When Glorious Doesn't Happen

...through painful toil you will eat of the ground

all the days of your life.  It will produce thorns and

thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.

Genesis 3:17b-18

I'm sure you recognize the above picture - it graced my blog from last week about my wonderful new plant - the bottlebrush buckeye, that I had spent two years searching for, and finally found one at a huge nursery in Ashland.  Ah, yes - my happy thoughts about my wonderful plant and how it would soon be the star of my yard and garden.

It's interesting how life has a way of throwing us some very large curve balls.  A couple of weeks ago I decided that it was time to get it in the ground.  I was concerned because the leaves had not made much significent growth (as you can tell from the picture, this thing has huge leaves) nor had they turned the dark green pictured above, and I felt it just needed a large planting hole and a lot of water.  So I delivered exactly that.

Within a few days of placing the shrub in the ground, it began to fail.  Each day when I would go out  and trim, water, etc., the buckeye's leaves looked a little worse for the wear.  It appeared that they were - well, wilting.  The days went by and the leaves wilted a little more and a little more.  I decided I had better call the nursery, so scurried around for my paperwork.  When I found it, I saw something that I had not noticed before.  On the bottom of the receipt were the words NO GUARANTEE FOR ANY PLANT.  Ooo, boy.  So I was on my own.

I went to the trusty Internet, and found that this shrub is highly susceptible to a common fungus that lives in the ground, and it gives the plant........ wait for it ...... Wilting Disease.  If the bottlebrush is wilting where it is planted, you have to transplant it somewhere else that hopefully does not have the fungus.  I ran out to the yard and yanked the plant out of the hole, shook off the ground dirt and placed it in a large container with potting mix.  I took my loppers and cut off the branches with wilted, dead leaves (almost all of them), and set the container in a part sun/part shade area.  The Internet said that the Bottlebrush Buckeye is an extremely hardy shrub, so I am watering it, and watching it, and hoping that somehow this very expensive plant will pull out of it.

My father always said, The best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry (quoting Robert Burns).  Too many times when life seems to be going quite well, something jerks it around and sends it careening off in another direction.  That's one of the reasons God is so very important to me.  When life is going nuts around me, He is the stable center - the unmoving fortress - the Rock of my existence. When everything and everyone else fails, God does not. 

P.S.  God and I have had long talks about my shrub, and I know that He stands with me, watering and watching and hoping for a turnaround. 

Memorial Day

Greater love has no one than this:

 to lay down one's life for one's friends.

John 15:13

On this

Memorial Day

I would like to pay tribute to one community, one open-hearted radio host, and a group of Marines in Houston, Texas, who came out to rebuild the home of a 93-year-old World War II Marine veteran and Purple Heart recipient.  In January of this year, Mr. Albert Wood returned home from a doctor's appointment to find that his home had been burglarized, then vandalized with spray paint.  Two teenagers, ages 13 and 16, used various colors of spray paint to coat almost every surface in the house, including antiques, a brand new television, furniture, and almost everything else.  

Radio host Michael Berry organized a team to repair the damage. Many in the community, including contractors and a large contingent of local Marines, took over the work of completely renovating Mr. Wood's home, including making necessary repairs that had been somewhat neglected the last few years.  Mr. Wood was housed elsewhere until the renovation was complete.  The videos are heartwarming of the much younger Marines laboring to assist an elderly man - a fellow Marine - whose military service compels their respect and appreciation.

To all those who have served/are serving this country through their military service, I salute you.  Thank you for your service and your sacrifice.

In memory of

Clarence "Clancy" Poulson

VR771 - USN

God is Not From Greek Mythology

 I have loved you with an everlasting love;

I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.

 Jeremiah 31:3

I was raised by a mother who regarded her God as a vengeful tyrant given to temper tantrums when His children didn't do what He told them to.  She was always admonishing her children to behave, lest God grab a lightning bolt from the sky (or Poseidon's trident) and hurl it at one of us.  God was a "do it or else" Master with a sharp temper and a short fuse.

I bought Mom's portrayal - hook, line and sinker - and tried my best to behave, but was consistently unsuccessful in accomplishing perfection.  I grew to hate her God - the one that expected the impossible from me and punished me when I couldn't hand it to Him.  i know I have mentioned this before, but it bears repeating:  One of the overriding memories of my childhood is the death of a young boy in our church (kicked by a horse), and our mother's proclamation that God took his life because the child and his parents didn't obey Him (examples at the ready).

When I moved away from my childhood home and began exploring Christianity and God for myself, including my own reading of the Bible, I found a Deity that was quite different; so different, in fact, that I had to rework my entire thought process about Him.  For example:

•  He loved us before we even knew who He was (not because of our performance): ...while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.  (Romans 5:8)
• God is willing to talk together (negotiate?):  Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord. (Isaiah 1:18)
• God does not want to hurt people who are already hurting:  A bruised reed He will not break, and a smoldering wick He will not smother.  (Isaiah 42:3)
• He will not turn away anyone who comes:  ...whoever comes to me I will never cast out.  (John 6:37)

Even Christ's disciples had the "it's the victim's fault" disease!  When confronted with a man who was born blind, the disciples asked Jesus who committed the sin that caused this to happen.  His reply?  No one!  The Bible says that the sun rises on the evil and the good, and the rain falls on the just and the unjust.   Just so, human tragedy happens to the sinner and saint alike.  God's job in that moment is exactly opposite of being the cause of the suffering.

The Raging Winds

Oh, that I had wings like a dove!  I would fly away,

and be at rest; truly, I would flee far away; I would

lodge in the wilderness; I would hurry to find a 

shelter for myself from the raging wind and tempest.

Psalm 55:6-8

The monster EF5 tornado that ravaged Oklahoma on Monday left a trail of death and destruction in its wake.  The photographs are horrifying:  entire neighborhoods flattened to rubble; two schools reduced to piles of building material; the entire front of a hospital destroyed.  The death toll was 24 - 9 of them children.  Our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Moore, Oklahoma and the surrounding communities who suffered such unbelievable loss.

Oklahoma lies in the geographical area known as "Tornado Alley" which stretches from South Dakota to Central Texas.  Three-quarters of the world's tornadoes occur in the United States because of its geography.  Warm, wet air blowing in from the Gulf of Mexico collides with cold, dry air coming from the Rocky Mountains, producing huge thunderstorms.  Weathermen have advance warning of the storms, but the pattern of how and when a tornado will form is very difficult to predict.  Many tornadoes last for only a few minutes.  The Oklahoma tornado was on the ground for 45 minutes, encompassing a path two miles wide.

There are those who will say that God "sends" such destructive weather as a judgment upon the sinful and guilty.  We always need someone to blame in great tragedies, and God is very convenient for a scapegoat - after all, He is not likely to pop down here and defend Himself.  But is God responsible?  When I typed that question into Google, up popped the Wiki Answers website, which said: God is not causing the earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, droughts, and volcanic eruptions that are so often in today's news. He is not using these to bring punishment on certain peoples. To a large extent, these are caused by natural forces that have been operating since the earth's creation.

Rachel Held Evans, in her thoughtful article, The Abusive Theology of "Deserved"  Tragedy, states:

While the world is still in shock, while we struggle to find the words to convey our grief and compassion and to weep with those who weep, [someone] jumps in with an explanation, and it’s always the same: Bad things happen because God is angry. This is God’ judgment on undeserving, sinful people. Repent. We brought this on ourselves.

There are those who will say exactly that.  But they could not be more wrong.  - to be continued

 

From Bottlebrush Buckeye to Infinity

All things bright and beautiful, 

All creatures great and small;

All things wise and wonderful - 

The Lord God made them all. 

When I attended the local Home and Garden show earlier this spring, I connected with a representative from a plant nursery up in Ashland, Virginia.  Located about 30 miles north of where I live - give or take a few miles - Colesville Nursery is known in the Virginia gardening industry as a place where you can find almost anything - particularly if it is unusual or hard-to-get.

I receive the Virginia Gardening Magazine from one of my generous choir members, and I am always cutting out pictures of things I would like to plant.  Almost a year ago, the magazine featured a photograph of the plant shown above - a Bottlebrush Buckeye shrub.  Growing to a height of eight feet and a width of twelve feet or so, this buckeye.shrub is a showstopper in anyone's book, and absolutely magnificent when in full bloom.  I have a huge front yard that could certainly use a lot less grass to mow, so I instantly wanted one of these beauties.  Finding one, however, has been very frustrating.  None of the local nurseries had one, and at least one didn't even know what it was. I found a five-gallon bottlebrush online in Oregon; the plant was only $60 but the shipping estimatge was $245!  Finally, I remembered Colesville, and shot them an email this week asking if they had one.  Two days later, I got my reply:  Yes, we have one - a seven-gallon plant.  Oh, my!

Yesterday, a friend of mine joined me to trek out to Ashland.  After driving down a long driveway (at least a third of a mile!), the truck turned into what can only be described as a gardener's paradise - a veritable Garden of Eden.  I have never been to a nursery that size, and I could not believe my eyes.  The acreage is split into multiple sections (L2, N1, P1, etc.), and workers on lawn tractors roar around to locate what you want.  I cannot begin to imagine how long it would take to walk through and look at everything.  We spent an hour and a half and only saw a small portion of three sections. 

The bottlebrush buckeye was still available and quickly loaded into the back of my truck.  We visited the perennial (huge) and annual (much smaller) areas - both sun and shade - and could have spent a fortune there.  I found a gorgeous plant I have never seen before:  the perennial Tiarella "Pink Skyrocket" foam flower.  I couldn't resist buying one, then wished I had taken all five that were sitting there.  I was like a kid in a candy store.  As we stood in the midst of an entire section of heucheras of every color imaginable, I thought of Adam and Eve's idyllic garden.  What must it have been like to tend to a whole world of plants whose color, size and scope were limited only by God's endless imagination.  Every spring I give Him thanks for allowing us to care for and enjoy my tiny portion of His vast, glorious creation.

A Child Cannot be an Adult

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, 

I reasoned like a child...

1 Corinthians 13:11

 

Of all the horrible stories that currently litter the headlines and news shows, one of the most tragic is the Kentucky five-year-old who accidentally shot and killed his two-year-old sister with the .22 rifle he received for his 5th birthday.  I have read countless articles "explaining" to the listening audience that children in Kentucky tend to receive guns at an early age, allowing them to go hunting with their fathers.  My father also wanted me, the only girl in the family, to experience the joy of hunting and target shooting, but he did not place a .22 in my hands until I was twelve-years-old.

Although authorities in Kentucky would like us to think that this is an unusual, isolated incident, it is, unfortunately, a lot more common than that.  In April of this year, a four-year-old boy in Tennessee shot and killed an adult woman.  Days later, a six-year-old New Jersey boy was killed when he was shot in the head by a four-year-old playmate.

My father was an avid hunter who owned a wide variety of rifles, shotguns and pistols.  He built a magnificent cabinet to store all of his guns and ammo - locked up tighter than a drum - with absolutely no access by his children without his knowledge, permission and guidance.  On Sundays, he would take my brothers (and eventually me) out to the desert for target practice.  I vividly remember the day he allowed me to shoot his 30.06 - one of the great thrills of my childhood.  Yes, Dad taught us how to shoot, but he also taught us how to stay alive while handling firearms.  He instilled in us a deep respect for the power of the gun in our hands.

A five-year-old has no capacity to think or reason as an adult.  Nor are they capable of reasoning from cause to effect.  A five-year-old is barely out of toddlerhood, and thinks like the small child that he/she is.  I have absolutely nothing against a family owning guns.  However, if your "tradition" is to give preschoolers their own .22, then be responsible for making sure that they never have free access to that gun until they are old enough to truly understand exactly what they hold in their hands.