Rubberplants & Remembrances

Don’t think I’ve dropped from the planet………..I’ve been sick.
We are talking--spend the day in bed taking narcotic cough syrup so you can finally get some rest—sick.
Never—NEVER!!—are we as thankful for good health as when we don’t have it.

The year I was going to celebrate the big "Sweet 16" my mother and I had planned to go to Manhatten where my sister Alane was attending KSU. It was parents’ weekend and I was going to get to spend my 16th birthday at college with my older sister and her college friends doing cool college girl stuff—I was ecstatic.
I had shared with all my friends at school what I was going to get to do, and a few teachers too, as several of them knew my sister and asked about her frequently. Everyone shared my excitement.

That Friday morning I got up and got dressed, finished packing my suitcase, and took it downstairs. I didn’t feel well, but went ahead and ate breakfast and got ready to go to school. I think I remember Mother questioning me as to whether I felt alright, but I wasn’t about to miss the awesome weekend ahead so I assured her I was good.

Somewhere during that Friday I remember being called to the principal’s office. Which I thought was sort of strange, but I had been in a fog all day, so I didn’t’ think much about it. There stood my mother. Apparently, everyone else could tell I was sick but me. The secretary, who had been called by one of the teachers, called my mom to come and get me. Sure enough when we arrived home and she took my temperature, the trip to K-State was cancelled. What made matters worse was that I found out later that my sister and her roommate had ordered a cake, decorated their room and were anxiously awaiting our arrival to surprise me. Needless to say, I spent the rest of the weekend feeling pretty sorry for myself, and sicker than a dog.

This birthday brought back all those memories, as I stayed home from church on Sunday in a cough syrup induced coma trying to get better.

Imagine my surprise when Rog came home with a lovely card, signed by all the folks in our Sunday School class, a beautiful rubber tree plant, and….wait for it……..CHOCOLATE TRUFFLES from The Sweet Granada!!!! Yes, those would make anyone feel better.

So as I continue to recover from this “stuff”, I’m reminded again how very important it is to let people know you care about them, love and appreciate them; especially when you are fortunate enough to be the one on the receiving end of it.

From whence comes my help??

Last month at Angel Food Distribution the pastor from the Eureka church, that drives an hour one way to pick up their food for distribution, told me that the church had voted to discontinue doing Angel Food any longer sighting several legitimate reasons; lack of volunteers, his own health issues, and orders being down. I was saddened to hear this, but understood, and wished him well.

As I went on line this week to print out our monthly paperwork, I noticed that the Eureka church had orders filed, so I called him. He immediately apologized, and stated that yes, they had orders and were going to continue Angel Food after all. A small, lay driven church, (meaning that it is so small they have no pastor, at least full time), about 12 miles from Eureka had contacted him offering to take orders, and even drive the two hour trip to pick up the food if they would allow them to use their facilities for distribution. It was an offer he couldn’t refuse. He told me that he would be bringing “a few” of their folks up on Sat. to get the lay of the land and meet us.

When Sat. rolled around, as I drove to the church at 5:45 a.m. I went over in my head all the people who had told me that they would be unable to help this month due to Childrens Quizzing, Upwards Basketball, and various other scheduling conflicts. I figured we would do well to have 4 or 5 men there to help unload the truck, with myself and one other lady. Imagine my surprise when I walked in and there was the Pastor from the Eureka church with 7 men ready to help upload the truck and learn the ropes. Needless to say we had the truck unloaded in short fashion.

Due to the scheduling conflicts for so many, I also knew that my regular helpers that help with distribution and carrying boxes out to the cars would be gone and I would more than likely be distributing all by myself. Not to worry, I had my trusty cart and felt confident I could handle it.

Shock is the only word I can use to describe the feeling I had when, as everyone was dispersing to go their separate ways, I turned and there was a young woman from Emporia State and 8 International Students standing in the hall. When I asked her if I could help her, she replied “We are here to help with Angel Food”. I checked their backs for wings.

The morning went smoothly, and the distribution was great. They caught on fast, we chatted and shared things about their native countries and they even helped put things away as time grew to a close.

When they left and I was left alone thanking and praising God for the help that He had provided, I realized something that amazed me.

These students were only here for one semester on a student exchange program. The organization that they were with, GIVE, was only started last year by the young woman who spoke to me at the beginning.

God not only provided help with the unloading, and the distribution, but part of that help came from half way around the world!!! I couldn’t have come up with that plan in my wildest dreams. Kids here studying for one semester from South Korea and China helping distribute Angel Food!!

We have been studying in both Sunday School and in Ladies Bible Study about the children of Israel when God led them into the Wilderness; the lessons he wanted them to learn. As they encountered hunger He supplied manna from heaven, and when they thirsted for water, He supplied it from a rock; I’m thinking that those too were pretty unlikely methods of feeding someone and quenching their thirst. So, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised when the help I need comes from half way around the world, huh?

The Psalmist states in Chapter 121:1-2

1 I will lift up my eyes to the hills— From whence comes my help?
2 My help comes from the LORD,
Who made heaven and earth.

One Thousand Gifts...a Review

There are certain books that you read in life that when you do read them think them the best kept secret known to man. You go back and re-read them, maybe all or parts. Hinds Feet on High Places, The Prodigal God, The Jesus I Never Knew, What’s so Amazing about Grace, those are a few of mine.

Now I have another one.

One Thousand Gifts by Anne Voskamp is one of those books. If you have checked my links at all, the ones that I check and read every day for inspiration, cheer, encouragement, and all those things that we in the family of God are supposed to do for one another, you will find Holy Experience there.

Sometimes people write books that you read and they are you, verbalizing in a way you can’t. Saying what you have learned, are experiencing, and you wonder if perhaps your dilemmas in this place are not that uncommon to more folk than you realize.

Hardships, sorrow’s, heartbreak, we have experienced them, but how do we respond, what do we learn, take away from them? Maybe we know what we should learn and take away, but do we remember and retain and keep and cherish those lessons learned? You will find answers in here from a fellow traveler who has found the door and is holding it open for the rest of us to go through, being that signpost that we are all called to be—“this is the way, walk in it.”

I was a fan of Ann Voskamp before. Her daily writing has become a small part of my devotions each day to focus my mind on loving God with all my heart, soul, and might. I am even more impressed and encouraged by her willingness to lead the way through the aftermath of the mire life can become, by sharing her story, and the lessons learned, and remembered, and followed. But most of all by the Christ she points to.

You will cry, you will grin, and you will feel it deep inside you as you read and relate and thank God, and Praise Him for these words that have come from a place of deep truth born of deeper sorrow. Just the beginning of being Thankful.
If you are experiencing dark days, the darkest you couldn’t even imagined, or you have experienced such days, and come through praying that nothing like that ever repeats itself, this book is for you, for it reminds us of the most important thing of “giving thanks in all circumstances” and why……..yes, why…….the most important part.

"When Hell Freezes Over"

I’ve been reading in the prophets lately—a little “lite” reading, but as usual something came off the page that made me think of the above saying.

When God gave Jeremiah the word of the New Covenant He would bring to His people, He said:

“Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah— not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”

He followed that in Chapter 33 by telling just how He would do this.

Behold, the days are coming,’ says the LORD, ‘that I will perform that good thing which I have promised to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah:
‘In those days and at that time
I will cause to grow up to David
A Branch of righteousness;
He shall execute judgment and righteousness in the earth.
In those days Judah will be saved,
And Jerusalem will dwell safely.
And this is the name by which she will be called:
THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.’
“For thus says the LORD: ‘David shall never lack a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel; nor shall the priests, the Levites, lack a man to offer burnt offerings before Me, to kindle grain offerings, and to sacrifice continually.’ ”

This promise, and the explanation of the fulfillment of it are the prophecy of Christ’s coming, Jesus fulfilled these by coming and dyeing for our sins.
Most of you would say, “Yes, Andrea we know all this.”
BUT did you know that God followed both of these promises with a “when Hell freezes over” confirmation?

Thus says the LORD,
Who gives the sun for a light by day,
The ordinances of the moon and the stars for a light by night,
Who disturbs the sea,
And its waves roar
(The LORD of hosts is His name):
“If those ordinances depart
From before Me, says the LORD,
Then the seed of Israel shall also cease
From being a nation before Me forever.”
Thus says the LORD:
“If heaven above can be measured,
And the foundations of the earth searched out beneath,
I will also cast off all the seed of Israel
For all that they have done, says the LORD.
And again in Jeremiah 33:19

“Thus says the LORD: ‘If you can break My covenant with the day and My covenant with the night, so that there will not be day and night in their season, then My covenant may also be broken with David My servant, so that he shall not have a son to reign on his throne, and with the Levites, the priests, My ministers. As the host of heaven cannot be numbered, nor the sand of the sea measured, so will I multiply the descendants of David My servant and the Levites who minister to Me.’ ”

Did you get that?

The challenges that He gives are, in essence, a “when hell freezes over” type of deal. He may not have used slang to express it, but I’m pretty sure He established the whole idea of such an absurd thing as “when hell freezes over” ever happening.

After all:
The sun will always rise, and night will follow day.
The stars cannot be counted.
We know more about the surface of the moon than we do about the caverns and caves of this earth.

So we can be assured His covenant will stand forever!

Whew...........another milestone another marker..

January 15, 1977