Abundance

Joel 2:23

23 Be glad, people of Zion,
rejoice in the LORD your God,
for he has given you
the autumn rains in righteousness.
He sends you abundant showers,
both autumn and spring rains, as before.

24 The threshing floors will be filled with grain;
the vats will overflow with new wine and oil.

25 "I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten—
the great locust and the young locust,
the other locusts and the locust swarm —
my great army that I sent among you.

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It is all too easy to get caught up in the frustrations of every day life and neglect to notice the abundance of blessings that God has showered upon me. I have a great family and have always felt loved. While I lost my mother many years ago, I am blessed to have Daddy living nearby. I have never had a child or grandchild suffer from a life-threatening disease. I have a pretty good job. In a society where so many people are laid off and losing their homes, my job is a great one. It is all about perspective.

I struggle with making good choices for healthy living, but lack the perseverance of our ancestors who suffered without even shelter sometimes on the promise and faith in an abundant future. If I could learn to bend to God's will a bit more, my grain stores and wine vats would overflow. Until that day, I am sustained by the faith that my stores and vats will be in abundance in the next life.

As for this life, I am thankful for the many blessings God has bestowed on me and mine.

Grandma Got Run Over by a Wii Dear

When I was a child, we had one television and one telephone in the house. The television had three channels IF the wind was blowing just right. If you wanted to know what was happening in Memphis, instead of Little Rock, someone had to go outside and manually turn the antenna. Someone else had to stand at the door watching the screen and shout when the picture came in. Of course, a bit of fine tuning and colorful language was usually exchanged before the picture was clear enough to watch. We were rarely allowed on the telephone. It was a party line, and good neighbors did not tie up the line with chit chat. No computers. No video games.


We did have books to read. Back then a book was a lot of pages of paper bound together – about 4 inches wide and 6 inches long. Sometimes they had a paper cover with a nice picture, and sometimes they had a hard cover. They were much thicker than a Kindle and could be 300-400 pages long. The great thing about the old-fashioned books is they needed no batteries. No power source required.

We climbed trees. We swam in rice wells and creeks. We rode bikes and horses. I spent the majority of my summers in a tree with one of those 4”X6” block of pages bound together with a glue spine. Treats were whatever fruit was in season, usually right in the field or orchard with no washing. Every great once in a while, my brother and I were allowed to split a coke and a candy bar between us. Sometimes we got homemade ice cream, but you had to expend a lot of energy in churning it. I am certain that torturous exercise burned more calories than the ice cream provided! The majority of children were fit and happy. We learned through discovery, not computers.

We entertained ourselves.

Today’s child has to be entertained. They cannot ride in the car for 30 minutes without a DVD. Our cars come equipped with all the gadgets to entertain the child, which has become much more important than comfort for Mom and Dad. Some children still have bikes, but they hate to ride them because it takes 30 minutes to get strapped into the helmet, knee pads, elbow pads, shoulder pads, chest padding, and mouth guard.

Video games are the main form of entertainment for children today. They have televisions in their rooms equipped with video games and dvd players. They have cell phones with video games on them. They have computers with video games on them. Some of them are “educational games,” but where are these kids getting their exercise? They aren’t.

At least they weren’t. Now we have Wii. Wii Sport comes with bats and tennis rackets, so our children can get their exercise in front of the television! What a marvelous idea!

My grandson got a Wii with Wii Sports for his birthday. I am staying with him for a few days, and he is really getting his exercise. I tried to get him to go for a walk with me or ride his bike while I walked. No way! He wants to play with his Wii. Lucky for me, I still have a few of those 4”X6” books that I carry with me when I travel. I decided to curl up in a sunny spot and read while Christian got his exercise/entertainment. That was fine when he was bowling.

I was deeply engrossed in Silas House’s newest novel, Eli the Good, when the Wii Dear decided to play tennis. My daughter has a nice large living room, but tennis is a very active game. I thought I had been hit in the face with a virtual ball when the Wii Dear stepped backwards and popped me in the eye on his back swing. Who would have thought that a video game could be so dangerous?

The last time we got better technology, parents had to rush out and buy a new car with a dvd player and charging stations for PSP, cell phones, and other gaming devices. I foresee a booming real estate market as parents rush out of find houses with large dens or play rooms to accommodate their Wii Dear’s gaming needs.

I will finish my book when the swelling in my eye goes down a bit.

The Jewels in My Life

It is Sunday night. As the week begins, my floor is covered with jewels of many colors. There are piles of pearls, mounds of rubies, stacks of sapphires. From my throne (a blue recliner) I see a small heap of emerald, and there is a new copper color this year that my grandson argues is red. I think it may be a shade of topaz.

My dear cousin and beloved friend, Suzette, lives in New Orleans. Every year Suzette sends my grandchildren a big box of Mardi Gras goodies -- beads, coins, cups, stuffed animals. The children have no idea what Mardi Gras is. The girls see fine jewelry. The older boy sees a coveted pirate's booty. Undoubtedly, the 2 year old boy will soon join the older one as a team of pillaging pirates. Look out Captain Jack!

My grandson has been visiting for a few days, so the plastic jewels have been pirate booty this weekend. We have sorted and examined each piece carefully. I have worn most of these beads at various times over the weekend and have been scolded for making the mistake of calling a strand of pearls beads. How silly of me!

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When I started writing this post, I had been looking for a different type of jewel for nearly two months. Sometime over the Memorial Day weekend I misplaced my mother's sapphire college ring, my grandmother's Eastern Star ring, and a watch that my daughter gave me one Christmas. I had a "throwing out" that weekend, and I had just about decided that my jewels had accidentally been tossed. I have searched every nook and cranny, under furniture, in the vacuum cleaner bag. I even put on the heavy armor and cleaned out my truck. My precious treasures were no where to be found.

I shed many a tear trying to think of places that I might have stuck my jewels. I felt like a part of my soul had been lost forever. The cherished treasures turned up in a most unusual place as I contemplated the importance of the jewels that painted my carpet with color.

The tears I shed were wasted ones. The missing rings and watch are not a part of my soul at all. They are a part of my memories. For the time being, those memories are still intact. When I lose the memories, the rings and watch will be meaningless to me, and it is not likely that my soul will be lost with the memories. At the end of the day, my precious jewels are worth about as much as the ones that turned my living room floor into a Jackson Pollack.

The true jewels in my life are in the eyes and smiles of my family. Of course, Daddy is a diamond, & his brilliance lights the way for the rest of the clan. Without him, the rest of us would lack luster. Amanda is a garnet. Shell is an emerald. While Roger is a tangerine topaz, his wife, Jessie, is an aquamarine beryl. Asia is a pearl, and her sister is a pink topaz. Christian is a peridot, a paler image of his mother. Katelyn is an amethyst, and her brother, Madden, is malachite. My brothers Mal, Craig, Greg, & Lance are various shades of agate. My best friend, Cathey, is a star sapphire. Suzette, the family jeweler is a ruby. Me . . . I am like the Mardi Gras beads, with lots of flash but simple plastic underneath all the flash.

My life has been blessed with the most precious jewels and gems God put on this earth.


"You're only given a little spark of madness. You mustn't lose it."
– Robin Williams