I Feel Sorry for Pepper...

Salt gets all the attention, and we want to say, "Let's hear it for pepper!". We have always spurned the already ground type in the can from Kroger's for the oh-so-fresh ground type from pepper mills. John's dad, Bockie, was a woodworker and we have pepper mills that nostalgically remind of of him. This Christmas, We got a really big one like they bring to your table at the restaurant and say, "Say when." With us, I'm sure the waiter is wondering, "Are they never going to say 'when'?"

Peppercorns do you absolutely no good until they are ground and crushed, and all the oil and flavor is newly released, ready to do what they were made to do--season food and allow you to enjoy it to the fullest. Yes, we are called to be salt and light, but consider those times when the sometimes crushing circumstances you face release in you, obvious to all, your extraordinary responses of love and hope, made possible by a seasoned life of walking by faith not by sight. Yea, pepper!

A Near Perfect Day

What does a perfect day in a fallen world look like? Tuesday wasn't perfect, but it was really close. As usual on Tuesday, the staff gathers on Tuesday mornings--this Tuesday was a business meeting. Were that everyone's business meetings centered around God's glory. John read a letter from a couple we know in Kenya who are serving the people traumatized and displaced by the civil unrest there then we spent the rest of the time dreaming together about our first upcoming national gathering of Perspectives Instructors and Coordinators. After the meeting, I met at Arsega's Coffee Shop with one of the wives to talk about memorizing Scripture and hear about the amazing network of Fayetteville people who love International students. While we ate a dinner, immediately ready because I had already cooked it, we agreed that it was an ordinary day but one you just sensed nothing was going to go wrong. UPS had delivered two packages we had ordered, both questionable. The first was a replacement part for the carpet cleaner--fit perfectly. The second was a Playstation 2 game we bought Lyle from eBay, described as not working--worked perfectly. After that, I was off to a meeting of New Heights women gathering to talk about and sample healthy food and to talk, talk, talk--"perfect" ending to a "perfect" day. Thank you, Ruler of Heaven and Earth, for the pledge of future truly perfect days with You--every day for all of eternity.

Wallpaper

Last night, during the flinket episode, we changed the screensaver from Ella and me playfully sticking our tongues out at each other to a picture Hayden sent when he celebrated Christmas with the E's in New York. I love this picture, but I think I'm going to have to change it to something else. It makes me so sad, but we are counting the days until March when we are planning to go see them and when we do, I'm going to pick him up and not put him down the WHOLE TIME!

Friday Night Flinkets

When our guys were in high school, we used to love the 10 o'clock news with their Friday Night Flights coverage of the football games. We also had a little in-house joke that when you had a restless feeling, you had the flinkets. I think last night I had the Friday Night Flinkets. After a great week with the team here, we got home late then had a quick but excellent dinner of tomato basil soup, stir fry, and Spam sandwiches then settled down in the living room and started flipping through the channels. Nothing. When we heard the first few explitives fly out of Nicholas Cage's mouth in Trapped in Paradise, we jointlly decided, "This is definitely not what I had in mind for entertainment." I looked around--I had letters to write, a map lying in the living room floor I wanted to frame...but somehow that wasn't it either. We came in the office and downloaded some of Hayden's pictures we hadn't seen before and that WAS entertaining, but it really made me miss him. Flinkets rising and I started feeling my energy draining. I don't know if anyone reads this but our friend Jerry (thanks, Jerry!) but I want to archive this for myself--Flinkets are the call of my heavenly Father who wants me to retreat under the shadow of His wing where He wants to love me, direct me, and encourage me. Now that's not "trapped" but it is "paradise".

The Great Unless

I love living in Arkansas. We woke up this clear morning--only moderately cold--to the sound of singing birds and the sun spilling into the house. Christmas is like the tail lights in a time exposed picture at night in Paris--a bright streak of pleasant memories--but with a strong desire to get the tree taken down and make it look like January around here with something other than red and green. For real now--put the new batteries in the smoke alarms (on the to do list since the time change as suggested by the fire department), try again to get everyone's birthdays on a calendar where I can really remember them, organize the 2007 pictures--and, of course, actually jump on the little trampoline instead of piling giftwrap on it and eat carrot sticks instead of carrot cake. A smile creeps across my face when I think how God set the stars and planets in motion to add regular cycles of life to our existence. It's almost a cliche in our circles that He loves fresh starts, but He does! Just as the anticipation of Christmas dissolves into "enough", so our new resolve for living passionate, disciplined lives wears thin by February. The great "unless" is that His mercies are new every morning and His offer to fill our senses with a new awareness of His great omnipresence is waiting on the pillow. Somebody remind me of this in a few weeks. I may forget.

Pie in the Sky...and Here Too

This is not a new thought. It's something I have been churning in my mind for several weeks. While listening to a message on spiritual gifts at our church we moved from, a picture formed in my mind of a pie chart with about 8 equal sections (or however many gifts were mentioned). The idea was that each gift was just as important as the next and had an important and needed place in the body of Christ. On revisiting that thought, I am seeing a pie chart with a sliver for each individual--still equal, but each person with a complex, unique mix of personality and abilities to contribute to the health and well-being of the body so that it can be an accurate picture of Jesus among us.



Sadly, I'm afraid some pieces of the pie get enlarged and seem overly important, overstepping the bounds of the circle. Others, for whatever reason--lack of appreciation, laziness, straying away and distracted by the world--either don't make it into the radius of the circle or get swallowed up altogether.



The new thought this morning was "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done." When we get to heaven, we will say that was then, but this is now--every pie piece is just the right size and fits in its exact place like a puzzle piece. Every person will be there and there will be one large pie,

Perpetual Gallery

When I was little, my dad gave me a perpetual calendar that I was completely enthralled with. I could tell the day of the week anyone I knew was born, what day Christmas would be on in five years, and when the last leap year was. Fascinating! Looking out the window beyond my computer screen and thinking about the Father of all who specializes in "perpetual", I was just thinking that He gives us a perpetual art gallery. Those new picture frames that revolve with pictures have nothing on God! I have this habit of whipping out my camera, which I always have with me in my purse, to take a picture of the sky and now have quite a collection of rainbows, billowy clouds it looks like you could sit on, and dark streaky skies full of color.

The heavens truly are telling the glory of God, and anyone in the world has a birdseye view of His museum of clouds, planets and stars. Many pockets of the world don't have any written descriptions of the pictures in their gallery, but the Spirit of God, the Great Curator, is still speaking to some to go so they will know who the Great Artist of the Gallery Above is. He is calling many who already are trained and great admirers of His work to write descriptions for them in their own languages so they can really know Him who painted a great masterpiece of eternity He has made it possible for them to actually step into. What a perpetual and ultimate Old Master He is!