About True Rest

Matthew 11:28-29—“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” There is something I can learn from Jesus that will give my soul rest. Weariness can seem to be a physical thing and sometimes it is. But the weariness and the burdens in our lives are magnified by the state of our emotions. To prove this you have only to watch a child’s response to “work” in contrast to “play” in two different activities that take the same amount of physical effort. A little reflection convinces me it is true in my own life, though the contrast may be simply between two different work activities. “Take my yoke upon you ….” Take my side of the yoke with Jesus on the other side. What could be a better picture of living with Jesus from Monday till Sunday? If I am “yoked” with him, I am certainly in his presence. “…and learn of me.” There must be something I can learn from Jesus by walking in yoke with him. He says “learn of me for I am gentle and humble in heart.” Gentle and humble. Especially humble. I wonder if it is not human pride that triggers the emotions that make me weary and give me unbearable burdens. The emotions that make me tired are anger, agitation, fear, self-pity…. Some emotional words that calm me by their very sound are love, joy, peace and gentleness. Emotions mot-ivate.

Connecting... What about pride? Some people rebel against the word “humility,” because they fear that it goes against the feeling of satisfaction for a job well done. There is false humility and there is false pride. The pride that makes me tired is the pride that makes me want to be better than the other guy. Or at least just as good. When I stop worrying about who gets the credit and whether my clothes are the latest style or whether or not I am “understood” it takes a big load off my mind. It is a comfort to be yoked with Jesus and to know that he understands. Everything I do because I am confident of being with Jesus gives rest to my soul.

Christmas on the Farm

For our first Christmases we hung up our stockings—pinned to the side of the daybed in the living room. They were our own long stockings that we wore in the winter-time, not special stockings made of red and green felt. When we got up on Christmas morning, our stockings would be lumpy because there would be an apple and an orange, which we didn’t see very often in Iowa. And some hard candy—red and green and white with little tiny flowers on it. And my mother made fudge and divinity, but I don’t remember if she put it in our stockings or just served it off of a plate. There must have been some small toys but I don’t remember any.

One year my daddy brought home a Christmas tree. He was out on Christmas Eve for some reason and a tree man who couldn’t sell all of his trees just gave one to my Daddy. We didn’t have any decorations for it, but it smelled nice.

Another time my mother made us stuffed toys. I don’t where she got the old coats, but out of the yellow coat she made a duck. She put cardboard in the bottom of the feet so it would stand up. Out of the black coat with fake curly hair she made a Scotty dog.

One year she gave my brother her Toonerville Trolley car. It was a special toy she had bought for herself a long time ago. She had never let us play with it. Just once in a while she would wind it up and let us watch it go. I remember it going bumpety-bump, like maybe it had one bigger wheel and three smaller ones.

While she was wrapping it up for him I saw tears in her eyes. Was that because she knew that if she gave it to a three-year-old it would soon break and she wouldn’t have it any more? I never asked her.

Childhood Memories

Playing “Cozy” in the rain

I love the sound of rain. I love the fresh smell of the outdoors when it rains. When I was a little girl, on a rainy day I and my brother liked to gather the pillows and blankets that Mom would let us use. We loved to build a cozy nest on the screened-in porch. The porch was a room that was very close to the outdoors because it didn’t have any glass windows—just screens all the way around on 2 sides. Even when there was lightning and thunder, but not too close, we loved to cuddle up in our cozy little blanket nest. Maybe that is why I still like to hear and smell the rain.

The “Three Bears” Book

I didn’t have any store bought story books when I was a little girl. I don’t think there were very many, even in the stores, but I don’t know because we lived way out in the country and we never went to the stores.

So my mother made me a book. She made me the story, The Three Bears. She drew the pictures on cardboard from cereal boxes and painted them with water colors. The cardboard didn’t have words on the back; I think the pieces she used were dividers from the boxes of shredded wheat.

The book didn’t have any words, just pictures that I could look at while she told me the story. Sometimes I wish I still had that little book so I could show it to my grandchildren.

Some Blake Family Stories

My mother’s name was Ethel Blake. Her father’s name was Alexander Blake and his mother, Mary McClennan, was born in Scotland. When Mary was a little girl the family lived in a sod house. One day she lost her sewing needle. After much searching, they found it stuck in the damp sod that was clinging to the sole of a shoe.

Mother’s mother was Edna Ellen Carpenter. I think her father’s name was Edward. He was an old grandfather when the first automobile was invented. On one of his first rides in an open touring car, a dog began barking at the car. Grandpa leaned over the edge of the door and barked at the dog, “Woof! Woof!” His false teeth flew out of his mouth to the road. The dog picked them up and went running across the field. Grandpa never saw them again.

Another Book Suggestion

The Healing Power of a Christian Mind, Dr. William Backus. Bethany House Publishers, 1996

Janice Learns About Tatting

Tatting is an old craft for making lace and other decorative ornamentation.
Tatting is portable and easy to learn creating
complex pieces with simple stitches.

When I came to California as a newlywed in 1950, I met cousin “Tom,” Glenn’s mother’s cousin. I think her real name was Bernice, but everyone called her Tom.

She did a very interesting thing using a shuttle with thread wound around her fingers. She made small knotted loops with even smaller loops at regular intervals around the first loops. It fascinated me and I learned to do it. It was an appropriate pastime to keep me occupied while I was waiting for my first little daughter to be born. I decided to make a simple double chain long enough to be inserted down the middle of a handmade baby dress made of white batiste.

Our home was in the Imperial Valley, a place of little rain and much dust. When I finished the chain the color was more dingy brown than white. As a new bride I didn’t have much laundry experience, but it seemed to me that the proper procedure would be to soak the chain in chlorine bleach. Accordingly, I poured some bleach in a little saucer that I placed on the back of the toilet, and dropped in the result of long hours of work. Then we went off to a church meeting in a neighboring town.

When we came home I was looking forward to seeing how sparkling white my little creation would be. But, alas! There was nothing in the saucer but a few little threads about the length of a fourth of an inch! I had known nothing about diluting the bleach with water!

But there was time, I was determined, and I enjoyed the handwork, so I made another chain, this time cleaner and more neatly formed because the process was becoming easier for me. I made the dress and when Ellen was born I took a picture of her wearing the dress. In fact, I think I put the little dress on every one of my six daughters at least one time, but I seem only to have pictures of the first three. I think I may have even put the dress on the two baby boys at least once, but that may be my imagination. Baby boys commonly wore dresses in my grandmother’s generation, but with the advent of gripper snaps, that practice went out of style.

I know I still had the little dress when we lived in Lima, because I remember giving it to a mother from one of the “pueblos jovenes” where the poorer people lived in bamboo mat houses.

The Instruction Book

“Eleven hundred dollars,” the gentleman said. For a 1972 Oldsmobile in the year 1985—36,000 actual miles on the odometer—previous owner an older lady who had used the car only for errands around town.

After looking over the car and a moment of mental mathematics, Glenn said, “We’ll take it.” We had been looking at smaller used cars in the $4000 price range, but we could pay cash for this one and the difference in price would pay for the extra gasoline we would be using.

What amazed me every time I opened the hood of the car was the expanse of the labyrinth of parts, tubes and belts that made the car run. With a simple turn of a key and a step on a pedal, I had access to power developed over years of engineering expertise and put together by who knows how many machinists and technicians in how many shops and factories all over America. But I did have to turn the key.

I studied physics in college, and I do have a general idea of how a gasoline-powered engine runs. But what would you do if you stepped out your door tomorrow morning and found a luxurious four-wheeled vehicle like none you had never seen before? Taped to the window is a neatly stenciled card with your name on it. You go to the car, look it over, rub your hand across the glossy-painted fender, and open the door. But the dashboard doesn’t look like anything you have ever seen before. How do you start the motor? You call in your family and your neighbors, but they can only scratch their heads in wonder. You call in the automobile experts in your city and they push and pull some buttons and levers but nothing works. Wouldn’t you be “moving heaven and earth” to find the person who designed the car, the one person who would know how to turn on the power to make the car go?

Now, suppose you did discover what seems to be an instruction book under the front seat of the car. You start to read it, but among some statements that seem easy to understand, there are others that don’t seem so clear. You show the book to your neighbors and friends, but they’re not impressed. They begin to cast doubts on the authenticity of the book. “This is the wrong book.” Or, “You don’t need a book. Keep trying things, the car knows how to run its self.” You take the book to some automobile engineers. They are glad to see the book and they take it and study it and come back with an armload of thick volumes they have written which are even harder to understand than the book you found.

This is a picture of what is happening with the human race. Man is a unique and marvelous creature. Whoever or whatever created him must be even more intelligent than man himself. There is a Book that claims to be the instruction book, but we are being told that it is not the instruction book. The Book is being ridiculed and slandered by friends and neighbors who have not even read it. Volumes have been written about it, but these books don’t even agree with one another. Worse yet, the prevailing theory in much of the world is that each “car” knows how to run itself. And we do get started after a fashion and run about crashing into each other, hurting ourselves and each other.

You, my dear friend, are a marvelous being. If the Bible is the revelation of the Creator of this world and of the human race as it claims to be, it should be possible for you to understand enough of it to make your life run right. The Bible is not about a machine. It is about a Person-to person relationship. Through the teachings in the book, you as a person can make contact with the Person who created you and live each day connected to the Power who is unlimited, who understands you, and who is always present. But you do have to “turn the key.”

The Value of the Invisible

You can tell from this blog that taking care of my physical health is important to me.  I have another blog titled www.simplebiblestudy.wordpress.com

In it I encourage the second half of Jesus’ statement to Satan, “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”  Sometimes I wish I had chosen a different title for that blog, but I still don’t know what it would have been.  I put “Simple Bible Study” in a search engine yesterday and discovered that there are hundreds of websites with that or a similar title, so what could I say that has not been said?  I just know that it is so easy to let lesser matters consume all of our time.  “The apostle Paul wrote, “what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”  I want to keep my priorities straight.

A link to read about sugar and sugar substitutes

http://www.womentowomen.com/nutritionandweightloss/splenda.aspx
I read the entire thorough discussion of sugar and sugar substitutes. Although it ends with an offer of their “Personal Program” for health, I found their information balanced and thoughtful.

In Memory of Glenn Kramar

(November 21, 1925-January 19, 1999)

This is a translation of a poem written by Pedro Tamayo of Tungual, Peru, and published in the magazine, La Voz Eterna, July-August 2002.

Like a bird that spreads his wings from his nest

and soars in lonely spaces

so he came to distant and dangerous places.

On rustic slopes and steep hills,

under the mended roofs of the forgotten

he lay down to rest,

and with tasteless bread he was nourished.

Upon that layer of hard soil where he planted,

today glorious fields on colorful meadows,

treasure shines through his clear vision.

Remembrance of his existence thrills the heart,

for among the thousands of sighs there are showers of hope

that soothe the soul, that fall over the gray pastures

bathed by the sublime and gentle showers of crystal clear waters.

The eloquent tree did not wither

nor was the flowering lily disturbed,

in the valleys torrents of waters do not run away,

but stay and water the dry and dusty soil.

Absent bird, leaving a trail to follow fluttering

to a glorious and eternal meeting

in the gracefulness of the blue celestial heavens.
Holy book open, names engraved

with cursive golden letters,

with measured notes, heavenly voices will sing

with indescribable joy.

“But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.  They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not faint.”
(Isaiah 40:31)