Today, earlier, I felt resigned, about many things, and about what happened, in Boston.

Then later, walking into the library, I felt confused (and invalidated) when I mentioned my sadnesses to an acquaintance. (He had asked).

But the acquaintance gave bad answers, to all my sadnesses. He had an answer for everything. He said of the Boston massacre, “They’ll just party again soon.”  That was his Bible answer, from the book of Judges, he pointed out. So now I never want to read the book of Judges. I’m lucky never to have read any of the Bible all the way through. The Bible is a violent book.

This morning I was thinking, God put the life in the blood and There Will Be Blood. (But I don’t recommend the movie, which is hateful).

In this life, as long as there is life, there will be blood. In this life on Earth, along with the good, there will be murder and maiming and mayhem, as long as there’s any life left, because God put the life in the blood.

So this song, “Be Still My Soul” has been going through my mind. I first heard it at a Cumberland Presbyterian church. I hope the song helps, in some way.

“How long, O Lord, must I call for help, but You do not listen?

Or cry out to You, ‘Violence!’ but You do not save?

Why do You make me look at injustice?

Why do You tolerate wrong?

Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds.” (Habakkuk 1: 2-3)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDkFL7yCGps

Before I forget, the name of the book about spiritual warfare is “Living in the Combat Zone” by Rick Renner.

Today I’ve been thinking about winning and losing. Sometimes in this life, we lose our beloved. Sometimes we lose the people, or the pets, or the things, that we love.

Sometimes, everything seems to fall apart.

But then (eventually today) one thought led to another thought, and all thoughts led to Jesus, by Whom and for Whom all things were created.

Jesus is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. (Colossians 1:17 New International Version).

I hope you have a good Thursday. I hope to see you again soon:)

God bless you, on this wonderful rainy day, here in Tennessee.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkASXisY9hQ

English: Pita Bread (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today my devotional “Streams in the Desert” said things can seem so hopeless sometimes there’s nothing to do but set the sail and stay the course, no matter what.

It’s another spring day here, with people outside in lots of colors, like pastel green and I heard a child playing and the window is open but I’m not really feelin’ it except for nerves.

This is the hard part, when the only evidence and substance for the good is the faith itself. “Faith is the evidence of things hoped for and the substance of things not seen.”

Sometimes my nerves get so bad, like today, but I’m trying to get back in the habit of writing, because I got off course.

Tests hurt nerves. Still, some good things happened today, like making a turkey and Swiss sandwich on pita bread for my friend and myself. She suggested putting the sandwich in the microwave (just a little) and that was good, because the Swiss cheese got melting good. My friend and I wish each other well each day and by some grace, we understand each other, after such a short time. To be understood, even without many words, is a great blessing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TCMpA5TfHc

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Gentleness in Mosaic (Photo credit: Nutmeg Designs)

When I first wrote this piece, it was last year during the summer months. I told you about that kind dentist, who decided to help me with my teeth again, after a mishap. She said not to worry about money, which I thought was generous and kind and gentle of her.

Last summer, one day at lunchtime, we talked about good foods at lunchtime, including turnip greens and collard greens, if you like those. 

Ms. Hannah said it’s good to be thankful for what we have. Ms. Linda said she loves the color pink. Pink is a gentle color, isn’t it? (These are real people, but I give them fictitious names, to protect their privacy).

Here’s a peaceful Psalm…Psalm 18:35 New International Version: “You have given me the shield of Your salvation; Your right hand has held me up, Your gentleness has made me great.”

Isn’t that interesting, how King David wrote that Psalm, that God‘s gentleness made him great? God’s gentleness can make us great, able to love and serve Him, and other people.

It feels so peaceful when God (with time) helps edit out so much of the frightened anger and replaces it with His great gentleness, if we’ll let Him. He doesn’t force us, but He will help us get better and be better, if we let Him just sit with us and help us. A preacher I heard once said “God goes where He’s welcome.”

Back when I wrote this first, when it was still warm, I hoped to go to the gentle park with picnic tables and playful swings, nearby. I have walked over to see the beautiful water fountain on the way. At that fountain, you can just look in the clear water, where people have made all those gentle wishes, shining up.

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An artificial fiber optic Christmas tree (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

An atmosphere can change, suddenly warmer and brighter. I’m sitting here at the warm and light-filled Cleveland State Community College library, which is open until 4:30 p.m. each day this week. Then Friday, like college libraries do, the CSCC library will close for the holidays.

So, since I don’t have Internet access at home, here I am at another library. Lord willing, I’ll be traveling from one computer to the next, during Christmas break, which sometimes seems too long.

I felt so blue this morning, again, the Christmas blues, but worse, because of so much tragic news, and now another family episode, splintering, hurting, wondering how to adjust, how to accept, how to get this knot out of my stomach, because of more strife and division and heartbreak.

I mention the late great preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon a lot here, because he seems to have understood so much of real life. One time, Spurgeon wrote that he was feeling low, then a friend wrote back to Spurgeon, about how much it meant to him to learn that even the great preacher felt sad too sometimes.

Spurgeon suffered from sporadic depressions, described in the book “Bright Days, Dark Nights: With Charles Spurgeon in Triumph Over Emotional Pain” by Elizabeth Skoglund.

The artificial Christmas tree looks pretty here, and peaceful, with shiny garland and green branches with, among other colors, lavender and green Christmas ornaments that don’t really shine, but glow, brushed light.

Today, I mailed Christmas cards to my children, with gold seals. It made me happy. It lifted some of the weight off my heart, to think of my children and send them cards. Children do that. You carry your children in your heart forever, no matter what. They glow from there, forever, luminous. Children change everything, for the better. I’m so glad they were born.

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1994-1995 Pontiac Bonneville photographed at the Rassemblement Rigaud Car Show. Category:Rassemblement Rigaud 2008 Category:Pontiac Bonneville (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sometimes, instead of no, God says Go!

Suddenly, in His perfect timing, everything seems fresh and green and alive, and growing and resting in peaceful expectancy, the kind that grows peaceful when it’s no longer expected, but given up to God, the Creator of all.

This morning at the center, everything worked! Our leader was called away, but we all worked together, nobody pushing or shoving or complaining or bumping into each other. It all got done, in green, in peace, in joy.

Isn’t God good? We don’t always believe or see or feel that God is good, but He always is and sometimes, like the late great preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon said (in his always profound and always eloquent way) God walks “across the billows,” to draw us and our loved ones out of the deepest depths.

One day, some day, God finds a way, to make it all okay, to keep us alive, to do (and sometimes to do without) but never leaving us alone, and suffering with us (even when it doesn’t feel true, and sometimes it doesn’t, for now) as we suffer with Him, because we are not above our Master.

Just since yesterday, good and hopeful things have poured forth in so many ways, decked out, in faith and in hope and in God’s love.

Just a short time ago, today, one of my neighbors walked outside on the porch, when I was walking to my car on this fresh new day. (And no matter where we are, with or without green grass, each day with God can be a fresh new day, although sometimes we can only limp along, or barely speak, or stop crying. That’s okay. God is with us, if we ask. God never forces anyone, but He will always be there, and Whosoever will may call unto Him, even without words. Somebody said it. All it takes is a look. Just look at Jesus).

My neighbor on the porch and I have been acquainted for at least a year. During that time, she’s walked nearly everywhere, and her options were limited, because she couldn’t afford a car. We’ve been a few places a few times in my car, which another friend gave me last year.

But suddenly, and also over time, things changed for the better, for my friend without a car. Today, when she walked outside, she said, “My car is parked next to yours.”

I looked and there was my friend’s car, a hope fulfilled, a Pontiac Bonneville, in deep forest green, The interior is plush and perfect. That car makes her so happy. She said she feels free now. She said she would ask Donnie, if we could borrow his charcoal grill, to cook out on another day. She told me we would also go for a ride somewhere in her new car, during the holidays.

How can we say thanks, for all God has done for us? What tribute can we give on a bright new day and a gentle quiet evening?

Just watch. Just watch what God can do, when He says Go, and when He flings open the bolted door, or removes the heavy stone. Light pierces the darkness and always comes through. Nothing can hold back Resurrection Power.

God doesn’t keep His children in shrouds. He clothes us with His Light and His Love and His Very Life. Through Jesus, our rags become righteous; our despair becomes hope; our impossible becomes possible. Nothing can separate us from God’s love, in Christ Jesus our Lord.

So we must wait for Jesus, Who walks to us across the billows, sometimes scaring us, in the fourth watch of the night, but still arriving, saying Peace! Be still!

So we wait, on the waters of our impossibilities, behind the stone walls of death, under the heavy weights of hopes deferred.  But by faith, we can hear our Master say, one bright green morning, “Unbind them, and let them go!”

Glory! Glory be to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit! They are One and They are All Mighty. They stay with us, and we will all be together, some day, some way, some how.

Amen!

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The city bell tower of Xi’an, China. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When I stepped inside the ornate wooden doors of a beautiful church last night, I stood still at first, waiting to be near, where God‘s glory shone.

The choir sang in magnificent tone and proceeded to the front of the sanctuary for Advent lessons and carols. For that hour, people loved God and each other and for that hour, all went well. We were healed inside, so gentle and powerful you could feel it.

This was worship. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard a choir sound so beautiful, a congregation sing in such unison, with palpable oneness…people sharing books; sharing words; sharing notes; sharing songs; the Shekinah glory shining down.

At first, at the back, there was no room to walk, as men and women and girls and boys, their white robes edged in color, opened heaven. We lifted our voices and sang to the Lord, sang to the Lord, sang to the Lord. For those beautiful moments, at the edge of every human night, we were God’s own answer.

All the people, young and old, rich and poor, heard God’s word together. The words about the wild beasts, read from the gospel of Mark, caught my attention. I had never thought about it before, about the wild beasts being with Jesus.

So later, I looked it up in different translations. Mark 1:13, from the Thompson Chain Reference Bible, says this (emphasis mine): “And He was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted of Satan; and was with the wild beasts, and the angels ministered to Him.”

That’s the glory, that the wild beasts, and ministering angels, and every willing heart in between, we are all at peace, in the Presence of the Holy, Who is Christ the King!!!

Let us sing!!! Let us sing!!! Let us sing for Joy!!!

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English: Christmas cookies Deutsch: Weihnachtskekse (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

First Tennessee Bank took my thumbprint today and it made my stomach and neck and shoulders ache and tremble like guilty for a little while.

So here I am now, changing this whole piece that I first wrote, because something else happened and now I feel more guilty and more responsible and less competent and less caring, but also a need to think back and defend myself.

The apostle Paul felt stupid for defending himself, when he did in one of his letters (or more). I’m not a magnificent Christian, like Paul was, but I’m insecure, like Paul was, so here I go, playing defense.

I’ll leave in the part about feeling responsible, so much so that I gave a sick woman almost my last $5 today, not out of any noble motive, but because I felt obligated.

When I was walking to get the cash, somebody else met me in the parking lot and asked if I was going to St. Therese church Saturday, could I pick up a blanket for her mama. I’ll leave that part in the story for today too.

That’s Just the Way It Is and we should take Bruce Hornsby‘s advice and not say “get a job” just for fun (I guess). Sometimes people can’t find a job anymore, but I still resented giving away my pretty warm afghan blanket, with green and white roses woven in, to somebody else’s mama. (Don’t you think Jesus felt weary, when He said “the poor you will always have with you”?)

I gave away that blanket because I did not feel like driving to St. Therese to get somebody else a blanket this weekend. The weak and poor and needy can wear you out, and now I’m weak and poor and needy myself, missing a blanket. I’m supposed to be more grown-up, not still hanging on to transitional objects for security.

Anyway, I’m about to go home soon and watch some TV, Lord willing. My TV is like a service pet and keeps me company.

Sometimes life makes you feel like wearin’ leech socks, but I feel like a leech myself, always trying to feel worthwhile and leech-less, comin’ or goin’. (Be sure of this, like a friend told me, God will make sure you see the other side of the story, if you’re unlucky (and lucky).

There’s no special virtue in being poor, I’m learning. And the Bible says the wicked prosper, so that’s not the best part of the deal either.

The best financial place to be is somewhere in the middle, because that’s where the backbone is and from there, all things radiate.

Back to the bank story. When I went to cash that check to pay a bill, the bank teller held out this black plastic thing with some slick waxy-feeling stuff in it. She said I had to put my thumb in that container and then put my thumbprint on that check, because some people steal checks and try to cash them, so thumbprints help the bank track thieves.

So now, my thumbprint is on an important piece of paper, floating around somewhere in banker space.

Did you ever wonder why Jesus let Judas Iscariot run the bank, since Jesus knows all things, and Jesus knew Judas Iscariot was a thief?

What has happened? What has happened to the days when all the thumbprints we had to worry about were the ones on Christmas cookies? I love those thumbprint cookies, the cookie part, not the too-sweet icing part. What’s wrong with me, wishing for a perfect cookie?

Now let me do what Paul did and feel stupid defending myself, but stupid is better than worthless: I used to be a bank teller, a newspaper reporter and a library clerk, competent and capable and went to jobs daily, and sometimes at night, like when I had to go to a lake late one night, to report on a drowned body being dragged up…or another night, when there was an armed robbery at Hardwick Farms, here in Cleveland, Tennessee. (One of the robbers became a Christian later).

There are more capable stories to tell, but no more room at the inn right now.

Let me try to think about getting back to the capable place.

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Rust and dirt on a baking plate. Français : Rouille et saleté sur une plaque de four. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

First of all, let me give some credit where some credit’s due. One of my long-lost friends told me Sunday she recently got a stern-sounding e-mail from one of those religious fanatics who are members of what my found-again friend calls the “Clean Livin’ Cult.” She named that club. She deserves the credit for that fine name.

Anyway, my found-again friend’s acquaintance was all riled up and reported my friend to their Sunday School teacher, all because my friend is not interested in protecting all the clean living going on in the religious world.

This found-again friend and my other true friends and I despise it when clean-living-cult members club us over the head with the Ten Commandments and their Extra-Righteous-Living Rules. These folks would never in their clean-living lives utter a high-falutin’ cuss word.

But those very same folks will mess over you and expect you to like it and play nice while you’re at it. The swanky club people don’t really care, as long as they can afford that new Tobacco leather chair and sit in their favorite pew. (The high people think the rest of us are too low and too slow to know).

Yes, some of us must dwell in the dirt, despite the clean living all around us. We are “people of the dirt,” like I learned about while trying to study the books of Luke and Acts. I wanted to learn about the women who followed Jesus. But we didn’t talk much about the women in that class. We talked mostly about the men, missing Luke’s good points about most of the women.

But, we did learn about the people of the dirt; I figured out I’m one of ‘em. People of the dirt are scrappin’ out a livin’ and getting through another freakin’ day of disappointment or drudgery or sorrow. We don’t have the energy or the way or the means for too many religious rituals and lots of clean living, so we do the best we can to love and follow Jesus, the truly Righteous One Who saves us from sin if we ask Him.

Today at work, Ms. Linda and I got our ears full, with people arguing and suffering. One guest told us she vomited last night. She used the real word and why not? There’s more suffering than that and it’s no time for fancy language. We suggested our guest go to the doctor or hospital, but she refused. She said call for help if we find her sprawled on the concrete.

So here we are down in the dirt, dwelling.

Ms. Linda and I were cleaning up the dishes and tables and a delivery man brought us a stack of new paper, colored like a rainbow, hard as a brick.

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Yellow flower (Photo credit: @Doug88888)

It will sound made-up, but those yellow Irises shut down by Sunday. What a good sign that maybe some of the heavy heat is about to let up on us.

It’s been a manic Monday. Over at the center, right before lunch, somebody yelled out because the edge of another person’s wheelchair caught the table leg, pulling the tables apart right in the middle of everything. That little mishap left a black hole and empty space and no place to go until somebody pulled the tables back together.

Somebody sitting right there at the table’s edge yelled out from sudden fear. We all jumped. We didn’t blame the woman who yelled out. It can scare you so badly when the bottom drops out. (God was with us in that turmoil. God understands the noise and the fear).

Three people are still out sick, or in some other mystery place, or in some other unknown condition. Ms. Shirley remembered them in prayer.

What about the love and ability and generosity of Jesus and His Father-God, the Giver of faith. It gets to where we have to Just Believe, like Ms. Regina‘s T-shirt said today. We have to just believe (even when we cannot feel it anymore) that we have Great Value in God’s eyes and that His eye is still on the sparrow, especially on Manic Monday. God’s love, through Christ our Savior, never bottoms out.

Those yellow butterflies are out there now and last night the fireflies blinked their little lights, silently twinkling and comforting and reminding of God’s Presence on this Earth.

At Communions with Christ, Sharon Ellis wrote that yellow is the color of gold and the color of true faith in Christ. Faith in Christ is more precious than gold. God searches the whole world over for that kind of faith. Jesus notices the tiniest faith, even if it’s as small and as quiet as that flickering little lantern we barely hold inside.

No matter how hard that bottomed-out place tries, it cannot shut out that little light of faith or the Presence of God, felt or not felt. As soon as those yellow Irises shut down, out came those golden fireflies, in all their tiny glory. God takes care. God sends light. Let’s shine our little lights one more day, like the purest gold, a gift from Above.

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