Year: 2012

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.

 

When I was a kid in school, I loved recess, almost as much as I love reading. I loved the merry-go-round, when I ran as fast as I could go, pushing it around and round, and then jumped on to ride. I loved to ride bikes, racing down the street with the wind blowing in my hair. I got my first bicycle for my 8^th birthday, a used girl’s bike that Mama bought for $10 from the neighbor girl up the street.

 Most of the time though all I did was read. I devoured every book I found. I read at least 3 books a week from the library in addition to school-assigned reading. I read the writing on the back of the cereal box while I ate breakfast. I read as we drove along the highway going to my grandpa’s house.

 Recently I took my 11-year-old grandson with me to a doctor’s appointment and when the doctor asked me what I did for recreation, I had to stop to think for a minute, but my grandson piped up, “Facebook, Mimi.”

I work on computers for other people. I watch TV while I play around on the computer and read my email and communicate on Facebook but I wonder. Is my only recreation Facebook? Pretty sad, isn’t it?

I read the Bible on my computer, too. I also have the Bible on my cell phone and on my new Kindle Fire, but I have at least 10 real leather Bibles of different translations. Reading is one of my recreations too—reading the Bible and other books, but my grandson considers that as schoolwork or part of my work as a writer, and not enjoyment.

There is a balance though. Paul himself said, “For bodily exercise profits a little: but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.” I Timothy 4:8.

Exercising the physical body has value, but we must pump our spiritual muscles too so they won’t shrivel up and  waste away to nothing.

 

 

The home where I grew up was across the alley from Bull Creek. Bull Creek was very shallow and lazy creek, but no boats ever floated our section of the creek. Never one time in my life did I see a boat on Bull Creek. Even if someone had tried to float a boat on the creek, they wouldn’t have been able to float under the low bridge on Tahlequah Street.

That’s what made the saying so strange, “When our ship comes in…..”

I often wondered when I was a child what it really meant when someone said, “When our ship comes in…” Oh, I knew it meant that they expected the ship to bring their fortune, to bring them money, but how or why, I didn’t know.

Then in history classes I learned about the early settlers of America and how they depended on ships from England to bring them supplies, so I figured it out, that’s what it meant when they said, “when our ship comes in.” The early-day settlers had to carefully watch what they used and use things from nature in their new home in America to “make-do” until the next ship came from England with supplies from home.

Mama would even make a joke about it, “Our ship couldn’t make it up Bull Creek.” The absurdity of that idea of an ocean vessel trying to come up Bull Creek would make us all laugh.

Mama taught us all to work hard. We all had to work in the garden out behind our house, which  was the biggest one on the block, and yielded the best green beans, corn, tomatoes, beets, all canned into Mason jars to feed us kids during the winter.

She taught us to give to the church, to give to others who were in need, and help out our neighbors and friends when they needed a hand. Mama also taught us to believe in God to supply our needs and not some make-believe “ship coming in.”  

King David said, “I have been young, and now am old; Yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, Nor his descendants begging bread.” Psalm 37:25

When the threat of the hurricane was announced by the National Weather Service, all the television news reports pleaded with the residents to evacuate the area because the Hurricane Isaac was on its way into the area. The governor of each state begged people of the affected areas to move to safer ground, to higher ground, advised them that the threat was real and high water and hurricane force winds were imminent.

But there are always those who say, “We’ve heard that all our lives. We’ve lived in this same house in this same town all our lives and nothing has ever bothered us. We’ll be fine. It will all blow over. We’ll ride it out. Our windows are boarded up. We’ve closed the doors and gone to the middle of the house and it’ll be okay.”

Then the winds came and the flood came. They climbed the stairs to the second floor, to the attic, to the roof, where they hung on for dear life, until a plane flying over saw them and sent a boat.

“Why didn’t you leave when you could? Why didn’t you take your prized possessions and go?”

“We didn’t think it would get this bad. Everything we have is gone. We’ve lost it all.”

Saint Peter tells about scoffers in the last day who say, “Your Jesus Christ promised to come, didn’t He? Where is He? We’ve heard about it all our lives, that these are the last days, but He hasn’t come yet, so I guess He’s not coming. Yes, times are bad but I’ve done a pretty good job of taking care of myself so far and I’ll be okay. I’m a good person, I’ll make it to heaven alright.” (See II Peter 3:3-4.)

You can’t make it to heaven on your good works. There is only one way to make it to heaven— make Jesus Christ your Lord and Saviour.

Jude 23, “Save others by snatching them out of the fire; and to others show mercy mixed with fear.”

There will be some people that will make it to heaven, just barely, snatched out of the fire, or flood, rescued by God through the help of some worker who puts his life on the line to see that a soul is saved from the fire or the flood.