IDEAS, CONCEPTS AND PHILOSOPHIES

I will tell you at the end of this blog why you are receiving it a couple of days earlier than usual.

My earthly dad had to drop out of grade school after the fourth grade to support his parents, younger brother and sister. ...but by then he could read. My earliest memories include his sitting in his rocking chair after the noon meal (which was "dinner" then) snoozing for about five minutes, then reading the Kansas City Star which was delivered a day late by our mail man. He listened then to WDAF, a conservative station as I recall,  out of Kansas City to get the latest news. Franklin Roosevelt, President, had brought in the New Deal. He also launched Social Security, the WPA and government handouts to people who did not work. When a college ""boy" (My dad called these guys "educated jackasses!) showed up in Dad's field to offer him government subsidies if he didn't plant wheat that year, my dad threw him (verbally) a country mile and told him never to come back. If you have never been cussed out by an Irishman, you've never been cussed out. At our kitchen table, we had socialism for breakfast, dinner and supper. Before I entered first grade in the one room school house when I was five years old (We had no such thing as kindergarten) I was schooled on what socialism would eventually do to our country. My dad said, "When people are paid for work they do not do, I'll give this country fifty years before it's finished."

Now, that is a "philosophy". My dad, with only a fourth grade education, could THINK!  Have you noted that small-thinking people talk about PEOPLE, but wise people speak about philosophies, ideas and concepts? My dad was not a Christian until he moved to California and the believers out here loved him into the Kingdom when he was 75 years old. He quit drinking and smoking overnight, and not one human person had said a word to him about either. I don't think he cussed any more either, though let me tell you that my dad never cussed around women, but I could hear him and both my brothers set the air on fire with their swear words (but never "dirty, sexual" words that only "trash people" used then) ) down around the barns and fields. ...but they did use God's Name because they didn't KNOW GOD!

Only God's grace is keeping us from experiencing persecution and nation-wide poverty. Oh, we are poor, all right. We're still floating above reality. I remember, even as a little girl, the realities of the Great Depression (and we ain't seen nothin' yet.). We had plenty of food because my family worked like slaves to produce nearly everything we ate. ...but the city people? ...lined up for miles in the food lines, waiting for a meager, meatless bowl of soup and a piece of bread.

I suspect our Lord is giving grace because we Amercan Christians continue to send missionaries and money to the poor around the world. I am quietly worrying (and now not so "quietly") about the shows being offered in our evangelical churches. A huge percentage of American church goers have never led one person to Christ. " What is it going to take to get church people out of the pews and into the market places? ...the visible church being forced underground, meeting secretly in the middle of the night?  Probably.

Yesterday in my little Bible class with women, I sat there, listening, and agreeing with John who says in his third little epistle: "There is no greater joy than seeing your children WALK in the truth."  Notice?  ...not SIT on the Truth.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, Jo. You've been touting the same "go get 'em" message all your life. Yes, and I will continue to tout the same message until Jesus comes and gathers me in His gentle arms.

This afternoon I will be at Lynda and Bob's kitchen table with a handful of teenagers who continue to come every Thursday and study the Word. I tell them openly how much they are going to need it in the days to come. Can they believe it when none go to bed hungry at night and sleep between clean sheets in a cozy house? No, not fully can they believe it, but they will remember after I am in Heaven, for God's Word NEVER "returns void" when everything and everyone else fails.

I am going tomorrow morning for the weekend, on Amtrak to Sacramento to be with my beloved Granite Bay family. Lauren, granddaughter #2,  is coming from Azusa  Pacific where she is a student. This week she texted me these verses from Lamentations 3:22-24: "Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself. "The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for Him."

                    HYMN OF THE WEEK: JESUS! WHAT A FRIEND FOR SINNERS

Jesus! what a friend for sinners! Jesus! lover of my soul!
Friends may fail me, foes assail me,
He my Saviour makes me whole.
HALLELUJAH! WHAT A SAVIOUR! HALLELUJAH! WHAT A FRIEND
SAVING, HELPING, KEEPING, LOVING, HE IS WITH ME TO THE END.

Love, Jo