I have finally arrived at my kind of perfection in my garden.  Something has been in full bloom since the last of March.  Just as one kind of flower stops blooming, another starts.  I go out every morning and pull weeds and kill poison ivy and yank our tree sprouts,  turn on the hose and water, not because anything needs it (I have a sprinkling system) but just because I like to do it.  I am a 5:30 AM kind of gal and it is still cool enough at that time in the morning to go outside.

I picked asparagus for months, then spinach and now I am overrun with squash.  The okra is two feet high and the tomatoes are almost ready to pick.  I love it.  But then, I love Oklahoma food.

Didn't God do a wonderful job when he created our world.  So much variety.  So many colors.  Just think about it: if we didn't have music, color and variety, the world would be dull and drab.

God is our provider.  He gives us what we need and more.

Revelations 2:7  "To him that overcomes will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.  ( The Tree of Life was also in Eden.)

 I wonder what that kind of fruit is going to taste like.  I can't even imagine anything better than fried okra.  I hope heaven has green things growing,  and good things to eat.  However, since God did such a fabulous job on this earth, I'm sure he can create something that I can't even imagine that will far surpass what we know here.

He says we are going to eat in that verse.  That's good.

As I have been thumbing through my Bible to prepare what I am going to write, one of the things that I had not really paid much attention to before is how worn out it is.  The edges of the pages are tattered.  Some pages are torn.  The binding is loose.  The cover looks like mice got to it.  But it is filled with notes in the edges.  Dates.  Underlining.  It's like a diary of my life.

But the most notable thing is how some pages are still white and others are yellowed and stained with whatever I spilled on them when I was reading and rereading.  Some parts of my Bible are just simply worn out.  Obviously, some parts of the Bible have been more important to me than others.

One year when I was teaching High School seniors at a Cristian camp called Falls Creek--which incidentally is the largest Christian camp in the world--I realized that I had packed everything except the above mentioned Bible.  Maybe it is a security blanket, but whatever, I had to have it.  I had too many notes in the edges.  So I called Ken, and he and a Christian friend who is also a pilot  got in a plane and flew it down to me.  They landed on a strip the size of a postage stamp,  handed it out the door and then took off to go home.  That is how important this particular Bible is to me.  It's the one I am using to blog.  It's a Thompson's Chain Reference Bible, and it's been with me since 1964.

When I memorize a verse, I underline it in green.  So as I have been flipping pages, I have been refreshing some of those "Green" verses in my mind.

"Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee."  Psalms 119: 11.

 I doubt if packing all my shoes, clothes, toothbrush, makeup and pajamas, but forgetting my Bible was a sin.  If it was, I sure got punished.  The anxiety and stress alone were pretty horrible.  There I am ready to teach hundreds of High School Seniors the next morning--without my Bible.

I was thankful for two guys who were carrier qualified who could get it to me.  "No problem." they said.  "Piece of cake."

I have been toggling from the Old Testament to the New, and I've reached the book of Ruth.
     Ruth 1:16 "And Ruth said, (to Naomi, her mother in law)  Intreat me not to leave you, or return from following after you; for wherever you go, I will go: and where you lodge, I will lodge: your people shall be my people, and your God my God:"  This verse is usually heard at weddings, but it isn't a verse about marriage, it is a verse about love.  A woman, Ruth, who loved her mother-in-law.

What a great verse.  Ruth loved her mother-in-law Naomi so much that  she was willing to leave her own  country, her town, her family.  Everything.  And go to a place that she had never been.  To a people that she didn't know.

One of the greatest joys of my life is my two daughter-in-laws.  What a blessing to have two daughters of my own and two daughters by marriage.  All four of them overlook my faults (most of the time!) and love me.  In law relationships can be wonderful.  Mine are such a blessing.

I really cherish the fellowship of women.  The most fun I have in my life is to travel to some far away place with women.  To laugh, eat, see fun places and just get to know each other better.  My second daughter speaks Italian and French.  She arranges our trips and plans what we will do.  It's like having your own personal tour guide.  We always leave the beaten path and have an adventure. We always do something that  no one else normally does.  She pushes me out of my comfort zone and it is always fun.


 I will never forget the first time I left America.  I got a passport, got on a plane and left.  That was 25 years ago, and I was scared.  I was all by myself.   I didn't know what would happen when I landed.  I had never done anything like that before.  I couldn't speak the language.

So I understand Ruth. She was willing to step out of her comfort zone because she trusted and loved her mother-in-law.  She had someone she loved to be her guide.   Because of Naomi, Ruth accepted the one true God.   What a great story about Godly influence that changes another woman's life.


                                                                                                                            

 When my children were teenagers and left the house, I would always tell them to remember what their name was.  I wanted them to remember that wherever they went, and whatever they did,  it reflected on the entire family.  It wouldn't have been so bad if we had had a common name like 'Smith' or 'Brown', but we are the only family in town that has our name.

I wrote about being changed from the inside yesterday.   Everyone in this town knows that I am a Christian.  When I leave the house and go out into the world, I carry God's name.  I truly don't want to embarrass God.  That feeling about my behavior comes from inside me somewhere.  Not from some church or religious doctrine.

Proverbs 20:11 "Even a child is known by his doings, whether his work be pure, and whether it be right."

We need to be sure our "doings" don't embarrass our Father.  We need to be sure that our desire to do what is right comes from the inside out, not the outside in.

Last week I told you that the people wanted to "…do what was right in their own eyes…" and chaos was the result.  You may have missed the first part of the verse:  (Judges 21:25)  "In those days there was no king in Israel."

After the people did evil under their leaders, Moses and Joshua, God gave them judges.  That didn't work either, so the people begged for a king.  They promised that they "would be good" if they had a king.  So God let them have a king.  Which was not what God had wanted, but I suppose that his plan may have been to show them that nothing was going to work.  They had to be "good" from the inside out, not from the outside in.

Ken taught Sociology at a college after he retired from the USMC.   Yes, I know, strange combo. Fighter pilot, Sociology Prof.   But as he was finishing a degree at OSU in Aerospace Studies, he took a class in sociology and loved it.  It was right after the Viet Nam war and hippies filled the Sociology classrooms.  Their mantra was  "Make love, not war."  That was to be the new social order.

When he was teaching, he used to tell his students to think of the human social behavior as a circle within circles within circles, and drew a picture on the board.  "When you are pushed from the outside, you will accommodate some changes in your behavior.  You discard the outside circle and conform to some of society's demands.  Stop at stop signs, etc.  But as you are pushed and discard circles, there comes a point--call it your inner core--that won't change anymore.  You've had it."

But with God, all the pushing comes from the inside out.  Our inner core has been given over to His will and we change by the power of the Holy Spirit to conform to His Image.
Ephesians 4:16, 17a  "That he would grant you…to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man;  That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith…"

We change not because we have to.  Not because of some law.  We change because we've been changed.  

In Judges 21: 25 we find the end result of all that happened to Israel in the first seven books of the Old Testament.  The people had followed a number of leaders.  Moses and Joshua were two.  But the people kept refusing to do as God told them to do.  And then God would punish them.

The people would cry to God and beg him to rescue them.  He would, and then the cycle would begin again.  When things went bad, when things went wrong, the people cried to God.  When things went according to their desires, they forgot Him.  Same-o, same-o today.

So the people begged for Judges.  God gave them judges.  But the people didn't want to follow the judge's rulings.  They disobeyed the laws.

Judges 21: 25 "In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes." 

That is what people want.  To do what they want to do.  To ignore laws that they don't like.  You've heard people say, "Don't tell me what to do."  We hate authority.  We want to be our own boss.  We don't want to conform to any rule we don't like.  As the verse in Judges says, we want to do what we want to do with total disregard to others.  They can like it or lump it.

Chaos.

  I remember a platoon of Marines I once saw at Paris Island, S. Carolina (boot camp) who were marching in perfect step.  With buckets on their heads.  Now that's unity.  They were in perfect form, counting cadence, yelling in perfect harmonic time. ( I won't tell you what they were yelling!!!)  Nobody was going his own way.  It was really wonderful to watch.  It made me very proud of them.

Things work better if we follow a leader.  Your life goes better if you follow God's commandments.

 

My oldest son is off the wall funny.  You would never in a million years think that there was a serious side to him.  He is a hoot.  But he is also a serious student of the Bible.  He comes up with some of the most interesting things--things that I have never thought about.  He is a great Bible teacher because he studies, makes it fresh and real to life instead of dry and dusty.

Which makes me think of Proverbs 17:22  "A merry heart does good like a medicine: but a broken spirit dries the bones."  He certainly was endowed with a merry heart. Out of the dozens and dozens of people in my family, he is our only comic.

Last night he shared an interesting thought.  I had all the facts in my head that he had, but I had not put those facts together.  He said: "God revealed himself in only three ways.  As the cloud and fire that led the Israelites through the wilderness,  as the voice--the great "I AM",  and as the Holy Spirit--Jesus.

I think that might be right, (!!!)  but I am going to have to study some more.  That is what is so neat about Christian people.  They bounce ideas off of each other and then they go dig.   In 1965, a friend pointed out this verse:  Proverbs 27: 17  "Iron sharpens iron; so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend."

It's, true.  We sharpen each other.  That's what a "church" is.  People who gather together to sharpen each other. We mustn't let church simply become a ritual that we endure because it's the "right thing to do".

Keep on keeping on……but laugh a little.