I followed directions on the recipe and made a very good looking dewberry pie.
Saturday - A Jehovah's Witness came to the house around 11 AM. I was in the midst of chopping but nothing was pressing. So I went out on the front porch and talked to her for a while. I enjoyed preaching, teaching and exhorting her. I do sincerely hope God will speak to her heart about her error.
There are also plenty of sour oranges. People largely do not pick this stuff. Kids probably pick them to throw at one another. I am working on ways to use the sour oranges. You cannot eat them. They make your mouth pucker they are so sour. But orange pies are excellent. They take some effort though. I have also developed an orange aide that is not half bad. But it's an acquired taste. One third juice, two thirds water and add 1/4 cup of saccharine for sweetener. Not too sweet and dietetic for me. There is also sour orange marmalade. It tastes pretty much like regular marmalade.
As I go to my car I see other evidences of recycling, leaves and grass from bags left for trash, soil washed out of yards and into the gutter on the side of roads. Getting that soil is pretty hard work. Soil is heavy. A man walking by saw me shoveling soil into a container last week and just shook his head. Yeah I'm crazy.
As I walk for exercise I find some fairly interesting things to reuse. I am pretty obsessed.
In the home we accumulate a lot of stuff. When I am straightening up I find a lot of things that have not been used for years. I either think of some way to use them, place them in a box to take to Goodwill, or toss them. I imagine Goodwill tosses a lot of this stuff without trying to sell it. But that is there problem. I do not give them broken things, just unusual ones. Things that would take imagination. Yet I believe there is someone out there who would pay a little for it. But I admit these things would be hard to move.
I am constantly looking at the food we have in the freezer and pantry to see how to use things long forgotten. If they are still remotely edible I will think of a recipe to use them in. Sometimes I have a great time combining seasoning where we have two containers of the same thing. I love doing that too. We also have lots of little body lotions and body washes. This morning I tried to combine some of those. I know the scents are different. The girls will howl. But these lotions are long forgotten. They were not going to use them anyway. I might use them, just to get rid of them.
In a broader sense jail ministry is about trying to recycle people. That is not as easy. The results are not as readily apparent. So one has to enjoy the process. Helping at the retirement home is similar I suppose. These people are often forgotten by others. And they need visiting in any way possible. People need "recycling" in a sense, we all do. In this context recycling means discovering or enhancing someone's talents and virtues. They are there. God knows it. They are not getting used as much as they could be. Be at peace with that.
I am going through Hebrews right now (Chapter 2 and 3). I've been missing my daily Bible readings lately. Salvation is like recycling to me as I have expanded the meaning of the word. Jesus has redeemed us. His redemption is big. The writer says we (they) will regret having walked away from so great a glory. Jesus is both high priest and victim. He suffered, he was tempted. He redeemed suffering. He overcame temptation. There is recycling in there.
Last night we read and meditated on Isaiah 43:1-2 which starts, "Fear not for I have redeemed you." God did a recycling project on the Israelites. He took them from the Chaldees and chose them. He saved and redeemed them out of Egypt. The second verse says when you are over your head in water, when you go through fire God will be with you. You will not drown or be burned. God will save you. It is a promise first for the Israelites but do we take this to be a promise for us as well? I think we do. I know I do. God is always with us. He is in the process of using and reusing us. Perhaps that is why I like recycling so much. I think it is a model of how God takes us, broken as we are and finds a use for us. I find that so exciting.
Are we offended by this statement? This occurs in Bethany, near Jerusalem. Mark and Matthew parallel this story with it occuring in the house of Simon the leper. John remembers it in Lazarus' house. These differences do not bother me as they used to. People's memories are faulty. I am the worst at that, as my family is quick to remind me. But that does not disqualify the major ideas of this story.
Jesus is quoting Deuteronomy 15:11. The context in Deuteronomy is the Sabbatical year. Any fellow Jew that was sold into slavery must be released in the 7th year. And one must not be hard hearted, calculating when the time will be up and deciding not to help someone because debts must be forgiven soon. No, one must be generous, open-hearted when it comes to helping a fellow Jew. So Deuteronomy concludes, "The poor will be with you always." Implied in this is that you must freely open your hand to help.
It is not the same to take money from rich people and redistribute it to the poor. This is not what God tells us in Deuteronomy. God tells us to help the poor. But too many people misinterpret this to mean government entitlements. This lets us out of helping the poor. I gave at the office, so to speak. But it does not.
The government is basically buying votes. An despite the billions redistributed we still have the poor with us. There are still those who need our help, if we only look around. The personal touch is so important. God is saying we need to be compassionate. The personal touch often helps people to find a way out. Unfortunately the government approach ruins people's initiative.
Jesus is not saying not to help the poor. What is he saying? Well firstly he is rebuking those criticizing the woman, using a false disingenuous reason. They do not care about the poor. They hope to dip into the treasury themselves.
But secondly he is saying helping the poor is not our only occupation. We are also to bless Jesus, to thank God often with sacrifice. It is important to spend money on God as well. In Jesus' time many people gave to his ministry. It is good to do that. Today it is also good to give to the ministry of those who are telling others about God, both to churches and to missionaries, and to para-church organizations.
Jesus says "You will not have me with you always." Yes, he is now in heaven. We can no longer see him. Yet he is with us, through the Holy Spirit. He is present to us. And giving to his agents who are in ministry is a good thing. To me it is part of Jesus admonition to give to him, while you have him. We have him. It is good and right to give to his ministry.
The race started at 9:10 AM but the 10k portion of the race had over 9,000 people so it took at least 30 minutes to get everyone through the starting gate.
The 5k portion had thousands more and it took quite a while for us to get over the starting mark. Just think if it had been over 2 million people, like the number of people who crossed the Jordan one day over 3,000 years ago. Joshua was the leader of this large group of people. The people crossed on dry land. The "ford" was bigger than the starting gate of a 10k race but still fairly small, I guess, when you consider how many people had to get across. It took a long time for everyone to cross over. They crossed before Joshua and before God, and before the Ark of the Covenant which was held by priests in the middle of the river until all had passed over.
After they all passed over and while the priests were still in the riverbed God told Joshua to send men back, one from each tribe to go back to the river to each get a large stone out of the river bed. Each man got one large stone. They carried them to the place when the new nation was to camp for the night. They used these rocks to make a memorial to what had happened that day. When in the future people had a hard time believing that anyone could have crossed the Jordan here (on dry land) they could point to the pile of rocks. They passed over in the harvest season, the time when the Jordan would be at flood stage. This was the time of year when the Jordan was strongest. Someone could point to these smooth stones, obviously coming from a river bottom and say, "Here is proof!"
We are sometimes tempted to think that people in earlier times were more gullible, more superstitious than they are now. But not really. There is no reason to think so. People have always trusted their experience. If in their experience a thing was unlikely, even impossible, they are not going to readily believe you when you say it once did happen. Crossing the Jordan was miraculous. If you did not see it with your own eyes, you are not likely to believe it happened. No matter how much you trust the person's testimony, you are still going to doubt. So the stones were set up to help people believe. So God had Joshua put up a memorial.
The Celebration service at SJD is about to end. I will miss it. Yet I suspect it has run its course. It is a failed and failing service if you look at the numbers. And yet there are a few mature wonderful people who consider it their regular service and love it very much. But with less that 25 regular attendees we, the choir and musicians sometimes out number the congregation. I will miss my fellow worship leaders. But I suspect my relationship to SJD, as little as it has become, will dwindle to nothing now. Life moves on.
I bring that up because one of Celebration's favorite anthems based on Psalm 8. I did not realize how close it is:
"When I gaze into the night sky and see the work of your fingers.
The moon and stars suspended in space.
Oh what is man that you should be mindful of him.
You have made man in glory and honor and have made him a little lower than the angel.
You have put him in charge of all creation.
The beasts of the field.
The birds of the air.
The fish of the sea.
Yet what is man that you should be mindful of him.
Oh Lord our God, little children praise you perfectly.
And so should we."
Well pretty close to that.
God made an amazing big universe. We are such a little part of it. So little. Sometimes we marvel at it. Man knows more about it now than David did so long ago. Yet the more we know the more mind boggling it all is. Why did God do it? If we do not believe that God created it where does that leave us? It just is? It just happened? Big Bang Theory tells us there was a time when it was not. How did it all happen? Surely there has to be some kind of divine mover? Like I said it is all mind boggling.
Moses had his weak times early on and at first no one accepted him. But when he died he was revered as a multi-talented genius. Joshua is his protege. He has been helping Moses since he was a youth. He is Moses hand picked successor. He is also God's hand picked successor. But now, in the book of Joshua, he is on his own to guide a mobile nation into battles and then settling the new land. His role is a continuation of what Moses was doing but also something new. The world is changing around him.
In businesses the second generation of leadership, following after the successful founder, often has trouble continuing the vision. Often the most successful second CEO takes the company in a new direction. But many hand picked successors try to maintain the company as it is. As the world changes this usually stymies growth. At best the successor can only keep the same size and manage the asset that the founder created.
A good example is Apple Computer and founder Steve Jobs. Finally Jobs is out for good. He died of cancer, not terribly old. He is finally gone. His hand picked successor is doing a pretty good job. He is trying to keep up the visionary ways that allows Apple to stay ahead in the fast changing technological industry. But the new leaders just do not have Job's special vision. They are working to maintain. But in technology old products and methods are quickly replaced. Maintaining is not going to work. So far Apple is still successful. But it is different now.
Disney Pictures is a good example of a company trying to maintain the assets that the founder created. No one has had the vision of Walt Disney. There have been some successes yet the successors to Walt Disney mostly maintain the assets he created profitably. Disney himself started the procedure used to milk the blockbuster movies by re-releasing them every so often. The theme parks get renewed with new attractions. But really the leaders of Disney are maintaining what the founder created many years ago.
It is hard to follow the successful founder. Joshua is trying to do that. He tries to build on what Moses did. He tries to use his same techniques. But he also creates new things on his own, building on the foundation that Moses left. Of course Joshua is also following God and God speaks to him and gives him favor, as long as he stays obedient. That part makes it different than the business leader analogy. Still I get the impression that Joshua follows God as best he can, still he thinks of Yahweh as Moses' God. He is in the shadow of Moses for a long time. But in his old age he becomes a faithful beacon that those after him try to emulate. Unfortunately they begin to forget how and lose their zeal.
We have a law of love if you will. But we also aspire to righteousness, as Jesus did. Jesus knew no sin. He never sinned. We will never be able to claim that but we aspire to righteousness. But the righteousness we aspire to is a righteousness of the heart, not only of actions. So only God can truly judge how righteous we are. Only God knows our hearts.
