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Several months ago, I was very blessed to be asked to write a short article for a local magazine that would be an encouragement during this horrific storm we call Covid 19.  I call it pure evil unleashed on a world where faith in our God is weak in the hearts of many.  It’s easy to acknowledge Him as an existent being, but that ain’t no big thing…. “ even the devil believes in God and he trembles”. (James  2:19)  But God asks for much more than mental assent.  He reminds us that “without faith it is IMPOSSIBLE to please Him… “(Hebrews 11:6) “We must believe that He is AND that He is the rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.”   Most of us have the “HE IS” part down pretty well, but does He really reward those who diligently seek Him?  That’s where faith is weak.  We have been told so much that is in error that we don’t know what to believe for sure.  UGH!  So, on Facebook, I see so much unbelief and error from Christians that it makes me crazy!

We need encouragement and facts that we can take to the bank… for sure…. that we can put our full weight on no matter how strong the storm gets.  There is a fearful world out there looking at Christians wondering if we have the answers.  Sadly, our message is about as strong as a limp noodle!   We seem to have little to offer as we shiver behind our masks while hiding in our houses.  For that reason, I think I need to do a little cheerleading for the children of God.  Yea!  Go Team!!!  We have got this…. You and God are always a majority no matter the trouble!  This is such an opportunity to bring people to Jesus… let’s rise up and do this!  We have good news!  We have the promises of God!  !

This is a part of a past ferret adventure, “What’s In A Name”, with a bit of a twist on it.  So back down the ferret trail we go!…

THE NAME ABOVE ALL NAMES

The storm was huge!  The winds were fierce, waves were lapping over the sides of the boat, filling it with water.  No matter how hard the men rowed they couldn’t get out of it and no matter how fast they bailed the water, they couldn’t stop the deluge.  All the while, Jesus, who was with them, was sleeping peacefully in the stern of the boat.  The disciples woke him shouting, “Don’t you care that we are sinking?”  Today, it seems that we are in a storm of mammoth proportions, we have a boat load of people we are concerned about, our family, friends, neighbors, and community.  And we are rowing as fast as we can and bailing water to stay afloat, all the while, we are worried and praying for God to intervene and calm the storm and yet it rages on.  But, honestly, are we certain of His will and His intentions or do we doubt like the disciples with little faith?  In Hebrews 11: 6 God tells us “without faith, it is impossible to please Him”.  Faith is the confident expectation that what you ask, is God’s will and He will perform it. In Matthew 7, Jesus described overcomers in the kingdom as those who built their house on a rock, a firm foundation so that when the storm came the house was not moved.  The house is shaking for sure right now, but Jesus, of course, is our Rock and His words, His promises, are the anchor in our storms.

For many of us these days, Psalm 91 has become the litany in our prayer time.  The promises are precious, especially in regard to the plagues that are lurking in the darkness.  We often declare, “No evil can over take us or any plague come near our dwelling… for God has given His angels charge over us to keep us in all our ways”… and I say Amen!  BUT…do you really believe it? Would you stake your life on it?

Did you know that God gave us an inside secret in that Psalm that will bring Him into our storm for a certainty?   In verses 14-16, God begins to tell us what He will do for us because we love Him and because we know His Name.   He will rescue us from harm, set us above the danger, He will answer our prayers, be with us in the trouble, honor us and satisfy us with a long life.  He will show us His salvation!  The word salvation is the name of Jesus in Hebrew… Yeshua!  He will show us His Yeshua!  In other words, He will demonstrate Yeshua to us.  Hummm, what does that mean?

Jesus and His name are one.  In His Name is His perfect will for us. So, what is in that precious Name?  The Hebrew, of course is Yeshua, in the Greek it is either Iesus or Jesus.  Both names mean the same thing.  The first part of His name… Ye or Je… translates GOD.  The ancient root word in Hebrew is “shua” and in the Greek it is “sozo” from which comes “sus”.  In both languages, that root means … DEFENDED, DELIVERED, PROTECTED, PRESERVED, VICTORIOUS, AVENGED, PROSPERED, HEALTHY/ HEALED AND WHOLE/SOUND WITH NOTHING MISSING, AND NOTHING BROKEN.  When you know His Name, you know His perfect will for us.  When you call on that name He will demonstrate it for you by fulfilling everything that is in it.  He will show you His Yeshua!

What a faith builder!  Let me share some scriptures with you to increase your faith…

John 14:13-14 (TAB) …”I will do [I Myself will grant] whatever you ask in (within) my Name [as representing all that I AM]… [Yes] I will grant [I, Myself, will do for you] whatever you ask in (within) My Name [as representing all that I AM].”

I John 5:13-15 (NKJ) …  “These things have I written to you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may believe on the Name of the Son of God.  And this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask any thing according to His will, He hears us;  And if we know that He hears us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of Him.”

II Corinthians 1: 19-20 (The Voice Bible)  “For the Son of God – Jesus the Anointed whom we…have preached to you was not both “yes” and then “no”.  With Him the answer is always “yes”.  In Jesus we hear a resounding “yes” to All of God’s promises. This is the reason we say “Amen” to and through Jesus when giving glory to God.”  (Do you get that?  All the promises of God are a resounding yes!  Not yes, no or maybe.  That means if it is in His Word, you can stand on it and believe Him for answers!)  So…. Having done all to stand, STAND!  Woop!  Woop!

 

Have you ever had that moment when company drops by just before time to cook dinner?  At my house, that time of day finds me standing in the freezer searching for the fastest meat to thaw and cook and some frozen veggie that I can steam in the microwave for 2 minutes.  The surprise of the doorbell and seeing visitors ready to drop in, takes me off my game and I find words falling out of my mouth before I have time to think.  Suddenly, I hear myself say to the company, “Why don’t you stay for dinner?  It won’t be any trouble and we would love the visit.”  Of course, they agree it would be wonderful!  OMG!  Now I am praying I have enough hamburger to feed us all.  I can thaw it, throw it on the grill, and while it’s cooking, thaw some buns, clean some lettuce, slice a tomato, maybe add a slice of cheese, find enough chips and drinks to go around and hope for the best.  Whew!!!  It’s hard to be a charming hostess when you are under that kind of pressure!  But, they are, after all, friends and they are most forgiving.  That’s what friends do!  Today, after “social distancing”, I would welcome a whole host of dinner guests without complaint!

I was reading Genesis 18 not too long ago.  It is the story of drop-in company at Abraham’s tent. Abraham and Sarah find themselves in exactly that, “surprise!  Here we are!” moment.  They are living just south of what is now Jerusalem on the planes of Mamre, prime grazing land.  Abraham is sitting in the door of his tent on a warm afternoon looking over the fields when a bazaar thing happens.  One minute all he could see were the cattle spread before him in the fields and the next moment, 3 men were standing in his front yard.  They just appeared out of nowhere!  “And he lifted up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood by him”, just like that!  Talk about unexpected company, YIKES!  And to add to the surprise, they must have been glorious to behold.  In verse 1, we find that the LORD appeared unto him.  The word there is Jehovah, the self-existent one.  (Whoa!  Can you imagine the pressure in cooking for God???)  Out of respect, Abraham called him Adonai. He was, indeed, part of the Godhead. The other two guests were supernatural beings as well.  Angelic beings are what the ancient writers of the Targum call them and that’s good enough for me.  At any rate, Abraham ran to them and invited them to stay for dinner.  Can you imagine Sarah’s face when he said “Honey!  Guess who’s coming for dinner!”

Poor Sarah…  no freezer, no microwave, no instant anything!  She had to start from scratch to make bread, no Brown N Serve rolls in that house!  Then they had to kill the fatted calf, dress it and cook it.  And she had to get it all together in time for dinner, to serve to the three mysterious visitors.  Notice, she hid in the tent while they ate.  I imagine she looked spent (just making hamburgers for company does that to me).  Don’t forget she is about 89 years old at the time!  Maybe it was just the custom of the day, but the men noticed her absence and asked about her.

Now, when I cook dinner for guests, I usually get a nice compliment for my efforts and that’s enough. But Sarah’s guests went way beyond a simple thank you.  The Lord declared that her barrenness would end and that she would have a son within the year.  He said, “Is anything too hard for the LORD? …At the time appointed I will return unto thee, according to the time of life and Sarah shall have a son.”  OMG! Now that is a big thank you!  A covenant promise was, finally, to be fulfilled after waiting 24 years. No wonder she laughed!  (At 89…I might have cried, honestly!)

I had a ton of questions about that visit!  Why did Adonai show up for a meal with the family? Why the meal?  Why didn’t He just fulfill that promise in the course of time and nature? After all, He had cut a covenant to insure the birth of a son.   I know, they were on the way to Sodom and Gomorrah but they didn’t have to stop at Abraham’s tent before going there.  Why did they stop?  Why did they agree to eat the meal?   I was off and running on another ferret adventure!!  Woop woop!  Here we go!

I started with the pay-off for dinner … Covenant promise kept, Sarah’s baby on the way.  Covenants… Oh my goodness! What a crazy bunch of ferret trails to follow!  I’m convinced that God created mankind with a “covenant gene”.  People will strike agreements over anything.  Some are like blood-brother covenants, some are worldly like buying a house or a car, or making a bet, some as simple as a handshake and then there are those that God instituted like marriage.  I followed a lot of trails before I hit the right one, the one that explained Abraham and the meal.

Blood covenants were everywhere in scripture.  God had to sacrifice innocent animals in order to cover Adam’s nakedness. Job sacrificed a pot-load of animals over his kids. (I get that!)  Abraham was in blood covenant with the Lord concerning the promise of a son for him and God’s reciprocal  promise of sending His own son into the world for all of us.  God used Moses to institute the Law which was consummated with the sacrifice of innocent animals to make a way for God to fellowship with mankind.  And, of course,  Jesus was our most precious blood sacrifice, making a way for us to become God’s children!  Thank you, Lord!!!

But, let’s take a breath! I get the concept of a blood covenant but my question still stands… what about the meal  Why a meal?  Then I saw it in an article… did you know that, particularly in the middle east, if you share a meal with someone, you are joined in a covenant with them?   It is as legal and binding as a blood covenant and and it can span over generations.  It is called the Friendship Covenant.   It is often instituted in concert with a blood covenant.  Here is a layman’s explanation… Basically “you are what you eat”.  So, if you eat the same food and drink from the same fruit of the vine, you become a part of one another, a unit or single body… two become one!   The Friendship Covenant is about complete trust, loyalty and faithfulness.  No matter what the issue, friends can confide in and depend on each other to the death.  They trust each other, and by right of covenant, can expect loyalty and faithfulness without question to the very end.  Who knew???

Flash back to Abraham!  The Lord knew that in destroying Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham’s nephew, Lot, whom he raised as a son, would be lost as would his entire family and so He purposefully made a friendship covenant with Abraham so that He could confide in His friend.  After the meal was complete, He sent his angels ahead, but He stayed behind out of covenant obligation, to tell Abraham what He was about to do to Sodom and Gamorrah.   He said to Himself “… Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do…”  He knew Abraham would intercede and fight for Lot and his family and He would be bound to honor that friendship covenant and see that Lot and his family were spared.   “…God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow…”.  Cool, huh???  But that was Abraham’s story.  Another question… what does that have to do with us?

Fast forward…  Did you know that Jesus purposefully made a Friendship Covenant with us?  He did!  The Last Supper was just that, a Friendship Covenant meal.  After that meal with His disciples, Jesus said to them…”Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.  You are my friends if you do whatsoever I command you.  Henceforth I call you not servants for the servant knows not what his lord does:  but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.”   (John 15:13-15)  As His friends, what did Jesus call on us to do?  Love one another for sure,  but He also called us to go into all the world and make disciples.  “…as my Father sent me, I am now sending you.”  (John 20: 21)  He promised to empower us by the Baptism of the Holy Spirit so that we could accomplish all He asked of us.  As His friends, He was, now, trusting us to be faithful and loyal to the end in the mission that He laid before us.

Every time we take this meal of bread and wine, we are reaffirming that Friendship covenant!  So… no matter our issue, Jesus is faithful, trustworthy and loyal to be with us and help us to the very end.  Do you realize that the Holy Spirit is the voice we hear when Jesus is confiding in us?  “…when the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all truth; for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will show you things to come… for he shall receive of mine and shall show it unto you.”  (John 16:13-14) Because of this covenant, Jesus can confide in us His deepest thoughts.  That’s what friends do!  No matter the issue, He promised that He would never leave us or forsake us.  (Heb. 13:5-6) And likewise, He trusts us to never forsake Him!

Question… For our part, are we trustworthy, faithful and loyal to the very end?  Are we friends of Jesus?   He has entrusted us with the ministry that He started.  He has put his beloved lost sheep in our hands and He trusts us to find them, gather them and bring them into His kingdom and to care for them.  He trusts us to be His witnesses to the utter most parts of the world!  How are we doing with that? Whew!  It’s getting a little warm in here!   Who knew friendship could be so …  umm…  weighty?  Next time I share a covenant meal with Jesus, I will be thinking of covenants not only in terms of what Jesus did for me but I will be reminded that, as His friend in covenant,  I am called and depended on, as well and I must remain trustworthy and faithful to the end.

What is really awesome in all of this is that Jesus has never changed nor has He stopped dropping in, hoping to be invited to dinner with us.  John recorded a beautiful picture of Jesus standing at our door. “… I am standing at the door and knocking.  If any of you hear My voice and open the door, then I will come in to visit with you and to share a meal at your table and you will be with me.”  (Rev. 3:30 – The Voice) NO SOCIAL DISTANCING REQUIRED!  In these times, that is a precious promise!   How often do I throw open the door of my heart and invite Him in to fellowship with me and to share a meal?  (What I like is…. He already prepared the meal!)  So, I say… “Come on in, Lord, let’s have a good long intimate visit!”    Woop!  Woop! Ferret dance here!!!

 

 

 

I lost my youngest brother in an automobile accident many years ago.  There was no good-bye, no closure.  He was just gone!  And the hole and the ache, although tempered by the years, still remain.  I knew God was in control and that Tommy was with Him.  I also knew I would see him again someday.  But I had lots of questions.  On May 21^st this year, I lost my sweet mama and this time there were goodbyes and wonderful moments that we got to share.  We had time to prepare and yet when she left, the ache and the hole in my heart is the same. This past week my husband and I buried a wonderful friend, who was like a brother to us and then a young man we had grown to love,  both taken from us too soon, suddenly and without warning.  The sadness has been overwhelming, but this time was a little different for me because I had less questions and more peace and understanding… things the Lord had shown me about going home.  I wanted to share what I have learned with others this week but there wasn’t time, so I am sharing it now in hopes that it will touch your hears too.

I know many of you have suffered heart crushing losses as well and maybe you have had the same questions that I did.  Where are they? What are they doing?  How far away is heaven?  Where exactly is heaven?  What is it like?  We have all read the books about life after death and the glory and joy on the other side and I believe the accounts, but my “ferret” brain wanted more!   So, I began to pray and look for answers.  I am not sure I really expected an answer…” but God”…  (one of my favorite phrases in scripture because it always precedes an amazing intervention, on His part, in our lives)  OMG!  He came through loud and clear!   One day, when I wasn’t even thinking about it, He just seemed to open my mind’s ears and eyes and He spoke straight to my heart.   He started tying so many things I had learned over the years directly to the answers I had been seeking.   He poured light on things I knew but never put together.   He showed me wonderful truths that explained so many things for me.  (John 14:26) How is it that Truth can be right under our noses for years and suddenly we discover it?

Ferret Trip coming!  It is a real heart blesser!!!  Woop Woop!  Ferret dance….

I am, by nature, curious about everything.   I want to know spiritual truth but I also have a desire to know how everything works in the natural world when it is tied to spiritual laws.  In other words, I love it when science connects the dots to scripture!  So, I spend lots of time studying things like electromagnetic energy (light)  and quantum physics,  neurological physics  and even mathematics (my least favorite subject in school)!  I tell you this because my adventure began with the natural world and  then  came its connection to the spirit.

The whole trip started with my past adventures through quantum physics and through my study of light.  So some background information is necessary here to get you up to speed:

First stop… Einstein!  Physicists will tell us that there are at least 10 dimensions in the material universe but there are probably more.  In the spirit or immaterial world, God only knows for sure!  But every dimension is real and substantive whether we can sense it or not!   Many of the dimensions overlap between spirit and material like height, width, length and depth.  In Ephesians 3, Paul is praying we would come to know the breadth and length and depth and height of God’s love.  So what is the bridge that links the seen and unseen dimensions of existence?

The short answer is… GOD!   When God said “Light Be”, He wasn’t creating light, God IS light.  But rather He took the very substance of His own being and caused it to materialize and then He used that light to create a material world.  The material world was created out of the spirit realm!  (IJohn 1:5)   Quantum Physicists Einstein, Frank, Neils and Bohr, discovered that a quark of light is the smallest particle of existent matter in the physical universe and… are you ready?…  it is the only existent particle that can be both material and immaterial! Yep! Light (the very substance of God) is the building block of all that exists, the fabric of our universe, and it crosses dimensions between the spirit and the material.  These physicists concluded that, dimensionally speaking, the immaterial is superimposed on the material, in other words, these dimensions coexist in the same space!  And the material world mirrors or is a pattern of the unseen. (Heb. 9:23-24)  In fact, Jesus confirmed that!  The drum beat of Jesus teaching was the phrase “repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand”. .  In the Greek the word “repent” means change the way you think and the phrase “is at hand”, in the Greek, is translated – superimposed upon.  So… Jesus was saying change the way you think, the kingdom of heaven is superimposed on you. (Matt. 4:17) He taught us how to live an overcoming life dwelling in multiple dimensions.  After all, we are a spirit being superimposed on a material body.  Which is more real, our physical body or our spirit being?   Whoa!!! Think about that for a minute! He used picture stories to show us how the spirit world affects the material and how we can live victoriously if we understand the connections, the laws and forces and the power of God. (Please note, I am not discounting turning from sin!)

For a little while, suspend your old understandings and look at creation with new eyes…ready?    Our existence spans many dimensions some material and some immaterial.  Yep!  Just what Einstein discovered!  And everything that goes on in the spirit affects the material just as everything that goes on in the material realm affects the spirit world because they are inextricable.  Want some examples?  When our words which are spirit (unseen) are sown in the kingdom of heaven, they bring up a crop of material fruit. (Matt. 7:16-19, Matt 12:33-37)  What the devil does in the spirit realm causes all kinds of problems in the material realm (Matt. 13:1-30)  Again Jesus taught us that spirit and flesh are connected inextricably,  in unseen ways and, therefore, what happens in each dimension affects the other. (Matt. 18:18-19)    Every parable was about spirit truths that pertain to overcoming in a material world.   In II Cor. 4: 18, Paul tells us to look at the unseen because it is eternal while the seen, the material, is temporary.

Ok!   Are you confused yet?  Well, let me add to your new way of thinking…  The material or flesh world is subject to time and space restrictions but the spirit world is unrestricted by time and space and yet they are superimposed on one another!  How does God do that?  Go figure!  In Col. 2:1-7 Paul was speaking of being in Christ Jesus and though physically, he couldn’t be with the Colossians, he was with them in the spirit enjoying and beholding their order and their faith in Christ Jesus.  (He isn’t talking about just “thinking of them”.  He literally means in the spirit he is there!)  While physically they were separated by time and space, they were one in the Spirit in Christ Jesus and therefore together, outside the bounds of time and space.

Now, to connect some dots…

All my life I had been thinking of heavenly things, in a material fashion with geographical locations and certain time structures in my mind. The earth was in a galaxy with the sun at its center and nine planets arrayed in orbits around it. We spin on our axis every 24 hours and circle the sun every 365 days. We are the third planet from the sun.  We are a part of the Milky Way Galaxy and our tiny galaxy is a speck in the entire universe.   Heaven was somewhere up in the sky but I was never sure where or how far away.  Some said God’s Temple and Throne were beyond the North Star… who knew!  It was all a good guess.

But when I began my study of the creation of this material world in Genesis, I took some time to study the works of the Jewish writers in the Targum to help me understand the Hebrew language and the proper interpretation of so much of the Torah (first 5 books of the Bible).  It was totally mind blowing!  “Poof!”    Try this for a new perspective….

God is immeasurable, infinite and beyond confinement.  He cannot be comprehended by an earthly mind.  Because He has no boundaries in size or scope and time has no parameters for Him, there is no place that can exist outside of His being.  And He is not outside of anything that exists but is a part of it all!   Everything that exists is WITHIN HIM, the visible and the invisible.  He is a part of all things and by Him all things consist (are held together) Col. 1:13-17.  In other words… everything that exists in any type of form or shape by human understanding, seen or unseen, such as the heavenly throne room of God, the heavenly Jerusalem, the heavenly temple, Eden that is God’s Garden, the places Jesus has prepared for us,  and the infinite array of created beings all have their existence IN HIM! God does not exist in one place or another, He is Spirit, He is Light and He is omnipresent!  Expand your imagination… make God so big in your understanding that He had to make room within Himself to create everything that exists.  For our purposes, Heaven and Earth as we think of them, are within God, a part of Himself, just as we are within God.  It is just that we exist across many dimensions in a God-like manner and our flesh (which is fallen) is a separator keeping us from being fully in His presence.

You and I are spirit, soul and body… multi-dimensional beings!  (Gen. 1:26 in His likeness and in His image). We live in both the spirit and the material world where our spirit is superimposed on our flesh…  just like God, who is multi-dimensional as well… father, son and Holy Spirit!  And, like God, we span the same dimensions, the soul being the bridge between the spirit (unseen) and the flesh (seen).  In Genesis 2: 7 God formed for us a material body out of the clay, but then, to make us in His image and likeness, He breathed into us His divine essence and we became “speaking spirits” (Targum writers’ explanation) housed in a material body with a brain that is capable of grasping the spirit and the material. Jesus, the humanity of God, was also a Spirit being housed in the body Mary knit for him in her own physical womb.(Luke 1:33-35)

Hang in there with me!!!

While our true, eternal spirit selves are housed in a temporal flesh body, we are able to navigate in a material world, only, as individual people restrained by time and space.  We are separate from each other and we cannot be in two places at one time.   But in the spirit, there are no time or space constraints everything is connected in God.  In Christ Jesus, we who believe and have made Jesus the Lord of our lives, are one with Him and one with each other  in the spirit, forever inseparable (those still alive and those who have gone before us).  John 17:20-21 “Neither pray I for these alone but for them also that believe on me through their words.  That they all may be one; as you, Father are in me and I in you, they also may be one in us…”  Bottom line all who believe in Jesus and have made Him the Lord of their lives are ONE in Christ Jesus, separated by flesh in the material world but completely and eternally connected in the spirit.  And because our spirits never die, even when our tent fails, we (our spirit selves) are alive all of us who believe are still one in Jesus Christ!  To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord! (II Cor. 5:1-8) When we die our flesh is no longer in the way and there is nothing separating us from the full presence of the Lord, He is fully in us and we are fully in Him!  Right now, our fleshly relationships are finite with a definite number of days but our spirit beings are eternal and our connections and relationships are eternal!  The spirit person that we love and miss is still alive and well even when though their tent has fallen and our relationship goes on with them.  They aren’t lost to us at all and they aren’t millions of miles away in some heavenly temple as if it was a geographic location. So, what is this relationship like for them and us?

Ok, now for the really cool part…

In Hebrews chapter 11 the writer is talking about those in Christ who have gone on before us, who have shed their earthly tents but are still very much alive in the spirit.  In Chapter 12:1-2 the writer says “Therefore, seeing we are also compassed about (perikeima’i  – encircled, enclosed, to be bound with) with so great a cloud of witnesses, lets us lay aside every weight and the sin that does so easily beset us and run with patience the race that is set before us; looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith…”  Whoa! SO!!! There they are and that’s what they are doing!!!  All those wonderful people are encompassing us, bound to us.  The writer uses the image of a great arena where the track and the playing field are the material world and the grandstand is the heavenly or spirit realm.  The two dimensions are inextricably connected in one purpose, seeing the Will of God play out as He designed it to be done.   The stands are filled with all those who have gone before us and they are very much interested in us and cheering for us as we run our race before them.  They know what is going on in our lives and they are actively watching.  I like to think they are also shouting cheers and encouragement to us.  Thinking of many of my own family members, I am sure they are coaching from the stands!  LOL !!!

Like every sporting event, the athletes on the field can’t distinguish the specific voices in the crowd.  They can’t talk to them or hug them but they are very much aware of their presence.  That is the same for us!  By faith we know those we love are there and they know all about us and they are still interested in what we do. No, we can’t talk to them, or see them or interact with them but we can be certain they are witnessing what we do as we run our race because Scripture tells us that it’s so!

So, what does that mean for us?  We all find ourselves overwhelmed with sadness and the pain of loss and sometimes it grinds us to a complete hault!  There are days when we don’t want to get out of bed or face another day.  There is even guilt at feeling joy again.   But God has called us to lay aside every weight and run. What are those weights?  The Lord told me, it is like a heavy sweat suit that a runner strips off before he runs, we need to strip off the heavy grief, sadness, depression and oppression, that deep inescapable sense of loss that wraps around us like a heavy blanket sometimes bringing us to our knees so we can’t fulfill our calling, we can’t run our race.  We must lay it all aside if we are to run with purpose, recognizing that the stands are filled with people who love us and care for us.  Then we need to avoid those sins that cause us to trip. For instance, don’t look back (doubt, regret) and don’t look at others (insecurity and fear), don’t become self-absorbed in sorrow and push Jesus out of the way.  We need to refocus on our loving God and our life’s calling, keep our eyes on the goal and focus on Jesus our coach who by faith will bring us across the finish line.  Be lifted up and encouraged by the spirit presence of that great cloud of witnesses.  With the surety of the Word in our hearts… every day we can run our race with purpose and with joy in our hearts!

What I learned is that Heaven isn’t millions of miles away… it’s dimensional, superimposed on us… surrounding us! The people we love aren’t millions of miles away… they are a part of us as we are a part of Father, Son and Holy Spirit!  We haven’t lost anyone, they are much closer than we can imagine!  We are eternally connected!  And there will be a time when we will all be completely reunited!

Isn’t that just amazing?

Woop! Woop!  Happy ferret dance here!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be away from my blog for a year! And I am sitting here, actually shocked that it has been so long since I sat down to write anything. I have had good intentions and I have started several different blog posts over the past few months, but the fire just hasn’t been in my heart.  Lately, The Lord has been pushing me in my spirit to return to writing but I keep finding reasons to avoid it. The biggest issue with me is a lack of discipline and drive, somewhere I just lost it! Have you ever felt that way? I find myself saying….” If it isn’t urgent or life threatening, then it’s on tomorrow’s do list”. The problem is that tomorrow never comes… it’s always TODAY!!!! DUH!   Anyway, the Lord has been pricking my conscience about neglecting what He asked me to do and I have answered, with good intentions, “OK, Lord, I’ll get back to it…… tomorrow”. Because He never gives up, He has, now, started sending people (not one or two but lots of people) to ask me why I stopped writing my blog, people I didn’t even know were reading it in the first place! I give up, Lord… Today is the day!

I hate roller coaster rides… I don’t like to feel as if I am falling with no one to catch me. But I have been on a 13 month “yeehaw ride“ that makes roller coasters look like child’s play! For me, it all started with double knee replacement last June. My last post went out just before the surgery and in my “delusions of grandeur” I thought I would have days on end to read and write on my blog while I recuperated…. LOLOLOLOL! Who knew my brain would go on a long hiatus? I am not pushing meds, but, honestly, pain pills when you have double knee replacement, are a necessary evil! And my brains went to mush!!! My sweet husband, who became chief cook and bottle washer at our house, would ask, “Sandy, do you want tea or water for supper?” … I had no idea, I was a blank, and for a million dollars I couldn’t have made that decision with any accuracy! The simplest thought processes became monumental. Enough said! Thank goodness I didn’t try to blog!

Just as I was starting to return to normal, 8 weeks into my recovery, Bill and I were in a horrible wreck. Praise God, my knees were undamaged and both Bill and I survived as did the little girl who hit us. But it was not without some serious injuries. While Bill had some bad scrapes and bruises, I ended up being life-flighted to Altoona Hospital with a collapsed lung, 4 broken ribs and more pain meds!!! Funny story…. The first night in ICU, I was praising God all night long that my knees weren’t bothering me at all because usually I had a hard time getting comfortable… no discomfort, no pain, what a miracle!   I kept thanking Him for taking care of my knees and allowing me to just concentrate on my ribs and lung! A nurse came in as I was praying out loud and I was telling her about my miracle, my new knees were barely 8 weeks old and they weren’t bothering me at all! She started to laugh and almost couldn’t stop… her next words were…. “Honey, pain meds work all over your body not just on your ribs!” Then, it hit me…I would have laughed, myself, but it was too painful – broken ribs! (My brains had once again turned to mush!) I am sure God was laughing too! He has a great sense of humor!

Fall came with Thanksgiving and then on to Christmas. We were praising God for His goodness. He had indeed been faithful and restored us fully, beyond what we could have imagined. I healed completely and life got back to normal, whatever that is… (by the way… I LUV my new knees! ) Bill hung up his apron and went back to doing “guy stuff” and I returned to being chief cook and bottle washer! New Year’s Eve was celebrated with great gusto… our sweet neighbors had experienced a 2016 equally as chaotic as ours … surgery and a wreck for them as well… so we rejoiced (partied hardy, actually, which included noise makers and funny hats ) to see 2016 end, at last.

Bring on 2017!!! And it began with much promise! March was glorious! My parents celebrated their 75^th wedding anniversary. Such a rare and precious experience! Only .01% of all marriages reach that milestone, heady stuff! At 95 and 97 years of age, both of them are healthy and doing well, so cute and still very much in love. God has so blessed our entire family! Their legacy is amazing! Children and grandchildren are all following in their steps with sound marriages and wonderful families! Bill and I just celebrated our 50^th anniversary and our daughter, Wendy and her awesome husband, Robert, will celebrate their 25^th anniversary, all in 2017. God is good!

Still on a high and rejoicing in God’s goodness in 2017, April came with the promise of spring. And then… our family was rocked with a tragedy of crushing proportions … we lost our precious daughter-in-law, Nikki. She was bright, beautiful, full of promise and only 30 years old… there were no answers to the whys and this time, there were no pain meds for the ache! Picking up the pieces has been an ordeal for us all, both our family and Nikki’s, but God has been so faithful and He has been there every step of the way with His love and strength. Our son, Dusty, has been amazing! It has been hard to watch him and not be able to help as he traverses this tough path, but he has walked through this nightmare with his heart broken and yet with such a quiet spirit in the midst of the storm. He is strong in the Lord and God has brought him to a place of peace (still waters). Nikki’s memory will never be far from our hearts, there are tears on occasion and a remaining hole in our family but life goes on. I find myself asking so often, how can anyone survive such pain without the Living God at the center of life?   He has been so close and so real. The Healer is at work!

So, here I sit in July, 2017, thinking about all that has happened in the past year and about all I have learned along the way, about myself and about life in general, at the gentle hands of the Holy Spirit. Even gently, some lessons have come to me like a smack to the back of my head, very humbling!   Who knew I still have so much to learn???   God, of course…

LESSONS I LEARNED IN THE CRUCIBLE!

1. God is God and I am not!
2. God is always faithful, even when I am not… He is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow with no shadow of turning. I can trust Him every minute of my life and He will always be a very present help in time of need. (Heb. 4:16)
3. I am not as much in control of my life as I thought. I am the kind of person with plan A, B and C and if all else fails, pray! The Lord once told me, when I was in another crucible, I was holding on to the things of the world so tightly that I had let the kingdom of God slip through my fingers. I am learning to hold on to God and His Kingdom and to give Him complete control (or should I say, relinquish my control) and to be at peace with having no “fall back” plan of my own. (Matt. 6: 25-33)
4. Plans for your future don’t always work out like you thought. But God’s plan is always best! (Jer. 29:11)
5. Receiving kindness and help from others is really hard when you are an independent minded person with a Type-A personality (personal pride is at the heart of that… and it’s not attractive). Allow people to be gracious to you, to help you and to be an encouragement, because they are blessed in the process.
6. Out of the abundance of your heart, your mouth speaks – we talk a good game when the pressure is off, but, when in the crucible, the abundance of your heart is laid bare… Beware!!! (Matt. 12:34-37)
7. The Holy Spirit really is the Comforter, Teacher, and Intercessor and I need His presence every day. I am not nearly as smart as I like to think I am!
8. Keep it simple stupid! Enough said…
9. Patience is a fruit of the Spirit that He produces in us and that grows stronger when exercised with life’s struggles … it is not a product of our doing or struggling nor is it an answer to our prayers… It comes to us when we are rooted and grounded in the Lord, as do the other precious fruits of the Spirit that we desperately need when trouble comes… love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, and temperance. Fruit should be produced BEFORE the storm hits… it’s practically impossible for God to produce any fruit in us when the winds are at gale force! And that’s our fault, not His! (Gal.5:22-25, Eph. 3:17-21)
10. You can be sympathetic with others when they are going through trials (a safe place to be), but once you have been through those trials yourself, you become tender and empathetic toward hurting people and that has its own personal pain.
11. When going through a storm you sometimes wonder where God is, but when the storm blows over, you can clearly see His fingerprints through it all from beginning to end, you just have to look! (Is. 43:2)
12. What the devil means for evil in your life, God will turn to good because He loves us and that love is constant and unchanging. (Rom. 8:28, 35-39)
13. Praising God in the middle of the storm is really hard, but it brings the peace that passes understanding to guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Don’t dwell on the circumstances of life, but think on the God of our victory. When Paul was chained in one of the worst prisons in the Roman Empire,  he was teaching this lesson…” Rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice! “ He didn’t mean to rejoice in the misery you face, but rather to rejoice in the God who makes the way out. Don’t dwell on your struggles and the storm but think on the God who is true, honest, just, pure, lovely, virtuous and of good report. Then fear and anxiety are dispelled by the Spirit of power, love and a sound mind.   (Phil. 4:4-8, II Tim. 1:7)
14. God is not the source of our troubles, He never gives us pain and heart ache to punish us or teach us lessons. He has no evil in Him, only goodness… (Only good and perfect gifts come from God…James 1:17)   Troubles and heartaches are common to all of us in this fallen world, sometimes it’s a matter of reaping what we have sown, ourselves, but, when trouble comes He makes the way out! I Cor. 10:13 Press in, listen to Him and let Him lead you like the loving Shepherd that he is … He will lead you to still waters and green pastures! He will restore your soul! (Ps. 23:2-3) And our testimony of deliverance, preservation and blessing always brings glory to our gracious and loving Father!

 

 

 

 

On a morning show, some time ago, I enjoyed an interview with the cutest little couple celebrating their 75^th wedding anniversary.  As they sat on the sofa holding hands, someone asked them what the secret was to their 75 year romance and without hesitation, the little lady spoke up and said…. “I always let him have my way!”   There is some truth to that, Happy wife… happy life,   but there is so much more that goes into the glue that holds two people together through the rigors of life for 75 years.

Love never gives up         
Love cares more for others than for self  
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have    
Love doesn’t strut            
Doesn’t have a swelled head         
Doesn’t force itself on others       
Isn’t always “me first”     
Doesn’t fly off the handle              
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others   
Doesn’t revel when others grovel
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth  
Puts up with anything                   
Trusts God always           
Always looks for the best               
Never looks back              
Buts keeps going to the end..       
Love never dies!
I Cor. 13  The Message     
God IS love! (I John 4)     

The God kind of love is the super glue for successful marriages.  Those words, in I Corinthians are spoken at wedding after wedding  (in King James English, of course) but there are some who never grasp the true meaning and few there are who do grasp it and have the opportunity to live it out for 50 or 75 years.  The US Government Bureau of Vital Statistics records that about 5% of all married couples in the United States ever celebrate a 50^th  wedding  anniversary  and the number that  get to celebrate a 75^th wedding  anniversary  is so small that it’s almost immeasurable.  Just think of it, a 75^th wedding anniversary celebration is a very rare occurrence!

So we are blessed to be a part of such an uncommon celebration with uncommonly special people.   Mom and Dad, Congratulations!   You are amazing!   You have lived your lives well!  Now, I’m not saying it was easy or perfect.  Heaven knows when you put two strong willed people together (notice I didn’t say bull headed or stubborn) there are bound to be some serious “gee-haw” moments.  There is no doubt that Mom allowed Dad to have her way plenty of times … and  I am also sure, knowing my Dad, that he had  his share of “I told you so” moments along the way.   But no matter the ups and downs, the high and lows, the gees and haws,  the Super Glue of love has held tight all these many wonderful years.

The Love Story of Frank and Frances:

As told by an inside observer

In God’s cosmic universe where everything is measured in light years, 75 years is no more than a blip on the time clock, but on planet earth, where God chose to plant humanity, it’s a life time.  It’s a lifetime authored and fashioned by God, Himself.  We,  both  willing and unwilling participants (depending on our stubborn wills) , are often surprised to look back and see His finger prints all through our pasts but God is faithful even when we are not!  He has a plan for each of us and He had a plan for Frank and Frances!   And when they finally met in 1941, He wasn’t surprised!   He knew what was to come and I am sure He was smiling!

It all began on June 2, 1941 in Birmingham, Alabama.    Frances ( the heroine of our story) , a Sulligent girl, was living and working in Birmingham and she lived in a boarding house with a friend, Ralph Jackson, who was also from Sulligent.  On June 2^nd there was a special dance at Boutwell Auditorium where Guy Lombardo was playing that night and Ralph wanted to go.  He invited Frances to join him for the evening and she accepted.   Another young man had come to the dance, as well, Frank (the hero in the story).   Now, Ralph and Frank worked together and were friends so when they all met at the dance, Ralph made the introductions.  And as Guy Lombardo was playing in the background, Cupid’s arrows hit their mark!  As Frances later recorded… “It was love at first sight”!  Frank had met his sharp angel!

From the outset, their courtship was fraught with difficulties.  Both Frances and Frank were working and on top of that, Frank was going to school at Samford University.   For 9 months, they struggled to date around shift schedules and classes until it got to be too much for Frank and he began to fall asleep in class.  His professor finally told him… “something had to go… the job, school or Frances”!    But you know the old saying, “love conquers all” so they decided, instead of getting rid of anything, to just get married.  Problem solved!

Not so fast!  You see, in an attempt to make life easier for themselves, they ended up trading one set of problems for another! They learned very quickly that you don’t just marry a person,  you marry INTO the whole family!   And so…their families got involved…  Strong Southern Baptists vs. Devout Roman Catholics and never the twain shall meet!  No one but Frances and Frank were happy about their plans to get married!  Frances’ family, all Southern Baptists, were worried about her marrying a Catholic (especially because they thought all Catholics had dozens of kids)  and Frank’s family, Roman Catholics, were not at all happy that he was marrying a non-Catholic regardless of her denomination!  (They believed that no marriage but a Catholic one was the real deal!)    It would have been so much easier for everyone if someone had just explained to them that God is non-denominational!    But there was no satisfying everyone, whatever they decided to do, someone was not going to be happy!

Undaunted by the difficulties, our two brave lovers took the bull by the horns, so to speak, and on March 14, 1942 at Pike Avenue Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama they had their wedding.  Sadly, Frances’ dad had passed away at Christmas, but her mother came by train to be there with them.  Her brother James had just been drafted and was on the way to Fort. McClellan and the rest of her brothers and sister couldn’t be there either.  Her friend Ralph and his new wife, Lorraine, were there and for them both, and Frank’s older brother, Edmond and his wife Helen were there.  Reverend Theo Harris did the honors and in a simple ceremony with no flowers, the two of them were married.  The crowd may have been small and the wedding simple, but most importantly, God was there blessing that marriage!  “A man shall leave his father and his mother and shall cleave to his wife: and they shall be one flesh.”  Amen.  It should be noted that no ill will was wanted by anyone and so sometime later, their marriage was blessed by a Catholic priest.  Now, all was as well as could be expected.

They had a one night honeymoon at the Bankhead Hotel.  Frances recalls sitting in the window of the room a good portion of the night looking out the window at the beautiful view… needless to say there was nervousness all around!  But the two of them look back on that evening with a warm smile and fond memories!  (Just a side note:  the total cost for their honeymoon was $5.00)

The happy couple began married life with, to quote Frances,” not even a nickel in their jeans pockets” but they had big dreams in their hearts.   They spent the first couple of months living with Frances’ aunt Madge and Uncle Harp.  They were given the front bedroom  in the house and Frank and Frances  never closed the door for fear that the family might think they were up to something… but, at last,  they found a little apartment  near West End in Birmingham and then, later,  moved into an apartment on 22^nd St. and Highland Avenue.

World War II was in full force now and most of the men had gone off to war.  Frances worked for Salmon and Cowan, a mining engineering firm and Mr. Cowan was head of the draft board.  He believed that having mining engineers in the US was more important than sending them off to war so, since Frank was studying Mining Engineering, he hadn’t been drafted.  However, as more and more of the young men Frank knew were enlisting or being drafted, he felt he needed to enlist as well.  Frances mentioned it to her boss, Mr. Cowan, and in a few days Frank had his 1-A notice and he was drafted.  He was off to Ft. McClellan for training before being shipped overseas.    Frances went with another couple to Fort McClellan for a one night visit before Frank was shipped out.  The 4 of them shared a room at a motel that night and in the morning they said their last good-byes for a two year separation.

At home, Frances went to work for Ream Manufacturing, a company that made 88mm gun shells and she continued to live in Birmingham.  James, her brother, lived with her for a year and then her youngest sister, Peggy lived with her and went to West End High School for a year.   Her dear friend Flossie Leonard  who worked at Ream with her was like a sister to her during that two years as well .   She wrote Frank faithfully and I am sure, spent a lot of time on her knees in prayer.

Frank, was fighting in the European Theater and he eventually ended up in the Battle of the Bulge, where, in the middle of the snowy,  bitter cold winter , his feet froze and that ended his duration at the front!  He was taken to a Military Hospital in England where he spent months recuperating.  He, too, was a faithful letter writer and the two stayed in as close a touch as was possible for the times.   The blessing was that he got to keep his feet and they worked just fine!  I have no doubt that the prayers of Frances and both families, was the perfect healing agent!  And after two years of army life, Frank was finally on his way home in May of 1946.  Can you imagine the reunion of these two love birds after two years of being apart?  I am sure it was glorious!!!

Frank had been promised a job when he returned and he went to work for Republic Steel in their mining division.  They bought a lovely little home at 1121 40^th St. West in Birmingham and began to raise a family.  In 1947 the “Hell-like” baby arrived, Sandra Flo, and according to all accounts, the nurse who put the beads on her bracelet was actually a prophet.  Sandra screamed and cried almost non-stop for the first 6 months of her life.  Most couples would have thrown in the towel, but not these to love birds.  Next, came Frank Waldrop and now they were fast out-growing their little bungalow and so they moved into a lovely home on  210 St. Charles Street in Edgewood, where William Dempsey was born and then,  in 1955 Thomas Michael made his debut.  Now, with  some dismay that so many little Hillekes were  arriving, the Southern Baptist faction of the family was more convinced  than ever that it was true that Roman Catholics had dozens of babies.  It was with some relief to all that Tommy was actually the last of the Hilleke brood for Frank and Frances… 4 was a good round number!  And the 6 of them lived happily (with a few bumps and bruises along the way)  at 210 St. Charles Street until the fledglings, one by one, began to fly out of the nest.

Raising 4 kids must have been challenging, word has it that very few do it and remain sane.  But Frances and Frank (perhaps even unknown to themselves) had the wisdom to do it well.  It is often said that the best gift a dad can give his children it to love their mother but I will take liberties with that and say… the best gift parents can give their children is to love God and to love each other!   And love each other, they did!  I am sure, like all married couples, they had their rough patches, but to the kids… they were always a united front!  They were the source and cause of all 4 children having that very serious “drug” problem.  They were drug to church when the doors were opened, drug to visit family, drug on family outings, drug to Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts and the list goes on…   Between ballet lessons and baseball games, the craziness of visits to the emergency room and  other “kid” issues that crop up every day, the family was busy and thriving…organized chaos!  Frances and Frank were working, Frank took time to study and pass his professional engineering test ( which is no easy feat),   they were raising a family and still, they had time to sing love songs (and other tunes as well) harmonizing  in the kitchen, driving in the car and even with other friends like Betty and Dick King.  There is an allegory there about harmony in the chaos of life!

On two separate occasions, Frank had to leave Frances and the 4 kids at home for extended work-related trips. How Frances managed to ride herd on 4 kids alone for all that time was definitely a miracle.  Only God could have helped with that!  I can only imagine the amount of prayer that went up from 210 St. Charles Street!    The first trip was between 1959 and 1960 when he went to Liberia, Africa for three months (give or take a few weeks).  He was helping open coal mines in this young Republic under President Tubman.  He returned bearing amazing things besides pictures and stories. There were ebony figures, a hand carved  set of ivory elephants , beautiful fabrics,  for Sandra, the most amazing rock collection ever but the most astounding gift was pigmy hippos that were donated to the Birmingham zoo!  The next trip several years later was to Union Town, PA for 4 months.  This one entailed an amazing adventure!  Frances, our fearless heroine, was again literally keeping the home fires burning, it was winter!  At Christmas, it was decided that Frances would load up all 4 kids and drive, ALONE, almost 900 miles to Union Town to meet Frank and they would drive home stopping in Washington, DC so the kids could see the capitol city.  What could go wrong?  They left early one morning and about two hours into the trip, the kids began to say “I think I have seen this place before”  … it soon  became evident as they passed more and more familiar places,  Frances, in horror, realized she had taken a wrong turn and they were heading back to Birmingham!  If she cried, no one knew it, all the kids were enjoying the adventure… playing games, counting cows,  singing … no one can forget “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”… it was repeated  and repeated and repeated!  Poor Frances!  But that strong willed spirit of hers put her back in the right direction and she actually did make it to Union Town and they all made it home for Christmas!

Every year that passed, they made sure to celebrate their love story by going out to Joes’s Ranch House for dinner and dancing.  They would dress to the 9s and leave the kids behind for a romantic night where there were no interruptions ( no one yelling, “Mom”  or “Dad”  or  the phone ringing or stopping squabbles or doing homework )… just Guy Lombardo, their memories and a lovely, peaceful evening!

In 1967 they achieved their first marriage mile stone, their silver wedding anniversary,  25 years of marriage!  Besides, a celebratory evening at Joes Ranch House, there was a celebration with all the family.  A Silver wedding anniversary is, especially in today’s world, a remarkable feat, in itself!  But the story continues…

Frances began to sell real estate with Caffee Realty in Birmingham and out of that, they found and moved into a beautiful home on Tara Lane Drive in Hoover.  Bill and Tommy went with them, Bill was already at Auburn but Tommy finished his schooling at Hoover High School before going to Auburn, himself.  The nest was empty, so to speak!  And there was more time for fun… Frances took up bowling for a while and then… the Ping Pong matches began.  Frank and Frances, two strong willed competitors butting heads (not literally, of course) over the ping pong table at night after work… the matches were often  serious and life threatening!  It would be no exaggeration to say they both walked away from one such match, one sporting a black eye and the other a fat lip!   But despite the vicious nature of their ping pong competition,  when the game was over, they would hug and make up and love reigned supreme!

Frank’s work took a surprising twist and even though it was hard (a bit heart breaking for them both, to leave family, friends and Frances’ work behind)  the two of them pulled up roots and moved to Northport,  Alabama  where they started all over again finding a church, making friends and building a new life.  It was obvious that God was in the move because, He brought them into a wonderful, loving community and they flourished.  Frank worked a few more years for Republic Steel and then retired and went to work at the University of Alabama ( I like to say he temporarily went over to the dark side but others in this family would disagree)He worked with the students in the Mining Engineering department.  With kids gone, they both had plenty time to enjoy life. They got involved in lots of church and community activities such as Frank painting houses with the young people at church and Frances being a part of Meals on Wheels.   They took up golf, which was a passion for Frank (his biggest goal was always to be able to shoot his age… of course, the older he got, the better the chances were that he would succeed…).  Mom took up golf, as well, and she also got back into bridge playing with her new girlfriends, another serious competitive sport.

Just before their 33^rd anniversary, a storm of seismic proportions hit the family.  It was a storm that rocked the world for all of them.  Frances was just getting out of the hospital from major surgery when the call came that Tommy had been killed in an automobile accident.  It was the worst possible agony that anyone could suffer… to lose a child!  Storms like this have been known to break up families and leave complete devastation in their wake.  But Frank and Frances held the family tight and with the support and love of their dearest friends and all of the family, they were able to steer everyone through the roughest waters into the calm.  Still with aching hearts, they all found that they had grown closer, everyone was quicker to say “I love you” and to be sure to never take each other for granted.  There was a thankfulness that God had been with them through it all and had been their strength and would still be with them as they all moved forward!  “

“Therefore, whosoever hears these sayings of mine and does them I will liken him unto a wise man which built his house upon a rock.  And the rain descended and the floods came and the winds blew and beat upon that house and it fell not for it was founded upon a rock.”  Matt. 7:24-25

Life seemed to gather steam again as the grandchildren made their appearance in the world.   The List:  Not by age, but by family…. Wendy and Dusty, Leasha, Ginger ,  and Pepper, Tommy and Katie.  Beach trips and wonderful noisy Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations kept everyone close and the love seemed to multiply as the grandkids came along, grew up  and then started families of their own.  Frank and Frances continued to hold forth as the family Patriarchs and they kept knitting the family together as new members arrived.    Wendy and Robert had Andrew and Will, Leasha and Paul had Jacob, Claire and Paige, Ginger and Kevin had Vance, Alex and Grey, Pepper and Jeff had Laney, Forrest and Olivia, Tommy and Polly had Kellly, Daniel, Dax and  Bodie, and Katie and Scott had Helen and Morgan.

How do you count the blessings?  The seeds of love sown so many years ago were still producing fruit!  Not just in progeny, but in the marriages of their children, Sandra and Bill, Frank and Sheila, and Bill and Denise had now celebrated 25^th anniversaries and were pressing toward the mark of 50 years together, themselves.  That is the testimony of Love sown!   Today, even some of their grandchildren are close to celebrating 25^th anniversaries.  (Just an interesting note here: This year, 2017… Frances and Frank are celebrating their 75^th anniversary, their daughter Sandra and her husband Bill will be celebrating their 50th anniversary and their granddaugter, Wendy and her husband Robert will be celebrating their 25^th anniversary!  3 milestones in one family in the same year… what are the odds?)   Quite a remarkable achievement!  And the recipe still holds…. Love of God and love of each other!

(Three oldest daughters, Mother, Daughter, Granddaughter celebrating 75th, 50th and 25th anniversaries in 2017)

In 1992, Frances and Frank celebrated their 50^th anniversary and they entered the rare and heady 5% of marriages that ever get to celebrate that auspicious day.   Of course, there was a big celebration  with lots of family and friends.  They made a splash at St. Marks as the entire congregation celebrated with them and, well, it should have been celebrated!

Some people look at 50 years as the winding down time in their lives but not Frances and Frank. Young at heart and still full of fun, they had much more living to do.  Still busy at church and working in civic activities, playing golf and bridge, they just put one foot in front of the other and kept going.  They began to check things off their bucket list, for example, with Frank and Sheila and Sandy and Bill in tow for several of their adventures, there was the trip to Jackson Hole Wyoming, a dream of Franks.  The dare devil couple (in their 80s) went horseback riding, rafting down the rapids on Snake River and  buffalo, elk and bear hunting (with cameras, of course).  Then there was the trip to Niagra Falls and the Finger Lake Wineries and back to Sandy and Bill’s house in Pennsylvania .  There were lots of fine wines tasted along the way but in the end everyone agreed that Frank’s homemade brew was by far the best!  Fortunately, Frank had brought along a bottle or two from his own winery and everyone partook gratuitously of the same!  One could say… a good time was had by all!

They say age is just a number and Frank and Frances have demonstrated that to us all. The secret to staying young is in your attitude not in the latitude of your birthdays.  Keeping a young mind and heart and fanning the flames of love between them has kept them, in a sense, ageless.   True,  the effects of gravity have taken a toll and body parts don’t work as well as they used to, and infirmities have tried to get them down,  but with sharp minds and stubborn determination,  this Ever Ready couple keeps going and going and going…

When I come home for long visits, one of the most precious times of the day for me with them is watching them as they head for bed.  They stop in the hallway and (in a scary moment…) they let go of their walkers and cling to each other for a sweet minute, they kiss good night and wish each other sweet dreams.  The practical part of me is going “Woowoowoowoo… don’t fall”!  But my heart is full and sometimes a tear sneaks out of my eyes… thinking how fiercely proud I am of my parents and about that lovely, loving couple that has blessed so many of us across the years and for generations to come.  Love of God and Love of each other ..that is the love that never fails!

Thank you, Frank and Frances, Dad and Mom, Mother Frances and Daddy Frank, Pances and Paco… for the gift you have given us all!  We will take your love for us where ever we go and we will always love you to the moon and back and into eternity!

And the Story Continues because Love never dies….

 

I live in gorgeous farming country in Pennsylvania and I see huge silos everywhere, all sizes and styles. But, being a city girl, beyond my freezer, I have no understanding of crop storage. The only thing I know about those huge structures is that they are full of a promise of provision. It makes me wonder about the silos that Joseph filled for Pharaoh during the 7 year period of prosperity. I have a lot of ferret questions about those silos, past and present. For instance, why are most of them round and not square and how do they fill the silos, from the top or the bottom? The ancient silos in Egypt had stair cases that lead to the top and most of their structures were underground so they weren’t very tall, but modern silos…. no stairs. Hum! So, do they use a crane to fill them from the top?  How much grain will they hold? How do they keep the silage from rotting or molding? Does the building material matter? Some are brick, some stone. Newer ones are like big steel buildings. See what I mean? I used to just drive past them and they were no more than a part of the scenery until I had an amazing experience, God was teaching me more about His farming system on the other side of sowing and reaping… stores of grace heaped up for us! Woop! Woop!

God has a way of illustrating and explaining things to me by putting images in my “imagination” and then He teaches me what the image means.   One night, many years ago, I saw a massive ancient silo in a field. It reached so high that I couldn’t see the top. But there were clouds around the top and a white dove was circling it.  It was made of stone and it had two gigantic wooden doors at the bottom, held shut by a massive wooden cross beam. (I wish I was an artist so I could draw the picture for you!) At the bottom of the doors there were many little holes gnawed in the wood so that grain would pour out of the bottom of the silo onto the ground. There were hundreds of little creatures feeding on the grain… birds, rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks (maybe even a ferret or two!). They were all having a fine feast and I just knew that they thought this was the most ample supply of food that they would ever have and they were rejoicing in the plentiful flow. I watched the scene for a while and the grain continued to pour out from under the door as the little animals gnawed bigger holes and scratched out the grain and more and more creatures gathered for the feast. It was beautiful to watch! I couldn’t take my eyes off of the little creatures and how happy they seemed to be. Beyond an initial glance upward at the beginning of the vision, I never looked up again, I just focused on the bountiful feast and the little creatures. I don’t know how long I watched before the Holy Spirit, the teacher and revelator, spoke to my heart.

There are 2 verses that matter here, John 14:26 “…the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you”;   John 16: 13-15 “Howbeit, when he, the Spirit of Truth comes, he will guide you into all truth; for he shall not speak of himself but whatsoever he shall hear that shall he speak; and he will show you things to come……he shall receive of mine and shall show it to you. All things that the Father has are mine; therefore said I, that he shall take of mine and show it unto you.” And with that, The Holy Spirit began to teach me about the silo.

He explained that the creatures in the grain are the “Church”. They, like me, are drawn to the bounty lying on the ground, and they never look up past the holes in the bottom of the doors. They believe they are feasting on God’s best blessings and that this supply is as good as it gets because they rely on what they see. And as far as they can see, scattered across the field, the grain keeps flowing.   They believe that God is good and God’s grace is abundant but words like “good” and “abundant grace” are defined, in them, by their own personal experiences. In their minds, God is as big and good and full of grace as their experiences tell them He is.

The Holy Spirit told me to look up toward the top of the silo, so I strained my eyes trying to see all the way to top of it, of course, that was impossible. I suddenly felt weak and dwarfed, overcome by the vast size of it, and then He quoted this scripture to me. I Cor. 2: 9-10 “But as it is written, Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him. But God (I still love that phrase!) has revealed them unto us by His Spirit…”   OMG!!!!! I was stunned!

The Holy Spirit went on saying that God, the ultimate farmer, has a storehouse of His grace and blessings that cannot be comprehended by the mind of man. And He desires to show Himself to His people in the TRUE and FULL abundance of blessings that He has stored up for them. But, sadly, He is unable to do so. Of course, my question was… WHY? His answer…“because the church is standing in the way”! WHAT? How can we be in His way? And the Spirit went on… If He opened the doors and allowed the deluge of blessings to flow all at once, it would overwhelm (the creatures) His church! Some creatures would scatter in fear and never return and some would be overcome and buried by the flood, of course, some would react quickly and stay in the flow, but the feast, as they know it, would be wiped out. Would that mean that the church would be shattered by the impact of the deluge? I couldn’t even think of what God was saying! All I knew, in my heart, was that the silo was filled with a fearful, awesome and overwhelming store… who could ever handle that?

Then, the Holy Spirit gave me a flash photo in my mind and I saw another picture of God barely cracking the doors on the silo, and The Holy Spirit was unleashed on the baby church in Jerusalem. The Pharisees and Sadducees never knew what hit them, they were buried by the deluge and they were never revived! The Holy Spirit explained that they were putting their faith in their own ability to chew the holes in the door and scratch out the grain for themselves. They had no idea of the true source of those blessings, they never looked up! The sound of the wind (the rush of the blessing flowing out) was powerful enough to bring thousands of curious on-lookers to see what was going on, the disciples, who were expecting to receive “something”, heard the deafening sound, saw the fire dancing above their heads and out of their mouths came tongues they had never learned. They were suddenly swimming in the abundance of grace that was pouring out from the doors of the silo and they boldly began to invite the on- lookers to share in the flow of God’s blessings. You see, they had looked up when Jesus left them and the Angel told them to keep looking up because Jesus would come again the way He left. Yup! Today’s church would definitely be in the way! Some would ride the wave because they had looked up and understood the silo, some would run in fear because they didn’t even know there was a silo, they only know the blessing flowing from under the doors by their own good works and, finally, some would be overwhelmed and buried, self-absorbed in their own pile of blessings thinking they had amassed the blessings themselves, never knowing what hit them…   I wanted to cry. Would the doors open further, would the new participants get in the way of the outpouring or would the gush keep coming, carrying everyone with it?

I was suddenly taken back to the original image of the silo, the doors were closed and the little creatures were safe. Now, I could feel God’s heart! He loves those little creatures but He also has a need to open the doors of the silo to let His full blessing flow. The world, which he loves with equal passion, is in desperate need of the Silo’s contents, they have been in spiritual famine too long. What is to be done? My heart was broken!

The Holy Spirit continued to quote more of I Cor. 2: 10- 16 “…The Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God… Now we have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit of God; that we might KNOW the things that are freely given to us of God….which the Holy Ghost teaches; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man (a man who defines God by his own fleshly experiences – my explanation) receives not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned…But we have the mind of Christ.”

So that was it…we have to get the church to LOOK UP! We have to discern, spiritually, God’s silo filled with the abundance of God’s grace and blessings with a potential of power that is beyond our understanding. (Eph. 3: 20 “Now to Him who is able to [carry out His purpose and ] do superabundantly more than all we dare ask or think [infinitely beyond our greatest prayers, hopes or dreams]…”)  And we have to be prepared and so strong and rooted in His love that, instead of being overwhelmed by that unfathomable gush of grace, those blessings will flow through us to the world instead of crushing us! Whew! No pun intended… but that is a “tall” order!

I think all of us sense that the creation time clock is running down, now. Jesus, in his explanation of the end times (Matt. 24, Luke 22) said it would be like the days of Noah, people would be eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage and, in Genesis, we see that there was also great violence and rage and every imagination of men was evil continually. But Noah, who dared to look up found his deliverance and blessing in God’s storehouse. The skies opened and the land was covered with water, but Noah was supremely blessed, the ark was full of the outpouring of God’s grace.  In II Timothy 3: 1-7, men in the last days are described as totally reprobate… having a form of religion but denying the power thereof, ever learning but never coming to the TRUTH! Jesus says “look up”….   In the midst of the worst storms, the silo still stands strong and it has the blessings of God that we need, not only to survive, but to thrive as we farm the world for a harvest!

There are a lot of lessons to be learned from that silo, but recognizing God’s storehouse and understanding the purpose of the silo comes first! OK! I see a lot of ferret trails coming from this silo! Woohoo!!! Little moon walk, twist and shout!!!

FARMING GOD’S WAY (PART 2)

I love to read the stuff people put on the back of their cars, don’t you?   Without any formal introductions, you can learn a lot about the people behind the wheel… their personality traits, what they do for a living, what their hobbies are, what their political views are, their family make-up and even about their faith or lack thereof. The other day I pulled up behind a car that had a John Deere sticker on the top of the back window and at the bottom of the window, in smaller print, were these words… “I make dirt beautiful”. OMG! It took my breath away! Almost immediately a silly thought flashed across my mind… God would put that sticker on the back of His car, if He drove one! His business card would probably read something like this: “Garden of Eden Farms, International … Agricultural Expert and Consultant…. In the business of making Dirt Beautiful… Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and the door will be opened to you, 24/7”.   And there it was, an opening for my next ferret “farming” trip! Woop, woop!!! J

Where to begin? Hum! Let’s dive back into Genesis chapters 1 and 2, familiar trails where we found that God was actually the first farmer and that He planned for farming to be a family business.   We found that every living thing is made of dirt and science confirms that, because all life has the same chemical composition as dirt. God prepared the soil with life-infusing power, and from it, sprang all of His feed crops, grasses and herbs with life perpetuating seed in them and trees that bear fruit that contain life perpetuating seeds in them. Then He populated Eden with animals which included cows, sheep, horses and every exotic creature He imagined to live in the air, on land and in the sea. Then, He molded Adam, (designed to carry on the family Agri-business) out of the moist clay of the garden.   God was very specific in his job description: one who would guard the garden, subdue it, have dominion over it and he was to till the ground. The word, till, in Hebrew is aw bad’ which literally means, husbandman, or a farmer and everything a farmer does. So Adam was meant to carry on the business of “making dirt beautiful”, just like his own beautiful, perfect dirt that God had created and beautified with His divine essence!

Of course, we know that Adam corrupted his dirt when he fell. Sadly, because all dirt is connected, when Adam fell, the ground, itself, and everything made of that dirt fell as well. (Romans 8:18-23) Look at Genesis 3:17-19…”…because you have listened to the voice of your wife and you have eaten of the tree, of which I commanded you, saying you shall not eat of it, cursed is the ground for your sake (because of you). In sorrow you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns also and thistles shall it bring fourth to you and you shall eat the herb of the field; in the sweat of your face shall you eat bread, till you return unto the ground, for out of it were you taken; for dust you are and unto dust shall you return.” Adam had just unbeautified his own dirt! How sad! Even more pitiful, he tried to make his corrupted body presentable by covering it in fig leaves, which was impossible. LOL! I can sort of identify. I have a calendar titled “If You Can’t Lose It, Decorate it” and I love that calendar because it gets real about our “dirt” and how to make it presentable regardless of how it has turned out. The thing I have learned is that an unattractive body is still unattractive even in a designer dress! UGH! Oh my! Sorry, I got us off on a funky little ferret trail! Back to the main tunnel…. So, Adam had ruined his own dirt and had no power to make it beautiful again…

But God…..!!!   I still love that phrase….(Eph. 1:4-7) God, who had an alternate plan from before the foundations of the earth, made a way to come to the earth in the form of a man (made of dirt). By his death and resurrection, He reversed the curse on all dirt! (Gal. 3:13, I Cor. 15:45-49) And we, who receive this gift, have a new seed in us, the reproducing seed of God! Check out I John 3:9 and I Peter 1:23 “…being born again, not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible, by the Word of God.” So, now, God is the husbandman, farming in us (from the inside – out).   He planted His good seed in us and He expects to bring in a harvest of good fruit from us, so that we, by our fruit, can resume farming in the world, solely by the power of God. It’s a little confusing but hang in there! Little chair boogie here!!!! Woohoo!

Okay!   We have gone from being farmers to being “farmed” by the ultimate farmer, God, with the aid and power of His Holy Spirit! The Word tells us that God is a “fruit” farmer! (Somehow that fits! LOLOL!) He chose to be our husbandman in grape vineyards and fruit orchards. (Fruit bearing trees are a type of humanity in scripture.  So we are trees!) In both, the vineyard and the fruit trees,  first, the seedlings are expected to be beautiful and eventually bear fruit. Second, the worth of the trees is judged by the quality of their fruit. If the fruit isn’t good, pity the tree! (Think of it… the fig tree full of leaves, but with no fruit, was cursed and didn’t get another chance,  unfruitful or poorly fruited branches are lopped off and thrown in the fire…. YUCK!) Third, the quality of the fruit is determined by where, and in what medium, the roots are planted. And, finally, in God’s vineyards and orchards, the plants are subject to the hand of the husbandman, God, Himself.

Ferret question… Why did God choose to refer to our beautiful lives as a type of trees and not as animals? I have a theory… in Genesis: 1:19-24, God described all animal life as having movement. Animal life is independent in that God’s creatures can move about, make decisions about where to go, what to eat and how to defend or protect themselves on a very basic level. Hebrew scholars say that animal life with “NePhesh” (a soul) have the freedom of independent movement. Trees, on the other hand depend totally on a husbandman (God or God’s environment) for their well-being, not being able to move or make determinations for themselves. I think of all those times I “planted” my kids, firmly, on a stool to clip hair, or brush hair, to clean teeth and even bandage a booboo, they couldn’t be still for even a minute! How many times has God said to us “Be still and know I am God”, and we couldn’t do it? God speaks of it in Matt. 6:28-29 “…Consider the lilies of the field, how they toil not, neither do they spin…if God, who clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you?…” So plants/trees, who can do nothing for themselves, and must rely, totally, on the creator to make them beautiful and to produce fruit in them! And He is faithful….

I don’t know about you, but I have heard innumerable sermons on our responsibility to love our neighbor as ourselves, to be kind and thoughtful, and  faithful, to ask for patience, and on and on. To tell you the truth, for many years I would listen with good intentions and actually believed that I could be that perfect person if I tried hard enough, only to fail miserably by Monday. It is sort of like trying to pin fig leaves on a muddy lump. Bottom line, I can’t make my soil beautiful by trying in my flesh to be like Jesus! The good news is that we don’t have to try to BE like Jesus… God planted His Spirit seed in us so we could produce, incorruptible “Jesus Fruit”! Now, that’s worth shoutin’ about!!!   Jump over to Galatians 5:22-25 and BOOM! there it is. “But the FRUIT of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance…”. Our branches can do nothing but abide in the vine or the tree, the fruit is produced by the power in the nutrients drawn up to the branches. (we do have a say in what we draw up into our branches, but that is another trip entirely!) The fruit hangs on our branches for others to harvest as a blessing. (trees don’t eat their own fruit)  When others are drawn to our fruit and feed on the fruit of God’s grace, produced in us by the husbandry of God, they ingest the seeds of that fruit and the dirt beautifying process begins in them. And suddenly, we are farming, God’s way! It’s the love of God, not man’s love, that leads men to repentance and a beautifying of their dirt. Amen!

God knows what we need to flourish, so we are planted deep in the Love of God (Eph. 3: 16-21), rooted and grounded. That means we are anchored in that love and that we draw up His love into our branches and the power of the Holy Spirit produces the fruit! How easy is that?   Jesus gives us an extraordinary picture of God, farming in our soil, making it beautiful. Go to John 15:1-12… If a branch isn’t bearing fruit, he lifts it up out of the dirt, cleans it off (by His Word) and puts it back on the trellis. (in verse 2-3 the phrase “takes away”   is the Greek word Airo which means lifts up) . Then, He prunes the useless foliage out of our lives. And He nourishes us by causing us to Abide in Him. In verse 4 Jesus says “Abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can you except you abide in me.” As we abide, God does everything and the fruit we produce is a response to His Love, not a responsibility demanded of us. In verse 8 we see that God gets the glory when we bear much fruit, like any good farmer who is known by the abundance and quality of his harvest. So, as we continue in His love, HE MAKES our soil beautiful and, in turn, by our fruit, we bring glory to the Father as we farm in others! Now that’s worth dancin’ about!   Woop! Woop!!!

 

I am certainly not a farmer! (At least, that’s what I thought).   I wouldn’t know a cotton picking machine from a plow! I am a big city girl born in Birmingham, Alabama! (The date shall remain a mystery!) But I enjoy gardening around my house and I love our small veggie patch in the back yard where we grow some green beans, a collard or two, tomatoes and peppers. However, farming on a big scale… no way!

But God…!!! I love that phrase in scripture, don’t you? It always points to what He has done or is about to do for us, in spite of us. Hang on, we are off and running on another ferret adventure!

My husband and I have been so blessed to be involved with Teen Challenge Prison Ministry Team for many years now and we have hosted wonderful men who have been delivered from indescribable darkness and transformed by the Holy Spirit. Each man is a walking miracle! Their testimonies are awe inspiring! One of those young men who stayed with us on numerous occasions was from the mid-west where he had grown up on a huge farm. He had such promise in his life but he lost his dad to cancer when he was in high school, then he lost a younger brother and the drugs took everything else away. When he gave his life to Jesus, the restoration began. God restored his relationship with his mother and gave him a future in ministry to others. Things were looking up!

Early one morning, Josh and I were talking before breakfast and he opened the door to our deck. I almost gagged and went to my knees but Josh breathed in deeply. The farmer at the end of our street had just fertilized his corn field with manure! (One man’s stink is another man’s perfume! LOL ) I asked him if he missed farming. He gave it serious thought before answering and then he simply said yes. There was no further conversation, it was as if that part of his life was over and I felt like he was mourning the loss of it. Being the perpetual “fixer” that I am, I wanted to give him a good answer to encourage him, but my mind went blank and I knew God had just shut my mouth! We just let it drop. In the next week, I found myself praying for Josh, wanting God to fill that void in his life and make it ok again. Little did I know that He had already done it!

I was reading in Matthew one morning and I came to Matt.9:37 …”the harvest is indeed plentiful, but the laborers are few.” Of course, a little farming! Jesus was speaking figuratively about the harvest, referring to the people who needed to be gathered into the Kingdom of God! Alright! I thought I’d e-mail Josh that little scripture to make him smile. Thank goodness I didn’t, because, looking back, it was sort of like putting a little band aid on a big boo-boo! Josh needed so much more and I had no more to give. But God…there it is again! He had so much more for both of us!

Before I knew it, the Holy Spirit led me into a new ferret tunnel and I found myself back on page 1 of my Bible…”In the beginning God created…“. By verse 11, God was preparing the earth for habitation by separating it from the water. Then he put in His irrigation system! What? God put in an irrigation system? Flash forward to Chapter 2: 4-6. This is a retelling of the creation story, filling in the gaps with more detail. In these verses, it describes the time between the division of water and land and the planting of the first vegetation, “…when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the earth and there was no man to till the ground. But there went up a mist from the land and watered the whole surface of the ground.” There it was, His irrigation system was an evaporation and condensation cycle, it was a beautiful biosphere! It dawned on me that God, not man, was the first farmer! He was preparing the land for feed crops! How cool is that? And not only that, but God was planning to create His man to help on the farm! OMG! We are all destined to be farmers! Who knew? Woop,woop! Ferret dance!!!

Then he planted His crops by speaking them into existence, His word was seed. (Don’t forget that!) He spoke to the earth and the earth responded. Gen. 1:11-12 “And God said, Let the earth bring forth vegetation; plants yielding seed and fruit trees yielding fruit whose seed is in itself….The earth brought forth vegetation…”.   He harnessed light and created the sun to reflect the right amount of God’s glory to facilitate the healthy growth of His flora and fauna.   When the food crops were in place, He populated the earth with beneficial animals, he stocked the waters with fish and the air with fowl. God had planted his crops, built his animal population and he named His farm Eden, which means perfection!

I was ready to get going with the creation of His man, but there was a nagging question in my “IMAGE-ination”. What does it mean for the earth to “spring or bring forth”? Hum! I assumed it meant that plants would pop up out of the soil, it sounded right to me. But I was wrong!!! AGAIN!!! In the Genesis 1 account of creation the words “spring forth” or “bring forth” are repeated over the land, water and air. However, they are different words! When God spoke to the earth (the ground) the words “bring forth”, daw shaw’ in the Hebrew, He meant that life would come out from the earth as a part of it. If you think about that, it makes sense because every living thing is made of dirt! When it dies it returns to the dirt. Right??? (Science confirms that the chemical composition of living things and dirt is the same!) It totally gives new meaning to the phrase “you are what you eat”. LOL! The other references to “bringing forth” are the Hebrew word shaw rats’ which means to team or wriggle with life. So, from the earth would spring forth the life in animal forms and the waters and air would team or wriggle with the abundance of their presence. In the Targum the writers describe this so beautifully, they say that the Holy Spirit hovered over the elements of creation, impregnating the earth with a life force from which all other life would spring. Isn’t that amazing? Some of these writers were recording their revelations more than a thousand years ago but they had such powerful understanding! Little chair dance here! Woohoo!!!

Oh my! Back to the adventure… The only thing God had left to do was to create His man to till the ground, to guard and keep the garden, to propagate it and to take dominion over it (we all know how that turned out!  ). So God stooped to the earth and from the life-infilled ground, he scooped up the wet ruddy clay and formed His man. At this point mankind, Adam, was alive with a soul (NePhesh’- biological life) that sprang from the earth. But when He breathed into his nostrils, man was filled with the divine essence of God (NeShamah’). To quote a Targum writer, Rabbi Onkelos, “And the Lord God created Adam from the dust of the ground and breathed upon his face the breath of lives, and it became in Adam a discoursing spirit”.   Man, like no other living thing, was able to think, reason, create and most importantly, speak (remember that)! He was equipped to farm God’s way.

Wow! Do you see it? God created and designed mankind to be farmers! It has always been the call on our lives. We are all farmers in God’s Kingdom! Now, to connect some dots… Hint…. We are more than farmers.

Look at Genesis 2:7 “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life…”, man is made of dirt! Yup! We are made of the very ground that God impregnated with a life force and from which all living things spring. Think about it! We are certainly farmers but we are also earthen fields ready to receive seed. Can you picture all of humanity as fields that need to be farmed?   Whoa!

On to the New Testament, to Luke 8:5-18… Jesus’ parable is the key to understanding all other parables and it is certainly the key to understanding how the Kingdom of God operates. A sower went out to plant his field and as he scattered the seed some fell in places that were not ready for the seed but the soil that was prepared and ready received the seed and produced a large crop. When asked about the meaning of the parable Jesus said…”The seed is the Word of God” and the ground was the heart (imaginagion) of mankind with ears to hear. So, the sower, who was obviously sowing the Word of God was a human being, speaking the Word to someone who was listening. A “speaking spirit” was planting the Word in the ground of mankind. (Now you see why I wanted you to remember that mankind speaks! )

I finally saw it! Josh is still a farmer! The fields belong to the Father and He provides the Good Seed in His Word. We plow up the ground of men’s hearts by touching them with the goodness of God which leads to repentance. We plant the seeds into the plowed ground, we hoe up the weeds of misunderstanding and the words that the world planted in the same soil, and we feed the seedlings by discipling and God gives the harvest. ICor. 3:6 Paul explained…”I planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the harvest.”  And Jesus, looking into the future saw the farm “…Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white to harvest. And he that reaps receives wages and gathers fruit unto life eternal: that both he that sows and he that reaps may rejoice together. ” (John 4:35-38) Bottom line… we are all farmers who farm in humanity.

That revelation took my breath away! I had to move off of my old paradigm and see the family business with new eyes. When it all sunk in, I didn’t just send Josh an e-mail, I wrote him a letter sharing what God had shown me! “Josh!… you are still farming! God has put you in charge of the fields around you. Your work, on His farm, is much more glorious than you can imagine with eternal crops to be gathered. Keep going, do not grow weary in well doing because you will reap if you faint not!”

Woop! Woop! Ferret Dance!!!!

 

OK! Now, don’t give up on this just because you don’t understand the title! Hang in with me… Before I am done, you will get it, I promise! Ready to hit the trail again? Let’s go back to Genesis 2:7, “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul.” I don’t know how many times I read through that verse over the years and, like Charlie Brown, it was “wah, wah, wah”…in my Imagination I had no spark of understanding. Well, because I can’t possibly take you on my entire trip, I will give you a short cut here. First, God formed man out of the dust of the ground and that made him a being like all other living beings in the earth, eating, drinking, walking, and focusing on life, itself. We were hard wired, plumbed, equipped and tooled to be able to survive in this material world. The image in my brain is that we are a spirit being, and God had just created our “space suit” that enabled our spirit man to navigate in a material existence.

But Man was meant for so much more and so God breathed (n’shamah’ – divine , essence, inspiration and intellect) into his nostrils and man became a living soul, capable of thinking, reasoning and discourse. The Rabbi commentators in the Targum say man became a speaking spirit. Wow! Do you realize that the breath of God is what makes us capable of being in the “likeness” of God? The word “likeness” means we function as God functions. The gray matter between our ears was suddenly full of capability that set us apart from the rest of creation and our IMAGINATIONS became the vehicle that propelled us into the “God realm”. Einstein is so cool to me, he got it! He lived and discovered great things out of his imagination. He said “Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world and embraces all there ever will be to understand”. In other words, our imagination is the infinite part of us! That small part of our brain in the back of our head that touches the limitless, immeasurable wisdom and knowledge of God! (I Cor. 2:9-16)

So, what does that have to do with the crazy title of my blog? And why does that matter to us? Turn around and run back to Genesis 1:1… “In the beginning God created…In the Hebrew that word is “bara” It is a unique word that, according to my lexicon, means to form, plan, create by thought or image, ideate, imagine, design. God used his imagination to create the entire universe and all that would happen there from beginning to end. It included every human being that would ever live (Psalm 139:16, Eph. 1:4), and included Jesus who was crucified “before the foundations of the world” (Rev. 13:8, I Peter 1:18-20). In other words it was done in God before He ever said Light be! No wonder He is the beginning and the end! Out of the fullness of his imagining, the fullness of His faith, He began to command all that was in his imagination to become material. Look at verse 7, “And God made…” The word “made” in Hebrew is “Asah”. In the lexicon it means the creativity of God, to work, create, build, plant, and procure. Look at Psalm 33:6 “By the word of the Lord were the heavens made (asah)! Now, connect that to Hebrews 11:3 “Through faith we understand that the worlds were “framed” by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.” So… God imagines and then He speaks and it happens. He is a thinking, reasoning, creative speaking spirit!

Now, think about it, we were made to function the way God functions! We imagine and we speak and we produce. On a very elemental level think of something you have made. What did you do first? Yup! You had the idea, you thought about it, imagined it and even imagined how to do it. You probably talked about it or even recorded pictures along the way to strengthen your imagining. Then, you gathered the materials and put it together to replicate what you imagined. Right? What does the word say about how we function? God imagined (bara), then He recorded (Psalm 139), He gathered materials (“Light be..”  He didn’t create light, He IS light!) and then he built, planted, and procured creation!

Let’s look at some negative examples of the power of our imagination, ok? In Genesis 3 we see that Adam didn’t imagine himself to be made like God, even though he was, so he ate the forbidden fruit trying to accomplish something that God had already established, and he lost that intimate connection to hear the voice of God in his spirit. The breath of God was greatly diminished. Men could no longer have dominion over God’s creation. Jump over to Genesis 6: 1-5. God saw, early on, that men were evil and every imagination of their hearts was evil and so He allowed the flood to happen. By chapter 11:1-6 men were at it again. They were building empires that were not ruled by God. He saw that the people were united, they spoke the same language and said the same things. They spoke and acted on a common imagining! God made a profound statement here… “…the people are one, and they have one language and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them which they have IMAGINED to do.” So he confounded their speech and destroyed their unity. Powerful!

Let’s look at a positive word, Deuteronomy 30:14… Paul uses this scripture to explain the spiritual law that brings us into salvation, and it is “bara and asah”. “But the word is very near unto you, in your mouth that you may DO it.” The word do is ASAH!!! The word is in your mouth that you may create, build, plant, procure and operate in it. Paul explains it like this in Romans 10:10, “for with the heart (the imagination) man believes unto righteousness and with the mouth confession is made (to procure) salvation”. Little ferret dance!!!  Woohoo!

Now, back into the Old Testament to Jeremiah 1:9-10, 14 where God is speaking to Jeremiah explaining how he will be used by the Lord, ”…I have put my words in your mouth…to root out and to pull down and to destroy, and to throw down, to build and to plant”, “…I will hasten (watch over sleeplessly, be alert for, watch for) my word to PERFORM it. The word perform is ASAH!!! And where was God’s word? It was in Jeremiah’s mouth! Bottom line there is power in the words in our mouths because we function the way God functions.

This should be a Woop! Woop! moment, but OMG! It turns out that we are a bunch of very powerful loose cannons firing off faith filled words everywhere, that do NOT line up with the word of God. What a mess we make! To quote Hosea 4:6 “My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge”. Uh huh! That pretty much sums it up! Or we could quote Forrest Gump “Stupid is as stupid does”. We are in desperate need of the BARA- ASAH AHA!!!!

The big “elephant” question in the room is what do you THINK on? Dr. Newberg, the guy that started this whole adventure for me, said “the more you focus on something, the more it becomes your reality, the more it is written into the neural connections of the brain”. I would say the more you focus on something, the more vivid it becomes in your imagination! What we imagine to be true will come out of our mouths, for good or evil! The world understands this perfectly. How many signs have you seen that say things like “Never say Never!” or “If you can imagine it, you can accomplish it.”   We just don’t understand that it all goes back to the creative gift in all of us that God intended to use with us and through us to create a wonderful world.

Let’s go to the New Testament to Matthew and check out what Jesus had to say about it! He spends a lot of time warning us about our thought life, what is in our “imaginations” (our heart) and what comes out of our mouths. One key here is the word HEART. In the Greek it is Kardia but it literally means the thoughts, understandings and feelings in the mind. Matt. 14:34-37 “…out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. A good man out of the good treasure of the heart brings forth good things, and an evil man (one with twisted thinking or one who thinks counter, or incorrectly, to the word of God) out of evil treasure brings forth evil things…. every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give an account thereof on the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified and by your words you shall be condemned.” That’s not good!!! 

I don’t mean to be a downer here! The main point is,  when life stinks, change your “stinkin’ thinkin’” and when God’s Word comes out of your mouth, you can create, plant, procure and operate in that.   That’s why we need to intensely study God’s Word every day, we need to keep it in our thoughts (focus on it), in our imaginations and in our mouths in order to transform our minds and renew them to God’s way of doing and being right, which is to “ASAH” God’s way! When Paul was in a Roman prison he wrote to the Phillipians that, in bad times, we should rejoice (not in the problem but in God’s deliverance.  I Cor. 10:13 – He makes the way out). Think intently on the nature of God to encourage you that He is faithful. And when you believe His word to be true, the Peace of God will guard your heart and mind against what is going on around you in the world. (Phil. 4:4-7) Image what God says about you and your circumstances until it is fully vivid in your imagination, more real than what you see in the world. Then speak that against what the world is saying to you. There is creative (asah) power in that!!!

OK, I need to tie up two loose ends!  When Jesus went to the cross He purchased our total redemption. The first thing he did when he appeared in the upper room was to breathe on the disciples (just as God breathed on His man at creation) and He said, “receive the Holy Spirit”! ( John 20:20-22) The intimate connection was restored and our imaginations came alive and became tender to the voice and thoughts of God. The Breath of God was restored! That renewing in the Holy Spirit wasn’t the end, it was just a taste of more to come. So He told the disciples to wait in Jerusalem for the complete baptism in the Holy Spirit. With that infilling, they were given speech in the form of new tongues. (Paul explains this in I Corinthians chapter 14) Of all the manifestations that God could have given them, why a new and unknown language? And why has that ability been passed on to generation after generation of believers?

Well, God needs a unified body and, now, the Holy Spirit can pray, instrumentally, through believers in total agreement with the mind of God. And how do we know and hear God’s mind when we pray? We use our imaginations, our mind’s eyes and ears! The languages we speak may sound varied and unknown to us in the material world, but they are known to God so that wavering flesh is cut out of the process!  In Romans 8:26-27  Paul is talking about wavering flesh not knowing what to pray and so the Holy Spirit prays “in” us.  The word “in” means instrumentally, so we are the instrument that the Holy spirit used to pray the perfect mind of God in our circumstances.   The confounded languages of Babel were restored in the unifying power of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit body of Christ still speaks in God languages in total agreement with what God prays through them. That’s why it is an important blessing to the Body of Christ. To quote God, we speak the same thing, by the same spirit and now, nothing we imagine to do, in agreement with God, will be impossible to us. God bless our IMAGINATIONS!!!

The BARA-ASAH AHAH!!! Woop! Woop! Big ferret dance!!!! OH YEAH!!!

Have you ever been “put down” by someone who, when you shared a thought that sounded ridiculous or you shared an unusual idea that just popped up in the back of your mind, replied “that’s just your imagination”? You may have even said it to yourself. The comment was meant to squelch the imagining as if it was unimportant, as if your imaginings are just fanciful notions with no substance, almost childish in nature. For most of us, when that happens we just put the notion out of our heads and move on. What a mistake!

As a teacher, I always appreciated the imagination in kids and the creativity that it generated within them. I also appreciated the imagination in creative adults, like my husband, a product designer for many years. But I had no deep understanding of its potential and its connection between us and the Kingdom of God. As a ferret, I wasn’t even sniffing at it from curiosity!

Some 15 years ago, I was on one of my many ferret trails, studying brain function in relation to how kids learn, (ho hum!) when I stumbled on a little article about prayer and brain function in a Reader’s Digest that was so stunning and powerful to me that it stopped me dead in my tracks. Somehow, I knew that God had put that article in my hands and that He intended for me to “ferret out” the connections between what was in that article and what God had created within us. It has turned out to be a very long, circuitous and exciting trail that has opened my eyes to the power of the IMAGINATION and brought me to bridges that connect imaginings to FAITH. OMG! What an adventure ensued!

It has actually taken me many years of traveling these trails to grasp what God desired to show me. I am still traveling these trails on occasion. Many of my excursions have crossed through quantum physics and the study of light to the study of the neurology, neurotheology and biology of the brain, into scripture, not only my Bible but the Tanakh and the Targum (ancient Jewish commentaries on the Old Testament) and more. But what I have learned has revolutionized my walk with the Lord. I have often said…”When Science ends up supporting Scripture, it’s a good day for Science.”

Now, on to the article! It was so long ago that, sadly, I don’t remember the title but it was about research being done by Dr. Andrew Newberg on the influence of prayer and meditation on brain function. I still have my notes, but, stupid me, I have lost the article, itself! UGH! Anyway, I will try to give you my best ferret explanation. If you could look at a cut-away of the top view of a brain you would notice the right and left lobes. When the brain is active in conscious thought, there are outside rings (parietal lobes)on each brain half, that look like two halves of a donut that glow hot in reds and oranges in a brain scan. At the back of the brain, a cortex (a membrane) that runs parallel to the ground and stretches toward the center of the brain (shaped a bit like a light bulb), is, as the article referred to it, called the dorsal lateral cortex. This cortex remains cool in rational thought, but when prayer or meditation is active, the front parts of the brain cool and this cortex demonstrates activity by heating up with reds and oranges in the scan. Hum!

My first question was, did God put a room in my brain to be used only for prayer? It was a good question but I was way off base. As I pressed on, I stumbled on some fascinating data: The left and right parietal lobes are fed information from the surrounding material universe by the 5 senses much as a computer receives information from keyboard input. There are approximately 100,000 million nerve endings that run to and from the 5 senses to the parietal lobes. (How Dr. Newberg and his researchers found this out boggles my mind!) But this is the really cool data: There are 10,000 billion nerve endings that run to and from the dorsal lateral cortext which touch the unseen “spaces” in the universe. Now, unseen spaces are a whole other ferret adventure, but suffice it to say that every unseen space in the material universe is filled with light, “electromagnetic energy”. Why is that important? I John 1:5 states: “God IS LIGHT, and in Him there is no darkness at all”. (A little chair dance, here!) The nerve endings in our dorsal lateral cortex are “hard wired” to touch the spirit realm, the things of God. Dr. Newberg confirms this fact in his research, he even used the term “hard wired”. OK, here’s one more cool bit of information to help you get this. When Jesus ministered on earth, He often said “Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand.” There are two really important words here that we need to understand. First “REPENT”, the Greek translation is to change the way you think. Why? Because the Kingdom is “AT HAND”. That phrase, in the Greek, literally means to be superimposed on. The Kingdom of God is superimposed on the material world. Science got it right! Einstein, Niels, Bohr, and Frank are quantum physicists who actually proved that “light” is superimposed (or co-exists in the same space) with the material world, filling every space. And light, being the smallest particle of existent matter( the basic building block of the material world), is also the only particle that is both material and immaterial. Whoa!!! Think about that for a while! Talk about a wild ferret trail… hopefully the Lord will let me share my quantum physics trip, one day.

Can you see it? God created us with a brain that contains the ability to communicate, in a multi-dimensional existence, not only with this material world, but also with the spirit world (the unseen) and we have the ability to process information from multiple dimensions! Paul’s words in II Corinthians 4:18 came to my mind right away. “…we look not at the things which are seen but at the things which are not seen for the things which are seen are temporal but the things which are not seen are eternal.” Not only can we look at the unseen, but we can receive input from God’s realm! Ferret question…so, can we see and hear from God without using our 5 senses?

The 4 Gospels were full of accounts of Jesus teaching the people truths that they had never heard. He wanted them to “get it”, not on the level of mental assent, but on a level much deeper within their understanding. Think about it, when Jesus would finish making a point, He would add strange statements like … to him who has ears to hear, let him hear… or… even though they have eyes to see they do not see. Huh??? Everyone he talked to had ears, what was He talking about? They had eyes as well! Answer…their deafness and blindness was not “of this world”, it was a Kingdom of God issue.

So where were these ears and eyes that Jesus was referring to? It had to do with the dorsal lateral cortex, I was certain, but I didn’t know where to look next, so I just put it on hold. (I should have known that God was still in charge of this adventure). LOL!   So I returned to brain study and kids! I was learning how kids take information from the “desk top” of their brain and transfer it to long term memory. Holy Cow! I was back where I started!   Woop! Woop! Ok, let me make the connection! Information that we manipulate with our 5 senses, what we think on, focus on and talk about helps us form IMAGES on the back of our brain.

(In my last adventure we talked about being “image” people) The more detailed the images, the more solid the memory and the stronger we come to rely on the images as fact whether or not they actually are fact. For instance, people imagined the world was flat for so long, it came to be the accepted science of the day. Every parent can tell you that the monster under the bed is real to their distraught children! Amen to that!

OMG! Whoa! The IMAGINATION, then,  is the “audio-visual” center in our brain. It incorporates the Dorsal Lateral Cortex, the vision center and the rest of the area at the back of the brain which includes a movie screen, projector and photo and film storage! (Not exactly scientific, but it works) And here is the first bridge… not only does the imagination take information from the material world through the 5 senses via the frontal lobes of the brain….. BUT…. It takes in information from the unseen world through the dorsal lateral cortex! So, that beautiful little cortex that God created in us actually has eyes to see and ears to hear what the SPIRIT has to say! What we receive into that little cortex goes into our IMAGINATION just like information from the material world. So keep your mind’s eyes and ears opened and when those thoughts pop up in the back of your mind again, don’t take them lightly, pay attention! Paul says it like this “Eye has not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the hearts of man the things which God has prepared for them that love Him. But God has revealed them unto us by His Spirit…Now, we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.” (I Cor. 2:9-12)

Where is the bridge to Faith? We have to dive back into science! The frontal lobes of the brain are wired to receive information from all 5 senses. But there is only one of those senses that touches the dorsal lateral cortex. Are you ready for this??? It is the auditory nerve! “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God!” (Romans 10:17) Woohoo!!! In Joshua 1:8 God tells him to repeat the Word out loud to himself and in Proverbs over and over God says to LISTEN to the Word, incline your ear and Faith comes! Hebrews 11: 1 is the hallmark definition of faith for Christians, but when you look at those verses through the prism of IMAGINATION, it becomes very powerful. “Now faith is the substance (in the Greek it means the spiritual image, blue print, A MIND PHOTO; the title deed) of things hoped for (hoped means confidently expected), the evidence (the proof of things we do not see and the conviction of their reality) of things not seen. [The Amplified Bible says it this way – faith perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the senses]. So faith has its origin in the Word of God, filtered through our dorsal lateral cortex where the Spirit can give you the mind of God upon it and it is sent to the IMAGINATION where it becomes a faith image, spiritual reality in the face of material appearances.   The best example is in Hebrews 11: 7-19   By faith, Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac; and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son…Accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence he also received him in a “figure” (faith vision).   (Whew! That’s a mouthful!)

All of this, to say that our IMAGINATION is alive and well and very important!   It is not a place of foolish dreams or fanciful thoughts, it is a powerful creative gift given to us by God! In Genesis 1 we discover that mankind was made in the image and likeness of God. Image means we look like Him in some way but “likeness” means we function like He functions. The first function we see God perform is the creation of heaven and earth. We see that God is a faith filled, thinking, reasoning, creative being. We have been hard wired to be faith filled, thinking, reasoning, creative beings, as well. God’s plan is to work with us and through us to create and recreate in the earth as He has done in the entire universe.  Think of the music that came to Beethoven or the art that came through the fingers of Michael Angelo. God spoke to them through their imaginations! All creative production starts with a vision in the mind’s eye or the sounds in the mind’s ears that are, then, reproduced in the material realm. Where did the thoughts and ideas come from? They came from the unseen through the dorsal lateral cortex to the imagination and then, through us, to the material world!

IMAGINE THAT!!!! Happy dance… woop,woop!!!! More to come…