It's okay. Mostly. I think.

My heart for blogging is gone.

Blogging isn't what I thought it was.  It's just one big, massive cyber Tupperware party, everyone trying to get in on some profits.  I don't like going to Tupperware parties, and I would never host one.

I thought blogging was a form of friendship, of connection, but it isn't.  Cyberspace doesn't give you friendships.  It's too busy, too packed with distractions.  I can get on my computer with the intention of researching the light exposure needs for a cryptomeria, or to order a birthday present, and two hours later, I'll look up from a news story about possible COVID therapies and wonder where my day has gone.  Panicked, I jump away from the screen and rush back to whatever I had been doing before, only to realize that I failed to complete my initial intentional task at the computer.  Then ambivalent dread seizes my heart.  Do I risk going back and losing another two hours of my day?  Or do I abort attempts at completing the task I had set for myself?

With so many distractions, obviously we do not use social media--blogs or otherwise--for the tending of relationships.  When one small voice in the entire electronic nexus drops out, there are so many others clamoring to fill the void, nobody would ever think to check in with a, "Hey.  Where have you been?  Are you okay?"  It's a lonely, frantic crowd, that online congregation.

Fall is here.  In North Carolina, fall is mild.  It has been a lovely time to garden.  We've been moving shrubs, transplanting irises, tearing out zinnias and cosmos.  On Saturday, I transplanted three baby cedar trees, volunteers.  I think cedars are captivating, and their name is, too.  JRR Tolkien said that the most beautiful sounding words in the English language are, "Cellar Door."  If that's true, then the reflected sounds in the name, "Cedar Laura," would make a most lovely moniker for a baby girl.

I've also had a resurgent interest in cooking.  Who knows how long that will last.  We got a grill at the end of September, finally replacing the one we left behind a year ago when we moved, and that has been a blessing.  When I don't feel like cooking, Shawn can make hamburgers now.  We stock giant sacks of frozen Tater Tots to complete these meals.

I should be blogging about things I'm thankful for.  That was a good discipline and a good practice, Novembers past. It always raised my spirits even as the days shortened into brief surges of light in the darkness.  But currently I find myself overwhelmed at the prospect of teasing apart my gratitude for God's gifts from pride in what I have, and from unintentional reminders to others of what they may not have.

Sometimes it is easiest to say nothing.

I tried to create a gluten-free recipe for pineapple-cherry-almond muffins today, but they baked up flat-topped.  I will eat them anyway, and be thankful.  The batter was tasty, so I have a certain amount of modest hope for flavor in spite of appearance.

I had intended to break my streak of once-a-month blogging and actually try to do daily thankful posts in November, but you can see how that has turned out.  If this is, indeed, the only post I write in November, as per my current pattern, then it is, indeed, a lame post.  And no pictures, either.

But there you have it.

Selfishness... and our only hope

The problem with government systems is, of course, the fact that the people who run them are always inevitably selfish.

The reason governing authorities--"rulers," if you like that term--are selfish is this: 

Every person is selfish.  

Every single person is selfish.  I am selfish.  You are selfish.  The birthday boy is selfish, and the girl who danced the lead in the Nutcracker, and the man who booked the last campsite available at the campground, and the woman who pulled into the parking spot I was hoping to get at Target.  We are all born hard-wired to look out for #1, and #1, in each of our perspectives, is the almighty "I."  We even capitalize it in English; that's how normal selfishness is.

Normal, however, does not necessarily mean good, or right, or fair.  It is normal to pass gas after you eat legumes cooked with onions, but that doesn't mean it is desirable.  Our selfishness is normal and natural, but it is not helpful or good.  Still, it is a state of being.  Most people are fairly slow to share with others, unless they trust that by sharing, they will earn the right to expect someone to share with them.  This is why people often work to befriend those they believe will benefit them.  People are selfish.  They trade favors for favors, gifts for gifts, and sometimes favors and gifts for the opportunity to leverage a popular person's reputation for their betterment.

Normal people give to get back, and they do not give if they do not think they will get anything back.  Kind people will give without expectation of a return on investment.  However, even then, they generally make sure that their needs are met first.  Kind people will share their extra.  They do not give away what they perceive they need, only what they can do without.  Very few people give sacrificially.  Very, very few people are more concerned with caring for others than they are with caring for themselves, regularly giving up what they need so that another's need can be met.  Such behavior doesn't even make sense to most people.  This is the nature of humanity.

And, this is why government systems are all messed up.

Capitalism, conservatism, "The Right," whatever you want to call it, was set up with the concept of human selfishness at its core.  Capitalism says: If you let people compete in a free market, and give them freedom to own property, and make money, and spend their money as they wish, they will naturally work hard to profit themselves, because people are by nature selfish and greedy.  Now, this is quite an interesting way to set things up, because it is true.  People will work, and compete, and fight and cheat to get ahead.  As we have said, this is the nature of humanity.  Capitalism capitalizes on the fact that people are driven to grasp for themselves, and it organizes a system whereby people can eagerly grasp away, and thus be productive, and thus build a society together.  This works fairly well for awhile, because it is implemented by realists who understand some basics about human nature.  However, over time, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.  The people who began winning the game go on to dominate the game, while those who have fallen behind lose hope and motivation, falling farther and farther behind.  As the gap between the rich and the poor increases, so does hostility and polarization.  Injustice breeds hate, and hate breeds violence, and then you end up somewhere similar to where the USA is right now, and ultimately in a bloody revolution.

However, Socialism and Communism are poor answers to this problem, because they are not based on reality.  Socialism and Communism are based on the idea that people are naturally altruistic--kind and honest--and will be happy to share and share alike, everyone throwing all his property into one big pot to be doled out to whomever has need of it.  Communism, in particular, is an insidious lie, because it takes a shared property system, but places a group of government elites--powerful leaders--at the center to collect and redistribute all of the "state" property.  They become the ruling class--the "State"--and historically they have ruled as harsh dictators, keeping the best for themselves and imprisoning, sometimes even executing, anyone who dissents.  Freedom is utterly lost.

Socialism is like Communism, but trusts that the people themselves will be able, democratically,  to distribute the shared (never privately owned) property to one another.  Of course, given the naturally selfish nature of humanity, this is a very risky idea.   But even riskier is the problem of motivation.  Those who would work hard in a Capitalist system, striving to amass their personal wealth, look around at the Socialist system and see that if they work hard to produce a lot, it will only be taken away from them and given to someone else.  They resent that the fruit of their hard work is taken from them for the benefit of someone who does not have the work ethic or investment in training that they have.  If everyone is paid the same, given the same style of government-issue apartment, the same style pants and shirts, the same soap, the same cereal, the same bed and the same chairs, why should anyone work particularly hard?  In Socialism, as it ripens, everyone only wants to put in 35 hours a week working slowly at the DMV, and then go home, drink beer, and play video games.  The obvious problem is if that's all anybody does, the pool of publicly owned property dwindles rapidly, and scarcity becomes a huge issue: we're back to widespread, desperate poverty.

So we're stuck, right?  Because if we use personal gain to motivate people to work, with Capitalism, then the bullies win in the end, and the weaker, poorer, less fortunate people suffer.  But if we take away the money the rich people have made, through taxes and whatever other means we think of, and reallocate it to people who are poorly employed or unemployed, we either drive the rich away (as in the topmost classes, who move to far away places and put their money into foreign bank accounts), or we demotivate hard workers from working hard, and both results decrease our overall wealth as a nation, thus decreasing resources and standard of living for all.

We need a system that will motivate hard work and personal achievement while simultaneously motivating the rich to help the poor.  We need to demonstrate realistically that sharing wealth is a benefit to all society.  It is not productive to hate rich people.  It is not fair simply to commandeer their stuff.  We have to appreciate them, and convince them that a beautiful world full of amply-fed, happy people--people who are doing well because resources have been shared--is a better place for them than one where they live in an ivory tower while the masses suffer in sewage outside their gates.

How can we do this?

We have to counter selfishness.  We must wage war against the the grain of human nature.

The only way to do this, the only way to change natural selfishness into love for others, love for those who need but do not deserve help, is to turn to the gospel.

The gospel tells us that there is a great and mighty God who created us in His own image, so that we could love Him and be loved by Him.  He did not create us as mere puppets or robots.  He created us as thinking, feeling, philosophical beings with the ability to make choices.  And when one has the ability to make choices, one also--necessarily--has the ability to make mistakes.

And oh, how we make mistakes.  Eve believed the first lie, the lie that God was holding out on her, keeping her from something good.  The only thing God was keeping from Adam and Eve was the knowledge of evil, the experience of shame, pain and suffering.  They didn't know what those things were, only that they did not have them, and so they thought they wanted them.  They chose to grasp for the knowledge of evil, believing the lie that it would make them better, happier.  And of course, it only brought them strife, the strife we still suffer under to this day.

They, like we, needed but did not deserve help.

The Bible says, "All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned, every one, to his own way..." (Isaiah 53:6).

But God loves us anyway.  God has compassion on us, because He made us.  He knows the potential with which He infused us at creation.  He knows what we can become under His grace, if we will only come back.  And although we had hopelessly entangled ourselves in a deadly lie, God took on flesh and became a human, like us, to bear in His body--on His own perfect self--the penalty our sins demanded.  He gave up His divine identity-- His omnipresence, His invulnerability, His glory--to obtain for us the salvation we desperately needed.

But He was wounded for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His stripes we are healed.  All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.  ~Isaiah 53:5-6

He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in His mouth.  When He was reviled, He did not revile in return; when He suffered He did not threaten, but continued entrusting Himself to Him who judges justly.  He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.  By His wounds you have been healed.  For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.  ~1 Peter 2:22-25

Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.  ~1 Peter 3:18

God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God.  ~2 Corinthians 5:21

[He] being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.  And being found in appearance as a man [as if that weren't enough...]  He humbled Himself and became obedient to death--even death on a cross!  ~Philippians 2:6-8

Jesus humbled Himself to a death He did not deserve, so that we could be cleansed from our sin and clothed with His righteousness.  He calls us to follow His example: We are to pour ourselves out for the good of others, as God fills us with His Spirit and the strength and the love of Christ Himself.

In God's Kingdom, everyone is valued.  Everyone receives full provision.  God created each one of us unique, with our own gifts and abilities.  No two of us are the same, and He designed us such that when we reach our God-given potential, we will all work together with miraculous divine synergy.  We will all esteem one another.  Nobody will be viewed as better than anyone else.  We will treasure our complementary differences and rejoice in the way God has designed us all to cooperate in perfect, stunning harmony (Romans 12:3-18, 1 Corinthians 12:12-13:13).  We will each have exactly what we need, and our greatest delight will be in sharing with one another as we trust the Lord to be the Source who bountifully, generously, joyfully provides all our needs.  It will actually be kind of like a functional Communism or Socialism--we will gladly surrender our resources to God, and trust that in His perfect wisdom and justice, He will be the One--the absolute only One--who is able to allocate everything fairly and for the true, supreme benefit of all.  Righteousness will reign, and righteousness is the result of a powerful, others-focused love.  The love of God.

Our hearts overflow with joy and thanksgiving, because we do not deserve this, but we receive it through the grace and compassion of Jesus Christ.  He teaches us never to look down on others, because we are all utterly lost without the salvation of Christ, and apart from Him there is no good thing.

The lie goes on and on.  Satan is a liar and the father of lies.  His motivation is to deface the glory of God.  He attacks from every possible angle, even through people who claim to know God, people who adopt and desecrate the very name of Christ.  If the devil can't smack you down by tempting you to hate the 10 Commandments, he'll smack you down with pride, self-righteousness and selfishness, insidious sins that others see in us long before we recognize them in ourselves.

But Jesus tells us that He will reveal to us the truth, and the truth will set us free.  Jesus assures us that He Himself is the way, the truth and the life.  Jesus invites us to abide in Him, and promises to abide in us, through His precious Holy Spirit, forming and transforming our hearts to be gracious and humble like His.  Jesus is our only hope, but what a hope!  He is the unfailing hope, the faithful God, grounded in love, plenty for all, a sure anchor for our souls, the Shepherd who has vowed to rescue His beloved sheep, bind our wounds and carry us home.

When we receive and extend the love of Christ, we can change things, touching and healing one life at a time, one degree of glory to another, by the power of the Spirit.

Waiting with maybe a little more more hope

 

I don't have ideas anymore.

Used to be, I'd take a shower and the thoughts would run into my brain like soap runs into my eyes, and my heart would burn to get them out.

Now, thoughts pass through before I can catch them.  I think, "Maybe I'll write about that," and then I think, "Write about what?"

The move nearly killed me.  That must be part of it.

It's over now, finally, after a year of owning two houses and going back and forth, trying to tend two gardens (or six, or seven, depending on how you count), and trying to keep six toilets from growing mold.  It got to the point where I'd slump in my seat of the van with an empty mind, my body numb between the aches and tingles, and just wait for life to fall on me as we drove across the country from one house to the other.  Some item I needed always seemed to be in the other place, and I gave up trying to fix it.  Now, at the end, I have two of lots of things.  Two jugs of bleach.  Two bottles of Dawn.  Two large containers of Oxyclean.  Those are just the ones I noticed this morning.

Yesterday I sat on the front walk and picked deadheads off a pink coreopsis.  The air was crisp, the sun was warm, and the tendrils of the plant gave way easily between my fingernails, satisfying little pops of tiny dried flower-heads gone to seed.  I thought, "I would be happy if all I ever had to do again was sit here and deadhead this plant."  It simply floated into my head, that thought, and I wondered why.

Why do I like to work outside, puttering from this to that, dragging hoses around, carrying sprinkling cans, plucking yellow leaves and spent blossoms?  Yesterday I tore out the last of the cosmos, which never really bloomed, and if they were planning to bloom in October, well, that's just too late.  Long ago, we took a parenting course that taught us, "Slow obedience is disobedience," which, in retrospect, I'm not sure I entirely agree with, but those words echoed loudly in my head as I yanked out those cosmos.

Yet, some things are happening.  We now only own one house, for one, and that is a great relief.  God removed a barrier, and our house sold.  This is a matter for great thanksgiving.  For another, we finally ventured out to visit a church, the first time since the Corona Virus has been at large.  It was a good visit, a visit to a place where the people were truly loving, in a way we've rarely experienced.  A miracle may have occurred on Sunday morning, and I am still pondering the implications, unready to elaborate.

May God show us the way.  May He continue to work His will.  May His glory dominate the earth.

For the earth will be filled

with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord

as the waters cover the sea.

~Habakkuk 2:14

Humbly Accept

Surely 

goodness and mercy shall 

f o l l o w  me

 a l l    t h e    d a y s    o f    m y    l i f e 

and I shall 

ll  dwell in the house of the Lord  ll

...forever...

~Psalm 23:6

I'm on the lookout for my promised goodness and mercy.  At times, I see it clearly, although as likely as not, as soon as I've had a clear view, it fades into fog and doubts crop up like the crabgrass I found in my lawn after two weeks away.

And yet, God is good.  How could He not be good, when He humbled Himself to become human and die on a cross in order to rescue our struggling souls?  How could He not be good, when He loved us enough to die for us while we were still sinners, helplessly entangled in our natural sinful state?  And if He loved us enough to give His only begotten Son for the salvation of our eternal souls, how will He not also, along with the gift of Christ, graciously give us all things?  

Indeed, God promises to give us everything that pertains to life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3-4).  The Apostle Paul writes, "And my God will supply every need of yours according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus," (Philippians 4:19).  King David wrote, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want," (Psalm 23:1).  Jesus taught, "Your Father knows what you need before you ask Him... Therefore do not be anxious, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' ...your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.  But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you," (Matthew 6:8, 31-33).

Last night I was so tired, I struggled to balance as I washed my feet before bed, just my feet, because I was too tired to wash my whole self.  I stumbled on the bathmat and felt angry because every movement was difficult, everything felt too hard.

Too hard to turn the faucet handle and feel for the water to get hot.  Much too hard to avoid splashing as my hand drifted under the flow.  Too hard to reach for the soap.  Too hard to bend, too hard to step over the edge of the tub.  Too hard to fetch myself a glass of ice water, even though I was very thirsty.  So I sat, face cupped in my hands, forcing myself to will the energy to take deep breaths, feeling the anger well up and violently erase any remnant of patience I might have had for this hampered existence.

Lupus is limiting, it cannot be denied.  I am so incredibly fortunate to have a life that is normally very low key, a life I can usually handle.  Ordinary days, I rest and read, garden and maybe go to a store, make the bed, fix a meal, vacuum a rug, brush a toilet, wash some dishes, fold some laundry.  I can forget that I have lupus, until I come upon days when I have to travel far and work breathlessly, hard and fast, doing many tasks in a day instead of only a few.  I get angry when I remember that I have lupus, but that is irrational, because I should be thankful for so many days when I am able to forget.

Man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires for us.  That's from James 1:20, right after the part that admonishes us to be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry (James 1:19).  I've been thinking about these verses lately.  It occurred to me that we usually pull out that part: be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.  We apply it to the way we ought to communicate with other people.  This is certainly a good and helpful application; we all need to be better listeners.  

Yet, I think it may miss the primary intent of the passage.  I think the passage is about listening to God, coming to Him with a humility that is ready to hear what He has to say, putting aside our own arguments about how we think things should be.

I think the passage is about listening to God, and accepting God's truth, God's wisdom.  I say this because of what comes both before and after this statement.

Before this statement, James has been writing about persevering through trials and temptations and coming through victoriously.  He explains that God never tempts us to sin (James 1:13), but that we are tempted to sin when we indulge our own evil desires, when we allow ourselves to be enticed by the devil's lie that there exist good things which God is withholding from us, that God would deny us joy and satisfaction, and so we must grasp for what we desire outside of His will.  We decide that we know better than God what will make us happy.

This is, of course, foolish pride.  Just as a parent knows that too much candy and too late a bedtime will make a child sick and miserable, just as a doctor knows that sunburns and cigarettes result in cancer, God knows that sin, no matter how much people think they enjoy it, results in death.

James writes about the deceitful allure of sin, how we are enticed by our evil desires to follow the pathway to sin and death.

But each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed.  Then, after sinful desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.  ~James 1:14-15

James counters the lies of the devil (whose goal is to deceive and draw everyone into his death-trap), by explaining the truth: everything good comes from God.  God loves us and gives us His perfect gifts.  God is good, generous, and full of love, life and light, holding them out to us, offering bountifully and kindly.

Don't be deceived, my dear brothers.  Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.  He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all He created.  ~James 1:16-18

And this is where we come upon the famous verse about being quick to listen, and slow to speak or become angry.

"Don't be deceived, my dear brothers," James has exhorted.  Don't be deceived by the fraudulent allure of sin.  Underneath the frothy whipped cream and glistening cherry, there's deadly poison.  Don't be deceived, because every good and perfect gift comes from God, who has given His children new birth through the word of truth that enables them to unmask their enemy, 

enables us to unmask our enemy.

"Don't be deceived, my dear brothers..." and then James continues, tenderly, winsomely (1:19), "My dear brothers, take note of this: everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry."  We should be quick to listen to God, to the word of truth, to the merciful warnings God gives us to stay away from sin, to flee from immorality, to guard our hearts and minds from the tactics of the evil one.

You can see how this meaning, that we ought to be quick and eager to listen to the Lord, derives from what comes before this famous verse.  

The same interpretation is supported by the verses that come after it:

For man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires.  ~James 1:20

While this has some bearing on the peace and righteousness which result when people communicate well and listen sensitively to one another, the clearer meaning, in context, is that anger against God's truth does not help a person avoid temptation or gain victory over sin, which is James' main point here.  The next verse makes it even more obvious:

Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you which can save you.  ~James 1:21

When a person believes in Jesus, it means that the person has accepted the truth about God.  The truth about God is the word of truth (James 1:18).  It is the word planted in us which saves us (1:21).

Jesus is the Word of God.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning...The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us.  We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.  ~John 1:1-2, 14

Jesus Himself said,

I am the way and the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.  ~John 14:6

When we are born into the kingdom of God, God implants us with the Word of Truth, the very Spirit of Christ, to transform us from the inside out, in a way that no external behavior modification program ever could.  

When we repent and agree with God that He is--indeed--God, and we are not, 

When we understand that we are fallen, broken creatures in a fallen, broken world,  

When we see that we have nothing to offer Him, but He offers us everything,

When we perceive the destructive nature of sin, and long with all our hearts to be set free from its control,

When we comprehend the all-surpassing love and beauty of Christ and run to Him with outstretched arms, ready to be washed of our sins and clothed with His righteousness and life,

Then, right then, immediately, He gives us His own Holy Spirit to abide in us and help us from that day forward.  There is a sudden and immediate change which may or may not be visible.  And there is a progressive and long-acting (some may say "slow release") change that will become increasingly more apparent over time.

But because of His great love for us, 

God, who is rich in mercy, 

made us alive with Christ 

even when we were dead in transgressions--

it is by grace you have been saved.  

And God raised us up with Christ, 

and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus,

in order that in the coming ages

He might show the incomparable riches of His grace,

expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus.

~Ephesians 2:4-7

And we all, with unveiled face,

beholding the glory of the Lord,

are being transformed into the same image,

from one degree of glory to another.

For this comes from the Lord

who is the Spirit.

~2 Corinthians 3:18

Now we have received not the spirit of the world,

but the Spirit who is from God,

that we might understand the things freely given us by God.

And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom

but taught by the Spirit,

interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual...

For who has understood the mind of the Lord 

so as to instruct Him?

But we have the mind of Christ.

~1 Corinthians 2:12-13, 16

This is why I believe that James meant we should be quick to listen to God, slow to insist that God should consider our point of view (as though He did not already know all our thoughts anyway), and very slow to become angry with God (why do we forget that He is never wrong?).

We need to learn humility, to humbly accept the truth of God for what it is: Truth.  When our ideas, our perspectives, even our experiences do not line up with the truth of God, these are opportunities to grow our faith muscles. Like any other discipline, it is hard, but it is good.  And unlike other disciplines, this one comes with special divine help for success.  God implants His Spirit in us to help us.  We can't do any of it without Him.

We need Him desperately, and it will be okay, because He delights to meet our needs.

In the hot house

                                                      Pink Gaura--Image by Annette Meyer from Pixabay
                                                                            (Mine does not look anything like this)

North Carolina is hot in July.  It's been a challenge to keep the garden watered.  I go out shortly after I awaken, dressed in grubby gardening duds, and I pour with sweat.

Eventually, I come back inside, strip the dripping clothing from my radiating flesh, and soak in a cool bath until I feel better.

This is the rhythm of my days.

I don't think about getting sick.  I don't think about anything.  I prune, deadhead, weed, water and fertilize.  I try to figure out how much sun hits where, when.  I google lots and lots of plants online.  I wear a mask when I go out to buy food, or garden supplies, or toiletries.  Otherwise, I stay home.

Currently, I am trying to figure out which plants will survive in a very hot, southwest exposure that gets only about 4 hours of harsh afternoon sun.  It's simply too harsh and hot for any shade loving plants, and too shady for the sun loving ones.

Perhaps I can plant a screen of something high, that loves the sun, that will get enough sun because of its height, while providing full shade for the remaining area, so I can put in a few astilbes.  I adore pink astilbes.

I'll need to puzzle on this for awhile.

Gardening gets me thinking again and again about life.

Today I chopped down my shrub roses.  I'd been planning to do this in February or March, to ready them for next spring, but I just couldn't stand them, all lanky and jutting in odd directions.  This morning, I went right after them, as fast as I could before the morning shade was gone on the southwestern tip of the garden, which gets more like 8-10 hours of sun once it's off and running (so I often simply miss a chance to work there, because Shawn is always tracking my sun time and warning me to get into the shade).  I cut them down to an organized collection of canes, removing dead wood, wild branching ends, and canes that crossed.  I may have killed them, but I have quite a bit of confidence that I couldn't kill them if I wanted to, which I may (they aren't the most beautiful roses, by any means).  After I thoroughly cleaned them up, I fertilized them with systemic rose fertilizer, the kind that feeds and provides systemic control against insects and diseases.  Strong stuff.  I've been pouring about a gallon of water on each bush (there are three) every couple hours throughout this stiflingly hot day.  They are not waterlogged.  I wonder what will happen, and how long it will be before I can tell.

As I plundered these plants, reaching into crevices with my pruning shears, snipping and snapping and tossing aside, I wondered about God, our heavenly vinedresser, who prunes His people for our growth and His glory.  A tender green cane rises from the center of the plant, sprouting some cute little leaves and buds, fresh and hopeful but headed nowhere helpful, twining around other, better canes.  I snip it at its base, thinking, "I hope I am a whole bush, and not just a cane.  I hope God snips out the undesirable parts of who I am, to make room for the good person He is transforming me into.  I hope He would not snip someone--me--out in entirety."  I don't think He would.  Nevertheless, pruning is painful.

I think of plants that find themselves in spots where they cannot thrive.  This home came with some gaura.  I finally figured out what it is.  The previous homeowner had stuck it into the center of a bed, and it never did thrive.  Not enough sun.  When some professionals came to prune our Japanese maple this spring, one of them stepped on the best gaura and killed it, but there were two others, which I think had been self-sown by the martyr.  Silly plants, they are growing in shade.  I moved one, before I even knew what it was, gaura with its finicky taproot that hates being moved.  It had been struggling right at the base of the Japanese maple, so any other location had to be more hospitable.  After the transplant, it actually got more sun than the one next to it, which had chosen its own location, but both of them have performed miserably.  Still, the one I moved survived, and that is a very encouraging fact.  I will try to move them again, in the fall or next spring, because there is 100% certainty that they look terrible where they are, and only a very high chance that they will die in another move.  If they make it, they will flower in pink, my favorite.

With God, there is perfect skill and wisdom, perfect technique.  If He transplants us, for His purpose, we will eventually take to our given spot (Acts 17:26-27).  This is important to me, given the fact that I recently moved, and shortly thereafter world events turned to chaos and insanity.  I do not feel the least bit rooted in my new location.  I've been trying to root some salvia cuttings in glasses of water on my screen porch.  Working with cuttings is a new thing for me.  It is amazing to me that you can cut a hunk off a plant, stick it into some water and wait.  Sometimes, it will actually grow roots out its bottom and new little sprouts out its top, and you can transfer it to a  container of potting soil and baby it until it becomes big enough to add to the garden.  Who knew?

God can cut us off the plant we were attached to, but He doesn't necessarily cast us away.  He might re-pot us, keep us in a nursery for awhile, even coddle us a bit, and then put us out again to flower.

God's coddling may come in the form of a precious tiny grandson to love.  What a blessing, to be the grammy, and have the energy to help when the momma is spent.  What a blessing to hold a tiny baby and remember one's own, but this time there is all the familiarity and all the precious newness, with none of the post-partum recovery, none of the fear, none of the overwhelmed feelings that accompanied the first round.  Pure joy.  A little person who trusts me, looks into my eyes and tells me that he knows me.  I am his grammy, and he is my comfort from the Lord.

Summer solstice

I always look forward to the summer solstice.

This year, it was extra special, because smack-dab on the summer solstice,
in the middle of the day --11:59 a.m. to be exact,
just in time to experience high noon on the longest day of the year--
my second grandson was born.

I am now the incredibly blessed grandma of a winter solstice grandson with platinum blond hair,

(James Michael, 12/23/2018, held by his mother, my daughter)

and a summer solstice grandson with surprisingly black hair.

(Preston Daniel, 6/20/2020, held by his father, my son)

I always wonder if the Second Coming of Christ will occur at the summer solstice, that He, by the power that enables Him to subject all things to Himself (Philippians 3:21), will transform the longest day of the year into a day of glory that will never, ever end.

The first time He came, Jesus entered the physical universe as it was descending into darkness, the darkness that had entered the world through the sin of Adam and Eve.

"You may surely eat of every tree of the garden," God instructed Adam, "but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die." (Genesis 2:16-17)

In that beautiful garden, where life and light never came to an end, who knows how long Adam and Eve lived in happy obedience?  It could have been weeks, or days, or it could have been only a few hours.  It could have been a millennia.  In that time, there was no death.

Adam and Eve did not even have any knowledge of death.  All they had known was good, plenty, satisfaction, joy and peace.  When they worked, they did so with every skill and every resource.  Every job they did was rewarding, gratifying, fruitful and fulfilling.  No aphids ate their roses, nor did fungi blight their tomatoes.  Drought?  No such thing!  Tornadoes?  Never.  Every aspect of their lives unfolded unhindered, under the benevolent direction of God.  It was always summer, but never oppressively hot, and in the cool of the day, they walked side-by-side with the Lord.

And then the serpent came to tempt them to turn away from this loving Father who provided so generously and bountifully for them.  There were things the Lord was keeping from them, the serpent said, things God did not want them to know.

As with every effective lie, there was a kernel of truth in what the serpent said.  God had created all things, and then pronounced them good, good, good, good, good and very good (Genesis 1:10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31).  Adam and Eve lived in the midst of abundant goodness, experiencing and knowing it every day.  What was God keeping from them?  He was keeping them from evil, warning them to stay away from the knowledge of evil.  Like the good, good Father that He is, He knew that they would not like evil, that it would hurt them and bring them sorrow.

So yes, God knew more than Adam and Eve knew, and He had warned them that evil would bring death.  Yet, how could two innocent beings in paradise, who had never known pain or want of any kind, understand what death was?  They had no framework within which to imagine death.  All they had was God's kind and lavish provision of good.  In hindsight, we can argue that they ought to have trusted in God because of the goodness they had already received from Him.  Yet, we must understand that they had no negative experience to enable them to comprehend the perfection of their situation.

"Did God actually say, 'You shall not eat of any tree in the garden'?" the serpent asked Eve.

"We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden," Eve replied, "but God said, 'You shall not eat of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'"

And then that humdinger of a lie: the serpent told Eve, "You will not surely die.  For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

O, dear brothers and sisters of the earth, please see what the enemy wants to do to us.  He knows the grace of God, the love God has for His masterpiece of creation, the man and woman whom He created to reflect the glory of His own likeness.  Satan wants to destroy us, destroy the mirroring of God's image, obscure the glory, darken the lights.   Satan knew that God, who is love, would not temperamentally dash us into oblivion for our disobedience, so he said, "You will not surely die."  And, to many, it looks as though they didn't.  Just as flowers cut from a garden remain beautiful for awhile, so Adam and Eve looked across at one another after eating the fruit, surmising that things seemed mostly okay.  Yet, in that moment of disobedience, that one bad decision which visited misery over all the earth in its wake, the beginning of death came into the world.  Life was cloven from its Source. Two immortal beings lost their immortality and began to fade.  What would have lasted forever suddenly became subject to death; every flower blossom and blade of grass, every bird, fish and rabbit, every elephant and giraffe, suddenly faced a death sentence.  I often wonder if it was at this juncture when God instituted reproduction, a mitigating factor to enable the continuity of life, even in the face of death (this idea helps clear a bit of my confusion over 1 Timothy 2:15).

It occurs to me: The entrance of sin and death into the world coordinates symbolically with the fall equinox.  Winter is not here, but the decay, the deterioration has begun.  There will be no going backward to summer, only a journey through winter with the hope of rebirth.

Darkness increases daily until the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year.  But instead of dissolving into eternal death at the point of the winter solstice, we celebrate the birth of Jesus.  Jesus came to deliver us from death and offer eternal life to all who will turn from rebellion, accepting His gracious forgiveness through the blood of His cross.  That tiny baby born in a stable, the light of the world, came to turn the tide in a new direction.  The change began small, but it's growing towards infinity even now.  As a reminder, every year by January 1, daylight will have increased by approximately 2.5 minutes, and the increase accelerates as the spring equinox approaches.

We celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus at the spring equinox.  The spring equinox is when the balance of light and dark in a day shifts to more light than dark.  After the fall equinox, each day contains more dark than light, ever increasing in darkness until it culminates in the darkest day on the winter solstice.  The beauty of the winter solstice is that light begins to increase as soon as it passes!  And the beauty of the spring equinox is that light begins to overshadow darkness.  Christ is risen!  The sin debt is settled, paid by the only human who could live a perfect life, God Himself in flesh.  We need only come to Him in faith and receive His Spirit, who lovingly connects us back to our Source of life.

I am sure that God planned these life rhythms purposefully and led us to celebrate His feasts at the most appropriate times of the year.

And this is why I think that it is quite possible that the Return of Christ, the Second Coming, will happen around the summer solstice.  That year, when it comes, the passing of the summer solstice will not mean that days begin once more to shorten.  Instead, our days will lengthen and lengthen, until there is no more night at all, only light, forever and ever, on the beautiful day that knows no end.

And night will be no more.  

They will need no light of lamp or sun, 

for the Lord God will be their light, 

and they will reign forever and ever!

~Revelation 22:5

Dear Lord, may my sweet summer and winter solstice grandsons live to know you and trust you and worship you.  May they love you with all their hearts, souls and minds, and may we all live together in glory for eternity.  Amen.

My secret grammy names for them are Spero, for the blond boy of hope,
and Nico, for the summer boy of victory.
I only think these names in my head,
and pray by them.

Today I did this

Try to write a book.  Draw a picture instead.