I am always hunting for a good topic for my blog.  Today, waking from a noon nap, I hit on one, a great topic, but the next moment it was gone!  I am eighty-seven years old, and that is the bane of my existence, forgetting – hey, that was it, forgetting!  My prayer was anticipated!

I forget doctor’s appointments (unless I write them down) and basketball games I want to watch, and the list goes on.  Friends think I’ve become bored with their company because I don’t call them, but, friend, I can hide my own Easter eggs.

Life is still a great discovery, and more than ever, I enjoy thinking about a life to come.  After the resurrection of the body, ailments will only be remembered if we want to.  Isn’t that a belief to keep you going!

My youngest son, formerly a bank vice president, is now CEO of PergolaKits, USA, with four employees.  Today I heard him talking with a Southern customer who had bought a pergola, and now wanted to get a pavilion (a pergola with a roof).  My son explained that a two-inch concrete base for the pergola was insufficient for a pavilion.

Adding a roof to a pergola doubles the stress on the stanchions, because a roof not only presses down, but in high winds pulls up.  It may take off in a hurricane or tornado, endangering people and property.  My son recommended deep concrete feet for the stanchions of a pavilion.  I could see he had the expertise of an engineer and the Weltanschauung (world-outlook) of a humanitarian.

We raise sons and daughters and hope they pick up enough good mentors to continue on the way we’ve started.  The college professors of today are not always those to continue this civilization, which rests on Judeo-Christian principles.

We are given so much we don’t use: pictures of multicolored nebulae (star-clouds), prize winners at flower shows, beauty contests, winners at the Olympics, etc. that you might say our cup overflows.  Who gives us this overflow?   Who started it all?

In a past summer, on a visit to Europe, I stood on the observation deck of the Jungfrau Joch, and saw for miles the mountains and glaciers, and even a wayside chapel in the valley below.  What am I going to do with all this knowledge?  It is a definite over-giving, over-generosity.  And the giver?  The original, supreme being, God Almighty.

To say the least, I am somewhat taken aback.  I had all this besides my daily bread.  The biblical expression, “my cup overflows” best describes it.

I think it was the Scottish poet Robert Burns who quipped:

                              O would the Lord

                              The giftie gi’e  us

                              To see ourselves

                              As others see us.

Of course that might correct some errors of our perception, but then you don’t want it to bring on a sense of worthlessness or depression.  Most people have an ego that would prevent that, so let’s not worry about the unlikely.

The lad who can balance his own self-worth with what others think has matured well, and is on to bigger and better things.  The Lord has given us instincts in this direction, and a good relationship with Him fosters such understanding.

Gratitude

Did it ever occur to you, that as adults, we are decidedly less lovable to God?  We no longer have the appeal of innocence, and are now more set in our ways, more decided, less sympathetic.  So why should God, in whose image we are modeled,  pay any attention to us anymore?

Yet we are decidedly among his favorites.  His Son, reflecting his father’s predilections, offered his life to replace the bullocks, lambs, and turtledoves that were used as sacrifices before Him.  (God has human attributes, too.)

So shouldn’t we say thank you?  What have we done in gratitude?  There are millions of good deeds done every day in gratitude to Him.  Is yours one of them?