Meditate on it

I have been plugging along in 1 Corinthians the last month, moving slow, as typical.  In the past, 1 Corinthians has been a high point for me, but this time through I've had fewer highs.  Maybe it's where I am in my own life, maybe it's that I am understanding the book more accurately and less subjectively or emotionally.hodgepodge of things that it's impressed me as being a catch all of sorts...a letter Paul perhaps knew was necessary but didn't look forward to writing.  It's a "your kids need to snap back into shape what are you going to do?" kind of moment. The church at Corinth was behaving badly--disorderly.  The city of Corinth was a mess to begin with, characterized by sexual liberty, rudeness, division, arguments, and pride.  We don't have the other half--what the church said to Paul--but from the context, we can hope that they were earnestly seeking His will, how to resolve and address some rather complex but common issues. Whether in

We switched our beach timeshare week this year so that Grace could join us.  Last year her AB Tech class conflicted, and our beach week just wasn't the same.   So here we are at Atlantic Beach, NC in May as opposed to September.  After 20 years of vacationing in this exact spot each September, it's striking to see the differences in May. Usually the season is ending, the businesses are weary of the tourist grind and looking forward to the rest that comes with cooler weather and the slower paced off-season life.  At the stores, beach accessories are well picked through with many on clearance.  The mosquitoes and other insects are ubiquitous at dusk and dawn.  The ocean air is breezy but consistently hot. A rainy morning at the beach, good for contemplation... May beach air is still breezy but cooler.  The rain we are experiencing this morning is certainly not one of the hurricane-season fronts that settle in solidly each September.  This rain is more like a friendly acqu

Christopher Lloyd's Great Dixter, front meadow, Northiam, UK The Bible is rich with agricultural imagery.  Often I think of the images while out in the garden, pulling this or planting that.   The Parable of the Sower is a particularly deep well that comes to mind again and again, but there are many others as well. Currently, I'm reading 1 Corinthians, one of my favorite books of the Bible--and not because of "the love chapter" (1 Cor 13) either which I feel has been mangled and waved around until it feels limp and lifeless to me. But, here, at the beginning of 1 Corinthians, Paul addresses division and jealousy within this church, a congregation beset by man-centered factions and petty distinctions.  Paul strives to put their focus back on God.  Why is this such a hard focus to maintain?  We lose our way so easily.... For when one says, "I follow Paul," and another, "I follow Apollos," are you not being merely human? What then is Apoll

Every time I set out seedlings, I feel sorry for the weak ones.  I long to be a Darwinian-minded spirit who has no trouble with "survival of the fittest," quickly tossing aside the stragglers, the weak-necked, the limp.  But instead, I find a spot in the corner for them.  I tuck them in and wish them well. Whether right or wrong, I've always had this sensitivity.  Sometimes I hope it's a sign of compassion for the weak.  Other times, it feels like indecisiveness, a wishy-washy inability to make "hard" decisions. I have this same problem with the semi-invasive plants.  Why pull the mint so ruthlessly?  They make great tabolui, tea, and salads--who doesn't love mint?  But mint is a bully my mind argues back.  And why remove every last clump of the sedum--nothing else grows so well in the crooks of rocks.  So, I let a few stay... I wouldn't have made the cut with Joshua conquering the Promised Land---there would have been far too many straggl

Driving down Patton yesterday, I saw John 4:34 on a license plate.  David noticed it first, then looked it up out of curiosity: Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work." -John 4:34 Intrigued, I caught a glimpse of an older man with a ball cap before the car pulled ahead and was gone.  Nice, I thought. Common man.  Straightforward verse.  I'm typically not a fan of Christianease and bumper stickers, but I liked his choice. I like the plate because it shines a light on Jesus and his mission.  And it speaks of our role, our mission too. First line of the Westminster Catechism: What is the chief end of man? To glorify God and fully enjoy him forever.

One goal of my 2016 garden is to blur the boundaries between the flower garden and the vegetable garden.  Thus, I've planted broccoli starts next to the snapdragons and bachelors buttons.  But, I'm finding it's easier to work vegetables into flowers than flowers into vegetable spaces.  Vegetables like beans and tomatoes beg for rows--its seems an artistic shame to sacrifice flowers to such a linear approach.  They end up feeling like an add-on, an afterthought. Yes, I know marigolds deter insects, but such a calculating relationship seems a disgrace to both ends.  I'm prejudice against marigolds for exactly this season--they are always approached very practically, planted sequentially along the rows.  So sad.  Last summer when walking, I saw a majestic sweep of marigolds in a huge bed, all by themselves.  That's the way they meant to be---beautiful in their own right. In contrast, the vegetables sneak into the flower beds quite nicely--broccoli is so obvious

A quick entry here--I have been mulling this observation from the devotional Streams in the Desert : "Miss Havergal has said: "Every year, I might almost say every day, that I live, I seem to see more clearly how all the rest and gladness and power of our Christian life hinges on one thing; and that is, taking God at His word, believing that He really means exactly what He says, and accepting the very words in which He reveals His goodness and grace, without substituting others or altering the precise modes and tenses which He has seen fit to use."  -March 24th Taking God at His word --how often do I truly do this?  How much more often do I substitute others or alter the precise modes and tense as she suggests? What does it mean to take God at His word?  It's a heady concept, but I do have some initial thoughts: 1.  I think it means trusting that whatever He is doing in my life today---though seemingly inconvenient, trivial, or unfair---is exactly what i

I've been delving into the family genealogy again, which is always a huge time sucker.  People seem to be either fascinated by their family history or largely indifferent.  It's one way or the other. Depending upon how you perceive the past and family, our heritage can either be inconsequential or profoundly significant. The view from my 2nd great-grandparent's home looking toward the massive grain elevators that line the Buffalo waterfront. The indifferent line of reasoning goes something like this: Why bother so deeply with the details of those who lived before us?  What's past is past. Their particulars don't impact my life and who I am today. Plus, it's kind of morbid. Ultimately, I am related to everyone if we go far back enough.  If I am descended from person A or B, so what?  Why does it matter? Then I think about our present culture---how masses of us make a pastime of following the minutest details of celebrity lives or the various waves of pop

Vivian Maier, September 18, 1962 Years ago I remember reading a parenting book that concluded that the teenage years are like the unwinding of a yo-yo. Everything that the parents have "wound" for the first ten or so years unravels for better or worse during this time. The principle: there is a window of maximum investment for maximum impact. This is true in the plant world as well--yes, you can grow basil in a sunroom through winter, and you can plant lettuce in July, but there is an ideal season--a range of temperature, precipitation, and growing conditions when things are easier, when your plants are most receptive. Although you can grow a plant outside of these parameters, the work will be harder and your efforts ultimately less successful. There is an ideal season for gardening and an ideal season of influence in the lives of our children. With our children now 11, 14, and 16, I suspect most of the foundational growing is past. Don't misunderstand, th

Yesterday was a bad day.  Though I know bad days will come, I hate when they ambush me so completely. Because afterwards, I am a double fool---a fool for the sin and a fool for not knowing the signs, preventing the overflow, for not initiating damage control. Yesterday was one of those days when all the yucky pieces of me spilled out everywhere, with abandon.  It's never pretty.  Tim Keller suggests that most of us would rather be exposed physically, running down the street naked, than have God see our rotten naked hearts. My naked heart is a great discouragement to me. Paul told it like it was, is, will be...until I made made complete in Him: "For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.  For I do not understand my own actions.  For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate."   -Romans 7:14-15  I do the very thing I hate. And, I hate that I do the very thing I hate.  But I still do it. Square one.  I am ri

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin..."                        -Matthew 6:28 As with the rest of Asheville, Rose and I have been getting out more this week with the warmer weather.  Yesterday I walked and she roller skated one of our favorites--Reed Creek Greenway which runs alongside Broadway and Montford.  We cross Broadway, skirt UNCA's Botanical Gardens and then connect up with their Glen's Creek Greenway to Merrimon at Luella's Barbecue then back.  I think it's about three miles total, a nice jaunt. Rose is learning to use the rollerskates she got for Christmas, so yesterday we stopped often.  Along the bank of Glen's Greek, there was a particularly picturesque section scattered with what we initially thought were dandelions.  But, we quickly realized they were something else.   There were also clumps of daffodils sprinkled through; we've recently begun to call these "Daffo-down-dillys" after read

Briggs has been reading the book of Job, so it's wandered into our conversations lately.  This morning he commented how full of himself Job was in chapter 29 when he finally vents his frustration and grief upon his friends and God.  He referenced this passage: "When I went out to the gate of the city, when I prepared my seat in the square, the young men saw me and withdrew, and the aged rose and stood; the princes refrained from talking and laid their hand on their mouth; the voice of the nobles was hushed, and their tongue stuck to the roof of their mouth.  -Job 29:7-10 As sometimes (perhaps even often) happens, Briggs and I see a passage differently.  In this case, I agree more with the perspective that Job's reminiscences are yes, perhaps slightly inflated, but mainly a romantic longing for the better, sweeter days of his past.  I don't think he's full of hubris as much as nostalgia. To me, this fits Job's stellar character--a man described as upright

O Jerusalem, Greg Olsen , oil on canvas Entering into John 13 and the subsequent tumble of Christ's final days, I'm fascinated by the fixed purposefulness of his actions.  Earlier on, Luke tells us that  Jesus "steadfastly set his face toward Jerusalem." (Luke 9:51)  He knows the path before him.  He's ready.  In striking contrast, his disciples are not---working in the dark, oblivious, trying to make sense of the events in medias res , in the very moment.  It's such a handicap. Our role as parents is strangely similar in that the adult knowledge that we possess--ours won from hard-edged experience rather than omniscience---always trumps our children's finite experiences and youthful idealism.  The very limited scope of their lives is delightful specifically because it is limited.  It suffers not from the caution and cynicism that results from navigating the many twists and turns that we know lie ahead.  Of course we don't know the particulars

Pondering this verse this morning...  When I was a young Christian, I resisted John and his sweeping declarations which struck me as over the top.  But, as I've grown older, the simplicity and profundity of his observations have grown on me too.   What a way to lead into the washing of the disciples feet (an event only recorded in John), all of this a prelude into the Upper Room discourse and last supper.

I've been ruminating on Psalm 16 this week--such solid images to grasp and turn back to Him in petition, pleading.  Here are some of the images I've created in this process:          The Psalms Project Band  has a song for this psalm here .   I particularly love this bridge: "You will not leave my soul in the grave, You will raise me up and I'll fly away. You did not leave Jesus in the grave. You will raise me up and we'll fly away." One more for good measure: here is an image from Psalm 17:5 I created after exploring the definition/sense of preserve from Psalm 16:1. Preserve (from Strongs) shâmar shaw-mar' A primitive root; properly to hedge about (as with thorns), that is, guard; generally to protect, attend to, etc.: - beware, be circumspect, take heed (to self), keep (-er, self), mark, look narrowly, observe, preserve, regard, reserve, save (self), sure, (that lay) wait (for), watch (-man)