New Baby Girl

I am spending this week in the northern mountains. My son and daughter-in-law have a new baby girl, one week old yesterday. She has lots of very dark hair and dark eyes; she's very different from her big (19 months old--not very big) sister, who is quite fair and blonde with bright blue eyes.

She has a hard time staying awake long enough to eat before she falls asleep again--unless, of course, it is three o'clock in the morning.

I haven't seen them in a year because we live so far apart, all the way across the nation. But from now on, I am going to make sure I see them more often. A year is too long a time to miss in the life of a little girl.

Creating new lives is one of God's most marvelous miracles.

New Baby Girl

http://connectionsgodandtheworld.blogspot.com/2008/06/new-baby-girl.html

Cardboard Testimonies

I got to know and love God after about fifty years of slogging along through life without him. For a while, I thought it would be a good idea to show people what life is like without him; maybe they would see the difference.

But now I realize that was wrong; people see life without him everywhere, every day--they know. The thing to do is show people what life is like with him.

The Hillside Christian Church in Amarillo, Texas, does just that. Watch this YouTube video they did called "Cardboard Testimonies." It says a lot--but not much aloud--about what God has done in people's lives.

Cardboard Testimonies

http://connectionsgodandtheworld.blogspot.com/2008/06/cardboard-testimonies.html

Wordless Wednesday: 1956 Photo

This is a picture of my brother, my mother and me, ready for church; it was taken about 1956.

Wordless Wednesday: 1956 Photo

http://connectionsgodandtheworld.blogspot.com/2008/06/wordless-wednesday-1956-photo.html

Wordless Wednesday

http://www.iit.edu/~smart/pearkat/lesson1.htm

See yesterday's post!

Wordless Wednesday

http://connectionsgodandtheworld.blogspot.com/2008/06/wordless-wednesday.html

Painted Lady Butterflies

My grandchildren sent my mother, their great-grandmother, a marvelous gift for Mother’s Day (with the help of their mother). The two oldest boys, ages 5 and 7, giggled and told her a mysterious package would arrive soon and she must be careful about removing it from the box. She must not open the jar.

When the box arrived, we carefully took the jar out and set it on the table to read the booklet that came with it. The jar contained five Painted Lady butterfly babies. They were charcoal gray—very plain-looking and wormish, as caterpillars often are. The directions said we should set the jar somewhere out of heat and direct sunlight for about a week, while they crawled around and ate the nutritious brown stuff in the bottom. A net butterfly cage came along with them.

By about the tenth day, they had all climbed up and attached themselves upside down to the paper on the underside of the jar lid. They grew shorter than before, and they turned goldish-brown as they became chrysalides. At that point, we very carefully removed the lid, took out the round piece of paper, and pinned it to the side of the butterfly cage.

About five days later, we noticed one of the chrysalides was missing. Amazing! It had turned into a beautiful gold, brown, and white butterfly. Perching on the side of the cage, it was waiting for its wings to dry.

The instructions told us to then place a large flower, preferably a carnation, in the bottom of the cage and sprinkle it with sugar-water. I bought a carnation at the local florist’s for a dollar; we cut the stem short and put it in a small bowl to leave plenty of room for butterflying.

Within two days, four of the chrysalides had hatched (I suppose “hatched” is the right word) and the four new Painted Ladies were flitting about and landing on the carnation. My mother wheeled her chair to the back door and opened the cage to release them. Three of them fluttered away immediately, but one stayed in the open cage for a few minutes before leaving.

This was a wonderful experience for my mother; she loved watching the caterpillars become butterflies. Only God, the Chief Architect of butterfly birth, could plan such a process.

**You can order butterfly rearing kits at this linked Swallowtail Farms site. The picture comes from this nature site.

Painted Lady Butterflies

http://connectionsgodandtheworld.blogspot.com/2008/06/painted-lady-butterflies.html

Wordless (well, almost) Wednesday

This is a NASA photo image of “the core of the Whirlpool galaxy M51 (NGC 5149) taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. It shows an immense ring of dust and gas that is thought to surround and hide a giant black hole in the center of the galaxy.” See this site: www.scienceclarified.com/Bi-Ca/Black-Hole.html

(Perhaps you notice the cross image in the center of the lighted area!)

Wordless (well, almost) Wednesday

http://connectionsgodandtheworld.blogspot.com/2008/05/wordless-well-almost-wednesday.html

Wordless Wednesday: Button Bouquet

Wordless Wednesday: Button Bouquet

http://connectionsgodandtheworld.blogspot.com/2008/05/wordless-wednesday-button-bouquet.html

The Irony of Christianity

We live in a difficult world—one in which people are very closed off to each other. Probably, it has always been that way, just in different senses of closed-off-ness.

I myself am a dedicated believer in Jesus Christ as the way, the truth, and the life, and I am also a faithful member of the First United Methodist Church. Even so, I fully understand that many things about Christian people and organizations contribute to the closed-off-ness. Like my friend Sterlin, many have trouble accepting Christ’s way as their life because of, in his words, “its staunch and rigid theology and the sometimes uneducated missionaries that socialize the individual.” I know.

If you look at this situation logically, you see that people are the cause of it. It’s a very sad and ironic thing that lovers of Christ would unintentionally create barriers for others.

Saddest of all is the fact that so many people miss God’s love because of us. I missed him myself for the same reasons until I was 51 years old; then out of my emptiness, I cried out for help. He came rushing and thundering into my life and filled me. I saw with such gratitude that he really is real. And powerful, caring and loving beyond my comprehension.

He will be found if we want him—if we reach out, cry out, just say the word. Lots of people today (and always) think we can heal ourselves, actualize ourselves, fulfill ourselves. We can’t. People are imperfect; only God is perfect—only he has the answers we need. Love is the only source of healing. And God is the only real source of love; if we feel love, it’s because God put it there as a part of himself.

People and organizations aren’t in the picture, really; that’s a misperception . People will never measure up. It’s not about people—not about us. It is about him.

The Irony of Christianity

http://connectionsgodandtheworld.blogspot.com/2008/05/irony-of-christianity.html

Wordless Wednesday: Wildflowers

Wordless Wednesday: Wildflowers

http://connectionsgodandtheworld.blogspot.com/2008/05/wordless-wednesday-wildflowers.html

Wordless Wednesday: Watering

Wordless Wednesday: Watering

http://connectionsgodandtheworld.blogspot.com/2008/05/wordless-wednesday-watering.html

What to Do about Anger?

Today I’m borrowing from Max Lucado’s UpWords Weekly E-Mail Devotional .

Max is very concerned—as we all should be—about the anger we see so much of today. He says anger becomes a tremendously explosive force, even built up little by little; rage is quite destructive. What can we do about it? Here’s his answer:

We can’t deny that our anger exists. How do we harness it? A good option is found in Luke 23:34. Here, Jesus speaks about the mob that killed him. “‘Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.’”

Look carefully. It’s as if Jesus considered this bloodthirsty, death-hungry crowd not as murderers, but as victims. It’s as if he saw in their faces not hatred but confusion. It’s as if he regarded them not as a militant mob but, as he put it, as “sheep without a shepherd.”
“They don’t know what they are doing.”

And when you think about it, they didn’t. They hadn’t the faintest idea what they were doing. They were a stir-crazy mob, mad at something they couldn’t see so they took it out on, of all people, God. But they didn’t know what they were doing.

And for the most part, neither do we. We are still, as much as we hate to admit it, shepherdless sheep. All we know is that we were born out of one eternity and are frighteningly close to another. We play tag with the fuzzy realities of death and pain. We can’t answer our own questions about love and hurt. We can’t solve the riddle of aging. We don’t know how to heal our own bodies or get along with our own mates. We can’t keep ourselves out of war. We can’t even keep ourselves fed.

Paul spoke for humanity when he confessed, “I do not know what I am doing.” (Romans 7:15, author’s paraphrase.)

Now, I know that doesn’t justify anything. That doesn’t justify hit-and-run drivers or kiddie-porn peddlers or heroin dealers. But it does help explain why they do the miserable things they do.

My point is this: Uncontrolled anger won’t better our world, but sympathetic understanding will. Once we see the world and ourselves for what we are, we can help. Once we understand ourselves we begin to operate not from a posture of anger but of compassion and concern. We look at the world not with bitter frowns but with extended hands. We realize that the lights are out and a lot of people are stumbling in the darkness. So we light candles.

What to Do about Anger?

http://connectionsgodandtheworld.blogspot.com/2008/05/what-to-do-about-anger.html

Wordless Wednesday: Mandevilla Vine

Wordless Wednesday: Mandevilla Vine

http://connectionsgodandtheworld.blogspot.com/2008/04/wordless-wednesday-mandevilla-vine.html

Wordless Wednesday

The Lineup--er...Fe-Lineup

Wordless Wednesday

http://connectionsgodandtheworld.blogspot.com/2008/04/wordless-wednesday.html

Declining Life Expectancy

A CBS News article online reports that overall, the life expectancy of Americans continues to edge upwards, according to studies. However, reports in the news this morning said part of the population has had a downturn in life expectancy, and this is

. . . a worrisome turn: Half of Americans in the 55-to-64 age group — including the oldest of the baby boomers — have high blood pressure, and two in five are obese. That means they are in worse shape in some respects than Americans born a decade earlier were when they were that age.

That means trouble, health-wise, for a very large segment of the population—the Baby Boomers. The studies show that health has been declining in both men and women for about the last twenty years in some areas, especially the South, where widespread poverty exists.

An AFP news article reports that women in 1,000 of the 2,000 counties studied nationwide have “chronic diseases related to smoking, overweight and obesity, and high blood pressure." In other words, the decline in health is mainly due to lifestyle choices.

What does this mean for me, as a member of the Baby Boomers? It means for many years, I didn’t pay much attention to my eating and couch potato habits. I have never smoked, thanks only to the fact that my father asked me not to when he and my mother took me down to the University of Texas as a freshman; out of a sense of duty, I remained true to my word on that issue. But last October, my doctor said I had high triglycerides, and therefore was at some risk for a heart attack.

She gave me a prescription for some cholesterol medication. But after reading the side effects, I decided to try other things first. I completely changed my eating habits. Following advice in a number of health information web sites, I started eating more fresh fruit, vegetables, whole grains, and nuts; more fish and poultry and very little beef; and sweets only once a week. I started riding my exercise bike, walking more, and lifting (not very heavy) weights.

The result is that I have lost sixteen pounds, and my triglycerides number has dropped by more than half. I feel much better, to say the least. Maybe my life expectancy has risen a little.

*The picture comes from the AFP web site linked here.

Declining Life Expectancy

http://connectionsgodandtheworld.blogspot.com/2008/04/declining-life-expectancy.html

Wordless Wednesday: Just Hand over the Chocolate

Wordless Wednesday: Just Hand over the Chocolate

http://connectionsgodandtheworld.blogspot.com/2008/04/wordless-wednesday-just-hand-over.html

Easter Sunrise

I went to a sunrise Easter service out at a ranch that belongs to some members of our church. The house is situated near the edge of high ridge overlooking a valley or maybe it is a canyon. Down in the distance, you can see deer browsing in the grass or wild hogs rooting around. From the back yard where we sat, the sun was coming up directly before us. A large wooden cross was in the middle of the yard. The pastor stood near it.

The ranch owners’ grown daughter told us a story about how she had a plan when she was nine years old, to go to town. It was cold, and she was angry and barefooted, but she was determined to get to town to find her mother, who had left her with her older sister for a few minutes to run an errand. Her plan was thwarted, of course, before she got very far down the road; someone called police, and they came and got her before something awful could happen to her. God has a plan, she said. His plan is dependable, unlike hers, based on love.

We sang a few songs and we had communion. Birdsong filled the air. It was cold, but the March wind was fairly still. I was happy to be there with all those people I love, praising God for his amazing love and his plan, based on love.

His plan is surprising in its simplicity. I used to think I had to work my way to him, that I couldn’t deserve his love. But I was surprised to learn that his love is free; I don’t have to work for it or deserve it. It is a gift. This is the surprise of Easter. He is risen, and he lives, not as a worldly king, but as the son of God, the one who leads us freely to his father through love. I want to live my life in the surprise of Easter.

Easter Sunrise

http://connectionsgodandtheworld.blogspot.com/2008/03/easter-sunrise.html

Easter Communion

Easter Communion

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Pure fasted faces draw unto this feast:
God comes all sweetness to your Lenten lips.
You striped in secret with breath-taking whips,
Those crooked rough-scored chequers may be pieced
To crosses meant for Jesu's; you whom the East
With draught of thin and pursuant cold so nips
Breathe Easter now; you serged fellowships,
You vigil-keepers with low flames decreased,

God shall o'er-brim the measures you have spent
With oil of gladness, for sackcloth and frieze
And the ever-fretting shirt of punishment
Give myrrhy-threaded golden folds of ease.
Your scarce-sheathed bones are weary of being bent:
Lo, God shall strengthen all the feeble knees.


Hopkins (1844–1889) was an English poet, educated at Oxford. Entering the Roman Catholic Church in 1866 and the Jesuit novitiate in 1868, he was ordained in 1877. Upon becoming a Jesuit he burned much of his early verse and abandoned the writing of poetry. However, the sinking in 1875 of a German ship carrying five Franciscan nuns, exiles from Germany, inspired him to write one of his most impressive poems “The Wreck of the Deutschland.” Thereafter he produced his best poetry, including “God’s Grandeur,” “The Windhover,” “The Leaden Echo,” and “The Golden Echo.” Since Hopkins never gave permission for the publication of his verse, his Poems, edited by his friend Robert Bridges, did not appear in print until 1918. His life was continually troubled by inner conflict, which arose, not from religious skepticism, but from an inability to give himself completely to his God. Both his poems and his letters often reflect an intense dissatisfaction with himself as a poet and as a servant of God. Though he produced a small body of work, he ranks high among English poets, and his work profoundly influenced 20th-century poetry. His verse is noted for its piercing intensity of language and its experiments in prosody. Of these experiments the most famous is “sprung rhythm,” a meter in which Hopkins tried to approximate the rhythm of everyday speech.

(Borrowed from http://www.bartleby.com/65/ho/HopkinsG.html)

Easter Communion

http://connectionsgodandtheworld.blogspot.com/2008/03/easter-communion.html

Doing, Doing, Doing

In today’s entry in My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers wrote that God sows us by a whirlwind, flinging us out like a handful of seed pods. We must live by God's vision, Chambers says, and not lose it.

If we lose the vision, we alone are responsible, and the way we lose the vision is by spiritual leakage. If we do not run our belief about God into practical issues, it is all up with the vision God has given. The only way to be obedient to the heavenly vision is to give our utmost for God's highest, and this can only be done by continually and resolutely recalling the vision. The test is the sixty seconds of every minute, and the sixty minutes of every hour, not our times of prayer and devotional meetings.

Chambers says over and over in different ways that the vital thing is the relationship, the vision—being in love with Jesus. He bases that on the Bible; God is always more concerned about the condition of our hearts than what we do in his name.

Eight or so years ago, I was locked in a dentist’s chair having a crown done. I could see a little patch of sky, so I looked at it and prayed, and so kept my mind off my tooth and all that drilling. I was kind of at a place where I had been doing lots of things—Emmaus, mission trip, Sunday school teaching—and I didn’t know what to do next. I prayed, “Lord, what do you want me to do next? What, what, what should I do?”

And he answered, “Stop worrying so much about doing, and just be.” I interpreted that to mean he wanted me to just love him and be fully in the relationship with him.

As Chambers points out, we must let God fling us out and keep an eye on his cyclones. “If you select your own spot,” he says, “you will prove to be an empty pod. If God sows you, you will bring forth fruit.”

Doing, Doing, Doing

http://connectionsgodandtheworld.blogspot.com/2008/03/doing-doing-doing.html

Suicide Attempt

A woman I know tried to commit suicide this week. She is very sick now, with a terminal illness. A suicide attempt is a desperate cry for help, and hers is no different.

Life without God in Jesus Christ is empty of joy, full of despair, fear, and darkness. Life in God through Jesus Christ is strength to deal with terrible illness, hope even in the darkest times, joy beyond pleasure and happiness, and peace immeasurable by human understanding.

In John 14:27, Jesus says: Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

My prayer is that this woman and her distraught family will open their hearts to his love. He is real and powerful.

Suicide Attempt

http://connectionsgodandtheworld.blogspot.com/2008/03/suicide-attempt.html

3:10 to Yuma

I just saw a terrific western movie--3:10 to Yuma, starring Russell Crowe and Christian Bale. Based on a 1950s short story by Elmore Leonard, it has much depth. It explores moral, ethical, and spiritual questions in a gripping story that is an intense shoot-'em-up.

Here is an excellent review of the film, at this linked site.

The picture comes from this site.

3:10 to Yuma

http://connectionsgodandtheworld.blogspot.com/2008/03/310-to-yuma.html