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Monday, April 27, 2015

Trust and Obey

The theme of our Weekend Meetings was Trust and Obey. The message Saturday evening was on Trust and we wound up Sunday evening with Obey. All the messages were good but I especially needed the reminder just now to trust God. Some things in life are very uncertain and we are living day by day, adjusting plans according to the need. We can't see how everything is going to work out but God is in control.
One of the reminders we heard was that "God knows the future better than we know the past." As a historian and genealogist who spends a lot of time trying to figure out how things really were in the past, I see a lot of truth in that fact. We don't need to see into the future to trust God to work out all the details.
We can trust God because of who He is: Self-existent, Holy, Infinite, Immortal, Omnipotent, Omniscient, Immunitable, and more. We can lean hard on Him and know He will not let us down. I'm glad I have a solid Rock under me that takes the worry out of the present and gives me hope for the future. And when I come to the end of life He will escort me into the next. I am never alone, now or ever.

Monday, April 20, 2015

Public Auction

In 1984, my parents built an A-frame cabin on ten acres of land in Union County. It was finished on my dad's 60th birthday. He told us when he built it that someday it would be passed on to his children. We thought that was a long time off but it turned out to be only about a year later when he learned he had a brain tumor. The cabin was deeded to me and my siblings before he died at the age of 62. After that, Mom usually went with us when we went to the cabin. She died in 1993 at the age of 66.
After our parents died, we kept the cabin and made memories there with our families, either separately or together. Every spring, my two sisters and I went together to houseclean the cabin and get it ready for another season. Sometimes we did major projects such as installing a shower, dry wall, painting, digging a ditch, cutting firewood or other things. A weekend with my sisters was always a lot of fun.
As the years passed, we added in-laws and grandchildren to our families and they grew too large to fit into the cabin. We started renting other people's cabins where we could all be together. Our own cabin was used less and less.
Last summer we decided the time has come to sell the cabin. We are getting older and the upkeep is getting to be a burden, especially for something we don't use much anymore. So we agreed to sell it. We signed a contract with an auctioneer to have a public auction on May 23.
This weekend we went to the cabin with my sisters to do the last annual spring cleaning. The sale signs went up a couple weeks ago and we were pleasantly surprised to find the box of sale bills attached to the sign was empty. We refilled it and began to discover there seems to be quite a bit of interest in it. We will be having Open House three Saturdays in May before the sale but this weekend we had five sets of visitors even though it wasn't an official Open House.
The big questions are: Who will the buyer be? How much is he willing to pay? We'll find out on May 23. It will be bittersweet when we drive away for the last time after the sale as I will lose my last connection to my parents. But the memories we made there will be ours to keep. Time moves on and we need to move on with it. I hope the cabin will provide a place for another family to make memories to keep.


 

Monday, April 6, 2015

Shadrach

Remember the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace? They were thrown into a raging fiery furnace but God was with them and they came out without a singed hair or smell of smoke on them. I saw Shadrach this morning. Well, almost.
We had a brush pile in the garden that needed to be burned so we can plant garden whenever the ground is fit for planting. With rain in the forecast the rest of the week and a still wind this morning, it seemed like this was the best time to do the job. Leroy helped get the fire started before he left for work and then I kept it going. When it was down to a small pile I left it to hang the laundry on the line. Then I went back to rake it together again so it keeps burning. By this time it wasn't much more than a pile of charcoal.
I was amazed when I saw a wiggle at the edge of the ashes and Shadrach emerged. His brown fur and long tail were singed black and I'm sure the smell of smoke was on him. (Or maybe it was a she, since females seem to generally have a greater pain tolerance than males.) Whatever it was, I couldn't believe a living creature had survived that inferno.
She sat there, singed and gasping for breath. I had a rake in my hand and knew my husband and sons would say "bop it." But I hesitated. What if it should turn and charge at me? What if Meshach and Abednego came crawling out too? I decided to let it die a slow death from smoke inhalation, dropped my rake, and walked away. I don't get anywhere near mice, even with a ten-foot pole.
When all the laundry was on the line I went back to the pile, intending to rake the corpse onto the charcoal for cremation. It was gone! Shadrach survived the fiery furnace. I can only hope she was sterilized in the fire and there won't be any grandchildren to hear her tell the story.
 

Thursday, April 2, 2015

Joy Filled Easter

 
Let not your heart be troubled,
Let not your soul be sad,
Easter is a time of joy
When all hearts should be glad,
Glad to know that Jesus Christ
Made it possible for men
To have their sins forgiven
And, like Him, to live again.
So at this joyous season
May the wondrous Easter Story
Renew our faith so we may be
Partakers of His glory
 (Helen Steiner Rice)