I took a couple of photos with the new camera I bought myself for Mother’s Day.
This is my favorite peony bush in our backyard. Gorgeous!
Here’s a picture of some Dame’s Rocket, my favorite wildflower in our area.
The colors of the current season are a continual feast for my winter-starved eyes.
A letter came addressed to “Resident” at our humble abode this very day. It came straight from hell.
On the envelope of this letter were these words, “Heavenly Father, we pray that this one who needs this divine help will write their needs on page two of this letter and will place this blessed, biblical, Acts 19:11,12, Handkerchief and this sealed Bible prophecy under their side of their bed as they sleep tonight. Let Thy power from heaven descend upon this home tonight and tomorrow night, after this one has mailed their most pressing needs back to this 56-year-old church ministry. We pray that they will break open this sealed prophecy after sunset tomorrow. Amen” (Italics and bold as printed on the envelope.)
Inside the envelope… drum roll, please… you guessed it – another ploy for money preying upon the poor and vulnerable. Of course the Holy Hankie (nothing more than a piece of paper with an edging printed upon it) was supposed to help answer all your prayers if you sent in a donation. It’s straight out of Robert Tilton 15 years ago. I know this to be true because my brother phoned Tilton’s “hotline” about that many years ago to get a Holy Hankie. He wanted to see if they would send him one even while he claimed he couldn’t afford to make a donation. It came as no surprise to anyone that Tilton’s “ministry” tried to weasel money out of him anyway and then refused to send him the handkerchief without a donation. But these guys (Saint Matthew’s Churches – Rev. James Eugene Ewing) sent it first with the expectation that perhaps the receiver would be so grateful for a magical prayer that he/she would send a faith gift in anticipation of the millions God would eventually send or miraculous answers to whatever seemed most pressing at the moment.
I get so cheesed with these little anti-Christs. And lest you think my anger unjustified, read this article about Saint Matthew’s Churches and their money-grubbing and evil founder.
This time I decided I would make them pay – literally, as in money. I stuffed all the information back into their No postage necessary envelope and added a note saying, “This is an abomination to the Lord. Repent.” A while later I found my husband and kids slitting open the envelope and attempting to find heavy objects that would raise the cost of the postage the organization would have to pay upon receipt of the envelope. They were giggling as they stuffed huge eye bolts into the envelope. I couldn’t laugh with them because I know about people who send their meager public assistance checks to organizations like this expecting that something fantastic will happen. In reality, it’s probably better to put your last quarter into a slot machine or buy lottery tickets with your welfare check than to send it to one of these scam ministries. There is a better chance of actually getting something back.
What makes it worse? They target their mailings to impoverished areas. There are quite a number of people on fixed incomes in my little town, and I wonder how many of the people from senior housing I see regularly at the local minimart will send money.
I hope that others will follow suit and send these organizations the message that their actions are evil. Make them at least pay for their own return postage. I don’t know if it will make any dent in the millions they bring in every year, but enough is enough, and a solution has to start somewhere. I won’t stand aside and see the poor bamboozled by those who claim to know Christ when they only care about their own pockets.
I can’t help but think of the parable of the sheep and the goats…
I was thinking about salsa and food the other day. Have you ever noticed that when a salsa is really good – fresh ingredients in just the right combination – it can make even mediocre food taste great? But if you have a mediocre salsa (or bad salsa that tastes more like Heinz ketchup than salsa), even the best of foods will taste mediocre. I’ve decided that this is the Salsa Principle. And I’m wondering if it extends to others areas of life.
My personal favorite is my friend, Sarah’s, and of course, mine because I use Sarah’s recipe and sometimes her garden-fresh peppers and tomatoes when in season. Sometimes I have my own, too. And when I can’t get homemade, Aldi makes a pretty good fresh jalepeno salsa.
What’s your favorite salsa, and do you think the Salsa Principle crosses over into other things in life?
God of Mercy -
Listen to our cries of anguish;
Attend to our pleas for help;
Consider our need for you even when we forget it is present.
Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world,
Have mercy.
Giver of Light -
Shed your brightness on the way ahead;
Illuminate the obstacles that would cause us to fall;
Brighten the places that are dark and sometimes frightening.
Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world,
Have mercy.
Sustainer of Life -
We are weak and frail;
Our bodies, hearts, and wills fail;
Without your powerful hand and the stirring of your Spirit we would surely fade and die.
Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world,
Have mercy.
Sovereign Peacemaker -
We war against nations, brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers;
Those we know and do not know.
We are powerless to save ourselves from our own evil hearts.
Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world,
Have mercy.
God of Mercy -
You see our pain and weep with us;
You meet us in the person of Jesus and his body, the church;
You appoint to us divine events which lead us to your love.
Glory to God in the highest!
Giver of Light -
You have given your word;
You appeared to us as the Word Made Flesh;
You have sent your Spirit to illumine the dark places of our hearts.
Glory to God in the highest!
Sustainer of Life -
You give strength when we fear we cannot walk another step;
You endow us with gifts to continue your creation;
And we await your certain promise of the restoration of all things.
Glory to God in the highest!
Sovereign Peacemaker -
You have restored peace between God and man;
You give us grace to renew kinship with our brothers and sisters;
And we wait expectantly for the coming of peace among all the peoples of the earth when King Jesus shall reign.
Glory to God in the highest!
To God be glory forevermore.
Amen.
Some trouble with pain and numbness in my right foot and lower leg required that I have a medical test referred to as an EMG today. I have no idea what EMG means. Maybe it’s Every Man Groans or Each Muscle Gives pain. If it were EMT, I’m certain it would stand for Experts Merrily Torture.
The purpose of the test was to find out if my nerves are conducting impulses properly in my lower extremity, and it will (hopefully) tell me if I have a pinched nerve somewhere. I didn’t realize that the doctor would have to put me in greater pain in order to discover whether my nerves were causing me pain. Conclusion – “By golly! You’re in pain!”
First he hooked up some kind of electrical gizmos to my leg and foot in various places, and it sent impulses into various other parts of me that made me jerk uncontrollably. It was a bizarre feeling. I just prayed that he wouldn’t hook it up to the “Pee your pants” nerve. I’m pretty sure he could have made me do anything he wanted if the electrodes (or whatever they were) were attached to the right places. (”Yes, Master. I hear and obey…”)
But the worst part were the wires they poked into me to “listen” to the nerves. What I could hear through my own inner shrieking on this highly sophisticated piece of medical machinery sounded like static. I don’t know how medical experts can tell anything from the way it sounded, but I’m hoping like crazy they can because I wouldn’t want the experience to count for nothing.
When it was over and I had successfully kept myself from passing out, I realized there was a huge puddle of sweat on the paper covering the table and my shirt showed big rings of sweat. I came out of the doctor’s office with my arms firmly attached to my side barely willing to pick up my purse so as not to show how sweaty I was. I staggered out to the parking lot, got into my van, took off the shirt over my tank top, and blasted the air on high. My blood pressure quickly rose to normal as I turned on one of my favorite CDs, and I roared off home trying to forget the pain and humiliation of the test. If only my leg and foot would let me forget now. But I think I left my ability to forget in the puddles of me on the table in the doctor’s office.
My strawberry plants have put out a sea of white, cheerful blossoms. My mouth is watering in anticipation. Last year we had quite a crop, and it looks as though this year’s will compete admirably and possibly outstrip the previous one. I was a bit worried about my raspberry bushes as a result of the days and days of snow and below freezing temperatures that came after the initial warm-up in March. But it appears that they have struggled through having lost their leaves and are producing more. I’m not sure about the blackberries, however. One plant has not produced any more leaves after the cold snap in April killed the first round, and the others have a pathetic number. Ah well, they didn’t produce much fruit last year anyway. Maybe there’s a parable in there…
The wisteria on our back patio is more covered with buds than I’ve ever seen it. If they all blossom, it will be glorious! It’s about time to hang our deeply resonant wind chimes and put out all of the patio furniture to complete my Zen Corner. Then I will sit out on the patio with a book and a glass of water so as to enjoy the wisteria more fully. A glass of tea might also serve, but anything with a competing smell would ruin the glory of the fragrance that is way too short-lived.
It’s also time to lay in stores for the bonfires we hope to have: wood, graham crackers, marshmallows, and chocolate bars. I’m never quite so happy about seeing my children filthy as when we have finished sitting around the fire with friends strumming guitars or picking banjos, talking, laughing, and watching the numerous children race around, start smokers in the fire, and look for the perfect spot in the fire to toast their marshmallows. It is near-perfect community.
Ah… I was made for warm weather, good food, beautiful smells, and companionable people – but especially warm weather! I guess it’s rather unfortunate that I live in Ohio. But I do like to make the most of it when it comes.
Book Recommendations
Thursday, May 31st, 2007Over the last week or so, I’ve read What is the What by Dave Eggers and The Rapture of Canaan by Sheri Reynolds. Both are worth reading. The first is the story of one of the Lost Boys of the Sudan. It is a fascinating, gripping, and enlightening novelized account (but mostly true, if that makes sense) of Valentino Achak Deng. I became more aware of the horror that children caught in wars face around the world and found his website, valentinoachakdeng.com, very helpful. I have added a link to World Vision as a result of our book club’s discussion of this issue (see the blogroll links) and my desire to be an advocate and encourage advocacy in the small ways that we can do so.
The second book, The Rapture of Canaan, is a quick read about a quirky fundamentalist, pentecostal congregation in the south and the challenges and changes they face when two of their youth conceive a child out of wedlock. It has some very humorous moments. My favorite is when the vast majority of the congregation thinks that the rapture has occurred and that all but their leader have been left behind. (I won’t spoil the rest if you’re planning to read it.) But on the whole, it is a poignant tale with a harrowing and, finally, redemptive end.
Now I will finally finish Lewis’s Experiment in Criticism and move onto selections from The Historical Jesus in Recent Research.
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