Jewelry

I have been constructing jewelry for the past month.  It was a hobby that my other had for many years.  She was good at it.  When she went home to be with The Lord I took most of her beads and finished items.  That was several years ago.  After being terminated from my job, I started cleaning up a storage room and sorting and throwing out and remembering and trying to remember.  The beads were amongst the rubble.

Quality of material, specifically gems and semi-precious gems, is what I have noticed the most.  Things have changed over the past 60 years.  Growing up I remember that gems were well cut and well defined.  If you had paste or other costume jewelry it was made to look like a well cut gem even if it was obviously not one.

Now we buy chips and nuggets and pass them off as gems.  They have the same base as the gem.  They may even have come from the same mine or pit as the well formed gem or bead, but these are the cast offs, the dregs.  The funny part is that they are included in the jewelry just as though they were a fine diamond.  It is not a bad thing and it does make for a very pretty piece if used properly.

What I have noticed is the parallel to Christianity.  Sixty years ago, the mainline churches taught from the Bible and made no excuses for the Word of God.  Over the years, many have adopted a chip, a sliver of Truth and built around it, a gospel that is nearly unrecognizable as coming from the Bible.  If you know what you are looking for you will find it, but more often than not, the Truth is so shrouded in half-truths that it has become a different gospel, a gospel of men and not a Gospel of Christ.

We now get chips and nuggets of Truth without the burden of the Full Truth.  This is not what was taught in the New Testament.  We are taught to beware of those teaching a different gospel  We are taught to seek after Truth not half-Truth, not bits of Truth, but to seek all of the Truth.  You can be assured that you will not be judged righteous on the basis of half-Truth when the Full Truth of the Gospel lies in front of you.  You will not hear, "Well done, my good and faithful servant." based upon the half-Truth that is spread as The Gospel of Christ.

The time is near, as it has always been.  Just because the Rapture has not happened or Jesus Christ our Messiah has not returned does not mean that the time is not close.  We are not guaranteed one more breath nor one more day and the day that each one of us meets God could be the next moment.  The time to be ready is NOW.

Each of us must ask that question of ourselves.  Are we ready at this moment to meet Christ and be welcomed into Heaven to dwell with Him forever?  We must ask ourselves what, if anything, gives us the right to expect to be in HIS favor?  If we answer with anything other than the BLOOD SACRIFICE ON THE CROSS OF CALVARY we have answered wrong.

Pray for guidance, search your heart and read your Bible.  Let HIM answer those questions for you.  Let HIM show you how to lay the crown at HIS feet. 

Shalom.  Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

May the Lord Bless you and keep you.  May His Countenance shine upon you.

May you be a friend of God in the coming year.

May you know HIS Peace, the Peace that transcends all human understanding.

May your prayers be answered in the Will of God.

May you be closer to the The Messiah than ever before.

Shalom. Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem.

Heros - The Way It Should Be

Our hero was our father.  Then our hero was the policeman or firefighter or teacher.  We had neighborhood heros that all the kids and some of the adults looked up to.  They were a hero because they did amazing things.

As a child a father was the protector who always caught us before we fell.  We could depend upon him to always be there.  He was larger than life itself.  He taught us things about bugs and why sky is blue.  He helped us with homework and took us to the zoo and told us about the animals.


He taught us to fly a kite, to ride a bicycle, to ice skate, to bowl and play cards.  He taught us that there was someone who we could depend upon when all else fails.

Then he left.  Our hero was a grandfather, an uncle or a neighbor.  Sometimes it was even Mom when she had time to be with us after working some menial job to put food on the table and clothes on our backs.

We moved around and our hero was a character in a book or someone in history.

History was changed and we found out that the hero owned slaves or polluted the planet or had children out of wedlock.

Our hero was a sports' figure and he used steroids or gambled on the game or beat his pregnant girlfriend.

Our hero was a rock star until they overdosed.  We found a new hero whose rap was banned because it glorified rape and killing policemen.

We emulated our hero and found the act of following was not satisfying.  The idol worshiping was not the same as the doing.  Our lives became filled with lost dreams and visions of a reality that did little more than torture us with their vagueness and we looked for another hero and when it was found the media ridiculed it and tore it down if they mentioned faith or belief in God.  Goodness and faith is reviled while men having illicit affairs and destroying hotel rooms are held high with massive coverage on the evening news.

We need a new hero for the children.  They need someone to uphold clean living and wholesome moral values.  They need to know that there is someone they can depend on so when it comes time to know God, they have already had the experience of knowing what goodness is, of knowing The Messiah through the human representation of Him through that one He used and we knew as a hero. 

We need to know that the children have someone other than a drunk, drug dealer, undressed rock star pulsating on stage or the pedophile next door to look up to and emulate.  They need a Noah, a Joshua,  a Jabez, a Boaz, an Esther, a David or a Paul in their life.  They need a living Bible that they can point to and say, "I want to be just like that when I grow up."

We need to know that their eyes are upon us each and every day.  They need a hero.  They need to know there is goodness and mercy in the world.  They need to know that God lives within us and is there to help us through the bad days and rejoice with us in the good times.

Tiny Tomato Follow-up

On November 25, 2010 I posted one called "Thankful for Tiny Tomatoes".  About 2 days later I decided to clean up the flower beds and put some pine straw around the plants that were still alive.

I looked at the Cherry Tomato plant and saw about a hundred little green tomatoes on it.  They had been protected from the freeze and were not damaged.  I didn't have the heart to just throw them away.  That would be wasteful.  But what can you do with a hundred inch sized green tomatoes?

I could not think of anything but I remembered reading in a gardening book many years ago about how someone had pulled up a regular tomato plant and hung it upside down in their garage to harvest the tomatoes later.

Being the type to not want to do more than I have to and not wanting to dig in the dirt, I just grabbed the stem close to the dirt and pulled up the roots.  I put it in a trash bag upside down and hung it in the spare bathtub.  It hung there for a few days and I moved it to the laundry room.  It has been a unique pleasure to go to the laundry room and check for more ripe tomatoes.  The vine is pretty much dried out now and is only storage space for the remaining few green tomatoes.   It is almost time to take it down and maybe start some new plants for the next season.  The Lord has been abundantly gracious and Blessed us with more food to eat.

For three weeks it has been hanging over the dryer getting a bit of northern sun through the window and we have been harvesting tomatoes every few days.

I will miss them when they are gone, but it has been fun having them around.

Thank The Lord for all His Blessings.

One of America's Heros

I do not recall ever meeting this man, but I may have.  One of my step-fathers worked at the National Bank of Washington so I very well could have had the pleasure of this gentle little man telling me things were "veddy good".  I have no idea when I cut out this clipping or what newspaper it came from.  I found it while sorting through some of my odd piles of "stuff to go through later."

At a time when people stay an average of less than seven years at one job location, it is amazing to know that one man stayed at his post for 66 years.   In a day when youth is venerated and the older worker is discarded in favor of the "innovative" ways of the young, it was refreshing to note that the employer chose not to throw away a faithful worker thirty years prior to his retirement.  It may even cause some to wonder, "Why is there mandatory retirement anyway?"  It only serves to reinforce the idea that after a certain age, you are no longer useful to society.

It was a truly heartwarming story and it is worth passing on.   He truly lived life to the fullest.