Month: October 2012

My house looks like a jungle now that the first freeze threat of the season has come. My home has a covered patio where I hang baskets along the edge of the roofline, and some of those plants I wanted to keep. I also have a straggly schefflera plant in a huge pot on rollers that comes inside every year. Every year I wonder how much longer I will be able to keep it alive, because it is failing to thrive for sure.

However my Christmas cactus in the hanging basket is blooming again, the second time this year. I just hope it blooms for Christmas. The secret of making the Christmas cactus blooms is to have a consistent light and darkness for a certain period of time to signal time to bloom.

When I was first married and my husband returned from military duty in Germany, he said it was like moving into the jungle when he moved home to live with me. I had houseplants everywhere. I have always raised African violets although in the last few years, I haven’t kept up with them as well as I used to.

I have a fluorescent Grow- Light that puts out a special light wave that plants like, which makes the plants grow faster and better in every way. Just about every kind of plant likes the Grow-Light. The more light the plants get, the bigger they grow, and the more they bloom. The Grow-Light produces the optimal light pattern for the plant’s growth.

God has an optimal plan for our lives too. He knows just what we need to make us grow spiritually, physically, and in every way. When God gave us eternal life, He recreated our dead spirits and we were born again. He called us out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of Light.

“For you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.” I Peter 2: 9.

When His Light shines on us, we grow and bloom bigger than ever before.

Did you ever get a song stuck in your head? You hear it all day long, all night long. Every time your mind is in neutral, the song is playing.

This last year I have had one song stuck in my head, Well, not in the typical sense that every time I was not thinking about something I would hear it, but in the sense that every time I would consciously think, “song,” it was always that same song. I sang it twice in church last year acapella (voice only, no music.)

Little kids love to sing, loudly, heartily, putting their whole body, soul, and spirit into it. They just can’t stand still so they do a little dance, a little jig, as they sing. Teach a child the song “Jesus Loves Me” and he will know it till the day he dies.

Then they grow up and develop a taste for a certain kind of music, rejecting other styles. They might sing along with the music in the car or sing in the shower, but seldom in public. Sometimes the only opportunity some people have to sing is in a Karaoke bar, where they can sing along to a recording of the latest hit song.

Most churches have changed their format to praise-and-worship songs. Many older folks wish they would sing some old familiar hymns, but the younger folks want to learn the latest-and-greatest praise songs. Some churches resolve this issue by holding two separate services, one traditional, one contemporary.

God created us with the ability to sing and then put a song into our hearts. Every
race on earth sings, from Africa to New Guinea to Alaska.

“Speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.” Ephesians 5:19.

God’s kingdom choir can sing every style of music, from chanting psalms, gospel hymns, and songs of the Spirit of God given to us in these last days. Don’t limit yourself to only one style.

Some jobs just never seem to get done–like cleaning the top of the range vent hood.

Nearly every time I cook, I stand looking at the dust and grime on top of the range hood and think, “Next time I do the dishes, and wipe down the stove, I’ll scrub that hood.” I suppose you know how that turns out. The next time I cook supper I see it again, but I can’t clean it then because the cleaner would fall into the food I have cooking on the stove.

Keeping a clean house requires constant work. Just ask any mother.

When my first child was 6 weeks old and I had to go back to work, I decided if I could walk across my kitchen floor without my shoes sticking to it, it was clean enough. When my son started crawling, I had to revise my cleaning standards and start keeping the floor cleaner, so I let the upper level dusting go. As long as you couldn’t write your name in the dust, it was okay by me.

After I had my second child, I was involved in church and school activities, and worked out of town, so something had to slide. As long as we had clean clothes to wear, clean dishes to eat out of, and the main living areas were company-ready, I considered the house clean.

Now that the kids are grown, I’m still busy, and I do pretty well at keeping things clean. The house is still cluttered, mostly with books & other reading material, and I don’t do very well at dusting, but the public area of my home is mostly presentable.

“The older women likewise, that they be reverent in behavior, not slanderers…. teachers of good things– That they may admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children… to be… homemakers…..that the word of God may not be blasphemed.” Titus 2:3-5NKJV

What a great privilege to teach others the lessons we have learned.

My 94-year-old mother used to always say she was only ready when she “dressed her feet.” That was the sign she was ready to “go to work.” If your feet weren’t “dressed,” you weren’t ready for whatever would happen that day.

Shoes have always been very important to me since I have very hard to fit feet. I have always had to wear very expensive shoes, though not necessarily pretty shoes.

Mother spent the night with me a while back and when I opened the closet door on which my shoe organizer was hanging, she said, “Why do you have so many shoes? I never saw so many except in a shoe store.”

If she only knew.

That shoe organizer only holds eight pair of shoes, the most frequently worn pairs. I have shoe boxes full of shoes in the closet. Without counting, I would guess I have eight more pair of shoes there. Then there are probably 4 more pair of athletic shoes all alike, all in different stages of being worn out. And a pair of SAS sandals.

21 pair of shoes. Compared to other women, that number of shoes is a drop in the bucket, a tiny ripple in an ocean of shoes.

Remember Imelda Marcos, the wife of the President of the Philippines, who was reported to have owned a collection of 2,700 pairs of shoes, while many people in her nation went barefoot?

However I am prepared, and every morning I dress my feet when I dress my body, preparing myself for whatever the day brings forth.

Paul tells us to prepare our feet spiritually too. “And having shod your feet in preparation [to face the enemy with the firm-footed stability, the promptness, and the readiness produced by the good news] of the Gospel of peace.” Ephesians 6:15 Amplified Bible

We are to be well-shod at all times in the Spirit, prepared at all times, with good shoes that are produced by the Gospel of Peace.

Paul tells the Christians all through the book of Ephesians to walk in unity, walk in love, walk in light, walk in wisdom, and walk in peace. (Ephesians 4:1; 5:2; 5:8; 5:16; 6:15)

Those are good shoes to walk in.