Friday Morning

The house is quiet this morning. Emery is off to work. Melissa and James went down to Austin late yesterday afternoon to visit some friends in Austin and to see once again the places where their life together began. They will be back this early this afternoon. It has been wonderful having the house full again. Wish Steven and Priscilla could have spent more time with us but they had prior commitments.

This morning the floors are all washed and waxed, the bathrooms scrubbed till they sparkle, the kitchen tidy and ready for some baking to be done. Wash hanging in the line. Rugs washed and hanging to dry over the fence. Chores done early, leaving some extra time for me to rake a bit of the pasture close to the barn. Its a good feeling having it all done. There was a bit of a chill in the air as I worked, and I enjoyed it. Cloudless sky. Birds singing and knock out roses in bloom throughout the flower beds, adding that bit of bright pink to the green all around them.

I have been thinking this week about creation of man. God put man and woman in a garden, not in a high tech large house which He could have easily done. He didn't hand them a back pack with a lap top, cell phone, and IPod in it. He gave them simplicity...surrounded them with beauty of the natural kind. Then I thought about modern research into the blue zones, you know the places where folks live the longest...they garden. Yes, Loma Linda is a big city but most older Seventh Day Adventist have a garden. We live in a town that is all most entirely SDA and most yards have a garden. Maybe not so many of the younger church members but the older ones for sure have them. The blue zone folks live simply. Lots of research done on the Okinawans for their longevity and productivity in their senior years, and gardening is a big part of their lives. So maybe, just maybe God knew what He was doing to set Adam and Eve in a garden. Yes, I know God made farm work more difficult after sin, but maybe we need to work harder in a sinful life and as we age, the gardening is almost easier, because the land is more weed free, the soil easier to work after having years of careful tending, provided its been an aspect of your life for many years. So God is gentle on us as we age if we have lived this way.

I think about the things God has done for us and/or shown us that we ignore to a great degree. Just look at all the fuss about how we eat. Some folks even change their diets as often as they change the months on the calender, or at least as often as they change decorations for the seasons, but honestly God seems to have given His land food that we need. Pomegranates, olive oil, goat milk, and now they are telling us that dates strengthen our teeth ....why don't we look to what He has provided for the land of Israel as a clue as to what we should eat. Life can be so easy if we just look to God for the answers instead of chasing after the latest fad.

Passover is just a few days away and what a profound lesson in getting rid of the leaven in our lives, both symbolically as sin being like a leaven and also, what a great fast for yeast related issues with our bodies. A Candida fast extraordinaire ! Weekly, we all need a day of rest, good for the body and the soul.