The Valley of Vision

Facebook’s “Like” Button Explained

Christmas in a Nutshell

This is a Tragedy

Contentment: That Slippery Thing

From Amy’s Humble Musings:

Yesterday I watched my son ride his bike through the front pasture. He was chasing a cow. At times like these, I’m not sure why I gave him siblings or a dog. We don’t have sidewalks here or else I’m positive he would’ve chosen to ride on that.

I’m glad he didn’t run over the cow. Puzzle, the nice milk cow, is about the only animal on this place who earns her keep. We get almost three gallons of milk from Puzzle on once-a-day (everyday, of course) milking. Even for greedy guts like us, that’s a lot of milkshakes and alfredo sauce. So last night, I called up the dairy across the street to see if they had any bottle calves for sale. They did.

I hung up the phone and yelled for the masses. My kids found a dog collar and leash (actually, they stole one off the calf born last week) and came back home twenty minutes later with a little Jersey bull calf. He’s one week old. Sure, I can’t get a latte where I live, but I can always scrounge up a bottle calf or a moonshiner lickity split. Bonus points if either can stand up.

While my oldest kid peddled after a cow and my younger son took turns walking the new baby calf on a dog leash, Greg and I sat on the porch, and I talked about the sporty convertible I planned to drive one day. Greg swatted a fly.

The car will have leather seats. When I reach for the seat belt buckle, there won’t be any gum wrappers hidden underneath it. There won’t be dog pee on the front right tire. When I open the car door, a bucket of baseballs won’t spill out and I won’t get a ticket for littering for simply wanting to get into my car on a windy day. The tape deck will work.

By then, my kids will have learned not to eat, drink, throw up, or breathe in the car I have to drive. In this universe, my hair won’t be frizzy anymore, and the bank teller won’t be snotty with me. It’ll all be great. I can see it now.

This morning, I had someone tell me that my life was perfect. I appreciated her letting me know. (She hadn’t heard about the goats yet, and for decorum purposes, I decided against sharing any labor and delivery stories.) I’ve got six kids, a farm, and I make my own butter. So obviously.

I know what it feels like to find out everyone else is having a good time while you’re just paying bills and trying to get the kids to brush their teeth and show some respect around here.  I know that everyone else is happy because last year I signed up for Facebook and now I have friends.

We’re all reaching, trying to tweak that thing that if we could “just get right” will magically make our lives perfect, or at least….happy. When it’s late and quiet and dark, sometimes we are just thinking about how to hold our marriage together. I think about the perfect formula for happiness all the time, though I’m too theologically snooty to call it that. If I could just lose weight, if I could just control my temper, if I could just remember what I wore yesterday but forget about that thing someone said last month, if I could just be open and vulnerable to the people I love — then everything would be okay. Wouldn’t it?

For tonight, I sit on my porch and stop talking. I watch. It is summer, God’s favorite season, and incidentally, mine as well. There are cows frolicking in my pasture. And little boys too.

Going Down Singing

Carolyn Arends explains why we should all remember that we will die:

The  day before he died, my father wore what his doctors  called the “Star  Wars mask”—a high-tech oxygen system that covered most  of his face.  Pneumonia made his breathing extremely labored, but that  didn’t keep  him from chatting.

“Pardon?” my mom would ask patiently, trying to decipher his muffled sounds. Exasperated, he’d yank off the mask, bringing himself to the brink of respiratory arrest to ask about hockey trades or complain about the hospital food.

After several hours, he gave up on conversation. He started singing.

God’s Been Hunting Me Down

David Murray claims that: “God’s been hunting me down for months.”

That was my immediate and instinctive understanding of why the Lord recently sent multiple blood clots into my leg and lungs.  Three weeks and two complications later, I’m more convinced than ever that God’s been tracking me for months, with loving arrow after loving arrow, until at last He’s brought me down to the dust. Let me explain.

A Sickbed Often Teaches More Than A Sermon

Luther said that he could never rightly understand some of the Psalms, till he was in affliction. Affliction teaches what sin is. In the word preached, we hear what a dreadful thing sin is, that it is both defiling and damning, but we fear it no more than a painted lion; therefore God lets loose affliction, and then we feel sin bitter in the fruit of it. A sick-bed often teaches more than a sermon. We can best see the ugly visage of sin in the glass of affliction. Affliction teaches us to know ourselves. In prosperity we are for the most part strangers to ourselves. God makes us know affliction, that we may better know ourselves. We see that corruption in our hearts in the time of affliction, which we would not believe was there. Water in the glass looks clear, but set it on the fire, and the scum boils up. In prosperity, a man seems to be humble and thankful, the water looks clear; but set this man a little on the fire of affliction, and the scum boils up — much impatience and unbelief appear. “Oh,” says a Christian, “I never thought I had such a bad heart, as now I see I have; I never thought my corruptions had been so strong, and my graces so weak.

-Thomas Watson, A Divine Cordial

HT: Blogging Theologically

Making a Mockery of Christ

“To pretend to trust Christ to save you from sin while you are still determined to continue in it is making a mockery of  Christ.”

 - C.H. Spurgeon (1834-1892)

 

HT: Defending. Contending.

Sickness Can Open Our Eyes

 Be laid aside in bed for a week.

You will soon know whether you are a Christian or not.

—D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones