Remembering Inez O.

The wealth of knowledge and experience in our most senior citizens is a wonder to learn from. Inez was a school teacher for many decades, she had an active marriage, interesting hobbies, and was one excellent conversationalist. I heard today that she passed away Sunday evening, as she lives on the other side of town now.

Her friend remembers her telling of rolling a 286 in her 70s at the bowling alley.
I remember her pies, and her collection of painted ceramic cardinals. She was also one of the charter members of our church. Spending many happy active years in our local set of apartments. Everywhere she went she spread love and blessing.

Our study room has a beautiful organ, almost new, her last hobby taken up in her late 80s. What a lovely woman.

Recompense

I love walking on a beach, anywhere, anyplace.

The New Revised Standard Version actually uses the word recompense in their translation. It is a pet idea of mine, related to the recent conviction that this present world will be renewed at the reconciliation of all things.

It's just a simple idea that as justice is due to those who harm and take life, so recompense is due to those victimized by injustice and violence.

It's a loving payback for time lost on earth. It's just an idea I like to think about when I think about 9/11/2001.

"I am not without skills"

That's one of my favorite lines from Six Days Seven Night with Harrison Ford and Anne Heche. Today I assembled a new ceiling fan in our study. Our Hunter died prematurely after just a couple of years, so we found a nice replacement at Lowes.

I am amazed that it has been ten years since the terrorist attacks. I am paralysed by too many disasters this past decade. 9/11, The Tsunami, Katrina, The war on Terror, the collapse of the economy. Thankful for faith that sustains.

My friends wife bought a brand new Kia Soul this weekend. Very cute car, and I share the enthusiasm for the quality and durability of the brand.

Our next skills required project is hanging four 13 pound mirrors in our Kitchen that must line up perfectly and hang on monkey hooks that can support that weight.

Enjoy your Labor Day break.

Why I love Koine Greek

I have not always loved Koine Greek, at first it was like math, something that I just was not able to grasp. Advanced math was the beginning of me being a B and C student instead on an A student. I just could not grasp the concepts then I got behind and it snowballed.

After I got my degree as a not A student, I began to actually understand why God used Koine, which meant common street language Greek. First, it has spread through the known world and everyone could understand it.

For us, it is the precision of the language. Word meanings are precise not fuzzy. There is a word for physical life, and a word for working life, but there is a very special word for the "God kind of life", that word is ZOE. Its a deep and wide river and I am excited to use the word as a theme for teaching this fall. Its a word that starts like a mustard seed and becomes a tree, its a word that becomes a river flowing out of the deepest part of you. It is a word that takes you from really living in this world to really living in the next.

The Fool says in his heart......

there is no God. And therefore does a lot of foolish things that bring problems into his or her life.

The going along with the crowd mentality is often foolish. God did not just decide that I would have the disease called diabetes in the year 2000, I earned it by 30 years of foolish eating. Did I mention all you can eat Pizza joints?!!!

God did not decide that our generation would be the most obese ever created. We decided that by listening and following the SAD...Standard American Diet, and we are all reaping the whirlwind. Life is supposed to have choices, and wisdom is to guide those choices, and reaping and sowing is necessarily a part of that equation.

God forgives and is gracious, but we often say, though we are forgiven we sometimes suffer from the consequence of our choices.

I am currently enjoying preaching thematic series. Not so much through a book, but exploring a subject through the scripture. My next series is about Zoe. Life. The theme verse is in Peter. God has given us everything we need in the things which pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of Christ (my own memory, not the exact quote) I love the greek word for life, zoe, and cannot wait to see what comes out of exploring that word through the gospels and letters.

Something old and cherished

This beautiful glass lemon squeezer belonged to Laura's mom and it reminds me of her and times when things were made with weight. Been squeezing lots of lemons for my health drink.

I took my first ph tests today on saliva and urine. The health issue is that you are not supposed to be too acidic or too alkaline for optimal function of the systems of your body. It's not quackery so don't bug me about it.

Anyhow, I am right in the perfect 6.5 zone for both, which has to do with two years plus of real hard exercise and many many months of eating whole foods and ridding myself of over processed wheat and empty sugar calories. Still trying to eat to satisfaction and still get the scale and inches around the waist going down. I am also experiencing excellent control of blood sugar readings.

The deepest joy is that I feel so good eating healthy real food. Sugar cravings are gone for the most part, and I can enjoy a special treat or meal without falling off a wagon it used to take weeks to get back on. I am also eager to try vegetables outside the common range. The developer of RBTI wrote a pamplet using a King James quote from Proverbs that I have not been able to check for context, but the title is pretty cool. "The curse shall not causeless come". His is making the point that disease has causes that can be observed, and many times corrected with proper nutrition.

This has always been true, even in our day of pill popping for everything. The stupid commercial of the guy popping antacids after every meal tells me he should really be trying to discover what is causing the heartburn and stop eating it when or how it affects him. I'll stop before you think I am becoming an obsessive health nut... or is it already too late????

Yeah September!!

I derive pleasure from viewing the Superstition Mountains.

We are close to being released from the purgatory called Summer in Arizona. Except I don't believe in purgatory, so I could say the Hell called summer but most people believe that hell lasts forever and an Arizona summer turns to a glorious fall and winter in which we shirtsleeve it while you guys around the four corners of the country, Florida excepted, start raking leaves and wearing sweaters and then, when your hell freezes over, digging through snow and ice. OO blah da oo blah dee life goes on.

Just a few weeks away.

Odds and Ends on Thursday. I am typing on one of the light Logitech remote keyboards and mouse, so I am so new fangled I don't have to hold the hot laptop actually on my lap. Should I call it my table top????