I Don't Feel Like It

Many times I just don't feel like doing some things that I should do. I know I am like every other person out there. I want to be faithful to those places that make me myself. A wife. Mom. Sister. Daughter. Grandmother. These are my physical responsibilities. I also have a responsibility to the spiritual. I am a Believer. An heir! A child of God. I am a warrior in the unseen spiritual world.

Sometimes I can be found shirking any one of these responsibilites just because... I don't feel like it. Todays Our Daily Bread devotional was about that. I read the scripture in Matthew 21 and learned that there are two ways people respond to the Truth = Jesus Christ is God's Son. Jesus told the chief priests and the elders that the tax collectors and the harlots believed John, but they did not.

The chief priests and the elders in those days were a very successful bunch that had spent their lives being holy. I can imagine how they probably appeared. They were probably similar to the priests in the Russian Orthodox church that I grew up in - revered by the people around them. These chief priests/pharisees did everything related to God - right. They followed the letter of the law to the minutest details. Yet, they didn't even recognize God's Son. The difference between the harlots and tax collectors and the chief priests and the elders was in their decisions to believe that Jesus Christ was who He said that He was or not to believe. Believe and be saved or disbelief and be filled with anger.

Jesus told them the truth about how they didn't believe John the Baptist and they didn't believe Jesus Christ even though He came and performed miracles before them. Things only God could do! Now that is pretty blind! But I don't think I would have done any differently if I was busy trusting in my own goodness. In order to be saved, we have to believe that we have a need to be saved from something and if we are already feeling pretty holy or good without Jesus Christ, why should one even need a Savior? Don't believe that lie, we can never be holy enough to stand before the piercing eyes of God Himself. He will probe deep into our hearts and what He finds is "DESPERATELY WICKED!" If we are quiet enough to stand alone in God's presence, we would all agree - there is nothing about us that is holy enough apart from Jesus Christ.

"I don't feel like it - but I will do it anyway." I think I want to put that up in my kitchen where many times I shirk my responsibility to cook and clean! How about that bathroom? These are my jobs and many times I don't want to but I will ask for grace to do them until I can't do them!

Yesterday was our family singing night. It is getting more organized every week! Yesterday Doug set up a microphone so that we can have a loud enough leader. He is kindly soft-spoken and yet I want to hear him lead his family on this night. We had a beautiful time of singing. The kids love the motion songs and enter enthusiastically when we get to "Only A Boy Named David," "Zachias," "Hallelu, Hallelu, Praise Ye the Lord!" I make sure we keep our time to one hour exactly so that they are not overwhelmed since we ask that they all are quiet, and respectful. Little Gunner comes and he does not quite like to have to conform to this rigid time so he folds his arms and scowls at Gramma, but after the singing is happening and the kids are motioning, he is so happy. So their lives of standing up to their shortcomings begins and I love how they are all rising to the occasion. Someday I will capture them on video. I got this afterwards video to share today.

In A Fog

We have fog this morning. Weather person said most likely freezing rain/snow today. Husband commutes everyday said that the roads were sloppy and right after they got through the slippery Hay Flats they heard that there was a roll-over.

"If God is present at every point in space, if we cannot go where He is not, cannot even conceive of a place where is He is not, why then has not that Presence become the one universally celebrated fact of the world? The patriarch Jacob, "in waste howling wilderness," gave the answer to that question. He saw a vision of God and cried out in wonder, "Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not." Jacob had never been for one small division of a moment outside the circle of that all-pervading Presence. But he knew it not. That was his trouble, and it is ours. Men do not know if God is here. What a difference it would make if they knew."
A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God, 1948.

So it goes in our world today. So many do not even think of God at all unless something like the raging California fires happen. What a selfish people we are and what a merciful God rules this world. We should long to know God. We should know what He loves and what He hates so that we can live our lives pleasing to Him. We should include Him in all of our daily endeavors. If we don't, we are living life in a fog. The created not knowing the Creator.

We must read the Bible and believe each word if we want to come out of that spiritual fog.

"This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true. Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written."

One of the disciples that God nicknamed "sons of thunder" wrote those words. John. (John 21:24,25.)

Pomegranate and Time

I cooked Mom grits for breakfast this morning along with orange juice, pomegrante jewels, that is the best way I can describe the pomegranate fruit after I took them out of the fruit, they appear to be jewels, so beautiful.

I learned yesterday how to get the fruit out of the pomegranate. First you score the outside of the pomegranate, then put the whole thing into a bowl full of water; peel the outside off. The rind and white membrane floats and then the fruit drops to the bottom of the bowl. It was fun. Mom and I were impressed with the sparkling beauty of this fruit in a bowl. Mom also had a slice of toast and 1/2 cup of frozen blueberries. I had a bowl of cereal with frozen blueberries.

After breakfast we watched the news of the fires in California. As we watched the news Mom commented on the time. "Oh wow, already 12!" I said, "I can't believe it, I am still full from my cereal and it's time for lunch???"

Mom's phone rang and she hurried to answer it, but was too late. She brought it to me and said, "I missed it, see who it was and call them back." We looked at the phone and we both decided it was a weird number we didn't recognize. She began to play Mahjong while I kept looking, then I noticed that she had gone to the dialed numbers list. I exited out of that list and went to the missed calls list and saw that my brother Mark had tried to call --- at 10:40 a.m.

"Mark tried to call you this morning Mom." She got up and came over to the phone and said "OH! I didn't even hear it!" We looked at the phone. Then I asked, "What time is it now anyway?" I looked at the microwave. 10:42. I realized the clock in the livingroom had stopped and it was not even lunch time. We were thinking we should be preparing lunch and we had hardly even burped from breakfast!

We are quite the funny pair - my Mom and I.

Native to Iran to the Himalayas in northern India and introduced to California by the Spanish settlers in 1769 how amazing is it that this pomegranate is on my table in almost frozen Alaska! They like cool winters and hot summers. Humid climates are not good for the formation of the fruit. This tree can be severely injured by temperatures below 12f. The tree can grow as far north as southern Utah and Washington D.C. but seldom get fruited. It adapts well to container culture and will sometimes fruit in a greenhouse! This plant with glossy, leathery leaves gets a beautiful flower and is self-pollinating.

This sounds like it could be a fun indoor plant to try.

Stored in temperatures (refrigerated) between 32 to 41f the fruit is like apples, can be kept for up to seven months without spoiling and actually the fruit will get tastier and juicier. Pomegranates make great juice that I read will help those with ischemic coronary heart disease by improving blood circulation. MedicineNet.com claims that pomagranates have more antioxidant qualities than cranberries or even green tea!

Do you eat pomegranates and how do you prepare them?

I went to see my sister Millie on Sunday.

She has been hospitalized for 301 days.

We long to see her smile. We want her to go home now. We want that her food be administered in daily increments rather than constantly. We feel that her body would benefit from going without that constant drip of food. If she could get something like pomegranate juice instead, I bet that would be so good for her.

"The Signature of God"

YES! A Blogger Blog search engine! I was always trying to find where to do a search on blogs here without using the "Next Blog" feature! Finally, here it is. Blog Search.

I've been reading a book by Grant R. Jeffrey "The Signature of God, Astonishing Biblical Discoveries." About the author Jeffrey, "internationally recognized as a leading researcher and Bible Prophecy teacher: More than one and a half million readers have read his seven best selling books." This is the first time that I am reading anything by him.

Here is a quote from his book:

The widespread agnosticism and atheism in our modern government, media, universities, and seminaries has resulted in the moral collapse of our society. The philosopher Thomas Hobbes wisely described the inevitable effects on our society of the growing agnosticism and the gradual abandonment of the authority of Scriptures in the life of our nations. Hobbes described the terrible results that would follow the loss of a national religious faith in the Christ in these insightful words. "No arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." Tragically, the results of our national apostasy were accurately predicted in his writings. In 1830 the government of France sent a well respected judge, Alexis de Tocqueville, to study the society, the beliefs, and the prisons of the United States of America to find out why there was so little crime and so few prisons. After several years of study he wrote a celebrated book called The Democracy of the United States in 1840. Alexis de Tocqueville wrote about the reason for America's greatness as a nation and the real reason for her low crime rate at that time. "I sought for the greatness of the United States in her commodious harbors, her ample rivers, her fertile fields, and boundless forests - and it was not there. I sought for it in her rich mines, her vast world commerce, her public schools system and in her institutions of higher learning - and it was not there. I looked for it in her democratic Congress and her matchless Constitution - and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great!"

Wow. That was quite the paragraph and one I know is the TRUTH! What is any man apart from the greatness of God? Nothing but a pawn to be pushed and pulled here and there by the greatest deceiver of all, Satan. And to think this deceiver has convinced those that are in his unforgiving grip that they are FREE? That is one of the greatest deceptions of all.

Grant goes on to write:

A century and a half later, America has publicly abandoned the Bible as the moral anchor of our society and education. It should surprise no one that, after decades of teaching our children that there are no absolute rights and wrongs, we face an appalling breakdown in public morality and rising levels of crime. President Andrew Jackson shared the same opinion as Alexis de Tocqueville about the central position of the Scriptures to the life of his nation. As he lay on his deathbed President Jackson pointed to the Bible on the table by his bed and said to his companion, "That Book, Sir, is the rock on which our Republic rests."

I've often wondered what people like Jackson and Lincoln would have to say to those in high places here in the United States today.

It is interesting to me that Wikipedia has nothing of what Grant wrote taken from Tocqueville's book "Democracy in America" on the page about him.

"Religion in America takes no direct part in the government of society, but it must be regarded as the first of their political institutions; for if it does not impart a taste for freedom, it facilitates the use of it. Indeed, it is in this same point of view that the inhabitants of the United States themselves look upon religious belief. I do not know whether all Americans have a sincere faith in their religion--for who can search the human heart?--but I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions This opinion is not peculiar to a class of citizens or to a party, but it belongs to the whole nation and to every rank of society." Alexis de Tocqueville, exerpt from Democracy in America, Chapter XVII.

I better stop reading and go see my Mom!

Have a beautiful day keeping God and His Truth evident in your everyday lives. God blesses when mankind trusts in the Lord with all of our hearts and we don't lean to our own understanding, and in all our ways acknowledge Him, then He will direct our paths. His paths are truly free.