Godly Wisdom

The verse for today is one from James. James speaks much about wisdom and in chapter 3 he compares the wisdom of the world to Godly wisdom. The verse for today is James 3:17, Here it is from the NASB.

¹⁷ But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy.

Notice that he has the qualities in order. Wisdom from above, James says, is pure, that it is holy, God is the source and it is therefore acceptable to Him. Then it is peaceable  which says that it promotes harmony among mankind. Jesus in the beatitudes said Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the sons of God. Do you think it is easy or hard to be a peacemaker? Third, it is gentle or kind and considerate. I think that Godly wisdom is never harsh or ugly but always seeks the best in everyone. Fourth it is open to reason, always ready to listen. Then it abounds in compassionate love and good works. The last two qualities are stated negatively, Wisdom from above is unwavering, consistent or without uncertainty. Lastly it is without hypocrisy, It doesn't pretend to be something it isn't.

Wisdom from above is the real wisdom and if we lack wisdom, that is what we should seek.
Have a great week,

Radio on the Roof

Radio on the Roof

We have a crew working on the house, and today they are on the roof. The contractor is one who has to have some music going in the background or he just can't work. Maybe you're that way too. Fortunately he is a Christian music fan so the music is pleasant to listen to. By the way, they are going to repair and repaint that gable! The house will be like new when the job is finished.

Verse of the day

A few years ago, when I first came to Howard Payne, there was a program that displayed a verse of the day at the DOS prompt, and waited for you to press a key to continue. The verses were not random but were from a table so the verse for each date in the calendar was the same year after year. That is July 20th always produced 1 John 3:1 and always in the King James Version. I rewrote the program in Visual Basic to make it more user friendly and for the rest of my time there it came up on every computer when you rebooted it or turned it on. I was always amazed at how the verses were so appropriate for the day that they appeared on. Today's verse is no exception.

Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God...
I John 3:1

That love is a self sacrificing love that is completely unconditional. In Sunday school we recently looked at the letter to the church at Ephesus in Revelation 2. This was a church that had lost or forgotten it's first love. That first love was that which God had bestowed on them when they believed. They had received it but had failed to pass it on. The will of God, given to us in the great commission is that we share that love with all we meet, how are we doing?

Grow where you are planted

Last night in Bible study we were looking at Acts chapter 8. There were a couple of key verses that stood out to me. Verse 1 and also verse 4. Here is what they say;


8:1 And on that day a great persecution began against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria,


8:4 Therefore, those who had been scattered went about preaching the word.


First I notice that the Christians were scattered. Persecution was not an abnormal thing, God's people have been persecuted to some extent in every generation and many times the result is the same, scattering. We can look at it as God scattering seed like a farmer. Not that we would accuse God of sending the persecution but since it happened, he makes use of it. He scatters his people across the land and plants them in new places. Notice verse 4, the people who were scattered, "went about preaching the word". That is God's plan for growing His church. He moves us, He plants us and He expects us to grow. As we grow we plant more seeds and they too grow so we are charged to preach the word wherever we are planted and the word is powerful, the word is our seed and God uses it in His unique way to draw people to Himself.


If you have opportunity, plant a seed today.

Water over the dam....

As a result of the rain in the last post, lake Brownwood came up to about 4 feet over the spillway. In our time in Brownwood I can only remember 2 times that it has over topped the spillway. One was in July 2002 and the other was in 2007. On April 26th of this year the lake level was 13 feet low and today it is still 2.5 feet over the dam. Here are some pictures we took last evening at the spillway

A view back over the spillway

A hundred yards downstream

Water headed downstream toward Brownwood

When these events happen we get flooding in Brownwood. The Walmart and various other businesses will take on water if the water gets high enough. Invariably someone tries to drive through one of the low water crossings in the hills around the lake and we lose someone. That seems to have happened this time as well. In spite of all the warnings and reports we never learn.

Rain, Rain, Rain

The rain gauge overflowed at 6 inches overnight and another 2 inches since we emptied it. That is at least 8 inches in the last 24 hours. We are a bit waterlogged to say the least/ The lake, for the first time in a long time, is over the spillway by .08 feet. That means Pecan Bayou through town will be running bank full or more. This has been an unbelievably wet spring and summer so far.

I forgot to include the cat

It occurred to me after yesterday's post that I had forgotten to include a picture of the cat. She is not always helpful on these trips but she goes along much better than at first. Here is her favorite pose.

When we first took her with us to the creek, We took along her drinking fountain, made out of a fish bowl and a small recirculating pump. She would not touch it there but she used it great here. It was like a foreign object to her. She seems to take on a different personality when we travel with her.

The best laid plans...

Well you know the rest of that ditty, and yes they do go astray. We traveled to the creek house with 3 sizable projects in mind. We wanted to paint the outside of the house, we wanted to install a new water heater, and we wanted to replace the top on the silverware cabinet and cover it with Formica to match the main counter top. Then we wanted to replace 2 of the heating elements in the kitchen stove. The first Saturday was already taken with my sister's 50th wedding anniversary celebration. Weather forecasts made the painting iffy and then on the way back from the anniversary gig we found that the lift bucket that we planned to rent was not to be found. Both Lowes and Home Depot have none on hand. Since the top of the end walls are about 25 feet off the ground. plus the weather, the painting was scratched.

We had to wait for Monday to get the water heater so on Sunday I tackled the stove. Should be simple, 3 connections to each element, take them off and put them on and it should be good as new.

   
I did that and tested it but not by cooking on it. Martha did that later and it failed miserably. The element is controlled by a 5 position switch and the coolest 3 positions did not work at all, not just on the new ones but on all 4 elements. So cooking was difficult to say the least.

Monday came and we were getting ready to go get the water heater when the refrigerator repairman called and wanted to come replace a fan that had failed on Spring break, We were expecting that but didn't know when. That delayed the trip for the water heater until afternoon. So we got a water heater and all the plumbing supplies to connect it and returned. Other stuff took up time and it was after supper before we opened the box to get it out. When we did, we found a this.

So now we faced a 60 mile round trip to return it. That would wait until Tuesday morning and then we discovered that all the water heaters like this that were in stock were similarly damaged. So scratch project 2. That leaves us with project 3. We had purchased a piece of MDF to use on the top so the top was cut and Martha began cutting the Formica to size. Here she is working on it.

I worked on installing the Formica and trimming the edges with a router. See below

So after a couple of days work we had the cabinet ready. It came out at a perfect height and the Formica was the same pattern as the main counter so I thought it looked really good, here's a shot...

So we accomplished 1 of the major projects and the minor one didn't do well either. I removed the new elements and put the old ones in but nothing improved so I brought them home and will inquire where I bought them to see what my mistake was. Hopefully we can get it fixed on the next trip. Here are a couple of general pictures to finish up.

Daybreak Friday morning

Taking a break on Friday afternoon, no fish...

All together we drove 975 miles and it was a good trip. The weather did act up with storms on Tuesday and Wednesday with winds of around 40 MPH. We would not have wanted to be up in the bucket painting in that. We had a couple of brief rain showers but all told it wasn't bad. The anniversary celebration was great also and we got to see family that we rarely see.