Working on a memorization project

I've been trying to memorize this passage of scripture:

2 Peter 1:3-4

His divine power has granted to us
all things that pertain to life and godliness
through the knowledge of Him who called us 
to His own glory and excellence,
by which He has granted to us 
His precious and very great promises,
so that through them
you may become partakers of the divine nature,
having escaped from the corruption that is in the world
because of sinful desire.

I worked on it awhile back, and almost had it, but then I realized that I had copied it incorrectly onto the index card I was working off.  What a bitter disappointment!  Nothing is quite so difficult as unlearning a mistake, and relearning something correctly.

I am not sure exactly what I had copied wrong, but I think I left out the part about the knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory and excellence, thinking the precious and very great promises were what we were called to.

This passage has a lot of interweaving in it.  I can always memorize better when I understand something fairly clearly.  Perhaps I am not understanding this passage sufficiently to commit it to memory.  I thought I'd work it out, showing my work, like on a math test, right here where I can see it and come back to it.  Maybe that will help.

Okay.

It starts with His divine power.

What is God's divine power?  How do I picture it?  I think I picture it as a shining golden cloud in the sky at sunset, with beams of sunlight streaming from behind it.  God's divine power.  Of course, I know that the picture in my head is only symbolic.

God's divine power is actually the resurrection power that raised Jesus from the dead, triumphantly conquering sin and death once for all.  This is something I've been noticing throughout the epistles.  The life-giving resurrection power of the Holy Spirit raised Jesus from the dead, and that same power is at work in us, raising our sin-petrified souls to new life in the Spirit (Romans 6:4, Romans 8:11, Ephesians 1:18-20, Colossians 2:12).

His divine power--the power of the Holy Spirit of God to produce life and faith where there was no life or faith.

His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness.

This is actually sort of stating the obvious, in a way.  God is the Source of life and goodness.  The power of His Holy Spirit breaks into time and space, to minister to those of us who will respond to Him, and bring us into contact with God's life and goodness.  As we connect with God, He purifies us by the power of His Spirit.  Romans 5:5 describes it as an enduring hope that protects us from being put to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.

There is no other source for life and goodness.  God is the essence of life and goodness, and His divine power, the power of His Holy Spirit at work in us, grants us everything we need to be in fellowship with God and to be transformed into the likeness of Christ.

His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness
through the knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory and excellence.

What does this mean, exactly?  What does knowledge have to do with it?

Perhaps it is about awareness.  We must be aware of God to be saved by God.  He gives us that awareness, awakens it in us and opens our eyes to see the light.  In Ephesians 1:17-18, Paul prays that the Ephesians will have the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of God, and that the eyes of their hearts will be enlightened to know the hope He has called them to.  In Ephesians 3:16-19, Paul prays that  they will have strength to comprehend (know and understand) the vastness of the love of God, and that they will know the love of God that surpasses knowledge.

It's a paradox that we have to know Him in order to be able to know Him.  I think that's why 2 Peter 1:3 seems redundant:

His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness
through the knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory and excellence.

It's almost as though Peter is saying, "The divine power of God has granted us all things that lead us to the divine nature of God through the knowledge of God who called us to His divine nature."

His divine power (the resurrection power of the Holy Spirit)
has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness (the nature of God as it touches and changes us)
through the knowledge of Him (He reveals to us His glory and goodness and love and salvation)
who called us to His own glory and excellence (the nature of God revealed to us, His perfection and beauty).

By His powerful Holy Spirit, God makes Himself and His glorious, beautiful attributes known to us, so we will taste and see that the Lord is good, and desire that goodness in ourselves, so we might be pleasing to Him.  Then He pours out His love into our hearts--everything we need--in a miracle of transforming grace, fulfilling our God-given, righteous desire to identify with Him.

His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness
through the knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory and excellence...

I might almost have that part.

Then:

...by which He has granted to us His great and very precious promises...

By which?  By what?  How did He grant us His great and very precious promises?  By His divine power?  Through our knowledge of Him?  By His glory and excellence?

How about this... His divine power grants us the knowledge of who He is and what His glory and excellence are like.

Who He is comes first, and it is followed by what He has promised and what He has done.  I alluded to this in my last post when I wrote, "I have meditated on God's attributes and found more comfort in who He is than in what He has done."  Promises of salvation mean nothing if they do not come from a faithful, almighty God.  I wonder if this is one of the reasons why the Old Testament is so important and beautiful.  God spent literally thousands of years creating a history for Himself, illustrating who He is and what He is like, before He sent Jesus Christ as a man to fulfill all the great and very precious promises.

God has demonstrated His existence, His faithfulness, His forbearance, His goodness, His lovingkindness, His mercy, His justice, His righteousness, His power, and His dominion, throughout history.  When people seek Him, He shows Himself to them, reveals who He is, and what He has done in Christ, how He has effected salvation for any who will humbly admit their need for it.

His great and very precious promises:

• forgiveness for all who ask
• salvation for all who come
• the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit, present in each of His children, forever and all eternity
• purification
• Spirit-breathed gifts to use in service
• the fruit of obedience
• enduring faith
• a future in glory together with Him

All these are ours because of who He is, the most excellent and glorious God of divine power who calls out to us, inviting us to join Him in life and godliness (Christlikeness).  He calls us to become image-bearers of Christ, and He endows us with every power and resource we need to pursue the calling.

So this is how far we are:

His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness
through the knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory and excellence
by which he has granted to us His great and very precious promises...

and then,

...so that through them, you may become partakers of the divine nature

The great and very precious promises enable us to become partakers of the divine nature.  I actually think I understand this part.

2 Corinthians 1:20 tells us that all of God's promises find their yes in Christ Jesus.  All of the the promises of God have been kept, are being kept, or will be kept through the victory Jesus Christ won in His work at the cross.  Jesus died so we could be forgiven, transferred from the domain of darkness to God's own glorious Kingdom, reconciled to God and saved.  Jesus died so we could be indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God Himself, purified and made productive, sealed and approved and nurtured and challenged and encouraged.  Jesus died so we could be united with God through the Spirit of God, transformed into the righteous image of God by the power of God, prepared to minister grace to the people on earth as ambassadors for God until the day when we are taken home to live in the presence of God, with His name on our foreheads and the glory of His awesome complexity engulfing our hearts and our minds forever.

Through the promises Christ fulfilled, we become partakers of the divine nature.  God draws us into a relationship with Himself, by which we identify with Him and become like Him (1 John 3:2).  This would move us to tears if we could actually understand it.

His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory and excellence, by which He has granted to us His great and very precious promises, so that through them you might become partakers of the divine nature...

And then the end:

...having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.

Sinful desire is that prideful root in us that turns us away from the love of God.  Satan fools us time and time again into thinking that something other than God (sometimes anything other than God) will be more satisfying than God.  Satan tells us we know best; we know better than our Maker what would be nice for us.  Satan tells us we've got to look out for ourselves.  "Look out for Number One," Satan whispers.  "You're Number One."  Of course, that is malarky.  God is Number One.  God is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the source of life, the absolute truth, and the fresh, clear water that satisfies and renews.

When the Holy Spirit opens the eyes of our hearts and souls to see the goodness of the Lord, and when He moves us to open our mouths and be filled with the bread of life, we enter a new realm of awareness.  When He reveals to us the paradoxical goodness of dying to our earthly desires and surrendering in humility to His overwhelming lovingkindness, He brings our hearts to new life through a new birth, and our new hearts have new desires for life and godliness which He is eager and willing to fulfill (Titus 3:4-7).

As the Spirit of God moves us to desire the life and godliness of God, working by His power in us, and reminding us of the faithfulness of God to all of His promises, we escape from the corruption that comes from sinful desires.  God gives us godly desires, so we will seek righteousness rather than sin, and He gives us His Spirit, His Spirit's power, His Spirit's guidance and teaching.  His Spirit reminds us of the teachings of Christ, the heart of God, and our sure hope in His promises.  Thus, He gives us everything we need for life and godliness, which also is our escape from corruption and sin.

His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory and excellence, by which He has granted to us His great and very precious promises, so that through them you might become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.

2 Peter 1:3-4

(I'm starting to get pretty good at typing that!)

The paradox of hoping after giving up hope

I spent a little time looking back over this blog today, and realized that I have been writing much less frequently on the topic of the journey.

The rhythms of life are always changing.  My schedule took on a decidedly different shape this year, starting in September, which precipitated a number of corollary changes.

Another life-altering transformation arose from the arrival of my sweet grandson, with all the promise and potential for great hope that a new baby births in us.

New activities came into my life, new things for me to set my mind to: Bible study preparation, for one thing, which was a tremendous blessing.  God taught me much about humility this year, while we studied 1 Corinthians.  These lessons came just in the nick of time, when I needed them sorely, and He helped me apply my studies to my real life, navigating a tricky situation with the powerful sufficiency of His Holy Spirit.  It was indeed a miracle.  I brim with gratitude and gladness.

The other blessed diversion in my life came in the form of trips to see my precious grandson.  What joy, what love a baby brings.  I've traveled to visit him four times.  That's four trips since Christmas, four trips in five months, essentially.  If that doesn't fill up one's mind to distraction from one's worries, I don't know what will.

In one sense, I stopped hoping about the things that worried me.  This is not to say that I've given up hope.  However, I have certainly given up any agenda I ever had.  I have one hope: the hope of grace, the hope of restoration and salvation.  I will never give up this hope.  My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness.  God is faithful.   I hold this hope as an anchor for my soul, firm and secure, which is a phrase from Hebrews 6:19.

It was only a day or two ago when I realized that Hebrews 6:19 is in Hebrews 6 (I was familiar with the words, but not the reference).  Hebrews 6!  That is my nemesis chapter of fear, where it says, It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the Word of God and the powers of the coming age, if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance (Hebrews 6:4-6).  This is one of those Bible texts where I have to squint as I read it, and hold my breath, because it is so completely terrifying to consider.

I don't know what it means, but having tasted the goodness of the Holy Spirit, and having received His great and very precious promises, and through these precious promises (which are all yes in Christ Jesus), having been allowed to participate in the Divine Nature and be indwelt by the Holy Spirit Himself, who promises never to leave me nor forsake me, I just wonder, could it even really happen?  Can someone who has been indwelt with the Holy Spirit fall away?  I don't see how it could happen, because the Holy Spirit does the work.  He convicts, He softens the heart with the gentle rain of His presence, He gives sight and illumination, He teaches, He encourages and sustains and empowers.  He comes in, gives life to the dead heart, and moves the soul into the process of transformation.  He renews and transforms.  He does it.

The writer of Hebrews gives the stern and terrifying warning in Hebrews 6:4-6, but he goes on to say in Hebrews 6:9, "Even though we speak like this, dear friends, we are confident of better things in your case--things that accompany salvation."

When I made the connection that Hebrews 6:19 (the verse about how God's perfect faithfulness is a firm and secure anchor for our hope) is in this very same chapter, I was overwhelmed with relief.

Shawn always says, "Why would God give us the parable of the prodigal son, if those who leave the Father can never come back?  That would be the opposite of what Jesus taught."

Then there is the stunning proclamation in Hosea 14:4, where God says, "I will heal their waywardness and love them freely, for my anger has turned away from them."  Some translations even quote God saying, "I will heal their apostasy."  Healed apostasy!  Don't we call apostasy the unforgivable sin?  And yet, right here in the Old Testament, The Old Testament, mind you, which many claim showcases a harsh and ungracious God, right here in the Old Testament, God says He will heal people's apostasy.  It's amazing.  It's outrageous.  It's the best news there could possibly be.

I cling to my hope in the goodness and lovingkindness of the Lord, my hope in His faithfulness to all generations, my hope in His mighty power and the efficacy of the death and resurrection of Christ.

A number of years ago, I had been studying a few influential Christian teachers, John Piper being the one I remember.  I remember reading that the Lord wants our emotions and affections to be engaged in our worship of Him.  At the time, I was struggling to feel.  It seemed like I was surrounded by influences that encouraged me to prioritize an emotional experience over truth, and that made me backlash against the idea of feelings.  Personally, I long for truth.  When truth implants in my heart and becomes real to me, that is when I can feel something.  I need substantive truth to evoke emotions of gratitude and joy in me.

Conviction struck me as I identified my evasion of emotions.  Awkward, simple and confused, I did not know how to give the Lord my affections and emotions.  Back in the messy little study on Sugar Pine Circle in Liverpool, NY, I prayed for God to help me love Him as I should, for Him to teach me how to give Him my emotions and affections, for Him to let me feel what He wanted me to feel about Him.

I wonder, today, if part of this long journey I've been traveling is God's answer to that very prayer.  So much pain, fear and disappointment have assailed me; yet, He always holds me secure.  I have spent long nights curled in a ball with my Bible, crying into a filthy old t-shirt, because even that was not enough material to absorb the wetness falling from my face.  I have felt utter despair for circumstances, and yet I have found, through His power, the strength to push my pen down the line of a page in my prayer journal, writing out the words, "I will praise Him anyway."  I have meditated on God's attributes, and found more comfort in who He is than in what He has done.  I have met God, and laid on my face before Him, humiliated and broken, with nothing to say, no words.

Once when I had no words, I started to pray the Lord's Prayer.  That may have been when I started to learn to pray in a new way.  Thy will be done.  That is the prayer I must be willing to pray.  Not my will, but Yours.  Whatever it takes, I must be willing to pray.  Whatever it takes.  I trust You, because You are altogether good and altogether loving.  Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

How strange that the most terrifying prayer is also the one that brings all the relief.

The Lord has been bringing me to the end of myself, teaching me to die to myself and trust in Jesus.  He has taught me to pray, to seek Him and know Him, to dig deep into His word and learn the beautiful things He has for me there, even to memorize a little.  He's starting to teach me compassion, although the outward manifestations of compassion come slowly to one who is as skittish of people as I am.

He is working on me through this journey, so much work that I never could have imagined, never would have known to request.  Yet, I can honestly say that I love Him more than ever, as I stumble along this difficult pathway.  I give up my personal dreams, and I hope in Him, because, as 2 Corinthians 1:9-10 tells us, He brings us through deadly peril to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead--on Him we have set our hope.

The Lord is good to all; He has compassion on all He has made.

~ Psalm 145:9

Small things

Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying, "The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house; his hands shall also complete it.  Then you will know that the Lord of hosts has sent me to you.  For whoever has despised the day of small things shall rejoice, and shall see the plumb line in the hand of Zerubbabel."  ~Zechariah 4:10

These are words we don't often contemplate, from a part of the Bible we don't often read, about a period of Biblical history we don't often remember . . .

. . . so I just spent all afternoon trying to write a summarization of the story of the Bible.  It is already far too long to publish here, and I'm not even to the 400 years of silence.

Sigh.

All I wanted was to write about the day of small things.

We despise the small things, think they are not important.  They are already small, and then we minimize them, oh travesty . . .

. . . because life is composed of small things.  Small things are the threads of the fabric of our existence.  Moment upon moment, our actions and attitudes and words intertwine with one another to define our lives and our personalities.

It's not about the grand wedding, the mind-blowing vacation, or the prestigious conference.  It's about the daily acts of kindness.  A gentle word of encouragement.  A smile.  A hand clasped gently.  It's about a cup of tea, or a cup of water.  It's about remembering instead of forgetting.  It's about taking time, on a Tuesday or a Wednesday, in the middle of a week, when nothing big is happening, but your presence is needed.  It's about tasting your toast and appreciating it, even though it is not an omelette.  It's about seeing the pattern on your bedspread and enjoying it, even though it has been there for years.

It's about the routine, and how good it is, how present you are in it, how carefully it has been cultivated for value.

Everything good is made up of a plethora of little things, and they all matter.

Love the little child, wash the grapes, smooth the pillow, observe the sunshine spilling through the maple leaves or down the late afternoon road.

Drive like the person trying to merge next to you is your sweet grandmother, and give grace.  Move over.  Step back.  Stoop down.  Pick up.  Replace.  Give.

Give one thousand little, tiny things: smiles, and words, and winks, and thoughts, and prayers, and hugs, and listening ears, and moments together in silence.  Give these over and over again, tirelessly, and it will add up to a fortune of generosity.

Jesus loves the little children.

A cup of cold water in His name.

Pride is the problem

Since Mother's Day, I've been worn down, exhausted.  Lupus talk belongs on my lupus blog, but I've virtually given up on that one entirely, so I will just briefly mention a mini-flare I've been having: Intense fatigue.  Headaches.  Aching legs.  Low-level buzzing and numbness in my face and hands.  Pain in my ankles, big toes, and thumbs.  And, last weekend, a burning, stinging butterfly rash across my face.  Also, my eyes bother me a lot.  The combination of eye issues and headaches makes it very difficult to blog, or even read.  Sometimes I find myself lying with my eyes closed on the sofa, listening to sermons on YouTube, in a desperate attempt to do something that is at least somewhat productive.

Sometimes I listen to Tim Keller, or Colin Smith.  Sometimes, when my head hurts too badly to think deeply, I listen to Focus on the Family broadcasts.  Today, I tuned in Rachel Held Evans, a "Christian blogger and speaker" who recently died of brain encephalitis at age 37 and made the news.  I'd never heard of her before she died, but CNN loved her.  I was curious.

RHE (as they seem to call her) confronts the tendency of many churches to hide brokenness under a mask of perfection that is supposed to be a good advertisement for God.  I thought a lot of what she said was good--better, in fact, than I expected.  However, I was troubled, because she blurs the line between male and female.

Why is it that in order to be kind, loving, and accepting--things Jesus absolutely calls us to be--people so often fall into the heresy of equalizing male and female roles, and celebrating homosexuality?  Of course, it logically follows that homosexuality would be fine, if a man and a woman are absolutely equal and interchangeable in every way.  But that whole package of opinions is troubling.

Men and women are not absolutely equal and interchangeable in every way.  There is male, and there is female, and we need both for the continuation of life.  That is a biological, scientific fact.  It's nature.  It's natural.  Homosexuality is not part of the natural continuation of life, and so it is a type of aberration.  Homosexual activity does not lead to the flourishing of a species.  Yes, there are ways to use what we know about science to overcome the obstacles of homosexuality in humans and produce babies anyway, but they are unnatural ways.  In this day when we know that organic food is safer and better, and we avoid eating GMOs like the plague, how can we think that GMO children (or, for that matter, GMO adult transgender persons) are a healthy thing?

The way of righteousness, the way of God, leads to health.  It leads to health and life, peace and joy.

The way of sin leads in the opposite direction, to disease and death, to conflict and despair.

The world is full of death, disease, chaos, conflict, anger, rage, fear, disappointment and despair.  This is the default state of the world ever since the original sin of Adam.  We cannot fix it by condoning it.

We bring relief by recognizing that this is what Jesus came to fix.  Jesus came to turn our eyes towards God, and to indwell us with His Spirit who transforms us so we desire righteousness instead of sin.  Jesus came to clean us from the filth and hopelessness of this world we live in.  Jesus came to purify our hearts.  Jesus did not come to condemn the world; He came so the world could be saved through Him (John 3:17).  We were already chained under condemnation, before Jesus came.  Jesus came to show us the way to freedom, by forgiveness through His blood.

We need forgiveness.  Forgiveness from sin is our most fundamental need.  We need God to forgive us, and then help us, by His everlasting presence in our hearts, to be remade into the image of Christ.  As we have borne the image of the man of dust, so shall we bear the image of the man from heaven (1 Corinthians 15:49).

We must never forget that we are all sinners, every last one of us.  We are all born to a spot on the bench on the death row of eternity, and it is only by the grace of God that any of us ever gains freedom and release from that condemnation.  Yet, Jesus loves us.  He loves us so much that He--the perfect, glorious Creator of the Universe--set His glory aside and came to earth to absorb the necessary wrath of God against sin, in our place, while we were sinners, before we even began to become righteous, because without His grace, we were incapable of becoming righteous.

I do not understand how this works.  In essence, it seems, God divided and conquered.  He divided Himself, so that He could punish sin in Himself, in our place, because He was the only One who could open the scroll, the only One who could face down sin and defeat it.

Part of sin is rebelling against God's righteous designs for creation, creation before the fall into sin, when He created male and female, to work together and help each other and care for each other in unity and love, to extend the life of humanity together.  If we love God, we must love His ways and His designs, the way trees grow outward with expanding branches, and water ripples down a mountainside, and daylight follows the dark of night, and both sunshine and rain make the flowers bloom.  We should not try to fight against the patterns and the seasons and the life cycles of creation.  We should embrace them, sway and flow with them, rejoice in them.

Loving God's creation, His patterns, and His ways requires humility.  It requires humility for us to admit that He is the unfathomably great Creator of all things: the origin, the source, the artist, the designer, the producer.  He made it all, and He knows how it works best.  He wants us to share in the joy of the Universe set right and working in perfect form.  Someday, when He brings forth the New Heaven and Earth, this is what we will experience.  But He wants us to practice now, to cooperate with Him in reversing the flow of death into a glorious flow of life and light.

Unfortunately, reversing the flow requires that we go against the natural flow, the bent we all carry to be selfish, to grasp for our personal interests and desires, regardless of God's will or others' best interests.  Reversing the flow first requires a death to our own pride and selfishness, and then it requires incredible courage and wisdom as we navigate the tricky path of figuring out how to help others also learn to die to themselves, which nobody naturally wants to do, even though it culminates in the death of death and resurrection to eternal hope and life.

This is why the Great Commission is so incredibly difficult.  "Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you..."  It is not good news for people to hear that they are on the wrong side of righteousness, that they are sinners in need of forgiveness, and that they need to die to their selfish desires and surrender to the will of God.  Only broken people will respond to that, only those who have come to the end of themselves and tasted the truth of the bitterness of the way of the world.  In His grace, God brings us to a point of brokenness where we can receive the truth of His hope, but Satan masquerades as an angel of light, constantly trying to avert us from seeing the truth about the darkness.  Satan capitalizes in deception, and we are prone to wanting to be deceived, because we are prideful.  Like the hard chunk in the depths of a massive pimple, pride is the core of the problem.

The problem is not homosexuality.  The problem is pride.  Pride is a much deeper and more pervasive problem than any sexual inclination, and it affects more people.  Those who find it easy to marry the opposite sex and raise families, sometimes feel no compassion for those whose temptations are different from theirs (even though they have plenty of struggles of their own).  Instead of showing kindness and compassion, they respond with revulsion and disgust.  This is not the way of Christ, who regularly made people raise their eyebrows as He supped with tax collectors and prostitutes.  Rather, this is pride, and pride begets pride.  For every self-righteous person who looks at a struggling sinner and says, "You are disgusting," there is a host of struggling sinners who join hands to shout back, "You are more disgusting than we are, and you have no right to speak to us that way."  It is a terrible cycle of ever-increasing pride, people who hate each other, calling each other haters.

Christ's followers are called to love as He loved, and He regularly showed love to sinners.  He said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.  I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance" (Luke 5:31).  The irony, of course, is that none of us are righteous.  Thus, Jesus didn't come to call people who do not exist.  He only came to call sinners, which means that He only came for all of us.

However, He didn't merely come to eat lunch with sinners.  He came to call us to repentance. Repentance is a change of heart and a change of direction.  Repentance is when we recognize our sin in light of God's perfect love and righteousness, and we say, "I wonder how you could love me, a sinner condemned, unclean," and we invite Him to purify our hearts, to put His Spirit into our hearts and teach us to love the things He loves, to pursue the way of righteousness, to leave our sinful habits behind.  Repentance produces change.  Our habits, tastes and inclinations do not usually change instantly, but as we grow to know the Lord better, we become quicker to recognize the folly and emptiness of sin.  Over time, it does become easier and more natural for us to choose righteousness over sin, willingly and joyfully.  Yet, it is good, and humbling, for us to remember and talk about our struggles with sin, and how but for the grace and power of God, we would be stuck there.  We should always remember that those locked in sin need hope and encouragement.  It is not our job to shame people.  The Holy Spirit convicts.  The Holy Spirit in us will shine His light where He chooses to shine it, if we will only walk in obedience, humility and love.

Obedience, humility and love, these are the attitude and mind of Christ to which we are called.  If only we could all put away our pride, every one of us, and stop insisting on our own way, our own desires, our own fulfillment, our own success or acclaim.  If only we could trust God and believe in His perfect love, goodness, compassion, and mercy toward us.  Oh Lord, help us, please.

Home time

When I travel to different time zones, I like to keep my watch on the time at home.

It is interesting to me that my phone, that modern affliction of constant information, automatically updates itself to whatever the local time may be.

My old-fashioned wristwatch needs old-fashioned attention which, if I decide to abstain from giving it, keeps the watch connected to whatever the time is back in my native time zone at home.

What a lovely feeling it is, to arrive back from a journey and have my wristwatch already set to the proper time, almost as if I'd never been away.

Ah, the joy of one's own home.

To be quiet at home: a book, a dog, a cup of tea, and a wristwatch in tune with the sun on your very own flower garden.

Ode to spring

Not last night but the night before, Shawn and I went for a walk at dusk.  The air was full of evening birdsong and the heavy scents of lilac and lily of the valley.  As daylight faded to gray, we meandered behind the small, busy dog, appreciating a well-watered spring.

We've had so much rain.  The poor farmers are paralyzed.  Even when the rain stops for a day, the fields remain under water.

Recently, while walking in the park, we came upon a sign at the start of a pathway.  Amidst orange warning tape, it said, "Trail flooded!"  We laughed and went on ahead anyway.  Why not?  We could always turn around.

Turn around we did, when the path dead-ended into a veritable lake.  The banks of the Sangamon River had been breached.  A few days later, the water receded, and the ground cover was still alive.  God's creation is marvelous, indeed.

And speaking of marvelous creation, consider the hardy hibiscus.  I always thought hibiscus was a tropical plant, but the nurseries were selling them all over Illinois last summer.  A little google research showed me that there actually exists a strain of hibiscus that is hardy to zone 4!  We planted some on our anniversary last year, and enjoyed giant pink blooms from July through fall.

However, after a bitter cold winter, the leftover woody stems poked up dry and gray.  We waited and watched while most everything else came up.  Nothing.

So, we went to the nursery and bought some Easy Elegance Knock Out Roses to replace the dead hibiscus plants.  Imagine our surprise when we dug up the first rootball and found healthy, turgid roots.  I snapped one and said, "This sure seems alive."  Meanwhile, Shawn was examining the exhumed rootball and pointed to some shoots that were coming up from the sides.

Upon further research, I learned that hardy hibiscus dies to the ground each winter, is slow to start in the spring, grows quickly and suddenly around midsummer, and blooms into the fall.  Should've looked that up a little earlier, maybe.

We went ahead and planted our new roses in front of the garage.  I didn't want to wait until July to have visible specimens in those spots.  But we saved the hibiscus rootballs and transplanted them to the utterly neglected south side of the house, where we will have much additional work to do this season.  You would think we would have done beautiful things with the south side, but you see, it is the hidden side.  I dream of someday planning out a home and building it ourselves in such a way as to gain things rarely thought about these days . . . like morning sun in the kitchen, and no morning sun in the master bedroom, and premium sun exposure for the most visible landscape areas.

Until we get that house, we will be here, and we will see how these new little beauties fare as they welcome folks who come up our driveway.

Another point of joy for me this spring was when we discovered Virginia bluebells growing wild in the commons area of our neighborhood.  I've been wanting Virginia bluebells for a few years now, and can't seem to find any at the nurseries.  This spring, Shawn dug me some up from the wilderness, and brought them home in a big old bucket.

There seem to be a number of schools of thought about transplanting these enchanting flowers.  Some say you need to wait until October to dig up and move the dry corms.  Others say you should gather the seed and plant it in April.  But one source said that he plants them while they are blooming, and they do fine.  He said he does it while they are in bloom because that is when he can tell what they are, since they die back in early summer and are difficult to find thereafter.  So, Shawn dug them up, and we stuck them in the wild shade bed in the back, the one I'm trying to get to naturalize with pretty things.  Since it has been so rainy, they enjoyed plentiful showers and continued to bloom for a few days.  Now they look spent, but I've noticed that the ones cultivated in neighbors' yards are also spent, so I'm just going to let them die back and hold on to hope for next year.  Since Shawn brought them home with gorgeous blossoms, we might get some self-sowing seed out of the deal, too.

The maple tree outside my bedroom window is in leaf now, almost full leaf.  It seems sudden, after the long winter of bare branches, yet there was a spate of time when the branches knobbed up with red blossoms and made my allergies go haywire.  At any rate, I'm thankful for the green.  I love to look at green leaves.

The perfect house would have a view of a tree out every window.  That, incidentally, is how we landscaped our home on Sugar Pine in New York.  I stood in the house, and Shawn took the baby trees around the yard in their rootballs, and from the windows, I directed him to place them where I would like to look out and see a tree.  Our next door neighbors hired a professional landscaper, and the day he came to consult with them, I was in the living room with the windows open, so I heard him say, "We put the trees out at the corners of the yard, to frame the house.  We don't just stick them anywhere like those guys did."  But I smiled to myself, because even then, my birch tree was shielding me from a view of the world beyond, which was exactly the way I wanted it.

Spring is my favorite season.  It took me a long time to realize this, just as it took me a long time to recognize that my favorite flowers are always pink, and that I really do not care for vegetables very much.  Summer and fall are beautiful, but spring is full of so much newness and hope and baby leaves that form like a fragile mist and fill out to maturity even faster than puppies and human babies grow.  You have to capture the moments because they pass so fast, and yet, every spring is a new opportunity to capture the moments.

Glorious lilacs, in their short burst of beauty.

Mysterious bleeding hearts catch a spot of sunshine briefly piercing their shady corner.

Breathe deep.  Summer will be here before you know it.