Hanging on by a thread

One of the things I never visualized myself doing was piecing a quilt by hand. Then I discovered Inklingo. It's an ingenious system for printing the patterns on the fabric using your ordinary printer. Snip, snip, cut them out. Love it. Every piece perfect and marked for sewing. Now I'm addicted. Sewing by hand is so peaceful and relaxing; the feel of the thread between my fingers...ahhhh.

The first thing I've "inklingoed" are these stars. Getting those points matching perfectly...? So much easier with this system. Today I started the next step of adding the frame around the star. More pointy joins but still no huge problems. I figure I'll get better as I go along. It is so lovely to have this little project to pick up in spare minutes and see something grow. I have my printed and cut out pieces in a lovely little handmade basket my friend Tee Bayless sent me. Handy dandy.

One more time

After two years of fussing and fertilizing, potting and pruning, tying and transplanting - only to have some very inferior tasting tomatoes that only the birds seemed to love - well, I resolved this year NOT to raise tomatoes in pots on the balcony. Heck, I know when I'm beat. This resolve went the way of all resolutions, of course, when persistent little tomato plants kept popping up in my pots, the seeds lurking in the compost I so lovingly make and distribute. I was ruthless, though, and only allowed one random plant to continue growing. I even went so far as to transplant it and give it more compost. It has now grown to the stately height of five feet and is covered with blossoms and little cherry tomatoes that are ripening in the hot sun. I was delighted to find it was a cherry tomato, hoping that perhaps they would have some flavor. Time will tell, unless the birds get there first.

I was also blessed by two potted pepper plants and a potted eggplant given to me by a friend of Anne's. Unfortunately the eggplant doesn't seem to be thriving. I can't figure out if I'm giving it too much water or it's getting too much sun. This is my maiden voyage with eggplant. It has five eggplants on it though. Perhaps they will make it to maturity. Perhaps not.

I much prefer the German (probably French) word for eggplant - aubergine. Why give a beautiful thing an ugly name? If the aubergine make it they will serve double duty because I plan to use those deep purple fruits as a centerpiece first. The plants also have lovely furry leaves.

I was thinking back to the farm today, remembering how every seed you stick in that rich black soil sprouts and bears fruit, "some thirty, some sixty, and some a hundredfold".

Answers in unexpected places

If someone were to tell me, "Write a paper explaining everything you know on the topic of 'The Sabbath' " I'm afraid I wouldn't have been able to write much. Oh sure, I know about the command to honor the Sabbath, etc. My understanding of the reason for the Sabbath, however, has always been woefully shallow. Knowing something is important to God is one thing. Knowing why is another.

Answers come in unexpected places. The other day I was reading K&D's commentary on Isaiah 58 and was absolutely floored and enlightened by their words. The discussion began at vs 13 "If because of the sabbath, you turn your foot from doing your own pleasure on My holy day, and call the sabbath a delight, the holy day of the Lord honorable, and shall honor it, desisting from your own ways, from seeking your own pleasure and speaking your own word, (14) then you will take delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; and I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken."

Here, slightly abridged by my own discretion and emphases of my own added, are K&D's thoughts:

The third part of the prophecy now adds to the duties of human love the duty of keeping the Sabbath, for the service of works is sanctified by the service of worship. The duty of keeping the Sabbath is also enforced by Jeremiah (17:19ff) and Ezekiel (20:12ff; 22:8,26), and the neglect of this duty severely condemned. The Sabbath, above all other institutions appointed by law, was the true means of uniting and sustaining Israel as a religious community, more especially in exile, where a great part of the worship necessarily fell into abeyance on account of its intimate connection with Jerusalem and the holy land; but while it was a Mosaic institution so far as its legal appointments were concerned, it rested, in a way which reached even beyond the rite of circumcision, upon a basis much older than that of the law, being a ceremonial copy of the Sabbath of creation, which was the divine rest established by God as the true object of all motion; for God entered into Himself again after He had created the world out of Himself, that all created things might enter into Him. In order that this, the great end set before all creation, and especially before mankind, viz., entrance into the rest of God, might be secured, the keeping of the Sabbath prescribed by the law was a divine method of education, which put an end every week to the ordinary avocations of the people, with their secular influence and their tendency to fix the mind of outward things, and was designed by the strict prohibition of all work to force them to enter into themselves and occupy their minds with God and His word. The prophet does not hedge round this commandment to keep the Sabbath with any new precepts, but merely demands for its observance full truth answering to the spirit of the letter.
Again, if you call (i.e. from inward contemplation and esteem) the Sabbath a pleasure (because it leads you to God, and not a burden because it leads you away from your everyday life; cf Amos 8:5) and the holy one of Jehovah honorable...then, just as the Sabbath is your pleasure, so will you have your pleasure in Jehovah, i.e. enjoy His delightful fellowship and He will reward you for your renunciation of earthly advantages with a victorious reign, with an unapproachable possession of the high places of the land - i.e., chiefly, though not exclusively, of the promised land - and with the free and undisputed usufruct of the inheritance promised to your forefather Jacob, - this will be your glorious reward.

I am a visual thinker and the picture they paint of God entering into Himself after He had created the world out of Himself and His desire to draw all men into Himself...well, that picture of the Sabbath was an entirely new one for me. And I must say a convincing one. How well I know that unless one periodically ceases from the active pursuit of daily outward things one will rarely "enter into themselves and occupy their minds with God and His word."

I'm not advocating a strict adherence to the outward form of keeping the Sabbath. But I see for myself the need to plan in periods of conscious ceasing/fasting from daily outward things to occupying my heart with God and drawing into His rest.

I could never hope to say it as well as K&D but if I had to write that paper, at least now I think I'd have a few more millimeters of depth to my answer.

Shared Riches

One of the absolute delights of this season in my life comes from the convergence of two gifts: the gift of unhurried time to bask in God's Word and the gift of a set of books - Keil and Delitzsch's Commentary on the Old Testament, 10 volumes of inestimable value. I share so often from the things I've gleaned from K&D that Pete has suggested that I write a book that simply highlights my sifted riches from their writings. I see merit in the idea because their commentary is not an easy one to read. Most people simply do not have the time to comb through discussions of the innuendos of different Hebrew words and the comparison of various commentators' exegeses of passages to arrive at the nuggets of truth buried at the heart.

I happen to have the luxury of doing exactly that and every day my heart beats a little quicker in anticipation of the riches I know I am likely to find. These godly expositors had an amazing gift for putting each passage of the OT into the overall context of salvation history. One might expect biblical scholars from the mid-1800's to have written something that, while accurate and scholarly, was dry and dusty. In reality, their words have an amazing freshness of truth, faith and devotion. When I die and my children go through my books I'm sure they will wonder at my worn copies and at all the red pencil lines highlighting passages of explanations.

All of that as a foundation for what I really wanted to write about. But perhaps that should be a separate post...

The World I Live In....

I ran across some interesting statistics about my zip code area the other day. I don't know why this fascinates me since my brain in generally accepted as being a-numeric. But somehow these numbers are interesting to me...

There are 53,830 households in 4.2 sq miles, giving it a population density of 12,805 people per square mile, which rates as "very high". For comparison, this ranks slightly higher than the city of Chicago.

51.4% of the population is foreign born and 29% of the residents speak English at home.

The 2008 estimated median household income is $46,423.

In 2008, the median price asked for vacant for-sale homes and condos was $739,000.
The estimated median house value in this zip code was $526,000, while in 2000 it was $205,000.
65% of the residents are renters.

The 2009 cost of living index was 165.4 (compared to a national average of 100).

Winter visit to Illinois, part 2

It's really hard to have your heart and your roots in two vastly different places. I'm so glad that I know GOD is the One who chooses our paths for us. I am confident that His wisdom, love and divine plan for His kingdom and glory determine those paths. The older I get, the more I cling to the story of Joseph - the amazing picture of God's sovereignty played out through incredible circumstances. My life isn't nearly as bizarre as Joseph's was!

Here's a photo I took of a prairie sunrise. I was staying at Mark and Janine's lovely farm.
If that looks cold, it really was! It was something ridiculous like 4 degrees.

These photos are inside their home which is to me the quintessential Midwestern farm house. It's as warm inside as it is cold outside!


Winter afternoons are perfect for walks. Here's the creek on our farm and the sun sinking over the fields.

Winter visit to Illinois, part 1

Natives of Southern California simply can NOT understand how anyone could live in a climate that has days like the one pictured at left. I guess you have to have lived it to know that it is not only do-able but beautiful and enjoyable. What you can't see in the photo is the silence and stillness - something my soul craves and can't find in the megalopolis. This photo is of our beloved barn, sporting it's new steel roof.




One thing I enjoyed during my stop at the farm last week was a walk through the prairie grasses. We had these grasses planted the year after we moved to California in hopes of accomplishing two things. The first was to provide habitat for wildlife. The second was to cut down on mowing and reduce the work and resources required to maintain the farm. The second purpose has definitely been fulfilled. As I walked through the grasses it became apparent to me that the first purpose had also been fulfilled. There were many little birds in the grasses, eating the seat heads from the forbs we had included in the seeding.

















Here are a couple shots of flower seed heads "before" being picked clean by the birds...















and "after"...