Password: Jesus

Summertime. ...and the livin'  is easy.  Really? If I term "easy" as giving myself a break from listening to my own voice teach, counsel and talk, well yes, this summer is "easy". If I think about being on the phone with an assortment of computer experts for frustrating hours at a time in futile attempts to discover what planet my several passwords prefer to inhabit,  then I am not having a summer that totally qualifies as "easy". Oh, did I mention that a hacker actually got through to me by phone and told me to "Go to hell?"  I am not going to do what he suggests because MY PASSWORD INTO HEAVEN IS UNCHANGEABLE. IT'S "JESUS"!

There are some wonderful summer days when the livin' is easy. Yesterday, for instance:  J. Vernon McGee guided me through the Preacher/Prophet Amos'  book. When Amos asks me in Heaven how I liked his Book I can look him straight in the eye and say: "Terrific!" Amos was a small town boy who pushed past his countryfied limitations and preached with the power of God to multitudes of city folk. My Ted, along with many other small town men of large faith must enjoy hanging around with Amos in Heaven.

Bear Mountain Nature News:  #1. I came upon a brand new-born fawn one day this week, wobbling on unsteady legs trying to follow its mommy up the hill. ...and I thought of the years my own babies wobbled, walked, then sprinted right past me.  #2. A big bear is roaming around a thousand or so feet above where I live. He was on Bear Mountain first, so that's his prerogative.  #3. It was so cold this week that I turned on the furnace, and that made a computer expert in blistering hot Los Vegas nearly cry when I mentioned that to her.  She and I have had some little talks about Jesus. Yesterday she said:  "You have made my day!" Well, she not only "made my day"; she saved my laptop from being slung over the rail of my deck to its final resting place a thousand or so feet below.  #4. The gophers keep chewing through the sprinkler system lines and my kitties can't seem to catch the varmints in the act.  So,  my friends, that's the Nature News from Bear Valley Springs, California.

It was a fine treat to work with a team of women in honoring Verna Williams at her Memorial the other night. Verna, mentor, discipler and Bible teacher,  lived 90 plus years to bless all who knew her. A long time ago, she made me promise I would play Dixieland and Ragtime at her funeral. ...so  as Verna's friends came through the door, they heard "Ain't She Sweet"; "Five Foot Two"; "Sweet Georgia Brown", "Bill Bailey", "Rockabye My Baby With a Dixie Melody",  and Scott Joplin's  "Entertainer".   ...then we sang Old Gospel, some hymns, and told beautiful "Verna stories" and were finally allowed to know and eat the dessert recipe she kept secreted all her life! Oh, dear Lord, I hope You let her listen in. She always loved a party!

One would have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to note that "natural tragedies" follow one after the other, marching across our beloved America as at no other time in our history. Next, will there be a wildfire on my mountain? Could be. Will the rocks and trees on my property be rearranged by the "Big One"?  Possibly.

Following is a sketchy summation of experiences in Ted's and my life together: parenting three kids with unexpected "knock-the-idealist-stars-outta-your-eyes" happenings; several car crashes; a flood requiring a quick evacuation;  two hurricanes,  each leaving a messy aftermath with house still standing; a tornado that missed us by a block; the inside of our Houston home torched by an arsonist; between the two of us, around eight surgeries; two simultaneously fractured arms (mine); one broken hip (mine);  a severed toe on a left foot (mine); staff relationships and sometimes lack thereof in nine churches and on three mission boards; foreign mission assignments in nine countries on three continents; the building of two churches from small beginnings into ongoing fruit-bearing ministries;  the birthing, alongside precious disciples of an ongoing "knock-your-socks-off"  Retreat ministry in Round Top, Texas; the crashing of two pastorates; a temporary black hole depression (mine);  location changes from Kansas to Minnesota, back to Kansas, to Texas, to California, back to Texas then at last, back to our beloved California;  the deaths from cancer of my husband and son within a year of each other; and hardly worth mentioning: two harmless snakes in my house (one on the third floor!) and one under my dining table. Compared to the life stories of countless saints, I can truthfully say that "The lines have fallen for us in pleasant places".  There is no reason to ask "Why" when we know "Who".

Will our beloved country continue to "fall from within" as have Empires before us?  How can we not live in the reality that we are being judged by our Righteous Sovereign God?  "To whom much is given, much is required". ...and God means it!

I am reading "America the Beautiful" by Ben Carson, M.D. (the lightning rod speaker for the recent Presidential Prayer Breakfast).  I'm not even smart enough to quote him correctly.  I suggest that you just read the book.

...and now I am going up the mountain to my daughter's home and immerse my aging body into her hot Jacuzzi that overlooks all of Bear Valley. Now, that qualifies as easy summer livin'.

                                         HYMN TO PONDER

O beautiful for heroes proved; in liberating strife
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!

AMERICA! AMERICA! GOD MEND THINE EVERY FLAW
CONFIRM THY SOUL IN SELF CONTROL
THY LIBERTY IN LAW!

Love,

Jo