Hot Cocoa, Anyone?

It's late to be sitting about chatting but hopefully there are others among you, like myself, who aren't quite ready for sleep just yet and who would like a little company.  Do come in...I can offer you cocoa, something which won't keep you awake all night.  Or perhaps some of my special Sleepy Time milk would be in order?  A little vanilla and honey added to milk and heated.

It's a new month, October today...but still more, with Rosh Hashanah just past.  Rosh Hashanah translates as Head of the Year which is why so many call it a New Year, because it is a time of beginning afresh, of starting over once again, of setting the past behind and moving ahead without the burdens that had come to encumber us.  I could do with a new start just now.  My prayers have been fervent:  Let a new season come. Let me have learned my lessons and accepted your disciplines, Oh Lord.  Let me move from this place, please.  Let me see the harvest of years spent standing on your word, though I did shake fiercely as I stood.  Yes, my prayers are fervent and fearful, too.  What if the new season is more difficult?  What if I find the new season sees me here still, in this same spot, unable to move?  I can only trust in Him. 

Rosh Hashanah started Sunday evening.  I had plans.  I  put out fresh candles and there was an apple and local honey to celebrate that first evening.  I set the table up and even put out the matches so I could light candles at sunset...and then I forgot all about it.  At 10:30, just as we shut off the tv to go to bed, I looked at John and said "I forgot..." and he knew immediately what I meant and said "So did I..."  Contrite, we went to say our prayers but it seemed silly to light candles so late and so we didn't.
But Rosh Hashanah is two nights and we did remember to light our candles last night.   It was so lovely...

The candlelight enriched the colors in the centerpiece and played off the blue and white jar.  Then there was John praying over me.  I don't know that I'll ever become accustomed to the sweetness of having someone pray over me the way that he does, with such love and care, with insights that make me aware that only love could see what he sees in me.  I couldn't stop myself smiling even as tears trickled down my cheeks.  And the colors in the arrangement were so vibrant, more so because of my tears.  Yes, I know prayers mean our eyes should be closed but somehow that beauty before me, the beauty surrounding me, was too much to close my eyes against.



Is it more reverent to shut your eyes to beauty or to gaze upon it and offer up silent prayers of thanksgiving?   Is it better to offer up praise for the things we can see before us or to close our eyes and pretend we feel more holy in not seeing?

Of late we've had a lot of talks about a Living God.  A God who breathes, and feels and sees and hears and smells and speaks.   It was something that came to John first and he spoke of it and it reminded me of the scriptures that bespeak the truth of John's revelation.   God says that the aroma of the burnt offerings was pleasing to him.  He smells.  He breathed the breath of life into Adam....He breathes.  He saw Hagar hiding in the desert...He sees.  He heard Sarah laugh...He hears.  He spoke to Moses...He speaks.  He loved Jacob....He feels.   He says His name is "I Am" and that means  that He's present, God with us...

Last week Joy Clarkson did a podcast about Touch and spoke of God relating to us.  Scripture lessons this week speak of a God who lives.

Not that I doubt He lives.  Only sometimes, He does seem very far away...It reminds me suddenly of how the children love to play with a pair of toy binoculars I've bought.  Josh and Taylor love to look through them and say "Oh you're so close!"  But Isaac hasn't yet learned how to use them, so he always has them backwards and he looks puzzled.  He only sees me as very tiny and far away.  Sometimes, I am like Isaac.  I look at God through the wrong end of the binoculars and forget that He's so very near.

Let me just dim the lights a little.   Perhaps that will make me feel more ready for sleep...

I've 'stumbled' upon  so many scripture, books, pod casts, teachings, uplifting music,  that I am almost overwhelmed as my mind attempts to keep up with it all. I feel my soul and mind expanding in a way it has not for a long time, as though something in me has opened wide.  It's wonderful, truly it is and daunting, too.  

I'll relate to it in a homemaker's way:  I walked into our local grocery last week which is under new management.  The produce department is vastly improved.  And the counters were loaded with all the autumn fruits and vegetables.  I kept picking up things to put in my basket and I felt so excited about all the new seasonal produce available.  That's a bit how I feel just now.   I want to fill my basket full to overflowing with the fruits of this new season of learning, and to do it with joy and excitement, mindful only of how good it all will be.

Oh my...Just listen to the dogs barking away.  I don't get nervous when they bark at night.  John gets upset.  He's sure there's someone in the yard and then when he goes to the door the dogs quiet right off.  I remind him that creatures move about in the dark: armadillo,  deer, racoons and possums, foxes and skunks who hunt under the moonlight.  I'll lay odds tonight the animals are coming to feast on the persimmons.

A new Harvest season is upon us, not just biblically.  Peanuts, hay,  sorghum, soy beans, cotton. In the past week, in my travels, I've seen many harvests ongoing and watched with pleasure as wagons were loaded full.  You can't head anywhere at all on the roadways just now without slowing down to a tractor's crawl.  I don't mind when this happens.  I'm not impatient.  I see the blessing of a harvest to be gotten in, and though it's not mine I know that in the end, somehow it will be a blessing to me, in goods upon a store shelf that come to my table and bless my family.  Blessings spread, like ripples on the surface of the water, you know.

I know this is brief, but it truly is late now.  I just thought of Robert Frost's line, "I've promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep..."  But I shall not keep my promises to myself or anyone else unless I do try to sleep, so here I shall end.  A new day is upon me...It does seem there's just so much new just now.  Make me new, Oh Lord, make me new.