Dad's Boat

          Dad was an avid fisherman.  I mean AVID.  He was able to retire early so he could go fishing everyday, and he did.  Our freezer was always full of wonderful chinook and salmon, steelhead and crappie.  Dad used his small boat to do amazing things.  He fine tuned his motor to skim over 2 inch rapids and had the other fishermen jealous.  He was followed much of the time to his favorite holes because they wanted to know where he caught the big ones.  Dad usually talked to whoever was in his boat about Jesus.  The older he got, the more he talked, and the bolder he became.

          Isn't that how we should all want to be?  Fishermen that others want to follow toward the Master, our Lord Jesus Christ?   I desire to be good at what God has called me to do, so that by using that platform others will follow Jesus, too.  What is your platform?  Your hobbies and interests?  God is waiting for you to use them for His kingdom.  We make speaking for Jesus a separate activity in our lives.  God desires to go fishing with us so He is always present speaking through us.  

         Dad's boat now sits in our garden near the fort, and the grandchildren play all kinds of things in it.  We just couldn't bear to part with it.   Because, once again, the memories give us great cause to sing the praises of Jesus.                                                                                                          K.C.

Wagon's Precious Haul

         This old wagon hauled around a lot of precious cargo over the years.  That cargo of six has since grown up  and grown older, although it is still precious.  Many memories float through my eyes each time I view this old wagon.  You see, this is not just a wagon; it is a reminder of God's amazing goodness to our family.  Even though this cargo has long ago dismissed this wagon and moved into life, I still look on this wagon with gratefulness.  What opportunity, what privilege, what treasure, what love fills my heart when I look on it!  Young moms, take stock of your wagon.  The years fly by so quickly - fill your heart with memories that cause you to praise the Lord Jesus for His goodness to your family.  When you are filling your heart with these memories, it is much easier to look with eyes of thanksgiving and praise rather than complaining and nagging.  

       So, now we have a new wagon - a Gorilla.  That first cargo has their own precious cargo and do they like to fly around our garden on that Gorilla!  I am making brand new memories, and they don't know it, but they are making memories, too.  When Mema (that is me) is gone to heaven, they will chat around the table about zinging around the garden on the Gorilla.  May Jesus fill their hearts with joy and love and wonderful memories.  And may your heart be filled with memories that you are making, full of joy and grateful love.  Someday this Gorilla will be a relic in the flowerbed, too.  To remind them of God's amazing goodness to them.

Blow upon my Garden

          "... Blow upon my garden, that its spices may flow out.  Let my beloved come to His garden and

                eat its pleasant fruits."     Song of Solomon 4:16                       

          Mmmmmm.  Can you smell that roasted Italian tomato sauce permeating the house with luscious warmth?  From garden to oven, from Cuisenart to freezer bags for the winter, this is one of our favorites.  Spices thoroughly change our blah meals to delightful mouth watering deliciousness.

How many of us ever sit down to eat a bowl of basil or cinnamon?  How about a bowl of pepper or oregano?  Nutmeg or a bowl of Balsamic vinegar?  No, I haven't heard of anyone eating a bowl of spice.  Such valuable and needed elements in our lives, yet needed to be used in the right way.  Spices literally change our food when used properly.  

          Look up the word "spice" in Scripture and you will find amazing thoughts!  Spice, fragrance, perfume;  this item was highly prized in Scripture.  Spices were one of the gifts to Solomon from the Queen of Sheba, and was a feature in the king's storehouses.  It was an ingredient in the anointing oil and fragrant incense used in the Tabernacle.  Spices are listed in Revelation 18 when the merchants of the earth mourn over their loss of merchandise.  In the book of John, Mary anointed Jesus' feet with spikenard, a very expensive fragrant oil.  Jesus' body was wrapped in rich spices before burial.  Throughout history, spices have been highly prized and sought after.  

         Our senses perk up to spices . Picking fresh leaves of basil leave an amazing aroma in the air as well as on your taste buds and fingers.  Our lives take on the flavor of spices we absorb, too.  Jesus said in His Sermon that we are to be the salt of the earth and not to lose our flavor.  And it is our flavor that influences other people around us.  If you are like me, you want people to perk up to the living Christ who lives in you.  It is not me, but Jesus in me, who is the Spice of fragrance and flavor.  So, the more I soak up Jesus and His great grace and love, the more I am able to be spice to people.  

         These are just musings from the garden that make me think about Jesus' great love and His amazing ways!  Which spice do you love?  How do you want to smell to others?                      K.C. 

Sweetpeas Downsized

Overflowing flowerbed of sweetpeas to 4 puny starts.

          Last year the sweet peas were massive!  Such a luxurious bed of multi-colored flowers filled the side of the porch and to the height of 5 feet!  I really enjoyed them.  Thinking that they would 

re-seed themselves even more beautiful this year, I eagerly watched for starts to appear.  And I watched and I watched.  For several months.  Hmmm.  This is all that showed up this year.  What a disappointment!  

          The Lord is reminding me to take joy and pleasure TODAY in His gifts.  Tomorrow may not come or it might be different.  If I live in "the tomorrow", I miss out on "the today".  Even though we are to plan and wisely save for the future, the line is crossed when we constantly are looking for better and bigger and more and more.  It does seem to me that we miss out on a lot of pleasures and a lot of opportunities for praise when we do this.  Today it is the will of our Lord Jesus for us to be grateful and thankful.  I Thessalonians 5:18, "In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus in you."  Let us not miss the joy prepared for us today while we are wishing for tomorrow's bigger joys.  

          Such a simple lesson that we skip over, isn't it?  The sweet peas and other plants in our garden have shown me this same lesson year after year.  One year has a bountiful crop of corn, but next year's is skimpy.  I am focusing on gratefulness to God this summer, looking for small nuances of the meaning of living in joyous thanksgiving.  This "sweet pea lesson" shows me to live in joy TODAY  for joy is a "present" word.                                                                                                       K.C.

Tiny Starts

                                          These tiny starts are going to be luscious full peonies!

                                                        And these small green starts ......

                                                   Are going to be graceful white calla lilies.

           One of the purposes of writing these thoughts on "paper" is to speak to my grandchildren as they grow up.  Right now they are tiny starts and so very adorable and precious.  They melt my heart as they unknowingly reveal their personalities and hearts.  All that is important to them is eating and playing right now.  Their delight is to find raspberries or blueberries on the vines to eat, even though it is November or February!  Or to hunt for "George" (my mom's name for the garden snake).  Or to collect BBs the boys have shed across the pasture and lawn as they play war.  They love Jesus, and He is as real as you or me.   No doubt or worry or trouble clouds their minds for they know they are loved and protected.  But we know they have to grow up and face life.  So we pray and trust Jesus to grow them strong and faithful.

          Even though these 13, with another couple on the way, and 4 in heaven already, are just little starts, God is at work each day "feeding" and nurturing them.  Who knows from these tiny starts, what God will do with their lives?  Their roots underground  are being strengthened and fed with love and faith, discipling and training, mostly through their parents' faithfulness and commitment to Jesus Christ.  One day, and very soon, they will grow up to be beautiful and fruitful, just as God has created them to be.  "How awesome are Your works! ...Come and see the works of God;  He is awesome in His doing toward the sons of men...Come and hear, all you who fear God, and I will declare what He has done for my soul."  Psalm 66.  It is God who works for our children and grandchildren, and we declare His glory to the nations!  We pray our grandchildren's great delight, now and forever, will be to worship God and sing praises to His name, to bless His name before all peoples.  "Certainly God has heard me;  He has attended to the voice of my prayer.  Blessed be God, who has not turned away my prayer, nor His mercy from me!"  Psalm 66.   

          So in reality, it is God who is faithfully committed to growing these tiny starts, guiding and directing their paths.  It is His mercy or lovingkindness, His "hesed", that grows our grandchildren to sing His praises.  Our part is to keep our eyes on Jesus.  He will not turn away our prayer.  He will not give us stones for bread.  He will answer.  Our grandchildren will stand and declare, "Come and see what our awesome God has done!"                                                                                          K. C.

The Old Bike

          This is my first bicycle.  At age 5 my mom and dad bought me a brand new bike, and it was a doozy!  No, my feet did not reach the ground.  By lining up near the fence or telephone pole I could push off and pedal quickly to get moving.  Then to get off I would put the brakes on and slowly pedal up to a post and wrap an arm around it.  There was a steep hill in the back of our neighborhood which was a great place to coast down in fast speed.  I do remember a major crash once that scraped the leather off the corner of my seat, as well as scraping multiple areas of me!  Bummer.  When it came time to move stuff out of mom and dad's house, I just couldn't part with my old bike.  It is like an old friend with many memories associated with it.  Now it's home is at the corner of the raspberry patch.

          Walking through the garden near my old bike reminds me how fast life goes by.  It reminds me of carefree childhood days.  It reminds me of my parents' love.  It reminds me of God's patience with me.  It reminds me that the rusty things of this world don't last.  It reminds me that I am on my way to heaven.  It reminds me to pray for others.  It also reminds me of the preciousness of life.  Yes, I will leave my old bike in the garden as a great reminder of many things.  

          There are over 200 mentions of "remember" in the Word of God.  (remembrance, memorial, remember)  Do you think God wants to emphasize something?  So easily we forget all the goodness of Jesus and all He is to us.  In Joshua 4, as Israel was crossing over to the promised land, God commanded them to take 12 stones from the midst of the River Jordan to set up a memorial on the other side.  When their children would ask, "What are these stones?", the people of Israel were to tell their children all that God had done for them parting the river and Red Sea.  God wanted all the peoples of earth to know that the Lord God is mighty to be feared forever.  

          How could Israel ever forget the parting of the Red Sea?  The same way we forget all the Jesus is and has done!  We just plain forget in our busyness the main point of life.  Peter mentioned several times in II Peter 1:12 - 15 that as long as he lived he would remind them and stir them up to grow in their faith and be fruitful.  So yes, I will leave not only my bike sitting in the garden but other things as well.  To remind me.  To keep pressing on in thanksgiving to God.                                K.C.

          

Winter's Moss

          

          One of winter's enjoyments in the garden is the mosses that grow.  They are so intricate and  lush,  revealing some of God's detailed creativity.  The varieties and contrasts on even one fence board are amazing!  Our Creator God is an incredible artist and shows us, literally,  in millions of ways His glory.  How can He carefully make beautiful mosses and at the same time care for the entire universe He created?  Our God demonstrates His care and His presence everyday.  He wants to meet us each day.

          You have heard the little sayings, "A rolling stone gathers no moss."  "No moss grows under her."  There can be different meanings in these little sayings, negative or positive, depending on moss being good or bad.  I have heard them in connection with the encouragement to keep moving and busy so that you will accomplish much.  In this little analogy, though, I want to illustrate the opposite.  

          God tells us to be still and know Him.  Unless we learn (and it does take learning this habit) to 

be still in God's presence we cannot know Him.  Reading Psalm 37 this week has me thinking about the connection of "fretting" and "moss".  A fretful person is always agitated,wiggling, moving, chafing, worrying, wearing.  The Hebrew meaning of fret has the idea of growing warm and burning, or becoming angry about something.  This implies the thought that you are impatient that the thing you want is not happening quickly enough.  God wants our "thing" to be Him.  In my little analogy,
moss is a good thing, revealing I am sitting still long enough in God's presence to grow "moss".  God is growing all kinds of things in my soul, enriching and strengthening and blessing it.  He takes the "fret" from me and replaces it with calm trust, peace and joy, patience and gratefulness for His intricate love and care.  And He does it while I am "still" in His presence.

          Moss is really lush and beautiful against the dreariness of winter.  It grows in the most unexpected places delighting the eyes.  That's what I want in my soul during the trials and labors of life.  To grow beautiful in the presence of my Lord Jesus delighting His eyes.                       K.C.