Current Thoughts

I went to my barber today, Harvey. Why do I alway wait to long to go to the barber. A fresh hair-cut is such a simple pleasure. We got to talking about walking. I told him I have been walking every day. He said, “O, I walk every morning about 5:30.”

“Where do you live?”

He said, “I live out on Ackerson Lake.”

“Do you carry a flashlight?”

“No. There are street lights so I can see.”

“But how do people see you?” I asked.

He said, “I was walking one morning and a guy pulled over in a pick-up truck and he said, ‘Hey. I see you out here walking every morning. It’s hard to see you in the dark. I’m worried for you. I have a gift. I figured you were about my size. See if this fits.’ He handed me a nice jacket with bright reflective tape sewn on it. I wear that every morning, now.”

“That might have saved your life,” I said and smiled at the human warmth of the gesture. The guy could have cussed him out for doing something dangerous. He could have drove close to give him a scare. Instead he reached into the toolbox of his humanity and pulled out a nice reflective jacket.

If you are not walking you might give it some thought. If you are walking in the dark you might invest in a flashlight and a reflective vest or jacket.

My daughter sent me a light band for my head that makes me look like an electronic angel.

Don’t be a couch potato and don’t be a crabby-britches. Be active, be safe, and be generous and may the wind be at your back.

Bittersweet Farm
March 20, 2023

Bittersweet Bits:

March Wind.

A strong March wind is howling in the trees this afternoon. A large branch blew out of the Maple in the teardrop. It landed squarely on the blue yard ornament ball in the circle beneath and blew it to shards. Lois will be sad. It was a vintage piece.

Country Life. The other evening we were watching a spooky crime drama when Lois screamed. A bat was flitting around the living room. I don’t know if it mattered but I turned off the lights and headed the frightened creature back out into the night unharmed. Country life. I would rather shoo an occasional bat out of the house than have to endure my neighbor playing rap music for two hours while washing his car in the driveway ten feet from ours in suburbia.

A Sweetly Recurring Memory

Lois and I live together alone again now since late summer of 2020 for the first time in over 40 years. I wondered what it would be like but we just picked up were left off when the children started to grace our lives. We enjoy the same love-for-life and childlike companionship we did then. We managed to avoid growing out of love with life and simple things and I’m glad.

The first summer after we were married we moved from Cedarville, Ohio to the quaint parsonage of a little country church on a back road near in Mercer County, Ohio between Celina and the Indiana line. Kyle was born while we were there.

The other day for some reason a warm memory sprang into my mind from that season of our lives. It was the memory of a drive from our home there to visit Lois’s family in Ypsilanti. It was a summer night. We packed and readied the car and at the close of the evening service we changed and left for Michigan. It was summer and still a couple hours to sunset. We would make most of the trip before the light faded.

I coxed Lois to scoot over to the middle of the bench seat in our Plymouth Duster and put my arm around her. We talked. She was in a happy mood. The nearly three hours passed quickly as we drove along side-by-side in on that summer evening making our way to where loved ones would be waiting for us.

There was nothing remarkable about the trip that night. (A few months later on the same trip we would blow our engine just across the state line into Michigan and Bob Thees, one of the deacons of the church, would drive up and cheerfully rescue us). But this trip was quiet and uneventful. That mellow memory stays with me now after decades have passed and eight children have come and gone.

I was a young man then. I could have worried but that was not my way. I lived in the moment. I trusted the Lord. The girl I loved was close against me in the car on a golden evening. She was quiet and happy and her hair smelled sweet and our journey had just begun.

Bittersweet Farm
March 17, 2023

It is evening on the last day of winter. (Out on Bittersweet Farm we say spring is March/April/May and tomorrow is March. So tomorrow is spring–even if we have to will it to be so and we may still have to endure a half-dozen snowfalls of various intensities.

This evening I helped a neighbor pick up some branches from an ice-storm and I walked. Upon returning I rode my bike a bit. It was a sunny and wonderful way to end winter, especially since we lost electrical service and internet last week for three long days.

I’ve written an article I hope will be helpful to you. Let me know what you think…

Learn How to Change

Unless you are perfect, you need to change. As a Bible-believing Christian I always hold out hope that real, lasting change is possible. God’s word p

romises that it is possible with God’s help to change. What needs to change in your life?

Small, daily changes contribute to overall change and the Lord promises that the Spirit will inspire us and empower is in the process. So if you want to change as God to help you work on these things:

1—Change the Way You Think. (Meditation) repent-means change the way you think. (Psalm 19) “Let the words of my mount and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight oh, Lord…” (Psalm 19:14)

2—Change the Way you Talk.“…Let the words of my mouth…be acceptable in your sight…” (Psalm 19)

3—Change the Way you Act. (Romans 6:15-23) “put-off and put-on” are you habitually godly or habitually ungodly. (ill) Ralph Waite. (Jay Adams)

4—Change Who you Admire. Worship is the loyalty, time, talk, physical bowing we give to what we really value and admire in the deepest part of us. (Psalm 1)

5—Change What you Desire. “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, (fleshly desires

) which wage war against your soul.” (1 Peter 2:11, ESV) “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” (Psalm 37:4, ESV)

Notice this prayer from the end of Psalm 19:12-14: “Who can discern his errors? Declare me innocent from hidden faults. Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me! Then I shall be blameless, and innocent of great transgression. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” (Psalm 19, ESV)

Remember that small sins lead to secret sins, which lead to habitual sins, which lead to life-dominating sins, which result in great transgression. Never stop improving with God’s help…and that begins by meditating on the Word of God.

With God’s help, you can change.

A Few More Musings… On the Asbury Revival….

Musings by the fire on the last night of winter….

I’m sure you know there have been spiritual stirrings among young people at Asbury University which have also spread to other gatherings and campuses. The awakening is especially among young people.

Now some of the same folks who were deeply grieved that more young people are not following the Lord are the same who are quick to be critical of the awakening.

Let’s be very, very careful about having a critical spirit with young people. Let’s be careful what we say. Let’s get our facts straight and err on the side of grace. Let’s not close our door or our hearts to what God might do among us because the first stirrings happened among people who might be “across the aisle” from us in some doctrinal matter.

Warren Wiersbe once said, “Isn’t it amazing how often God uses people we don’t approve of.”

I would be very, very careful not to discourage young people when they are praying, repenting, singing, reading Scripture and seeking God. I would be very, very careful not to compare my spiritual experience unfavorably with theirs. I would be discerning and wise, but I would be very, very careful to discourage young people who want long church services, spirited singing, prayer meetings, public Bible reading, and repentance.

God, thank you for moving among young people. Move across our land and around out world in revival. May we be telling the stories of what you did on the porch in the evening throughout the rolling ages of time.

Oh, and may I gently add this. Please don’t post a defense for criticisms on this site. Can I humbly suggest that you spend your time watching and reading and listening to accounts of revivals of the past so you long for a fresh moving of the Spirit among us.

Bittersweet Farm

February 28, 2023