Joy in the Morning

10/4/2018

Good morning! (Good afternoon and good night! —remember the Truman Show) this is another beautiful NE AL Fall day. Love these cool mornings. Sitting out in the back porch, I gave Buddy a couple of treats which made him eager for more. When he finally realized I didn’t have any more, he walked off with a “huff” coming out of his mouth and wants to go back outside. (I’m only his friend when two things occur—Barb isn’t here and I have treats.) His health seems better to me and he looks as though he’s gained back some of his weight loss. A good friend just lost his faithful pet a few days ago and I’m appreciating Buddy here today. It’s a great loss when something as close as a pet can no longer stay with us, yet we have the memories.

But the morning sun rises up over the trees and the day breaks filled with hope and joy! Hope for the content of our day, most assuredly, but also hope for tomorrow when the “morning breaks eternal.” And the joy—the joy of accomplishment, the joy of others’ around us being happy and prosperous (weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. Ps.30:5)

My sound effects this fresh morning are many birds, backed up by a few head of cattle. We live amongst houses but we adjoin a couple of farms and have the benefit of a pasture a few hundred feet away. In fact, our lot was formerly (15 yrs ago) part of a large pasture. We still get the experience of it when instead of grass in early Spring, we get wild onions. We cut them or pull them or speak harshly to them, they still come back. When I speak harshly to onion plants I let them know I know which chemical it takes to annihilate them, so it is in a threatening tone (I think they understand, they didn’t get very big this year.)

I know we’re pretty far into the normal size of this blog and I haven’t yet mentioned the SIMH. OK, ok, I know you’re anxious! It’s a George Jones —“He Stopped Loving Her Today” —done in 1980, Wow! 38 years ago. Ol’ George had a voice, didn’t he? If you have any appreciation for country music, you’d never turn the radio off when George was singing, right?

As some of you know, my Monday night bible class is online at zoom.us/j/2103785748 at 7:00pm Central. Please know you’re invited to join us. Enter the above url and follow the screen prompts. the rest of the “board” and I in Blue Jug land use Zoom for our meetings. It is a great medium, seamless and clear signaled, etc.

Last evening a couple who are several years into bible study and good friends to Barb and me wanted to call me and discuss some Scripture passages. I suggested using Zoom for that. It was a true pleasure, not only because the conversation was edifying and the friendship side of our fellowship was sweet, but because the zoom system was so easy and gave us the sense of being in the same room (and they didn’t have to put on shoes and they didn’t have to smell my breath!) It was fun catching up with their news, telling some of ours, and the bible study was (I hope) helpful.

Technology does get ahead of me very easily, but when I’m used to using a program, and it isn’t complicated, I truly enjoy the “day” in which we live. I was just thinking about how sometimes it is hard to remember everything that is said in an hour or take notes that catch everything. We could have recorded that hour also and I could have sent it to them by email, I think—I’ll check and see if that’s possible. Oh, the possibilities!

Thanks for reading, the Elder