Bridges are for Connecting

Recently, Timmy helped me put together a charming little bridge that I had purchased online.

It came in pieces in a box, and I unpacked and oiled each piece with a natural wood oil

to keep it from weathering.

For a long time, I had been wanting a bridge over the dry creek in our back yard, and finally realized that if I were going to have a bridge, I would have to:

1) Decide on my own.

2) Purchase on my own.

3) Put it together on my own.

So I did.

1)I decided what I wanted (which ended up being what I could afford and not totally what I wanted)

2) Purchased it 

and 3) Got Timmy to help me put it together.

It looked simple.

What is so hard about putting a little bridge together?

In the end, we had to take some of it apart three or four times to get the pieces together right, in the absence of any kind of instructions, which should have been in the box. And it still wasn't right.

Jonathan took one look at the funny way one part of it looked, and told us how it should be.

So then Timmy fixed it the way it should have been.

I do not know how to build bridges. That was obvious.

But I wanted a bridge.  

And I succeeded. After several tries, and asking different ones for help, I got me a bridge, and it is built, and there it is, a small apparatus that connects one side of the stony creek bed to the other.

It doesn't really matter whether a bridge stretches across a shallow creek bed, or over Royal Gorge 1000 feet below.

A bridge is for connecting.
Royal Gorge where my brother Gabriel's family took some of my children with them a few weeks ago when they were here.

Sometimes you need a bridge between you and someone or something else.
What is between you may be as small and shallow as our dry creek bed,
or as deep and impossible as the Royal Gorge.

You don't know how to make the bridge, and the ones who have the skill can't do it for you.

You have to build the bridge yourself.

And when you can't get it built right, you have to backtrack and try again.

And you might flop again.

But you keep trying.

You try and flop, and you try again, and you wish for instructions to follow, and you feel your own inability and lack of strength and smarts. 

You feel like a little kid that doesn't know anything.

So you have to ask for help. 

Maybe you ask your husband, or your dad, or your brother, or your pastor, or you give up on all of them and ask God.

God loves bridges.
He sent His own Son to be a Bridge--a Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus.
Jesus, be our Bridge today--connecting us poor humans to the heavenly Father.

And help us with the bridges we need between us and others.

We know we need bridges, but in our own strength we can't build it.

Show us how to build the bridge, how to build or mend the relationship,

how to take the little step that will result in You reaching out to us with Your great big step,

and we'll praise You with all our hearts.

Brains in a Bag--Using Your Head to Save Your HIde

This is Rose, proudly holding her brains in a bag.

Well, you know, they weren't her brains. Actually,they were the steer's brains salvaged by the butcher from our steer's skull.
Rose asked the butcher for the brains. She needed them to use to tan the steer's hide.

 Here is the hide, with the butcher's helper sprinkling it liberally with lots and lots of salt to preserve it. Most hides are sent to a hide processing plant in Nebraska, they told us, from which the hides are then sent all over the world to be turned into leather and leather products.

 But Rose wanted the hide to tan and process herself, so she had to pay $35 for it.
You can see the salt being dumped all over it.

Rose later froze the hide in four pieces to work with when cooler weather arrives.
In Rose's research about preserving rabbit or elk or deer or cow hides, she has learned that there are enough brains in each animal to rub on to preserve its own hide.
There is something in the brains which, when you rub it on the backside of the hide, helps to preserve it.

And sometimes we need to use our own brains to save our own hides.

Like the Rechabites had to do in the book of Jeremiah.

Sometimes, we have to do things we don't normally do, because prudence calls for it.

We have to use our brains and be wise. 

The Rechabites had been commanded not to live in houses but to dwell in tents, and they carefully kept this commandment until Nebuchadnezzar came and took over the land.

Matthew Henry writes, "These Rechabites would have tempted God, and not trusted Him, if they had not used proper  means for their own safety, notwithstanding the law and custom of their family."

This clan fled to the city of Jerusalem to live there (in houses) for their safety's sake. 

They could have made a big deal about Great-Great-Grandfather Jonadab's stipulations to only live in tents, but instead they used wisdom.

It's called using your head. 

Matthew Henry says, "The rules of a strict discipline must not be made too strict, but so as to admit of a dispensation when the necessity of a case calls for it."

In simpler words, "Rules may sometimes be bent when necessity calls for it." 

Usually, for example, toads don't sleep beside hens, but after a hail storm, both a hen and a poor toad were rescued by our children and put to sleep for the night in a box of straw.

Now what is interesting is that all at the same time as this Rechabite clan was obliged to bend the rules in order to live in houses in Jerusalem, instead of in tents as they had been commanded to do,
they still kept the other commandment of their father--not to drink wine.

So they temporarily kept the first, while not the second of their father's commands.

They didn't throw out the baby with the bath water.

When Jeremiah tested the Rechabites' resolve by offering them wine, they didn't reason with themselves, "Well, we broke one of our clan's rules; we may as well break the second rule, too."
No, they made a difference between a rule broken
in an emergency and out of necessity, and one broken deliberately and with no necessity.
They lived in Jerusalem in houses rather than in the wilderness in tents,
but they didn't decide to get drunk while they were at it.

So there may come along one or many circumstances where we will have to use our brains to save our hides. When Samuel was afraid Saul would hear of his anointing of one of Jesse's sons to be king, God gave him a way to be wise, by going to the town to offer a sacrifice. This reason covered for the real reason, which needed to be kept secret for Samuel's and David's safety.
When Jeremiah was about to be killed for talking to King Zedekiah about the future fall of Jerusalem, Zedekiah told Jeremiah to tell the questioners that he had been asking the king about a better place to be imprisoned. Jeremiah did this. It was a wise cover to save his life.
Corrie ten Boom did not feel it necessary to reveal any facts that would endanger the lives of the Jewish people she and her family were trying to save.

While we must draw a line at denying Christ to save our hides, there may be other things we can do for safety's sake.
There will be other circumstances that won't be as difficult or dangerous as risking our very lives,
but which will nevertheless be tough and dangerous to ourselves, our children, our safety, our reputations, our beliefs. How will we preserve them?
We must pray for discernment and use wisdom.

God has given each one of us exactly enough brains to "preserve our hides," exactly enough freewill to make wise choices and to do what is good and wholesome and right. We might have to do something temporarily at times that we wouldn't normally do, but we don't have to throw all our personal convictions and beliefs out along with that temporary decision.
God has said, "I have set before you life and death.
Therefore, choose life."

Simple, Old Fashioned Joys on Independence Day

We had such a delightful Independence Day.

You'll notice I didn't say "perfect."
Just delightful. 

And that was perfect.

Carrie made red, white and blue scones for breakfast, drizzled with orange glaze. Mmm.

And after breakfast we finally came to a concensus about what we wanted to do for the holiday.

We had discussed going to the Cripple Creek gold mine (which cost a lot)

or going four-wheeling (which required a lot of unloading of hay off the flatbed trailer and loading and hitching of the trailer and all sorts of rigamarole).

We finally settled on driving to Cheyenne Mountain and taking a hike to St. Mary's Falls, which was a 6 mile hike.

But when we got to the parking area, it was packed, with vehicles in line waiting to find a spot.

So, trying not to be too disappointed, we drove on several miles to another road--

and to our great delight, we found a spot to park and a little road to hike back.

Pretty soon, we found this spot by a stream, where the boys quickly discovered lots of fish!

There were so many fish, and the little pools were so shallow, that the boys caught some with their bare hands!

As we were walking up the trail, I couldn't help thinking about a wedding that was going to be happening tomorrow, daughter of friends. And another wedding that evening, friends of Sam's at the firehouse. Pictures of all sorts of reunions and get-togethers and new "in-a-relationship"'s on Facebook.

My daughters and sons don't even have a boyfriend or girlfriend. Yet.

We're just going on a hike in the mountains together--wading in the stream and hiking up trails and catching fish with the boys' bare hands.

Jonathan and I are standing there watching our kids have fun,

just having a grand old time with a little bit of water and rocks and slippery, slimy fish darting about their legs.

We couldn't even make a hike to St. Mary's Falls happen, much less provide future spouses for our older children.

Our nineteen-year old daughter and her nineteen year old cousin Elisa are merrily going up trails, seeing a grouse, a buck, and wild strawberrries, and happily sticking flowers in Elisa's hair.

The boys are snatching and grabbing slimy, wiggly, fish by this big boulder.

We saw a beautiful, bright orange western tanager, and butterflies, and even a bat hanging upside down under the stream ledge. It hissed at Timmy when he was trying to catch a fish, and scared him.

He discovered it was a bat hanging upside down!

Bats of doubt and discontent and envy might like to hiss at us on our merry hike. 

You learn to ignore them.

Instead, you choose trust and contentment and thankfulness and joy.

Which results in peace.

Jonathan and I kept looking at each other and grinning.

We didn't have to hike six miles to find joy.

It was right there beside us by the stream where our kids were playing happily.

Just us and God and the sunshine and fresh aspen leaves and blue sky and little fish and water trickling and black-eyed susans, and each other.

Sometimes the greatest joys are the simplest.

"Contentment in Obscurity"

 All around us, new houses are popping up. Here is what we watched from our front window last week--a crane setting up the parts of a modular home just down the road.

When I take a walk, I don't enjoy feeling like everyone is looking at me. I'm more at home on a path or driveway back in PA back in the fields and woods. But guess what? I live where I live, and so when I take a walk, I just live with the possible stares of people in the houses around.

I have been reading and studying Matthew Henry's comments on Jeremiah 35, the story of the Rechabites, descendants of Moses' father-in-law. Henry describes them as a "family that kept distinct by themselves," accustomed "to hard fare and hard lodging. They were commanded by their father Jonadab, a man known for wisdom and piety (2 Kings 10:15-16) to refrain from drinking wine 

and to live in tents.

"Tents were mean dwellings," to "teach them to be humble;

...cold dwellings,so that this would teach them to be hardy and not to indulge the body;

and "movable dwellings, so that this would teach them not to think of ...taking root anywhere in this world. They must thus accustom themselves to hardness."

 "Humility and contentment in obscurity are often the best policy and men's surest protection," Henry writes.
"Jonadab saw a general corruption of manners; the drunkards of Ephraim abounded, and he was afraid lest his children should be debauched by them; and therefore he obliged them to live by themselves, retired in the country..." living not even off the produce of gardens, but rather the produce of their cattle,

(That was comforting to me, since we can't keep gardens much here, but we do live off our chickens and beef cattle we raise, one of which we butchered and froze last week.)

"so that, forseeing the evil coming on the nation of Israel,
"even in the midst of the troubles, they might have peace."
"Let them sit loose to what they had," that "they might with less pain be stripped of it.

They must learn to live by rule and under discipline.

It is good for us all to do so, and to teach our children to do so," admonishes Henry.

Here is another thought related to this, from another blogger I enjoy occasionally.

"If you...have new life in Christ, how aware are you of this whole 'hiddenness' thing?
This was recently a brand new idea to me, as I discovered it in Sara Hagerty’s book, Unseen: The Gift of Being Hidden in A World That Loves To Be Noticed. As I go throughout my day, I've been trying to imagine myself being tucked away in this hidden, safe place in Christ.--Christy Fitzwater

And along the same line again, here is a poem we saw on Facebook:

O Modesty, Where is Thy Blush?

O Modesty, where is thy blush? we may ask, 

O Nakedness, where is thy shame? 

Fast slipping away from the people of God 

Till some are mere Christians in name. -

O Modesty, thou art a virtue quite rare, 

A most treasured gem of each saint. 

But where are the women aglow with God's love, 

With courage to be labeled quaint? -

The world treats unkindly who will not conform 

To rules that Fashion declares. 

For any who dare to step out from the crowd 

Will notice the whispers and stares. -

Yes, Fashion is cruel, she has her designs, 

For she is the foe of the Lord. 

She violates principles God has laid down 

In counsel quite clear in His Word. -

The daughter of Fashion must pamper her pride, 

For meekness would make her too plain. 

So vanity leads to all manner of show, 

And Modesty's held in disdain. -

As Modesty flees, and the 'goddess' now reigns, 

Discernment and conscience both sleep. 

The church and the world now appear as if one--

How God's holy angels must weep! -

O Modesty, waken the people of God 

And let us recapture thy grace! 

Adorn us with purity, meekness and love--

Prepare us to look on His face!

-

Author unknown

Others' Trash--My Treasure!

Yard saling is not something I've taken much time to do in the last few years, for the simple reason

that I do not need more stuff!

However, when I stopped at an estate sale one street from us and found two totes of quilting strips and fabric, (someone else's scraps and leftovers they were getting rid of) I couldn't keep from purchasing them at just $5 a tote! (Especially when I know that just one yard of cotton fabric can cost $5-$9 a yard.

I could just envision various homemade things like potholders and aprons and baby bibs made from these cute strips. Later, I sorted the strips according to color. My goal is to help Hannah learn to sew by using some of these.
Then last Monday the children wanted to go to the cattle auction to see about rabbits, and I stuck around to bid on a few items, including this lovely quilt with shams, (which I got for $5),

a HUGE box full of several pairs of jeans that were Danny's size, and all kinds of very nice bedding, including sets of sheets and pillowcases and mattress covers. (I got the whole box for $6 after the auctioneer sold it to me accidentally when I had quit bidding at $5. I went ahead and gladly paid the $6 and am I ever glad! I had no idea there were so many nice sheets and things underneath the jeans!)
Here the sheets are, proudly waving in the western breezes after I laundered them.

 I also hung around at that auction because I wanted to bid on a box full of old hymnals, Favorite Hymns of Praise.
We've had Worship and Praise ones for so long, that I thought some "new" hymnals would freshen our family worship hymn times.
 
I ended up getting that box of hymnals for just $1, plus five other boxes of Christian books for just $1 a box. There were no other bidders.  This book quickly caught my eye--and it is fast becoming a rich treasure as I read snatches of it when I can. It's particularly helpful because of being written from a Wesleyan perspective, when there are so few books along this line in our persuasion.

I guess it is thought that if you have any problems, you are just carnal, and that is that.
So I am afraid that many people end up giving up because an experience of entire consecration doesn't fix all their issues--like church leaders and flaming evangelists claim it will.
They leave our churches in droves because they aren't good enough.
Most of us--though apparently not those church leaders or evangelists--
have broken wings somewhere, like this lotion holder I found in another box of a pretty, matching bathroom set I found at the auction.

 In it were these towels, wash cloths, and bathroom sets with butterflies. ( I got this whole box for $5.)

I found the broken piece, and carefully packed it in with the rest of the set to be glued on later.

I didn't throw away the lotion bottle because it had a broken wing. 

From a distance, I hadn't noticed the broken wing on the ceramic butterfly.

It had looked so pretty from a distance.

And if we could just accept it, each one of us has a special beauty not only to God, but also to people whose eyes are open to loveliness and value in others.

Not everybody notices and criticizes every thing wrong with you, 

every broken wing--

and not everyone will throw you out just because of your broken wing.

It's so easy to think other people have it altogether when we observe them on the platform or at a distance--until we get to know them.

Then we come to realize that they have their broken wing, too.

Every one of us has a broken wing somewhere.

But every one of us also has value.

Jonathan saw this wooden ladder out in somebody's yard the other day, with a "FREE" sign on it, so he brought it home.

You can see what we did with it!
Another person's trash became our treasure to make our front porch beautiful!
And God is so good at that.
What we think is trash becomes His treasure!
Lord, open my eyes to see value in that which You value,
and to see beauty and potential in the people that You care about!