Failed Fruit

Late last spring, my husband and I created a raised bed garden. We filled a wood frame with fresh dark soil, stirred in bags of rich manure and mulch such as coffee grounds, grass clippings, and egg shells. We planted tomatoes, onions, herbs, squash, and flowers. We watered faithfully every day and kept the ground free of weeds.



In early June, the wildfire season started with a bang. Lightening started wildfires spread all over northern California and the smoke ominously snaked over the Sierra mountain range and settled in our valley. Smoke permeated everything. It seeped through the cracked open windows and into our homes. It was hard to breath. We felt suffocated by the heavy air and depressed by the prolonged exposure to haze and ashes. That annoying group of people who are optimistic in the most challenging of situations stated that sunrises and sunsets were more spectacular during those weeks of dark and greasy smoke. Pessimists such as I were not as perky. "This cannot be good for our health", I mumbled in despair. The fires started in June and lasted well into the last weeks of July.



Meanwhile, back in the garden, my tomatoes just didn't seem to take off. They stayed green and hard. The basil remained a stunted plant, and the squash plants bloomed half-heartedly but didn't produce fruit. I scratched my head, knowing that I nourished the soil and watered often. During harvest season, we picked a few tomatoes here and there, managed a good pesto sauce now and then, and didn't expect a thing from the squash plants. I had never had such a dismal garden in my life.



In early September, our school traveled to a large farm for a field trip. The students studied plant cycles, fed chickens, and were allowed to pick produce, including fresh red raspberries. The tour guide said something that stuck in my mind. She stated that the raspberried had ripened a good couple of weeks later than anticipated. When I asked about her theory for the delay, she answered that the farm crew determined it was due to the smoke that hung around for half of the summer. All of a sudden everything about my garden made sense! I provided everything that my garden needed for growth. I provided good soil, lots of water, mulch, loving care, but I could not provide what the garden needed most of all to thrive. I could not provide the sun. My plants were duped by a smokescreen. The smoke slid in and stole life from plants which would never grow to full maturity as a result. I might as well have purchased Emerill's tomatoes instead. So, will I attempt a garden next year? Of course! In some things in life, it pays to be an optimist.

Why I Appreciate My Pastor

I haven't blogged in months. It took a challenge to post about our pastors that encouraged me to post something that means a lot to me.

I appreciate my pastor because he is passionate about the truth of scripture to transform our lives. He has enabled our church to be an orderly, reverent, and committed group of Christians. He has the help of godly men who make up elders and deacons and who stay close to the vision of the Church. When we sing hymns and spiritual songs, the magnitude of worship resides in voices and not so much in instrumentation. It is a rousing lifting up of voices in praise.

Our children stay with the parents, and I have never experienced a quieter group of children as our pastor preaches and they take notes or rest in their parent's arms.

I guess the most touching testimony of the committment of our pastor is the fact that he blew out his back and was in intense pain the summer before this past summer. He painstakenly hobbled up to preach with a wide back brace, still passionate about preaching the Word of God. Sometimes our other pastor and the elders stepped in to preach, but we knew that it was hard for our pastor to give up his pulpit.

Our church is set in a valley surrounded by ranch land and a strand of the Sierra Mountain Range to the west. We drive an hour to go to our church, and others drive up to an hour and a half each Sunday. The church is the hub and gathers folks from all four directions. We have tried to visit churches closer to our home, but none can compare in our mind to ours, mainly because of the sure foundation set forth by good preaching, and a pastor who loves the Lord so much.

Since he appreciates John Piper and quotes from him occasionally, I sure would love to surprise him with tickets to the Desiring God Conference.

Ok. I will go back to my occasional pasttime of posting comments on OTHER blogs.

Perhaps an Enema Will Help

I read a great quote today in the www.desiringgod.org/Blog/

The great challenge of the preacher is to follow Paul in 2 Corinthians 4:5, "What we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake."

But there are more ways to preach ourselves than one might think. This word from James Denney has exerted a sobering effect on me since I first read it in 1982. He had these words framed and posted in the vestry of his Scottish church.

No man can bear witness to Christ and to himself at the same time. No man can give the impression that he himself is clever and that Christ is mighty to save.

There is a great discussion over at Pyromaniacs about Legalism and one of the quotes I enjoyed was this:

But it is obvious to everyone around him that he is not really holy, he just needs to take an enema.

The Shift of Spring

Peter's boat curves to a point
The inside is hollow.
Tiny shells roll to and fro
on the silt bottom of the lake.
Peter imagines skimming the floor
sifting, trying to find Jesus,
clutch his hand to pull him back.
Sand, the boundary for blue-grey, dark waters,
shifts endlessly, reminding Peter
that just two days ago he said three times,
"I never knew Him!"
He used to notice tumbled rocks on shore
harboring windblown seeds,
cumulous clouds promising rain.
Now he doesn't see a thing,
rubs his sour knotted fishing net
between calloused fingers,
wishes he had been stronger.
How can he know in this dark time
that a few days from now,
a familiar figure will rise
from the sun-bleached shore,
hold out his hand,
and call to him across salty waves,
algae turning,
schools of fish flashing,
nets suddenly full.
Peter will say three times,
"Yes Lord, you know I love you!"
Lift his head at the slow exhale of spring,
new life from clefts and cracks of hard places.
"Yes Lord, I love you!"
Sand gently shifts,
waves are silent.
Morning moves slowly.
A fisherman weeps.

Christian Reality in Sudan and Kenya

Yesterday in our school, we had a missionary couple tell us about their ministry in Kenya and Sudan. They work at an orphanage of over 300 children who have lost their parents because of war or other circumstances. The husband is actually Sudanese. I asked them to speak specifically to my class of fourth and fifth graders after our assembly. I have been honest with my students about the suffering of Christians in other parts of the world and I wanted the husband to share with us what his life was like in Sudan. He told us stories about how his village was bombed up to three times a day. Planes would roll out large barrels filled with nails and shrapnel and children would hit the ground in a flat position to avoid the flying nails and then run for shelter. He saw his best friend die beside him. He finally fled his village at the age of 19 because Muslims would take teen boys, train them to be soldiers and then send them back to fight their own people. They also kidnapped children and women to be sold as slaves in other countries. In order to prevent people from escaping, they would cut their achilles tendon. Ramsey did say that Christianity is growing stronger in Sudan, but now he and his wife (who is American and here on furlough), are worried because they have a home in Kenya. They are not sure how dangerous it will be to return home after their furlough, since Kenya has killed thousands of people since their elections earlier this month. The new president is apparently closely tied to Islam. It was a sobering time of questions and answers in my classroom, and my children then prayed for the missionary couple for safety, and that their needs would be met.

My church also has a lady who is a missionary in Sudan. She was on vacation in Kenya for Christmas, because Kenya was the safe country for Christian organizations. She was still in Kenya during the elections and our church received word of her experience in the midst of chaos and people being hacked and killed in the streets.

She wrote:

Today I worshiped in a church with a thousand plus Kenyans from all different tribes and tongues united in one voice crying out to God. Do you know what their cry was? It was not "God bring peace" or "God, change the hearts of our leaders" or even "Why?" Instead the cry was "God, forgive us for we have forgotten to love our neighbor as our self. We have allowed this hatred to grow and create a divide that none can bridge, but Christ." One man prayed the whole of Psalm 51. Young and old shared in these prayers of repentance and the call for strength to return evil with good and hatred with love.

It is a different world in Kenya and Sudan and it seems we are so insulated from such difficult circumstances, and yet I believe storm clouds are on the horizon for us in North America as well. I am blessed by the humility of the man from Sudan who softly told us about his life and sufferings, and sang praise songs for us in his native tongue. I am blessed that he is an example of patient endurance in the midst of difficult circumstances in his life.

A Rant Just Cuz

So. I haven't really been posting, but have had my say here and there. I do want to throw something out into the atmosphere. I spent 25 years, as a pre-reformed Christian trying to measure up. Well, not really. I tried and failed so I rebelled against what I considered a hard and impossible walk with God. I rebelled because my walk was not contingent on what God was working in my heart and life according the the Holy Spirit, but what was coming out of others expectations, outward appearance, or guilt. Once I realized the amazing improbability that I was actually chosen by God, I realized that I wanted to please Him because He first loved me.

What does that look like you may ask? Well, it certainly doesn't look like the outer appearance taking preeminence over the inner man being renewed daily by the power of the Holy Spirit. I have to confess that my ornery personality has a tendency to take the position of the "devil's advocate" in blog wars. Lately, it has been the war of whether Mars Hill Church in Seattle under pastor Mark Driscoll should have had a New Year's celebration. After viewing pics of last year's celebration, I thought that the poor church hardly deserved the title of "whore church" for their choice of having a celebration instead of a time of prayer and reflection for the new year. Why is it important that they follow the footsteps of churches who do have prayer watch on New Year's Eve? They are their own church with their own choices and they are responsible to God. I did not see anything unseemly in their celebration that causes concern that they are falling off the deep end.

I want to please God in my walk, demeanor, and testimony to the world. I do not want that testimony to rest on an outward appearance that may look great but hide a deceitful heart of pride and self-promotion. I want to be honest in my life and testimony and that may mean that I don't necessarily look as disciplined as some Christians. I spent many years with a prideful and self congratulatory Christian man who looked down on others and thought highly of himself, and once said he wished he had married a real Christian woman instead of me. Why did he think that? Sometimes I read novels that were not written by Christians. Sometimes I liked to hike and really soak in God's creation. I enjoyed dancing. He considered all of the above, worldly pursuits. He went on to divorce me and marry a non-believer while I spent 11 years as a single woman, and met and married a kind and humble Christian man with little self-pride. When I was previously married for 18 years to a self disciplined "Keith Green" kind of guy, I was torn down and demeaned often and did not recognize that God was working in my life, in His way and in His time. Now I am married to a guy who also spent many years trying to overcome being torn down as a Christian man, but who has a heart that really wants to please God. I am so thankful for God's grace and provision for both of us.

I notice that some Christians in the reformed faith go around and demean other Christians for reasons that sometimes leave me scratching my head. Yes, we are to be Bereans and judge rightly when it comes to our lives and doctrine, but some of the attacks out there are just not warranted it seems to me. I have to go to work, but I will post a letter later a missionary from my church wrote recently from Kenya/Sudan that sure puts many things into a different perspective when it comes to our self-indulgent American Christianity.

Everybody Smile Now!

I find this photo rather funny.