Don’t Take It Easy……by Charles R. Swindoll

Psalm 90

Last fall one day at the church, I spotted a visiting gentleman who was shaking hands with a half-dozen folks he’d never met belore. Then he looked at me, and with a grin and a twinkle, he whipped out his hand. It was a hand you could strike a match on, toughened by decades of rugged toil.

“You look like a man who enjoys life. What do you do for a living?” I asked.
“Me? Well, I’m a farmer from back in the Midwest.”
“Really? I guess I’m not surprised, since you’ve got hands like a tractor tire.”
He laughed . . . asked me a couple of insightful questions, then told me about his plans for traveling on his own.
“What did you do last week?” I asked.
His answer stunned me. “Last week I finished harvesting 90,000 bushels of corn,” he said with a smile.
I then blurted out, “Ninety thousand! How old are you, my friend?”
He didn’t seem at all hesitant or embarrassed by my question. “I’m just a couple months shy o’ 90.” He laughed again as I shook my head.

He had lived through four wars, the Great Depression, sixteen presidents, ninety Midwest winters, who knows how many personal hardships, and he was still taking life by the throat. I had to ask him the secret of his long and productive life. “Hard work and integrity” was his quick reply.

As we parted company, he looked back over his shoulder and added, “Don’t take it easy, young feller. Stay at it!”

The Bible is filled with folks who refused to take it easy. Remember our friend Caleb, who, at age 85, attacked the Anakim in the hill country and successfully drove them out (Josh. 14)? Or Abraham, who had a baby (well, actually Sarah did) when he was “in his old age” . . . he was 100, she was 90 (Gen. 21)? Or Noah or Moses or Samuel or Anna, the 84-year-old prophetess . . . significant people, all.

Age means zilch. Wrinkles, gray hair, and spots on your hands, less than zilch. If God chooses to leave you on this old earth, great. If He makes it possible for you to step aside from your work and move on to new vistas with fresh challenges, that’s also great.

And whatever else you do, don’t take it easy!

“No disease is more lethal than the boredom that follows retirement” (Norman Cousins).

A little this, a little that on a cold wintery day…

Looking out from within.

Beautiful Amarylis that's bloomed sitting on my dining room table.

From a heap of birds to........

..to a mobile of birds at my kitchen window.

I've been working on my yo yo quilt.....

Snow Mushrooms

Wearing a pair of Jim’s workboots, I decided to venture out this morning and see what I could find in all of this snow….10 inches…at least!!

Our table (with the umbrella still up!! Go figure!!) reminded me of a giant mushroom. Wonder if there were some other snow mushrooms lurking about!

Cello Journey Continues……

I am still learning the last song in Suziki Book 3 but have already purchase #4 with great anticipation. I am now in my second year of learning cello and still enjoying the process immensely. It has been a huge challenge but one I am so willing to pursue.

Here are 3 of the techniques I am still struggling with….

1. Consistent bowing (sometimes I get it right, sometimes I don’t)

2. Proper fingering ( I hate to use this as an excuse, but with arthritis in my fingers, with my left hand especially, I struggle with this all the time.)

3. Vibrato (this……I don’t care what anyone says…..is a technique that requires time to achieve!! To me it is an advance technique…to do it right)

Well, I am sure there are so many other things too but these 3 stand out the most….things I need to really focus on.  And what will it take?…we all know….practice, practice, practice. But through it all, I am just having fun!

Searching for Spring

I took my camera this morning and thought I would try to see if I could find a hint of Spring lurking about. Judging from the pictures I took….you decide!

Even my garden gnome is searching~!

Ahh…..just a touch I have found!

Real Lessons from 2009

It’s hard for me to grasp that another year has come and gone. That feeling of time slipping by so fast is a sign of…..old age? Perhaps…or maybe it’s just that you’re having so much fun you don’t notice it! Or you are working the days away, and before you know it….well, you get what I am trying to say. We can think of so many reasons, silly or otherwise, that explains that rapidly passing of time, but it really doesn’t have to pass in vain. I am looking at 2009 as teaching me some valuable lessons. The only way to realize that you have learned from something is to look back and contemplate. And as I looked back in the passing of these hours, days, weeks and months, this passage of time was holding some wisdom that was hidden from my paltry field of vison. I am positive that you won’t have to search long to see wisdom embedded in the passing of time. As I have considered what Wisdom was teaching me, one most wonderful realization came to me.  Here is is:

              

 These wonderful pictures are just a part of my family. I’ve learned that these people are more important to me than anyone or anything. To really see how precious your family is, you have to push aside any long held anger, bitterness and fill that space with forgiveness and love and compassion. These attributes will reveal what is really important in your life. My husband, my daughters and their husbands, my grandchildren, my Mom and sisters and their family are truly precious to me. This new year I want to show them all just how cherished and valued they are to me. I want to take the time to do it….just take the time. Thanks 2010 for coming so I can put to practice what God’s wisdom is teaching me.

Have a very Blessed Christmas filled with Hope and Grace!

    

 

Luke 2:11

Yes, we have snow!

    

Right now we have at least 3 or more inches of snow! These pictures were taken earlier this evening, right at dusk…so more snow has fallen and will continue through the night. No Market for us tomorrow and it was to be our last Market until March 2010! I am disappointed but know that we are making the right choice. I’ve been outside walking around at least half a dozen times tonight! It’s so quiet and peaceful…and the snow is like a fine powder…really very pretty. Stay warm everyone!

Where I’d like to be right now…

It is time to slow down….take some time to rest. God has provided so wonderfully this last year for us. But it has been a time of work, frustration and exaltation!! It has been a time of weariness, wondering and wearing thin. It has been a time of satisfaction, success and strength. God has given us the vision to go on…He has shown us what it’s like to work for Him…He’s revealed to us that it does take hard work to make something worthwhile. We are so very thankful for a great blessed year for O My Soap! We think that it’s been so very worthwhile!

Quietness

by Chuck Swindoll

It is almost 10:00, Monday night. The children are snoozing and snoring upstairs (or they should be!). Aside from a few outside noises—a passing car . . . a barking dog . . . a few, faint voices in the distance—all’s quiet on the home front. That wonderful, much-needed presence has again come for a visit—quietness. Oh, how I love it . . . how I need it.

One of my most poignant memories of quietness occurred in California when I was walking with a friend along the sandy shores at Carmel. The silence of that early dawn was broken only by the rhythmic roar of the rolling surf and the cry of a few gulls floating overhead. The same thought I had then I have now: I cannot be the man I should be without times of quietness. Stillness is an essential part of our growing deeper as we grow older. Or—in the words of a man who helped shape my life perhaps more than any other: 

We will not become men of God without the presence of solitude.

Those words haunt me when I get caught in the treadmill of time schedules . . . when I make my turn toward the homestretch of the week and try to meet the deadline of demands, just like you. Alas, we are simply geared too high. Thanks to Alka-Seltzer, Excedrin, Sleep-eze, and Compoz, we repeat our nonproductive haste with monotonous regularity. As Peter Marshall put it:

We are in such a hurry, we hate to miss one panel of a revolving door.

Talk about pollution! I want you to think about what our nervous systems undergo just to stay afloat: Noise (music, news, talk, laughter, machinery, appliances, phones, and traffic) from 6:00 a.m. ’til midnight. Speed (bumper-to-bumper at 65 mph, on-ramps and off-ramps, deadlines and appointments) that makes us frown rather than smile . . . that causes us to check our watches more often than checking in with our Lord. Activities (meetings, services, suppers, luncheons, breakfasts, rallies, and clubs—all “necessary” and “nice”) that have a way of dismissing quietness like an unwanted guest. Sure—some things are important—super, in fact—but not everything. Listen, if you and I really treasure quietness, we will have to make time for it. When you feed it only the “leftovers” from the schedule, it always goes hungry.

Now, believe me, I’m not bitter. I’m just being direct and honest with you about an ingredient that cannot be ignored much longer in our lives without our paying a dear, dear price. I am jealous that we: “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10 NIV). I am desperately concerned that we slow down and quiet down and gear down our lives so that intermittently each week we carve out time for quietness, solitude, thought, prayer, meditation, and soul searching. Oh, how much agitation will begin to fade away . . . how insignificant petty differences will seem . . . how big God will become and how small our troubles will appear! Security, peace, and confidence will move right on in.

This is what Isaiah, the prophet, meant when he wrote:

And the work of righteousness will be peace,
And the service of righteousness, quietness and confidence forever.
Then my people will live in a peaceful habitation,
And in secure dwellings and in undisturbed resting places (32:17-18).

You know something? That still, small voice will never shout. God’s methods don’t change because we are so noisy and busy. He is longing for your attention, your undivided and full attention. He wants to talk with you in times of quietness (with the TV off) about your need for understanding, love, compassion, patience, self-control, a calm spirit, genuine humility . . . and wisdom. But He won’t run to catch up. He will wait and wait until you finally sit in silence and listen.