God Directed Decision

 

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Genesis 25:7-8

New King James Version (NKJV)

⁷ This is the sum of the years of Abraham’s life which he lived: one hundred and seventy-five years. ⁸ Then Abraham breathed his last and died in a good old age, an old man and full of years, and was gathered to his people.

When I turned 60, people began asking me when I would retire. As time went by, the question morphed into “Why haven’t you retired yet?” Had this question been asked by my colleagues, I would have taken it as a sign that it was high time I retired, and taken the hint, but it wasn’t. In fact, when I turned in my request in December 2012 to retire in July 2013, my colleague Vernon acted very surprised. He is within a very few months of being my age. “I planned to retire before you,” he exclaimed.

At many points in my life, including the decision to retire, I wished for a direct statement from the Lord telling me which way to decide. I would think back on Abraham’s experience. The Lord directed him to leave Ur. Later he was directed to leave Haran for an undisclosed destination. He was told that Ishmael was not his son of promise but to expect a child by Sarah. Eventually he was instructed to offer Isaac as a sacrifice. Then at the very time of slaying his son, he was restrained and given a ram in his place.

Once in my lifetime I feel I received direct communication from God. He had led us to devote our lives to working in Africa. When it came time for us to return to the U.S., it took direct communication to get us to actually accept that decision. I tell that story elsewhere and have not as yet posted it to the blog.

As I came back again and again to my question as to why God could speak so often to Abraham and only once to me, I finally did the math. God spoke to Abraham only about 4 times. He lived 175 years. That means that on the average, God spoke to Abraham about once every 44 years. So I should expect my next direct communication sometime before I reach the age of 88. Besides that, I have something Abraham didn’t have! I have the written Bible, God’s word that I can read for instructions. So I am not discriminated against! I am indeed favored.

Thank You, Lord, for speaking to me in many ways. I’m just sorry that, on occasion, You have to hit me on the side of my head with a two-by-four in order to get me to do Your will!

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[1] https://media.swncdn.com/cms/CW/63718-thinkstock-erikreis-womanoutsideheadup.1200w.tn.jpg

Love Is Patient

1 Corinthians 13:4 New International Version - UK (NIVUK)

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.

Let’s face it; none of us married the totally ideal partner! I’m afraid I’m not a great communicator. I do things without saying a word, leaving Sylvia mystified. She wonders what I’m going to do next.

We have a library in the house. It fills two complete walls in our smallest bedroom. It then spills out onto bookcases and every level spot in every room of the house. Okay, so we’ve learned to live with it. Our (my) favorite pastime is to go to used bookstores and library book sales and look for more books.

But a major bomb shell hit me when I officially retired. That meant I needed to clean out my office. Not bad! Except it had an entire wall devoted to books. All of those books had to go somewhere. Every time I looked at them, I realize that I wanted to keep most of those books. So many of them arrived at home, most now in our storage shed.

On top of Sylvia’s honey-do list, she wants me to “retire” bunches of books. She still loves me even though I don’t think I have retired a single book in the last ten years. On the contrary, I’ve added several books practically every month. Actually, I just persuaded my daughter to take a collection of 18^th and 19^th century antique books that are family heirlooms. They were in the vacant shelf you can see on the right of the picture. As Neil Armstrong said when he first stepped onto the moon, “That’s one small step…”

Thank You, Lord, for a patient, loving wife.

 

 

 

Wondrous Heavenly Things

 

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Psalm 119:18 

King James Version (KJV)

¹⁸ Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things...

 

Brock Kidd in the July 10, 2020, devotional in Daily Guideposts 2020 pulled an unforgiveable punch with the quote as I wrote it above. Of course, if your mind thinks along similar tracks to mine it automatically fills in “out of Thy law.” Ignoring the inspired ending to the verse, he went on to describe a cabin his grandfather had built where he would retire to meditate. Allow me to prolong Brock’s abuse of scripture.

At four-thirty on the same morning I read Brock’s story, Katie, our beloved mongrel, and I went out to Doty Park near home. There was a promise of seeing Comet Neowise. The park was dark and silent. Across the sky in a magnificent arc of a circle stretched four naked-eye planets. Punctuated on the right (west) shone Jupiter, and on the left Venus outshone even Jupiter. Continuously social distancing herself wider and wider from Jupiter, Saturn followed, looking pale compared to her brilliant sisters. Racing towards Venus almost as fast as Venus was racing toward her was Mars. And in their very midst sat an almost pregnant Moon, brighter than all four sisters combined.

Immediately below Venus hunkered Aldebaran—the bull’s eye. With my binoculars I noticed a cloud of stars, the Pleiades, dancing around Venus. In ancient Greek mythology they were considered a troop of nymphs bringing rain. They would have to prance a whole lot livelier to bring us rain in this middle of the dry season.

We didn’t find the comet. A week or so later it had moved into the evening sky, so Sylvia, Katie, and I drove out into the desert where we had true night. Sure enough, we saw a wondrous, naked eye comet in the north sky under a magnificent Big Dipper. We sat there a while and then walked around in the warm desert evening marveling at God’s handiwork in the heavens.

Help me, Lord, to put similar effort into seeing wondrous things in Thy Law.

 

 

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[1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/10/21318478/nasa-f3-comet-neowise-see-watch-astrophotography-space