Just Thinking about Stuff.

Just Thinking about Stuff.

 

Have a feeling that indigestion is going to be interesting tonight. Decided to fix up a container of English cucumber slices and red onion pieces—and then ate a bunch of it! Oh well. The thoughts of how good cucumbers are at any time can remind me of good trips to the farm and fresh veggies from the garden. Yellow squash fried up with onions and maybe even some fresh English peas made into a salad with boiled eggs and dressing just make me about drool. The wonderful change of seasons helps us to appreciate when the cold weather is gone and the heat of summer has not quite taken over our lives. Even the flowers have made this a wonderful spring so far despite the storms and damaging winds. Maybe we just have to have a sense of balance between the good stuff and the heavy-duty misery of storms.

 

Have mentioned a teacher today in my prayers several times and thought about an older lady in the church who is dreading any news of what might be wrong with her. As we age, we are usually pretty stubborn about just ascribing all the problems we have to aging. It just does not make sense to find ourselves unable to think or react as quickly as we once did. It takes patience to get old. And it takes patience to teach—especially in today’s atmosphere of rebellion against authority. These are two different situations, but the patience needed is the similarity. And the hard part is that we can’t just expect God to give us patience. We work on it day by day and experience by experience. We have become a society that tends to have a microwave mentality. We want answers to problems NOW. It is not necessarily a sin to get upset with problems that we feel should be removed or otherwise understood. But we have been given help to see that even the problems are given to us to help us change our attitudes. Oh yes! When pain in the hips, knees, back or other body parts restrict our abilities to do whatever we have chosen each day, we can get pretty disgusted and even depressed. But even pain has a way of teaching us lessons. Another lesson in patience for some of us—well, many of us—reminds us that we have to ask for help from the one who has always loved us since before we were in the womb. It may take a long time to understand why things happen to folks who get some disease or some child loses life itself or someone lives in constant terror. We want the answers, but we WILL someday understand. How God looks at things must be so very different from how we are able to see life. Someday we will be able to see things the way that John, Paul, and Daniel saw them. Until that day comes, we must have patience.

 

Sterling and Jacqui came today. Tomorrow the old woman will cook for them if they have a little time for me to get things done. It is so good to have them here and to be able to visit with them. Family means breathing quietly while you remember things together. God has blessed us so very much to have our families.

 

Rest well, my friends. You are loved.