Sunday Bugs, Rugs, Jugs, and Snug

Sunday morning started out with a bug on the rug.

Jonathan saw it first, and asked what kind it was. I wondered if it might be the cricket that I had seen last night skittering along a paper in a spot in the office while I was up when I couldn't sleep due to twitching nerves.

Then Danny had a clever idea about how to get rid of that bug.

 As you can see, now we had a hen in the house!

 

However, Danny's idea worked great, and now we had a hen but no bug!

I, however, as the mom of the house, was not interested in a hen on anywhere with carpet, so Danny had to get the hen out again, which wasn't much trouble. We hurried around to get a crock pot of food and a bowl of coleslaw ready to take for church fellowship. (Hats off to Jonathan for toasting the almonds, making the dressing for the slaw, and adding the vegetables to the meat in the crock pot while I had to do other things!)

We managed to leave in time to run to the nursing home where the nurse had just finished braiding the hair of our friend Beaver and she was ready to go!

It was such a balmy October day that the church needed neither heat nor air conditioning.  I actually was the one to share a devotional thought inspired, of all things, by the loss of most of my hair this week, thinking of how God cares so much for us and knows so much that we don't, including even the number of our hairs! He knows how many are all over my bedroom right now and how many I lost each day this week.

I finished with a poem by Annie Johnson Flint, after sharing a little bit about her life and story of loss and suffering, yet how she chose submission and love for God rather than bitterness despite being confined to her room of suffering for 40 long years. I will paste it at the end of this post.

In the picture above, Danny is pushing Beaver along. I sat with her at a picnic table outside after service, where another fellow discovered us and sat down to enjoy some food, too. Hannah and I kept running back and forth with plates of food, bowls of soup, or cups of juice from jugs inside. A ladybug suddenly appeared on the picnic table, and I watched it fly away.  

There are bugs galore--especially yellow jackets or wasps nearly everywhere, inside and outside.

The weather has been dry for months, and very warm. Our soil is cracked terrible in some places, very deep.  

Since the pastor at Mission is away fundraising for the mission, and people who usually cook meals Sunday evening were either gone as well or sick, it was decided not to have a whole meal. 

 

Instead our family made an assembly line and put together about three dozen bologna and cheese or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to hand out afterward, especially to people off the street or ones who struggle to take care of families, who come expecting a meal as usual. We added a snickerdoodle cookie from packages I'd found marked down yesterday in Murdo on our way home from medical appointments in Rapid City. We wrapped sandwiches and a cookie snugly in pretty autumn cellophane baggies that I've had stored in my Thanksgiving decor for years. It was fun to find a use for those this evening! I stayed home, since we leave again early tomorrow for more medical appointments, this time in Sioux Falls. But the sandwiches did stretch! One time recently there were over 70 people at church, but tonight there were not so many and there were some sandwiches left over, most of which I took up to a neighbor lady who takes care of people on both sides of her--an elderly man whose wife has been in the hospital, and a nephew who was thrown out of his home. 

She handed me a bag of some of her own homemade fry bread in exchange. 

Once again, it was a very full and fulfilling Sunday! 

Here is Annie Johnson Flint's poem:

 

I cannot, but God can;
Oh, balm for all my care!
The burden that I drop
His hand will lift and bear,

Though eagle pinions tire —
I walk where once I ran —
This is my strength, to know
I cannot, but God can.

I see not, but God sees;
Oh, all-sufficient light!
My dark and hidden way
To Him is always bright.

 My strained and peering eyes
May close in restful ease,
And I in peace may sleep;
I see not, but He sees.

I know not, but God knows; 

Oh, blessed rest from fear!
All my unfolding days
To Him are plain and clear.

 Each anxious, puzzled “Why?”
From doubt or dread that grows,
Finds answer in this thought;
I know not, but He knows.