf of the transom window above the double doors.

It was a robin.  And she studied the ledge for quite awhile, then flew off and returned with straw in her beak.  I watched her as she struggled to build her nest.  I don't know why she chose that place because there wasn't anything to hold it in place.  She must have been a new mother with no experience at building a nest.  I'm sure it seemed safe, it was high up, but it wasn't secure.

At the first wind gust, all her work was for nought.  Straw flew everywhere and the nest fell apart.  I felt so sorry for her.  All that work gone, right when she is ready to lay her eggs.  I hope she has time to build another nest in a secure tree somewhere--hopefully in the back yard where I can watch her.

It doesn't matter how hard you work.  It doesn't matter if you do the job right.  If you do the right thing at the wrong time, or in the wrong place, things won't turn out like you plan.  Information and preparation are everything.

Bless her heart!  She had a plan.  She was sincere.  She wanted her babies to have a good place to grow up.  She just didn't know what she was doing.

It's better to learn from other people's mistakes than to make them all on your own.  Don't build your nest in the wrong place.  Get your babies in church.

In the sixth chapter of Mark, Mark tells us about Jesus going to his home town and how he was completely rejected there.  Even his mother, brothers and sisters didn't exactly know what to think of Him.

All the men his age had probably played marbles, hop scotch, hide and seek and other games when they were children.  How had this kid grown up to be such a phenom?  Everybody was wondering.

Jesus said that a prophet is not received in his own hometown.  And then He took his twelve disciples and left.  Mark recorded dozens of miracles in Chapter one through six that Jesus had done.  His disciples had been there for that.  They had seen what Jesus could do, and how he could teach.

So He gathered them together and sent them out two by two to preach the gospel. They hadn't done that before.  I bet they were uneasy.  Like we are?  Jesus told them that if they weren't received, that they were to dust the dust from their feet and go on to the next town.  He empowered them to heal the sick and cast out demons.  Which they did. But after the dust off their feet settled, they came back to him, and told Jesus everything that had happened.

The point is this.  You don't have to have Jesus standing there with you to do what He sends you to do.  God has given you the power to share the story of Christ.  Tell what God has done in your life.  How you have been changed.

Jesus wanted the twelve to know all of this, because the day was coming when He wouldn't be physically present with them, but they had everything they needed whether he was physically present or not.  So do we.

They got it.  They changed the world with the story of Christ's resurrection.  You and I can change our world as well.  But you have to speak up.