Jewels From the Word

 

 

This week I have been hearing a repeated thud on my 6-foot-wide picture window that overlooks the covered patio. It must have been several times before the sound penetrated my consciousness enough to make me wonder what it was. I opened the door to see if someone was knocking and happened to see a bird fly away.

The next few times I heard this, I pulled the curtain back from the door to peek out, and saw a Robin red-breast. There was bird poop on the bar chair I have sitting outside by the back door.

I have curtains plus I put two little plastic snowman on the glass so he would see them; I hung a long swirly blue plastic ornament on a hook outside the window, to blow in the wind and scare him away. This morning he hit the window eight or ten times while I dozed in the recliner. I finally got up and pulled the curtain back to scare him away. I let the dogs out and moved the bar chair away from the window.

I don’t know what that bird’s problem is, but we do the same thing.  We hit our heads on the window time and time again, doing the same thing over and over, trying to get a different result.

Winds of change are blowing all around us. God is allowing these changes, so it is time to seek God’s will in all of this for you. Let Him show you where in your life you have been hitting your head against the window.

 Do you want something to be different in your life? Now is the perfect time to change what you have been doing. This changing season could be the greatest opportunity you have ever had in your whole life.

Isaiah 43:19-20, “Behold, I will do a new thing, now it shall spring forth; shall you not know it? I will even make a road in the wilderness and rivers in the desert….to give drink to My people, My chosen….They shall declare My praise.”

Instead of a closed window, you will see God’s wide-open road in the wilderness.

 

 

We women just love a wedding. We get to ooooh and ahhh over the beautiful bride who never looked prettier than on her wedding day. We dream of our own romantic engagement and fondly reminisce about our wedding day. We laugh with the other guests over the antics of the ring-bearer and flower girl.

And we get misty-eyed at the taking of the vows, wishing they would have used the old church vows, “For better, for worse, in sickness and in health.”

When the couple exchange rings and vows, sometime they take communion together, then the minister pronounces them man and wife.

Many couples these days, after the seriousness of the wedding ceremony, give in to the juvenile temptation to cram the wedding cake into their new spouse’s mouth and smear it all over their face. How humiliating to show so little respect to your new husband immediately after making a life-long commitment to him. Or how unloving to smear cake on the beautifully made-up face of your dearest darling new wife, on the one day of her life that she wants to look her best. All in the name of fun.

The wedding cake represents the communion bread and the wedding drink represents the communion drink. Along with the wedding vows, this represents the making of a covenant between two parties, to enter into a legal marriage before God.

As Jesus and His disciples sat at the Passover table, the night before His crucifixion, “And He took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them saying, ‘This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of me.’ Likewise He also took the cup after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is shed for you.’” Luke 22:19-20

Jesus made a covenant with God for us. He gave His body to be broken and His blood to be spilled out of love for us all.

And every time I take communion, reverently eating my little cake and drinking from my little cup, I remember and renew my commitment to Jesus, the lover of my soul, my coming Bridegroom.

 

 

They laid Jesus’ dead body in the tomb. Their hopes and dreams for a conquering Messiah to overcome the Roman rulers lay dead, too.

 

So, their hopes all gone, and in fear for their lives, they all hid out. Life would never be the same again, but life would go on, even without the Messiah.

 

Except for the women. Their broken hearts gave them a boldness to go to the tomb that Sunday morning. What did they have to lose? They had already lost the only thing that ever mattered to them, their dear Jesus, and they had nowhere else to go, nothing else to do.

 

So they went to the tomb, as every mother and sister has for thousands of years, to touch the stone-cold hands one more time and look in the face of that precious one they loved more than life itself. They wanted to smooth oils and perfumes on that cold body to keep it from smelling one more day. In their grief, they just could not let Him go.

 

The women went to the tomb, worrying about whom they could get to move the stone that covered the entrance, but when they got there, the stone was rolled away. Jesus was gone, risen from the dead. He didn’t need to move the stone to get out. He proved that later when, in His newly resurrected body, He walked through the walls and suddenly appeared to His disciples.

 

But Jesus, being the gentleman that He is, saw to it that the stone was moved so the women could come in.

 

 

In 1971, when I went to work for the phone company, we operators worked on the old cord board, where operators answered customers by plugging a cord into a lighted hole, At that time, customers could dial local calls, but long distance calls had to be dialed by the operator. By 1974,  customers could dial 1+ calls by themselves, but certain calls, such as collect calls, still had to be handled by the operator.

 In 1984 I transferred to a job in the dial office, as an electronics technician working on electro-mechanical equipment that had been installed in 1958. In 1995, the phone company started upgrading the whole state to digital phone systems, replacing the electro-mechanical offices with computerized or digital offices. After my home office was upgraded, I was placed on a traveling crew, going all over the state, until the last offices in Weleetka and Wetumka, Oklahoma, were replaced.

When I retired in 2003 after 32 years of service, I became an active member of the Telephone Pioneers, now serving as secretary and attending most monthly meetings. We are a service organization, serving the communities together as a club, and as individual volunteers.

I have noticed over the years that the retirees who have the best retirement are the ones who had a “life” outside the phone company, the ones who kept up an active life after they retired.

We enjoy reminiscing about how things were in the “good ol’ days,” but we live in the here-and-now.  If changes are going to be made in our community, our state, our nation, our world, it must come from those who are forward-looking, not sitting back, retired from the world. It’s okay to fondly remember, but don’t try to live in the past.

 

Paul spoke wise words to us in Philippians 3:13-14, when he said, “But one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”

True pioneers don’t just sit around dreaming of the past; they press on into the future.

 

 

Oklahoma and Kansas has had more than their share of tornados the last few years, with several towns having almost total destruction. Storms are inevitable in Tornado Alley, as this area is called.

In May 10 years ago, the town of Midwest City, a suburb of Oklahoma City, experienced a devastating tornado that destroyed many homes. A day or two later, Vinita experienced a downpour of rain, which caused a flashflood, resulting in 3 feet of water in my mother’s home, as well as other homes in Vinita.

The newspaper later reported that she said, “I feel so sorry for those people who lost everything. I still have my things; they are just wet.”

Since I grew up in Oklahoma, with the threat of tornados looming over my head, it is really easy to ignore the many National Weather Service warnings every spring. We natives tend to go on with our duties of life, oblivious to the impending storm, then we nonchalantly find an interior bathroom or room with no windows and read a magazine until it is all over.

Many older homes in this area are built with storm cellars, but they are so nasty when not used often, with spider webs and other critters. Some new homes are now being built with a Safe Room, an enclosed steel-reinforced box with no windows and only one door.

The one thing our family has learned to do is pray when the storms approach. We ask the Lord to protect the town, the townspeople, our homes and property, our families. We remember that Jesus spoke to the storm and said, “Peace, be still,” and we ask Him to still the storm for us.

And Psalms 144:1-2, “Blessed be the Lord my Rock, ….my high tower and my deliverer, my shield and the One in whom I take refuge.”

Whether it is the weather, financial troubles, illness, death, God is the one we can run to for shelter. The Lord is my Safe Room, when the storms of life come. We turn to the One who has never failed us yet.

 

 

I have two tropical fish in individual bowls on the window sill over my sink, plus I have an aquarium in the living room.

Male betas live in the bowls over the sink—one deep red male beta and the other dark blue. They swirl through the water, hiding and darting about the plants, coming to the surface when I drop food in the water.

If one male beta catches sight of the other male beta in the other bowl nearby, he ruffles up his fins to make himself look big and threatening. I try to keep them far enough apart so they can’t see each other, with the fish food container in between, but sometimes it just happens. Male betas don’t get along with any other fish, not even the female beta.

Neons are small tropical fish with a fluorescent stripe down their side. They run in gangs. If you see one, you will see them all, for the rest are soon to follow. There is no discernable leader, just a bunch of followers all moving together.

Guppies are the flashy ones in the tank. They have long multicolored tails and float around near the top, showing off.

Another one is the gourami, a fish that grows pretty large and can be a predator. They will attack whatever is smaller or wounded, nibbling at tails and fins until the other fish dies or eating it whole.

My favorite is the angel fish. Big, round, flat, with pretty coloring and angel wings, they float gently through the water and reflect light.

Oh, and we love the goldfish, the one that can live under most any circumstances, in any old bowl or jar, as long as the water is changed once in a while and a pinch of food is dropped into the bowl now and then. But the goldfish will only grow as big as the bowl will allow.

Which fish are you?

Romans 12:18, “If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men.”

We live our lives in a glass bowl. Let’s live in peace with our fellow bowl-mates and let our shiny souls reflect the light of Christ to all who see us.