We what? No we don't

We sang one of my least favorite worship choruses this Sunday. I first learned it at my previous church where it was a favorite of one of the worship leaders. It only occasionally comes up in our current church, for which I am thankful.

I don’t like songs with words about physical actions that hardly anyone ever does. I don’t recall ever seeing, for instance, a worship leader actually kneel during a song they are leading about kneeling. (Maybe I always have my eyes closed at the wrong times and just miss it.) I don’t judge anyone in the congregation who doesn’t do the motions. After all we aren’t the ones who selected the songs. The worship leaders are. So why do they so often select songs that encourage certain physical movements that they know they can’t or won’t do and most of the congregation also won’t do for whatever reason. I’m not talking about easy ones like standing, clapping, singing or lifting our hands, though even those can be overdone. I’m referring to songs about kneeling, dancing, jumping, or worst of all: falling.

Yes, that is the song we sang this Sunday. It says "we fall down" and "lay our crowns at the feet of Jesus." It doesn’t say we will fall down one day in heaven, it says we are right then falling down and casting our crowns. For one thing we don’t have our crowns yet so that part isn’t possible until we get to heaven. As for falling, maybe in heaven we will be able do that without injuring ourselves, but for now, unless the Spirit really moves someone, it wouldn’t be safe to just literally fall face down like that. There is also limited space since most of us have chairs or pews in front of us. Thankfully, I have never seen anyone attempt to literally follow the motions on that one, unless you count slowly bending over at the waist or gently getting on their knees. I think I have seen one or two people do that some time or other.

It particularly bothers me because the second half of the song says “we cry holy, holy, holy.” God is Holy and we need to believe it and worship him for it. But if we are in the habit of singing words we don’t mean in the first part of the song then it seems to send a mixed message to our brains. There is a dissonance. If we don’t mean the first half of the song then how can we fully grasp and mean the second half?

It also sends the wrong message to children or new people. If they get the message that we don’t really mean what we sing, mightn’t they start to think it isn’t really true or doesn’t really matter?

We are supposed to be worshiping in spirit and in truth. How can we really be doing that in this case? We are singing words we don’t mean so it isn’t “in truth” and our spirits can’t truly be entering into it.
Matthew 5:37 says we should let our “yes be yes” and our “no be no.” We are supposed to say what we mean and mean what we say.

I suggested once to a musical friend, not at my current church, that the words of that chorus should be changed to say “we will fall down, we’ll lay our crowns…” I don’t think she thought that would fly. Sometimes it seems like very musical types can start to care more about the melody and musical “quality” of a song than they do about the message. (not that friend of course, in case she reads this!)

For myself when we sing that song I just don’t sing the first part of it. Maybe instead I could change the words myself and sing my version extra loudly. My voice isn’t very loud, though, so it wouldn’t make much difference but every little bit helps right?

Weekend away at Cedar Hill State Park

"Take me away with you--let us hurry!" (Song of Songs 1:4)

A couple of weeks ago we took our RV to Cedar Hill State Park for a few days "away"--it is 12 minutes from home according to Google. But it was still a nice little escape. We left on Friday and came back Monday.

Canoeing on Joe Pool Lake Saturday evening was a high light. The wind was up (12 mph) so it was a little rougher than I like. And there were enough fast-moving boats out to make some significant waves for our little light-weight inflatable canoe. But John wasn't worried so I tried to quiet my fears, relax and enjoy it. I'm glad I did. I didn't think Joe Pool Lake could look so pretty. I have some stunning mental images of it. Since we didn't have our camera you'll have to take my word for it.

We put in near the swimming area a while before sunset. Following the shore line to the left to avoid some of the wind we rounded the bend and paddled toward a little cove beyond the main boat launch area. The cove felt like its own little world. Tall reeds on the left caught the glow from the setting sun. On the right side, deepening shadows sheltered the fishermen standing on the shore. Herons skimmed across the water as they headed toward the reeds to take their places near the fishermen to watch and wait for their dinner. To the left of us a large fish jumped almost all the way out of the water catching the orange glow from the sun.

We headed back toward the swimming area before sunset but paddled around in the water to watch the orange trail on the water as the sun finished setting.

One morning I sat outside before it got too hot, hoping to photograph some birds. I could hear them but they must have thought it was already too hot because they stayed hidden in the trees.

 

A dragon fly came instead. Bird photography requires patience because birds hardly ever hold still. Photographing dragon flies requires patience because they hardly ever move.

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Then when they do fly away they zip away so fast it's like they disappeared. I discovered that if i stayed focused on the same spot it would sometimes come back to nearly the same place. Landing took a fraction longer so I was able to get this photo just before it landed.

A lizard came and joined the fun

Not all the wild life kept their proper distances that weekend, however. On the first or second night, I don't remember which, I woke to discover dozens of ants in my bed. In the morning we found them streaming into the living and kitchen areas and exploring our food! We smashed them like crazy and emptied our food cupboards. John tried spraying insect repellent on them as it is less noxious in such a small space. It killed them on contact--a useful discovery.  Later he also asked the park rangers for what they recommended to use on the outside to keep them out. It was some sort of white powder. He got some from Walmart. I don't remember the name of it. It was also supposed to kill them on contact but I saw ants walk through it without any noticeable problem. Maybe John didn't sprinkle it thickly enough. But we did slow them down so we didn't have quite so many after that. We also put most of our food in the fridge or freezer. I guess I need to get some some more air tight (or should I say ant tight) containers.

Our last night I woke to hear what sounded like possums having a barn dance on our roof. After one particularly loud ker-THUMP, John went outside to investigate. They got away before he could get up on the roof to see what it was.

On our last day I also saw our first cockroach--EEK! I managed to kill it later. At least I hope it was that one!

Sigh. This isn't heaven yet.

I've never seen Joe Pool lake looking this turquoise before.

Taming the to-do lists

I finally found a to-do list method that might actually work for me. I bought the above journal just over a month ago. Since then I've filled up about 13 pages with to-do items and several more at the back with notes. For the notes, I turned the book over and started writing from the back. That way I won't waste any pages and I don't need to decide ahead of time how many pages to devote to notes. I just will record whatever I need to until the two lists meet-up.

I love the moto on the front too. It's something I want to live up to more.

It's encouraging to see how many things I have gotten done since I started using it.

At first it seemed like having such a nice thing to write my to-do's in was helping me get more done. But now that I'm used to it I am back to my usual tendency to procrastinate a bit.

The hard fact is: recording to-dos in a nice book doesn't mean I get them done any faster! But it does help me to remember them until I do them (as long as I keep looking through the book for the ones that still need doing that is.)

It certainly beats the way I used to make lists on scraps of paper that seemed to go missing almost as soon as I wrote on them. I keep it open next to my place at the table. I do still put a sticky note on my place mat sometimes to remind myself about time critical things like: use up roast beef for lunch.

How do you keep track of your to-do list? Please leave comments below!

Cheese Glorious Cheese!

I hope it's not against the rules to use that quote from the long ago commercial as my title here! But I just can't help myself!

After five long years of being completely dairy free, God has healed me of my dairy intolerance! So now I can have cheese again! I am so thankful.

I am also enjoying having yogurt in my smoothies. I'm surprised that I haven't enjoyed ice-cream as much as I expected, though. I never imagined ice-cream could be an acquired taste! My first latte with 'real' milk was also a disappointment. The milk had a 'game-y' taste. Maybe I'll stick with soy milk in my coffee. Maybe it is because i've had reasonable substitutes for ice-cream and milk these past five years. But the fake cheese was just not the same! It didn't have much food value either. So I am definitely enjoying real cheese again!

To celebrate, here is a recipe I've made a couple of times lately. I started with one I found on-line, but I changed it quite a bit. So I don't know if I can say it is my recipe but it is my version of it anyway. I'll include a link to the other one and you can compare them yourself. Here is mine:

Sharon's Cheesy Italian Spaghetti Squash Casserole

Ingredients:

• 2 chicken Italian sausages from Sprouts - removed from their casings
• 2 T olive oil or more as desired
• 1 8 oz can tomato sauce
• ½ onion – diced
• ½ cup diced green bell pepper (that is a rough estimate. It was actually 2 hands full. We keep a bag of diced bell pepper in the freezer. So I don't know how much of a pepper that is.)
• 4 oz. can sliced mushrooms – drained - cut up more
• Black pepper – fresh ground, to taste
• About 2 cups pre-cooked spaghetti squash
• Generous amount of shredded cheese of your choice (I used the fiesta blend from Walmart, which is a mix of: Monterey jack, cheddar, queso quesadilla and asadero cheese)
• Parmesan cheese

Instructions:

1. Pour oil in large skillet
2. Remove sausage from casings and put in skillet with oil. Add onion and bell pepper.
3. Cook and crumble sausage in skillet with oil, onion and bell pepper until meat is no longer pink. (Start cooking on high heat and turn down a little when it starts to sizzle well.)
4. When meat is no longer pink, stir in the mushrooms and tomato sauce and black pepper. Cover and simmer on medium-low heat several more minutes until onion and bell pepper are tender.
5. While sauce is cooking spread cooked spaghetti squash strands in the bottom of an ungreased 8” square glass baking dish or similar sized pan. Spread the meat sauce over the squash. Cover it generously with fiesta cheese blend to cover top and sprinkle with a little Parmesan cheese as desired.
6. Bake at 375°f for about 30 minutes until bubbling and cheese is browning on top

Notes:
•    Serves 4
•    It is naturally gluten free 
•    Nice with fried potatoes on the side and a green veg or just the potatoes (or baked tater tots.) —after all the spaghetti squash is a veg 😊.
•    This reheated nicely in the oven. I put it in, uncovered, for the last 6 minutes while the tater tots baked at 450°f. The cheese got crisp on top again. It was yummy.

I forgot to take pictures until we had eaten half of it!

Here is the link I promised to the other Italian Spaghetti Squash recipe:
https://www.delish.com/cooking/recipe-ideas/recipes/amp46758/tuscan-spaghetti-squash-recipe/

Redeemed to be God's children, not slaves

I just hung up from talking with my husband. He called me from Africa on his cell phone. It wasn’t a very satisfying conversation. We couldn’t hear each other a lot of the time and even had to hang up and try again a couple of minutes into the first attempt. Then the second time we got cut off. Then when he tried again for the third time he still couldn’t make out what I was saying. We finally agreed to hang up and try again another time. I’m thankful he is usually here so we can talk more easily!

It’s a good thing we don’t have to depend on cell phones to talk to God.

Then again, God may think differently about that. He has to depend on us.

Our "self-phones" don’t always work very well. At least mine doesn’t. I don’t always hear when he "rings" for one thing.

So he has to wait for me to "ring" him. When I do I don’t always stay on the "phone" very long—just long enough to say what I want to say, then "hang up" as soon as I’m done talking because I assume that he doesn’t have anything to say to me. At least I don’t wait to find out.

I know a lady who actually stops and asks God what he wants to say to her and then she even waits and listens to see what he says.

She encouraged me to try that too. I tried a couple of times. But mostly I don’t think of it. Now that I think of it, I would like to try that again.

Frequently I get distracted and wander off and do something else in the middle of the conversation and leave Him hanging. At least my thoughts wander off, which is about the same thing.

I’m so glad God is patient.

But two-way communication is essential in a relationship. So why don’t I try harder to talk and listen in my relationship with God?

I suspect I still mainly see him as a disapproving task master. I am trying to get free from that image. But lately I am realizing how little I know about how to relate to him as anything else but that. I don’t really fully grasp that he wants a relationship with me for anything but to tell me the next task or to tell me how I am messing up. In fact that is one reason I hesitate to ask him what he wants to say to me. I assume it will be negative and heavy. That I won’t be able to handle it and then I will get “in trouble” for messing up.

Galatians 4 really grabbed me this week from my ladies small group study. It says that I am no longer a slave, I am God’s child. That is why he redeemed me!

So why do I think and act like I am a slave sometimes?

I could point to various reasons. Conditional, seeming, love from parents and wrong teaching from other Christians come to mind as contributing factors.

But bottom line, the basic reason, I believe, is that I have an enemy who wants me to stay in bondage. Satan doesn’t want me to understand or experience what it means to be God’s child.

Jesus said if we know the truth it will set us free. I believe that the more I learn and stand on the truth of Scripture the more I will be able to walk in the freedom Christ purchased for me on the cross.

Galatians 4:6 says that because I am God’s child, he “sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, ‘Abba, Father.’ So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child.”

“Abba” is like a little child calling her father, “Dada.” A friend once said she didn’t want to call God “Abba” because she thought it was disrespectful. But it is no more disrespectful than a little child calling her father “Dada.” In fact that is what we are meant to be, a little child calling out to our loving Heavenly Father because we love and trust him and want to be with him.

As adults we usually carry baggage because of the ways our earthly fathers failed us. But the little child who calls “Dada” doesn’t have that baggage yet. She doesn’t know how frail her earthly father is. She trusts him completely. We have a Heavenly Father who will never fail us. He is not frail or fallible. We must set aside the baggage from the past and become as little children again with our Heavenly Father.

Fed up with Facebook

I’m getting fed up with all the clutter and junk on Facebook. Ever since I heard that Cambridge Analytica hoovered up personal info from 87 million facebook users by getting them to take a personality survey I’ve become more aware of how much similar stuff there is there.

Some of it is just one question like: “How many years have you and your spouse been together this year? Or, “What was the first concert you went to?” or, “If you got a life time supply of the last thing you bought, what would you now have forever?” Sometimes they are games like, think of the name of a country for each of the letters in your first name. They are often cute or funny. It’s hard not to get pulled into it sometimes. I confess I did answer the one about the first concert.

What’s it all about? Are they legit?

Yesterday I did a little research on-line.

I found several articles on how to advertise on facebook. They encourage advertisers to use *memes,*  those cute, inspiring or funny pictures with funny or clever quotes on them. They say that getting people to *like* something is a good first step for beginning advertisers. That way it makes them look popular so they will get even more people to *like* them. And this quote really got me, “Ask questions! Facebook users love to get their voices out and feel heard. Try incorporating questions or surveys into your posts for engagement. Keep the questions simple though…”**

So, we fall right into their trap when we engage with those cute questions!

I’m not against legitimate advertising. It can be annoying, but if someone has a product or service then they need to get the word out to make a living at it. But I haven’t detected any obvious product or service attached to a lot of the stuff I've seen.

So I looked up the facebook page for the concert question I answered. It was from something calling itself, “Grew up in the 70s and 80s.” It says it is a Social Media Agency. The only team member listed was someone named Nino Rostomashvili. Their contact email is: contact@egeekowl.com. Their address was shown as: 26 Nadikvari St, Telavi, Kakheti, Georgia. And no that is not the US state of Georgia. It is the former Soviet country of Georgia. I looked it up.

There is no sign of a product or service being sold to facebook users. I suspect that we are the product! Like so many flies bumbling into a spider’s web, we are getting caught in their web and our juicy morsels of information are being quietly packaged up and sold to whoever wants to buy them.

I reported them as a *fake* page to facebook. That was the only thing that fit in Facebook’s reporting scheme. I don’t know what facebook means by a *fake* page. There is clearly something there. But it isn’t providing anything useful to us. It also didn’t appear to fit any of the other criteria for removal, such as purveying hate speech or obscenities.

I also blocked them so they wouldn’t be able to send me anymore junk. Or so I thought.

This morning I looked on facebook and there was a post on my *feed* from a group that had a similar name, something about the olden days. I wish I had written it down. But I did click on the name of the organization and guess what? It had the same contact person: Nino Rostomashvili with the same email.

I just tried to go back to their other page and either some of their info has been removed or they are now blocking me from seeing it--maybe because I blocked them. Weird.

Trying to weed out the junk from the legitimate posts by real friends is getting harder. If we would all take a break from liking, sharing or engaging in facebook posts that are not created by people we actually know that would be really eye opening. It might help us see how much of what we are reading on facebook is at best time-wasting fluff and could help us keep from getting duped into inadvertently giving away our information to bad actors.

We might even be able to get through our news feeds and see more posts from real friends. And if it was a slow night and not many people were posting we could have more real face time with friends and family!

** quote from:

https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2014/01/30/facebook-advertising-tips

Celebrating Easter

Celebrating Easter with my brother and several friends

Brownies with Peeps having an Easter egg hunt :-)

We did a lot of celebrating this Easter. More than usual. On Friday we went to a Good Friday service at our local Episcopal church. Then Saturday friends had us over for a Christian ‘Passover’ meal. Sunday morning we went to our church where there was a drama and special music. After church we had several friends and my brother over to our house for Sunday lunch. They stayed for several hours. We had a great time.

I guess all that preparation and remembering ahead of time got me even more in tune with the Holy-day. I don’t always feel as much joy on Easter. But Sunday morning as we sang joyfully about Jesus’ sacrifice and resurrection I wondered why don’t I feel this happy every day? After all Jesus has been risen from the dead for the last 2000 years. I don’t have to wait until Easter each year for it to be true.

Then I thought of the disciples. As joyful as I felt they must have felt ten time more joyful! Their joy was so profound and surprising it must have taken days to absorb. Some of them didn’t even believe it at first. It was just too amazing, impossible even.

Just before that they were devastated, crushed and traumatized. They saw their leader and teacher and friend, Jesus, violently murdered in front of them. They thought he was the Messiah from God. They thought he would save them from the Romans, but with his death all their hope for the future was gone. Maybe they thought God had tricked them. They believed, really believed, in Jesus but look where it had gotten them. They were bereft. They were also afraid that they would be next. Jesus was killed as a traitor. They were his followers so they may have expected to be hunted down as his co-conspirators.

But all that suddenly changed when Jesus rose from the grave! He was victorious over death! It was impossible! But it true! He really did die but then he really did come back to life! He beat the Romans and the religious leaders and the rabble that wanted him crucified. He conquered them all!! Life went from being hopeless to being the best day ever! It is hard to fully grasp the amazing joy they must have felt. They probably felt like dancing. Maybe they did dance. They probably shed tears of joy and relief. Maybe even laughed hilariously. And shouted. That kind of joy just can’t be contained sedately inside. And it doesn’t need to be.

They had Jesus back! Against all odds!!!

I wonder if they had any inkling how different life would be after that? They may have expected everything to go back to normal, only better. Like maybe Jesus would finally conquer the Romans and set up his kingdom and show everyone that he really was the Messiah. Then they could have comfortable positions in his kingdom.

I doubt if they were prepared to see Jesus leave again in 40 days. I wish we had a record of all the things he said and did during those 40 days, of course some of it was probably included in their later writings that we now have in the New Testament.

Some things they didn’t understand immediately. I’m thinking particularly about the Gentiles, that’s us, being included when Jesus said go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature. It also seems to have taken a while for them to understand what being in the new covenant was all about.

Some still don’t. I read last week that some people are even now teaching that only “Torah observant” believers in Jesus will be saved. But in Acts 15 when some of the Jewish believers said that, Peter made it clear that salvation is through faith in Jesus alone and not by following the law of Moses. (Paul also taught about that at length in Galatians and Hebrews.)

We are under a new covenant. Jesus began it with his blood. He announced it at their last Passover meal together. It is a new and living way. It was promised to them long before but maybe it seemed too good to be true. But it is true. Now we can, "draw near to God in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful." Hebrews 10.

If you put your faith in Jesus you can be included in it too.