The Help We Have from Heaven

 

There is so much to share in life. But there is supposed to be fellowship, or relationship, in sharing. And sharing, as Christians, isn't supposed to be a mandatory percentage of what we have. But we're supposed to live, and to give as we feel led or called upon to give — not under compulsion nor coercion, the Bible says, but out of the hope we have in Jesus.

No matter what we've received in order to live, our giving has to be heartfelt and appropriate and not contrary to our own well-being. Our giving isn't meant to meet socialistic expectations and doesn't need to cause us suffering, but needs to answer our individual willingness to be loving (in Jesus) even toward someone who has hurt us.

When the Bible says we've freely received and are blessed to freely give, the meaning is most of all about spiritual giving: sharing God's word. When Jesus broke bread on a mountaintop, no one was expecting that act of friendship. The mass of people on the mountaintop that day, had only wanted to hear what Jesus would say. But He felt Heaven's leading, and asked everyone to be seated for an unexpected meal together. That was Heaven's heartfelt offering of Christian friendship. Jesus added a fellowship or friendship meal to the sermon or instructions He had given them.

And He added no sorrow to the meal.

To keep us safe from the perils of public meddling, probably most of what we do on our Christian walk, isn't meant to be seen or widely known. Jesus says, "Watch out! Don’t do your good deeds publicly, to be admired by others, for you will lose the reward from your Father in heaven. When you give to someone in need, don’t do as the hypocrites do — blowing trumpets in the synagogues and streets to call attention to their acts of charity! I tell you the truth, they have received all the reward they will ever get. But when you give to someone in need, don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. Give your gifts in private ... ." Matthew 6:1-4, New Living Translation

There should never be public backlash for what we do from the heart. What we do, no matter how small, shouldn't cause us to be mocked or persecuted or criticized. Indeed, in the Lord, what we do usually isn't about sharing everything we have, like some families who live together, but is usually about showing someone Christian love, or kindness — and helping someone understand what to do when they need help.

As an old song says, "If it had not been for the Lord on my side, where would I be?"

Life in Jesus Isn't about Suffering

 

 

Tell the truth. If you were born before 1990, didn't Sunday worship at church sometimes feel like being at a place of mourning, especially when there was communion? I remember how, when asked why not be at church, a relative once said, "No one died lately." But, since I've grown to know Jesus, that's the relative I have most hoped will be preserved blameless until Jesus returns to be among everyone in this world (1 Thessalonians 5:23).

And that isn't my only prayer.

I also pray that many sisters and brothers who are Muslim, will know Jesus the way I do. The way I know Jesus is set free from a constant review of child-like sins and mourning.

Life in Jesus — the life Heaven gave us through Jesus at Calvary — isn't a life of continual struggle and suffering. Although, in contrast, Islam tends to continually sacrifice life for life, to wrongly read biblical texts to mean we should cherish suffering, and to even practice whipping oneself with chains and cords, Christianity says Jesus has overcome the world; that He has given us traditions not like the world's; and that He wills us to have mercy instead of a continual heaping on of debt, sin, and dying.

Jesus also has told us He is our best example. He said that, although persecution is inevitable in the world the way it is now, He has never meant for us to remain persecuted. If any of us was appointed to suffer persecution, it was meant only during a difficult a season in the life of the church, and our suffering wasn't meant to do what Jesus already has done for us: Our suffering tests our faith but doesn't open anyone's eyes to how, through Jesus, we're set free from being bound to hell.

And just think: Even Jesus came down from the cross.

By the way, when the apostle Paul rejoiced that he had been "crucified with Christ," he didn't mean that life in Jesus is unstoppable suffering. Instead, Paul was saying that he had died to his old way of living — that he no longer was a murderer, not even in his heart. Paul had found new life, a new way of understanding and living. He had gone from being chief of sinners, to saving many souls. And the one thing he mourned was that there was a war in the church (a battle in the "body" of Christ). Those things he didn't want the body to do, the body was doing, anyway. And Paul knew that souls were being lost.

One lost soul was a man who was corrupting the church through being unrepentant about being in sin with his father's wife. Paul so hated that sin, that he said to put that man out of church, to give that man over to the devil to be castrated. Putting members of the church away from the main body is what Jesus meant when He said that, if the eye won't stop offending the body, to cast the eye away from the body.

But, being Christian, Paul knew that members of the body of Christ, even those who are cast away, are able to repent and to serve. That's the whole nature of knowing Jesus. So Paul reasoned: What can repentant Christian hands and feet do without those repentant eyes that want to serve?

Paul transitioned from being a persecutor of Christians, to being a minister who helped Christians repent and rejoin the church.

Also, in the new life that Paul loved, he realized he didn't have anything to be ashamed of in eating the food that Heaven intends for us to. After all, it was Heaven that told Peter to wake up and hunt for spiritually acceptable food, to eat the acceptable meats that were being served by those Gentiles who he was meant to minister to. A calling to eat nourishing foods with Gentiles was God's way of bringing Jewish believers together with people who had not believed at all — a means of helping to spread Heaven's Gospel.

Remember, life, under Heaven, does go on. After all, Jesus had at least two meals after getting up from the grave: one meal in a meeting place where disciples were probably so deep in mourning and eating that they had not noticed Him in the room, and another meal on the shore of the sea of Galilee.

It's as if Heaven was assuring us: Go ahead. Eat, and live.

We have a Savior who came down from the cross.

 

 

"So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God."

1 Corinthians 10:31, CSB

We Shouldn't Underestimate How Good God Is

 

 

 

Heaven gives special, very strong families the responsibility of raising a child with disabilities.

I thank the Lord there is that care. Because, many children with extreme disabilities do thrive.

From a faith perspective, that's a blessing, for a disabled child to thrive. But, for some, it's difficult to understand why Heaven cherishes the disabled, the same as the perfectly able.

It's also difficult for some to understand how supportive people in the life of a disabled person may value milestones in that person's life, the same as parents who sometimes remember a child's first words, first steps, and first quirks. Yet a simple fact of life is that, in faith, a child has worth, regardless of ability.

That said, I am a disabled person. I'm also a Christian.

And I thank God, I wasn't restricted or limited, as a child, to special classes. Instead, I learned in ordinary classrooms. And supportive people quickly saw I had a good aptitude for English language in writing — even an aptitude for creative writing and abstract language.

And, while I can never be a rap artist who races through the dangerous hairpin turns of his oral dissertations, I can understand what he's saying, if I can see it and study it in writing.

What Makes for Peace

 

 

  

Sometime between September 17, 2021, and November 20, 2021, this post was hacked into. I am holding out prayer no other posts have been tampered with: that my witness is secure.

 

Psalm 23:2-3:

He makes the way to green pastures. He leads beside still waters.

His word restores our souls.

 

 

 

Before the church was born at Pentecost, Heaven had a way of speaking into lives of people who would believe. It was hundreds of years before Jesus appeared, when David (a flawed man among a flawed people), heard from Heaven. David found stronger faith through believing the prophets and repenting.

David looked forward to the coming Messiah, but meanwhile found comfort in a personal prayer relationship with Heaven. David's relationship with Heaven was like the relationship Jesus promised the church. Jesus told those who followed Him that He would send "another comforter," the Holy Spirit.

It was through life in the Spirit that David knew Heaven, although David had not seen Jesus, who was yet to arrive. Despite the fact that we do see Jesus in one another today, the church kind of has a relationship with Heaven as David did: in the Spirit.

Although David had much more alone time, talking with Heaven, than most of today's church has, the church does know something about the importance of having personal space as a sanctuary.

That's the sense I get in remembering how Lydia, in the New Testament, offered her home for a few days' Christian fellowship, not based on anyone's need but based on her joy that a group of disciples had just saved her whole family. Lydia didn't want to part with those disciples right away but wanted to spend more time with them. In that moment, in Spirit, her home became a sanctuary not only for her, but also for those disciples.

It's in that sense that the early church shared with one another, not out of compulsion, and not based on a rule, but based on a desire to be supportive of those who were ministers, and a desire to spend time with those ministers.

In fact, the apostle Paul built on Jesus' teaching that disciples, or ministers, shouldn't carry money or extra goods when traveling from place to place, house to house, inn to inn, but should work as examples to others and should also depend on the kindness of believers who offered sanctuary and who wanted to continue worshiping together.

Through wanting time together because of ministry, the church began to have less alone time in the Spirit, but more shared time in the Spirit. And, so no one would have to worry about money, there was a sharing of goods, to support the ministers and those who traveled with them.

In terms of practicality, it was a little like when people join the armed services today and are deployed. Those servicemen and women kind of depend upon the kindness of the people in order to remain cohesive and do their work. But, obviously, most people are not in the armed services; and, like leaders and disciples of the early church, most people don't travel from place to place in ministry.

In the early church, most people were not those who shared all they had in order to minister: in order to, together, go from place to place, house to house (Acts 4:32). That wasn't everyone's calling to do.

Remember, even Jesus had asked some people to go in peace, to return home instead of following Him on foot. In fact, most of the mass who gathered at the Sermon on the Mount, went home after fellowship. And later, at Pentecost, when the church received the Holy Spirit, thousands were baptized but, again, most went home after their time together.

Today, there continues to be that way of being in Jesus, with some groups soldiering together in ministry, depending upon one another and upon others who are willing to be supportive. Yet, most of today's church does not so much soldier on in shared travels but meets together in sanctuary, both to do the work of the church and to fellowship like at Pentecost — but always departing and going on to create sanctuary at home (something hell likes to destroy, by the way).

That's all part of the life we live in Christ Jesus — or should be. I also believe it's worth saying that, when we read and teach that some of the early church shared everything they had (in order to go place to place in ministry), we should each seek Heaven's will for our lives and be accepting that, as Christians, we don't all have that particular practice of the early church as a calling, but that we all are called to be at home, in the church.

 

"He made the way for me to abide in peaceful pastures. ... He restores my soul." (Psalm 23:2-3)

~

Two Articles for Background:

The Holy Spirit Moves God's People from Law and Labor to Reaping in Faith

The Holy Spirit Moves God's People from Force to Freedom

Faith is a Vineyard

 

 

 

If you maybe are not willing to think spiritually about at least some of the Bible, you may miss the really big messages Heaven has given us.

While there are many ways the Bible asks us to be thankful for things of nature, and to use such things well, more times than not, the Bible is telling us something spiritual, something beyond the nature of the words we're reading.

Proverbs 31, for example, describes the virtues of a wife who is really blessed during Old Testament times. That's what we see at first glance. But the more we know our Savior, we realize God gave a spiritual vision to the Old Testament mother who was describing her future daughter-in-law.

You see, that vision wasn't only about her future daughter-in-law; it was about the church. The vision of Proverbs 31 is a kind of prophecy about the church, Jesus' "bride."

The church had not been born yet, when a mother spoke or wrote the words of Proverbs 31. But that Old Testament mother foresaw the wise purchase of a field for godly work. She did not know it, but she was seeing the church, time and again over the centuries, buying fields for godly use.

Scores of years after Proverbs 31, the church was born through Jesus, and, eventually, the church did begin to always use its earnings to buy such. The prophesy of Proverbs 31:16 is true.

That prophetic Bible verse is sometimes misused to say it would be virtuous for a woman to invest in things like the many commercial vineyards that have prospered over the centuries. But when Proverbs 31 says "she plants a vineyard," it's not meant for us, today, to think about an Old Testament vineyard. It's for us, today, to think about what the church has done and is doing. She, the church, has planted church after church, vineyard after spiritual vineyard.

And many church-goers who are the vineyard, have faithfully planted homes for themselves, and have raised families, vineyards of their own.

Going deeper, we can see other spiritual truths in this prophecy. And, often, we can see Israel as a vineyard. For example, in Psalm 80:8-9 and 80:12-18, Israel remembers the family of Joseph and their escape from Egypt:

You have brought a vine out of Egypt;
You have cast out the nations, and planted it.
 You prepared room for it,
And caused it to take deep root,
And it filled the land.

Numerous Bible verses describe the Hebrew people as a fruitful vineyard. But, time and again, that people of faith suffered attacks from enemies all around, sometimes because of the people's own backsliding. That people had grown strong, having hope for the promised Messiah, but sins of enemies and sins of the people wore down faith and left the people unsure.

Why have You broken down her hedges,
So that all who pass by the way pluck her fruit?
The boar out of the woods uproots it,
And the wild beast of the field devours it.
Return, we beseech You, O God of hosts;
Look down from heaven and see,
And visit this vine
And the vineyard which Your right hand has planted,
And the branch that You made strong for Yourself.
It is burned with fire, it is cut down;
They perish at the rebuke of Your countenance.
Let Your hand be upon the man of Your right hand,
Upon the son of man whom You made strong for Yourself.
Then we will not turn back from You;
Revive us, and we will call upon Your name.

God took care to cultivate Israel "in Spirit," even caring for the fringes of Israel in Judah, in times of trouble. When parts of that fruitful people were destroyed in the past, the Bible promised, "the surviving remnant of the house of Judah" would again "take root below and bear fruit above." (2 Kings 19:30)

Think it through.

Faith is a vineyard.

 

 

 

Meeting at a community center in Vineyard, New York

God is Still Good

 

Nehemiah spoke to Israel after a tragedy, but he encouraged everyone in an unexpected way. He said to be thankful for the (good*) fat and for "the sweet," to help bring cheerfulness at a sad time.

In this time of global transition and trial, do you still have a healthy dessert** recipe that you like?

If so, will you leave a comment about your healthy dessert?

~

* Nehemiah didn't actually say to eat "good" fat, but we know Israel was aware of differences between fats. In Judges 9:9, for example, the olive tree metaphorically asks, "Should I leave my fatness, wherewith they honor God and man ... ?"

** Avocados have lots of good fat, and there are many ways to make ice cream with avocados. The recipe on this link puts avocados together with heavy cream and syrupy condensed milk. So, like regular ice cream, it's not a light dessert; but it's a little healthier than regular ice cream, because avocados take the place of some of the cream. Cream has lots of unhealthy fat and does not have the nutrition that whole milk has. And that means even this recipe isn't the healthiest.

Another way to make ice cream with avocados is to pour healthy whole milk into a 3/4 cup measure of chopped, ripe avocado, and put that in a blender. Also put 3/4 cup of strawberry yogurt, 1/4 cup of heavy cream, and 1/4 cup of mashed bananas into the blender. Puree, and freeze for a few hours.

The amount of each ingredient can be adjusted so that the consistency is okay to the "cook."

Things You Might Not Think Can Mess Up a Garden

 

Many landscapers and homeowners use tree bark and pine straw as mulch, to suppress weeds and help beautify flower beds. But these types of mulch are not good for a vegetable garden.

If you've ever wondered why most farmers and vegetable gardeners don't use mulch (and why we don't put bark and pine straw in a compost pile), here are a few reasons why.

 

Things You Might Not Think Can Mess Up a Garden

 

 

1. Pine-tree bark, cones, and/or straw (or mulch in general): Tree barks can hold larva from beetles and other insects that destroy garden plants. The pinewood beetle (or pine-sawyer beetle) especially can be a problem in places like Colorado (where much mulch is made). Many trees have developed a resistance to symptoms that that beetle causes, so mulch businesses don't always know when a mulch may be infected with beetle larva. In my experience, even a reputable company can wind up selling products that have beetle larva. 

Although the pinewood beetle only attacks certain evergreen plants, the pinewood beetle can be a double threat, because it also may deposit microscopic nematodes on tree bark. These nematodes can quickly kill some evergreen plants. 

Similarly, other mulches can carry other beetle larva and other kinds of destructive nematodes, including larva and nematodes that are a threat to fruit, vegetable, and some ornamental plant growing. So, avoid mulches and soils with wood or straw that can harbor larva and nemas. Or, to become familiar with which woods and straws are most likely safe, contact your local agricultural extension office, or look up info from ag extensions online.

2. Diseased Leaves and Diseased Fruits: Often, plant leaves (and fruits like pecans) can carry spores of powdery mildew and fungal scab, both of which can destroy a fruit and vegetable garden in late spring and summer. Some ag extensions recommend burning such diseased plant matter, to avoid long-term problems. (And note: Powdery mildew often can't be seen by the bare eye until late spring and summer, so, when you do see that problem, it helps to keep those trees or other plants in mind, so that you can rake up and throw away their leaves as soon as they fall each year.)  

3. Diseased Soil: Be careful about moving soils from one place to another. If you know there is a problem like fungal blight or bad nematodes in soil in a certain area, don't move that soil around to other places. Instead, leave the soil in place, and plant lots of nematode-killing marigolds during the spring. Then, cover the problem area with black plastic for several months through the summer, leaving the marigold roots in ground under the plastic. The natural chemicals from the marigold roots, and the lack of rainwater and oxygen under the plastic in summer, should help mitigate the problem. Then, when planting in that area, plant something that's resistant to the nematodes. Asparagus roots repel the nemas that attack tomato roots, for example.

4. Store-bought Potatoes and Store-bought Onions or Garlic: Don't compost nor plant potatoes nor potato skins from the produce section of a grocery store, and don't compost nor plant onions, garlic skins nor garlic cloves from the produce section of a grocery store. Potato blight, and stem and bulb nematodes found in store-bought garlic and onions, are common problems on farms that sell the produce we buy from grocers. So, find seed potatoes and onions in garden shops, and mail-order your garlic. Garden-shop potatoes, onions, and garlic are usually certified disease free.

5. Synthetic Chemical Pesticides: Manmade (or unnatural) pesticides have the potential to kill insects that help a garden thrive. Pollinators include bees and wasps, both or which can die from the wrong kinds of pesticides. Earthworms also can die out from pesticide use. (In fact, earthworms sometimes don't even tolerate heavy amounts of natural citrus peels in a compost!) Not only are synthetic pesticides (and toxic amounts of natural chemicals) bad for garden growing; they're bad for anyone who eats garden vegetables and herbs.

So, what's good in a garden? What actually serves as garden helpers?

That's a long list! But just a few garden helpers include

• eggshells (washed with plain dish soap, rinsed, air dried, and ground in a blender);
• pumpkin seeds (air dried, and ground in a blender);
• banana peels (chopped);
• peanut hulls (and other safe recommendations for aerating soil and composting);
• chicken poop (sun dried/completely cured: found in some store-bought garden soils) Don't use poop from a person nor a dog nor a cat for gardening, no matter how dry or old the poop is!;
• fish emulsion;
• safe amounts of plain sulfur (Read information from agricultural extensions, for more about how to safely use sulfur.);
• hay from a farm or straw from wheat, in order to mulch, if you feel you just have to mulch!

There also is such a thing as a beetle that is good for gardening. For example:

• ladybugs, and
• rove beetles!

Rove beetles can look kind of unhelpful or

destructive, but they really are garden helpers.