Goose Eggs and Lilacs--Simple Pleasures versus Status Symbols

I hope I'm not in a bad habit of expressing how much I miss lilacs and daffodils and trees and flowers--

but I'm afraid it's quite obvious!!!!

Therefore, gorgeous photos like this one that my niece Mercy took and then my sister sent us, means so much to me!!

But I hope I am also in the habit of being thankful for what I have--the two little bunches of daffodils out by our front doorstep, and the little spring scenes we see here and there... like this darling nest of goose eggs we discovered Sunday as we walked around the pond near our place of worship.

It was such a simple pleasure--after the time of worship and Christian fellowship and breathing in rich truths from God's Word.
I asked Jonathan if we couldn't take a few minutes to walk around the pond, just so I could enjoy the trees and the water--
and that is when the goose rushed off from her resting place and we discovered the nest!
We sent the children on a goose egg hunt after that!

Today I read that the New Testament "calls us to love simple beauties, not luxurious status symbols. This is so crucial. The world is begging us constantly to love status symbols instead of simple beauties."
That was from John Piper in answer to  a middle-class Christian lady who was afraid that she was living with a far higher standard of living than that with which she would want to face the judgment.
Piper wrote, "I don’t think it’s possible to take all that biblical teaching about money and find a clear line between wartime simplicity [as he had explained earlier is about sacrificing to the extreme for war efforts or gospel advance] and peacetime luxury. I don’t think the line is clear at all. Therefore, my approach both in preaching and in my own life is to return again and again and again, just like we’ve done now, to the relentless thrust of the New Testament toward loving, fruitful, others-oriented, sacrificial simplicity for the sake of kingdom advance."

"Riches are dangerous; that message is everywhere. Simplicity for its own sake is worthless because love is what counts. Doing good, and not going without — that’s what counts. I know there are people who’ve given themselves to way more simplicity than others, and they’re loveless, while people that have more are very more loving and good is coming from their lives.

Immerse yourself in the New Testament summons to love people, not money [italics mine.]. Learn with Paul the secret of such profound contentment in Jesus that you know how to be abased and how to abound."
These were wonderful thoughts from the following link:
https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/do-the-biblical-warnings-against-riches-apply-to-most-americans

Yesterday evening we had another home-schooling family of eight children to our home for fellowship.
Another rich time of simple pleasure versus status symbol!
No status symbols here at our house!

The dad used to be in the military, and I was worried that our home might not be too great--certainly anything but every hair in place like the dad of this family! But we needn't have worried. They were a very gracious family, and it didn't take long for us all to feel at home with each other. The couple, she from Minnesota, had met each other at college in South Dakota and had spent many years of their marriage moving about all over the place wherever the military sent them,

from South Dakota to Alaska to Guam to North Carolina, to other places, to Colorado--

where they ended up attending church in a modified barn and meeting some crazy people named Lucases!

Carrie and Rose had made homemade icecream for us all with cousin Samuel helping. We had popcorn and chips and dip and a few treats out, and they brought deviled eggs and apple slices with the best cream cheese caramel dip!

It was so comforting to have another mother be so understanding of where I am in my journey of motherhood,

someone who understood the struggles of bearing your 7th and last baby at age 43 (she had her 8th at age 42)

and many other things. She asked me one question after another, and I hope she found understanding from my end as well, that she isn't alone in the struggle of being an older mother of many children, trying to home school the younger ones effectively while launching the older ones into college or real life. Her oldest is taking college classes in town.

I loved how the one thing one of their children wanted to copy us about was to make wooden cowboy boots with children's names like are on our livingroom wall! The dad asked how we made them, and I had gotten the pattern from my sister-in-law in North Dakota a few years ago, Timmy had jigsawed them, and we had all woodburned the names and details with a little kit from Walmart.

Simple pleasure rather than a status symbol, that's for sure!