the "jesus test"

Why am I offended when someone sends me an email “Jesus Test” saying “If you aren't ashamed to do this, please forward this email to at least ten people” It irritates me no end! Most times I’m so irritated I hit the delete button before I even think about it. Then I feel guilty. So this morning I analyzed my feelings.

Of course, I'm not ashamed of Jesus. Every soul who knows me knows that! Lord knows that Jesus is life and breath and salvation and strength and hope of eternity to me. He has kept me and blessed me and brought me through a life that I guess (although I didn’t realize it till later someone told me) has not always been easy. I don’t have enough words to praise Him. And yet, I’m offended.

Why? Maybe because I often get them from people who I know aren’t living lives for Christ. Somehow they feel that by forwarding a few beautiful pictures of Christ, it makes them more of a Christian. The pictures are always loving and inspirational, but I don’t need a loving and inspirational picture to make me feel loved by Christ. I don’t need a picture to make me love Him more or to make me feel my gratitude to Him more deeply. I live out my love and gratitude every single day. I don’t need to send a cute email.

Why else? Maybe because I feel that (often) I’m getting them from people who are trying to impress me with their goodness. Often times I know they are not godly people and I resent (a bit) that they are trying to fool me into believing they are. I don’t love them any less because I know they aren’t living for God, but I feel sad that they think they can influence me into believing they are. I feel sad that they believe that by sending a pretty Jesus Test they are proving their allegiance to Him. I won’t harshly condemn them if they aren’t living for the Lord, but I won’t back off on the standard of salvation in regard to them either.

Why else? Maybe it is just because I refuse to include myself in the thousands of people who pass these around the internet without an ounce of salvation in their hearts.

Now it isn’t that some of the forwards I get aren’t good. Some times they are. And sometimes I put my own spin on them so there is a message behind them rather that a just a warm-fuzzy that makes people feel good. But I refuse to pass anything on that might be used to make the receiver feel that he can make himself right with God just by forwarding an email. I refuse to pass anything on that will make the receiver feel that by forwarding it he will proclaim his standing with God—especially if I know the person is NOT right with God.

I don’t think any less of good saints who send these to me. (If you are one, please don't be hurt. Lots of you do. ) I truly believe they are just endeavoring to extend their witness. I just wish they would do a little editing. Change the wording so it doesn’t appear that anyone who passes them on is a Christian. Or just forward the pictures and the message without the challenge to take the “Jesus Test”

The real “Jesus Test” is lived out every day of our life. We do the things that are pleasing to God in every situation. We give of our self and our life to be a witness of His saving grace. We don’t pass on just pretty pictures and warm fuzzies, but also messages that carry a challenge for righteous living and messages that point men and women to a better way, messages that give a standard for making heaven our eternal home. THOSE are the deeds included in the real “Jesus Test” They are the things that are evidence of our real love for Jesus.

mean people

Last night for the third time in two days— twice in one evening!—our gate was opened. And an open gate is a wholesale invitation to Gabriel and Maxim. In the year we have lived here the gate has been left open once or maybe twice— by negligent service men reading the utility meters or doing lawn treatment. Now in only a couple weeks or ten days they’ve been open five times!

One evening I was sitting here waiting for them to finish their business outside when the neighbor guy knocked on my window. He had one of the little dogs in his arms! He had come out to go to class and the dogs met him! The gate was open! A couple days later Rachael put the dogs out the back, then stepped outside the garage door to do something in front. And here came Maxim to meet her! And Mica was coming around the corner! Now we had these three events in the last two days.

Someone has to be opening the gates.

This last incident, the twice in one day and once the day before, coincided with a strange happening. I was sitting here all quiet and busy when I heard someone rapping on the front window. Mica barked fiercely and of course there was a regular chorus in here. It happened twice, once a rather long series, then a shorter couple of raps. I couldn’t figure out what was going on but I did get up to go see what it was. Nothing. By the time I got up and moving the dogs had settled down and all was quiet. I puzzled about it for a few minutes then dismissed it.

Now in conjunction with the open gates I’ve given the incident a little more weight. Those who keep track of this sort of things say this is a prime time of year for burglaries. People are busy and rushed. Most houses are brim full of gifts under trees, in closets, sitting on the table to be wrapped. Owners are hurrying to do this and that so locking doors is frequently overlooked or they are consciously left open while people are carrying stuff in and out or running across the yard to the neighbors. Garage doors are left open. A little drive through a high-end neighborhood every couple days quickly makes it apparent where people are home and when. In times of absence it is no problem to make and entrance to load up on small transportable items. If you were ‘casing a joint’ (lol too much Mike Hammer!), if you are casing a joint and you go up to the window to look in a seemingly empty house with a huge tree in the front window the best way to tell if there is a dog is to rap on the glass. If a huge black dog, or even a tiny cute one, comes barking you know the dog will have to be dealt with if you are going in to lift some expensive items. How better to deal with a dog than by leaving a gate open on the side of the house where it would seem that no one would notice until too late! No dog, no bar to breaking in. I think the incidents are all related! Okay. Now I’m paranoid.

At any rate, R & M have tied the gate shut. Not any great deterrent to opening, but at least it will take a bit longer to loosen, or even cut, than simply flipping a latch. And if that happens we will know it wasn’t an accident.

The worst part is that when the dogs were out at 10:00 the other night, Maxim evidently got hit by a car. He came hurrying home to Michael with his tail tucked in. Michael has never had pets so he isn’t real good at reading dog body language, but as soon as he brought him in to me I knew something had happened. He hurried over to the corner beside the cat tower and laid down kind of scared looking. I thought maybe Michael had gotten after him, but then he cried a bit and began licking his leg. Sure enough when Rach examined him he had a cut leg and still has a swollen and hurting shoulder!

Gabriel got a personalized trip home in the arms of the guy down the street. Thank the Lord for ID tags!

If we get robbed it won’t be the dogs’ fault

getting ready for thanksgiving

I've discovered the joy of a convection oven! When R & M bought their new house, it came equipped with a Jenn-aire stove. It is an old one but it's fantastic. Jenn-aire, in case you don't know, is a high end type of cook stove. This one does everything except whistle "Dixie" when your roast is done. For one thing, it has removable burners on the right side that expose a built in griddle. The grease trap under the griddle almost cleans itself.

As far as I'm concerned the Best Feature is the center exhaust fan. I was excited when I got a hood over the range that sucked the hot steam up off the pots and out of the kitchen. THIS BABY has a built in exhaust between the burners in the center of the stove. You flip the switch and it sucks the steam down into the fan and shoots it out the vent. Amazing. I was skeptical at first but WOW! does it work! No steam in your face for one thing. No steam billowing out into the kitchen. And, especially(!), no greasy residue on the hood or the underside of the counters above the stove. There is a fan cover with a filter that pull out and pop into the dishwasher, so cleaning isn't a problem. (Not having that hood to scrub every whipstitch gets my vote every time) If you ever have a chance to get this feature in a new range, by all means, grab it! It takes a little room off your oven space, but it more than makes up for it in comfort and convenience.

The only thing that confused me was (and still is, truth be told) the oven. It does about three or four different things. I always had ovens that you stuck your meatloaf in and set the thermostat to 350, then let it cook. THIS oven you have to tell it what to do. At first every time Rachael left me with directions to put the roast in, I had to check what kind of cooking to use. (FYI: Most ovens are radient heat ovens. Okay, smirk if you will. I'm a dumb country kid--we only had one kind of oven. I told you that!)

This oven also cooks by convection. That is it cooks the food by circulating super hot air around it! I'm not sure how that is better than radient or if it is better even. But this morning at 5:45 AM I discovered a Use For It.

Making dry bread for dressing has always been a pain in my kitchen. Mostly that was because I always forgot about it until twenty minutes before I was ready to make the dressing--just about the time I pulled out the celery, onions, sage, and carrots to begin chopping! So we over stressed the breakfast toaster trying to put two loaves of bread through it in twenty mintues or we spread the bread all over the oven racks and turned the heat up. This sometimes resulted in charred edges on the bread, but don't be picky.

This morning-note this is Wednesday, a full day before we have to make dressing! This morning I said I would dry the bread today so it would be ready to turn into dressing tomorrow. It only took me sixty years to come up with such an outstanding idea. I was preparing to spread the bread out to dry when The Idea hit me. Why not put the bread through the convection oven! Hot dry air. Bread you want to be dry. Perfect combination. AND it saves Vondi having to stand up and turn bread and keep the cats away and remember to put the bread away again when its dry.

I spread the bread on a cookie sheet-kind of leaning them up against one another so the air could circulate. I set the oven to 250 and clicked the dial over to convection! Fifteen minutes later I have dry bread. No rotating slices or flipping slices or trips to the kitchen. No worrying about bread charring while it toasts in the oven. No keeping an eye on the cats so they don't decide to investigate the bread spread on the counter. No gathering it up later. it's all done, sitting there in the oven ready to use tomorrow!

Go buy yourself a $3000 or $4000 Jenn-aire cookstove. It's really handy for drying the bread for your Thanksgiving turkey dressing. Among other things.

This morning when R&M had gone to work, I sat down to finish looking through a pile of catalogues that came in the mail yesterday. The first one I picked up was one that heaven knows how it got to my house, but it was full of ‘Christian’ gifts. I don’t know what I was expecting, but by the time I finished looking at it I was disillusioned.

Now I like cute dust catchers and stuff hanging on my walls and cups with pretty pictures as much as the next sentimental woman, but after looking through this catalogue I don’t think I’ll like them quite as much in the future. The book was full of cutesy ideas for “promoting our faith”, and “building a witness” and “proclaiming our allegiance” and “testifying of Salvation.” There was a plethora of necklaces and bracelets and key chains: all of them purporting to be a “constant reminder of God’s Promises,” “encouraging words before us,” and “shining reminders that God hears our prayers." There were bracelets with John 3:16 and I Corinthians 13:13 engraved on them. There were charms with faith hope, trust, love, and kindness logos dangling from them. Cross necklaces with inspirational words engraved on them promised to ‘make a statement’ of your faith designed “to start thoughtful and faith-provoking conversations where ever you go” There was even a crystal cross proclaimed to be ‘faith filled finery.’ Inside it was a mustard seed and a couple sprigs of greenery! And there were military ‘dogtags’ adapted with scriptures and witnesses instead of the standard name and serial number….

There were statuettes and plaques and wall hangings and appliquéd banners, each designed to be a "silent and constant" “proclamation of your faith.” One was declared to be a “silent testimony to the Creator.” A set of wind chimes was designed to remind us every time the wind blows that ‘we are not alone.’ There were religious symbols modeled onto lapel pins, tie tacs, ball-point pens, key chain fobs . There was even a ‘prayer crock’ with a pretty floral heart and a pad of small note pages. Prayer requests were to be written on the papers and placed in the jar where we could “rest secure in the knowledge that your heavenly Father hears you.” There were coffee cups and travel mugs and candle holders and neck ties! ( For goodness sake!) All of them designed with pictures and sayings to be a ‘silent witness.’

Now I do believe that there is a real need to be a ‘silent witness’ in the world today. There is a crying need for sinners to see men and women of God quietly and faithfully living out the gospel message. Now that is not to say that we should never speak of our salvation and what God had done and what He requires of us. No, no, no. But too often there is too much talk and not enough living. False religion has substituted much speaking for liv[ing] soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world.

Now we come up with these religious messages plastered on all kinds of chintzy objects, shouting out isolated words and scriptures and pictures, all designed to circumvent the crying need for righteous living. If we LIVE out the message of Christ in righteousness and holiness, we will have an impact on those we live with and meet daily. There must be a dramatic difference between the Christian and the world. If there isn’t, all the cute mottos, and necklaces and coffee cups and plaques and teeshirts will be worse than useless. These things plastered across the living space of men and women living like sinners but proclaiming their spiritual connection have a negative effect--instead of drawing people to God, the heap scorn and negation on the very name of Jesus.

I once knew a lady who liked to wear tee shirts with scriptures and cute religious sayings on them. She was ignorant of any message of righteous living, so some of the fault must lie with the men who served her as pastors, but her fits of temper and bad language belied the message she sanctimoniously proclaimed on her tee shirt. People had no confidence in her and by association, no faith in God either.

Now some of the things in the catalogue were pretty. A couple of them I thought I’d like to have myself, but not to substitute for a holy life. I liked them for the same reason I have pretty pictures hanging on my wall. They were pleasing to the eye; but I wouldn't depend on them to proclaim a message of salvation. To do that, I depend on living a consistant life for God. If you walk into my sitting room…looking around right now…there is no visible indicator of my religious belief. Even my Bible is on the shelf behind my chair and not visible to the casual observer. But anyone who spends any time with me, I hope, will find a difference between my attitude and lifestyle and that of most senior citizens.

If you like the kinds of things I’ve been talking about, that’s okay. There really isn’t anything wrong with most of them. So if you have religious things hanging on your wall and your coffee cup says "Prayer changes Things" I'm not faulting you. However, don’t rely on them to proclaim your salvation. Do that by living righteously before the Lord and your neighbors.

The scriptures keeps running through my head: Whose adorning let it not be that outward . . . But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price. (I Peter 3:4-5) Granted this is speaking of women and their penchant for jewelry and fancy hair dos and fine clothes, but it is certainly still applicable to all children of God regardless of their gender. The hidden man of the heart clad in a meek and quiet spirit is the greatest witness, not plaques on walls or banners or neckties or necklaces.

Okay, I’ve vented.

(Don't forget. Go see http://chosenhighway.wordpress.com )

our ditch

Poor Michael. He's spent his evenings for almost the last week and his afternoons over the weekend trying to conquer our sump pump drainage system. At first he thought it was a simple leak in the pump, but every time he fixed something he found another problem. By last evening he had the entire ditch dug up across the front yard! He discovered some obstructions, but his biggest problem was that the corner turn just below the side walk was several inches lower that the far end of the drain!

He and Rachael dug out and had no success with lowering the far end-it was getting so it was too deep for the drain hole. Finally they decided to replace the pipe, which wasn't really broken up but did have some cracks in it, and raise the low corner section. So they have all the pipe and the corner joint replaced and part of it refilled. Now all they have to do is buy a couple loads of topsoil and cover the still exposed corner, which is now the right level, but sitting almost on top of the ground.

Fortunately there was a low spot in the yard at that point (probably part of the reason it was low there.) Hopefully they will be able to get it finiahed off with no more headaches.

Oh yeah--the cause of all that mess AND the subsequent exposure of the messed up drain was that the drainage pvc under the sidewalk had been filled with concrete along about a 2 foot length when they raised a tilted section by forcing cement between the slab and the substrate. A good idea, but NOT if you drill into the drain pipe. The one good thing-none of this happened in the middle of winter!

Oh good grief!

My friend Donna has some cute little smileys that she uses in her emails. I liked them and when a link for them came at the bottom of one of her emails, I decided to down load them. Yaaagh! Famous last words. I downloaded them okay! Them and a NEW homepage and a NEW tool bar. And STILL couldn’t find how to access the cute little smiley pictures.

Not only that, but this presumptuous webpage wanted me to use THEIR email service and I couldn’t get to my good old google mail! I had to go through the ‘uninstall’ process TWICE to get them gone and then I had a BLANK homepage! THEN I had to reset it for Google.

What ever you do, don’t be tempted to download those cute little Crawley-site smileys! The are very invasive and persistent!

Got my day off to a depressing start. It’s better now though.

Too much, too late!

I’m finally getting my system back on track. For the past two days I’ve paid the price of too much coffee too late in the day. Several years ago I nearly lived on coffee, well not literally, but you know what I mean.

One day I was rushing around to take some supplies to one of the satellite sites and I had a sudden cutting and enduring pain in the bottom of my chest. I have a pretty high pain thresh-hold but this one made me stop a minute or two and notice it. I finished loading the van but the pain persisted. It was so severe that instead of going to the site I drove to the doctor’s office. I went in to the receptionist and said, “Either I’m having a heart attack or this is the absolute worst case of heartburn ever!!”

That got me into an examination room immediately. A half hour later and two hefty doses of the doctor’s special chalky goopy stuff I was feeling a little better. Turned out it was heart burn. When I asked what could have caused it at 11 AM the doctor asked how much coffee I’d had that morning….Hmm. Well I was a chain coffee drinker. You know the cigarette smoker who lights his next cigarette from the one he’s finishing….yeah. Well, I “lit up” the cold coffee in the bottom of my cup by refilling the whole cup with hot from the pot…probably 4 maybe 5 good-sized mugs that morning. THAT had caused the severe pain.

Now one would think I’d learn, but no, it took a few more months and a stomach that burned and stabbed constantly before I realized that all that coffee was not good. I cut back to one (okay, it was large) cup in the morning and another (smaller one, normal for most people) just before lunch. Then no more coffee! And basically, I’ve stuck to that pattern for I can’t remember how long and I love my coffee!

But Monday afternoon I just had a hankering for some hot coffee. It was gray and rainy and I just felt like a cup of good coffee would warm me up and brighten the day. I asked Rachael if she would drink some if I made a half pot. She said sure she would and I made the coffee while she was fixing supper. Turned out between then and eight o’clock she drank about half a cup and Vondi drank the rest! Bud-deeee! Did that get my heart pumping and my toes jiggling-until about 2:00 in the morning! I think I calmed down enough to sleep by around 3:30 and woke up again at 6:30. Of course I ran out of steam about two in the afternoon and fell asleep a couple hours which made me wide awake again when most people were sleeping, which messed up yesterday too.

For two days now my sleep pattern has been weirder than usual. Last night I finally got back to normal. I guess from now on I’ll leave the coffee alone after noon.