This is the end of the fifth year I have been writing.  I have committed myself to it like I have committed myself to brushing my teeth.  I'm going to do it.  I wonder what will happen to all of it.

Sunday, we discussed Jacob leaving Laban to go back to his homeland.  God had told him to go, but Jacob had left his home because he had tricked his father Isaac, and his brother Esau.  Jacob's mother Rebecca had helped him with his chicanery.

Jacob naturally was fearful.  He figured that Esau would kill him since Jacob had tricked Esau out of the birthright.  But God said "Go."  So he took all his cattle, goats, and sheep, along with his family and headed home.

One of the most difficult parts of being a Christian is knowing what you should do, but not knowing the outcome.  If you can know what it going to happen "next" you can make plans to deal with it.  But God doesn't seem to work that way.  He requires trust.  There are times that we just have to do what is right, plod ahead, and deal with it when we get there.

We are given the stories in the Old Testament to remind us that the great leaders were just humans, like us.

Moses said, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and that I should bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?"  Exodus 3:11.  And later, "...they will not believe me, nor listen to my voice...they will say, The Lord has not appeared to you."

But God said, "Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say."

We are starting a new year.  Each year, we think of resolutions.  We know we should become better people, we should grow in the faith.  We should resolve to change something in our lives.  We should become more like Christ.  But it takes resolve.  Resolve.  That's the hard part.  Which is almost impossible without dependance on God.  If you decide to resolve something, do it for the year, not for the day.  Because if you fail on a day, you might give up.  Keep going for the year.

Today, I did something that I will never do again.  I cut up a chicken from scratch--which I used to do once a week when Ken and four kids were home.  It had been 7 years since I had fried a chicken and the only reason I did it was because David, my grandson, begged me to.

I couldn't pull the skin off of it!!  I have lost so much strength in my hands, that it took me almost an hour just to get it cut up.  But David had said, "Grandmother, you've always told me that fried chicken doesn't taste right unless you cook the whole chicken.  Please fry me a chicken."  Which is true.  There is something about all the juices from brown meat, white meat, liver, gizzard and the fat and skin sizzling in the cast iron skillet that makes a difference.  Plus, you get flour and gummy juice sticking to your hands.  Which, every little bit, you scrape off into the skillet to brown so that you have crunchies for the gravy.  Besides all which, you don't get a pulley bone unless you cut the chicken up yourself. David called me from college once to have me walk him through it--which I did, but he didn't cut the chicken up and only fried white meat.  That doesn't work.  So there I was today, by myself in the kitchen, cutting up a chicken and making a terrible mess.

And I thought about how things change.  I  don't know anyone in my family that cuts up a chicken  anymore.  And the generation before me wouldn't be caught dead buying a chicken already cut up and packaged in a store.  I remember when I was a little girl going down town Pryor to get a chicken with my grandmother at the chicken house.  They had a zillion coops with chickens squalking.  I can't even begin to describe the smell.

Gran would pick out the chicken she wanted and the man would kill it, put it in boiling water just long enough to loosen the feathers, scrape, then pull the feathers off and finally, gut it.  It had to be fresh or she wouldn't eat it.  After inhaling the smell it was hard to imagine the final product being edible.  The chicken house was right off main street.  It smelled up the entire town.  (The first time I went to Paris, I was shocked that they sold chickens with the head still attached.)  Before my gran moved to Pryor, I would go out to the chicken pen with her.  She would back the hen she wanted into a corner, grab it by the neck and sling it around and snap off it's head.  Then wait for it to stop hopping around before she tended to it.  After I was grown I asked her for her chicken and dumpling recipe.  She wrote, "First you snap off the chicken's head and throw it on the cellar to flop.......

Becky cooked a rib roast last night.  She does this every Christmas.  Her two sons and wives were home for Christmas--and they got me talking about my experience protesting porn in the seventies.
I had asked local gas station by the school to please put the magazines under the counter.  The sixth and seventh grade boys were regularly spending their lunch hour in his establishment going through them--and getting an unrealistic education on sex--since the owner left porn open on the counters.  He told me in no uncertain terms that I was off limits.  I said that it wouldn't be a hardship to put it under the counter.  He said no, he wasn't going to do that.  (Red flag to a bull moment.)

So, in light of all the picketing going on in America, I thought, "What have I got to lose."  I got a pole, attached a sign to the top that told what was being sold there, and began walking back and forth in front of his store.  Before long, the whole town knew what I was doing, and other mothers joined me with similar signs.  The proprietor called the police.  The chief of police got out of his car and said, "Janie, what in the world are you doing!?" (Pryor is a small town.  Everyone knows everyone.  My grandsons broke into laughter at this point because the police chief called me by name.)

"I'm protesting," I said.  "And these other mothers are exercising their rights as well."  He told me he wasn't sure that was legal.  I told him (politely) to look it up.  About then the mayor showed up, along with a Tulsa (!) news reporter with a camera.  The mayor said, "She's right, we have a statement on the books about local decency."  All that time the reporter is trying to get me to say something stupid.  Which I didn't, but I answered his questions.  By then, two other stores in Pryor that were selling that kind of stuff showed up and were yelling and saying that they had taken all that kind of "literature" off their shelves and told the distributor not to restock.  "Don't bring your ladies to our stores," they were actually begging me.  "Please don't picket us." The number of mothers picketing were growing by the minute.  The mayor told the gas station to put the stuff away.  Out of the sight of children.  Mission accomplished, we all went home.  Maybe I should have asked him to burn it?

By that evening, the national news had picked it up, and friends on both coasts had seen my TV interview and were calling to ask what was going on.  I guess it was unusual for an everyday person like me to picket?  I got a letter from Larry Flynt lambasting me and telling me basically that I was a nobody and who did I think I was.  Threatening.  However, the little lady won that one.

There are three types of behaviors in the species we call man or humankind.

1. Reflexive behavior.  You have no control.  If a doctor hits you on the knee in a certain place, your leg will jerk.  If you touch a hot stove, you will jerk away.  And so on.

2. Controlled Actions.  You think about doing something, and you make a choice to do it--or not.

3. Drives.  These actions can be controlled to a point.  Hunger, thirst, sleep, sex...they are necessary for the continuation of the species.  You are driven to indulge in these behaviors, but most cultures believe that you need to control them.

God gives instructions for human behavior.  Those instructions are for the good of humankind.  They are not destructive.  But man tends to indulge in behaviors that are detrimental to himself.  Behaviors that destroy the body, the mind and the spirit.  Why?  Because we have not agreed on controlling the third type of behavior--drives.

We eat and drink too much, grow fat and induce an overwhelming number of problems and side effects.  You know the illnesses that come from overweight.  And the joint destruction--knees, hips and feet.  Also, there are problems that result from not eating proper foods--even if you maintain a good weight--and induced problems of drinking the wrong things for our body to function properly.

And then there is the sex drive.  We all have this drive.  If we didn't there would be no survival of our species.  As a matter of fact, the very first instructions that God gave the man and woman that He had created was to have sex.  He created them for each other.  His actual words were "Be fruitful and multiply."  Probably no drive given to the human species has been so horribly abused.  To the detriment of society as a whole.  Misuse of this drive can lead to emotional pain, heartbreak and sadness.  Which is a shame when God gave it as a reward of commitment in marriage.

God did not intend people to treat each other with cruelty.  He said to love each other.  Just as we love ourselves.  We are about to start a new year.  Examine yourself in the light of what God intended for your life.  If you aren't a better person than you were a year ago.......why?

Merry Christmas.  Have a blessed day with family and friends.

Instinct.  From the definition:  "An innate fixed behavior that is found without exception in every member of the species, and that presents itself full blown upon stimulation."

When you hear someone say that all people protect their babies, you know from experience that some people abuse and kill their children.  Instinct does not allow that kind of deviation.  There are entire courses that delve into the subject of instinctual behavior.

If you study sociology, you will, from the definition, conclude that man has no instincts.  There are too many deviations from the norm within the species.  But I believe that man has one instinct.  All tribes, aborigines, cultures, etc. that have emerged--that we call human, or that have been found archeologically--have one thing in common.  They make gods.  Totems, or they worship cows, snakes, or other animals.  They worship the moon, the stars, the sun and on and on...  They, without exception, look for the cause of their existence and design a god.  They make sacrifices. They know that there is "Something."  They seek to fill some empty place within themselves.

God created that empty place.  And until it is filled, man will search for something to answer his questions about his existence.  Where did he come from?  Why is he here?  Is there something more?   Is there something in the sun, or the stars or moon?  No other species does these things except man.  God created this "chamber" within us in which He intended to live.  He breathed into us a living soul.  His Holy Spirit.  His very breath.  And without this Spirit, we are not whole.  We are always searching.  Looking to find something that will calm our fears.  That will give us peace.  That will take away the fear we have of death.

The entire Old Testament of the Bible is the story of God's plan to return His Holy Spirit to man.  To complete him once again.  To dwell in man--where God intended to dwell from the beginning.  "Christ in you, the hope of Glory," is how the Apostle Paul described it.  All of us are the children of a man--Adam--who lost God's Spirit and was cast out of the garden of Eden because of disobedience.  We are born empty as an Adamic species...and we search for a God.  This God desires to be found.  To take up residence within us and make us whole.  He loves us and was willing to take our sin and die in our place.  We have an instinct.  We want God.  And for some reason, He wants us.

We humans don't understand the mind of God.  I've often wondered why he created animals at all.  Were they for us?  That seems to be the reason.  But some animals, like lions, tigers, rhino's and such, seem to be here just for themselves.  And yet, the food chain that now exists, will begin to suffer and die if you are not able to sustain this diversity.  Predators, and tiny bugs, all have a place in the ecosystem.  All life is from God.  And He is getting ready to design a caretaker for this life.

God's third creative act is man.  Not just any man--this creature has a unique capacity that the other animals don't have.  He has a place within himself--think of it as a chamber--that will hold the very breath of God.  No other animal has this capacity.  This "man" is in God's image.  God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness...So God created man in his own image...male and female created he them." Genesis 1:26-27.

Why?  That is the eternal question.  What did he want from something, someone, in His image.  Why weren't the animals enough?  Like I said, we humans don't understand the mind of God.  But here we are.  Living and breathing on the earth.  I find it utterly ridiculous to think that we evolved.  The human body is a miracle of intricate parts fused together into a functioning whole.  Everything we know about physics denies the possibility of evolution.  We are perfectly created.

"And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."  Genesis 2: 7

God gave us His breath.  That was His original plan--to fill us with Himself.  Designed to hold Him, his Spirit.  Able to communicate with Him--made in His image.  He intended for us to live with Him forever.  But we, created to make decisions and think for ourselves, did the one thing God said not to do. We disobeyed.  (All sin is disobedience.)  Adam, and we, denied--and continue to deny--the Creator's supremacy over us.  We want to rule ourselves.  We've done a terrible job of it.

Free will is a blessing and a curse.  We don't behave as the animals do--through instinct--for the purpose of  survival. An instinct is a unique behavior.  We choose our behavior.  Humans have no instincts.  (I'll discuss that tomorrow) We choose to do behaviors that destroy us.      (Continued....)