Both of the two museums I have visited in Fort Worth, the Kimbell and the Amon Carter, allow visitors to photograph most of their exhibits. When I learned this I returned to the Carter to revisit a water color painting I had seen there, of three crows in a winter landscape , one upon a bale of hay, and two beside it in the snow. The light seemed to replicate perfectly a winter sky, with shadows on the snow. It was painted by one of the Gentling brothers, whose specialty was bird pictures, many of which belong to the Carter Museum.

I had the picture enlarged from my phone camera, and framed and hung it over my desk. It never fails to move me when I look at it, as it so strongly reminds me of my grandparents’ farm. It perfectly bundles and conveys to me an impression of the farm, in spite of the fact that the painter never even came close to Grandpa’s farm.

I believe that the entire world of nature is a canvas delivering an impression of our Father God; and that most of humanity is drawn to and seeks the natural world for a respite from the human stew, while some recognize God’s handiwork in what they see.

In the midst of extolling his love, the lover in “The Song of Solomon” says,”See! The winter is past, the rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth, the cooing of doves is heard in our land! (Song of Solomon2:11-12)

When Jesus wished to convey to his disciples his relationship to them and to his Father, Jesus said, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that does not bear fruit. . .I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit. (John 15: 1&5)

The world of God’s nature supplies respite and inspiration to God’s people. As Jesus spoke it, the inspiration in a grapevine was real and conveyed the exact relationship between the Father and son, and between the son and his disciples. In this comparison, Jesus revealed that the Father , (the “gardener”) disciplines even Jesus himself.

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge.

(Psalm 19:1)

When each soul discovers that he or she is not alone, and responds to Jesus’ voice: “Consider the birds of the air, they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” (Mathew 6: 26) then we recognize the painter of our lives.

Love in Him,

Prue

“My sheep listen to my voice; I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.” (John 10:27)

In this passage Jesus is responding to a request from Jews who were gathered around him: “If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” (John 10:24)

Here Jesus suggests that the folks in this gathering do not know him because they do not listen to his voice, or take action to get to know him by following him, as sheep follow their shepherd . It is a remarkably simple reply, and a window into a relationship with God’s son. The promise of eternal life was spoken by Jesus before his death and resurrection, but even before this, Jesus spoke clearly to Nicodemus: “For God so loved the world, that he gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” (John 3:16) Eternal life is at the very center of Jesus’ message to the world. Jesus shared eternal life with his Father God, in and offering it to everyone, he is extending the family of God to human beings.

Sometimes churches reserve “eternal life” for funerals, but to Jesus, eternal life is God’s priceless gift to His people; better, even than a Promised Land, or having more descendants than there are stars in the sky, Entering eternal life is entering your eternal family, and finding everything you thought you had ever lost in your life. While it’s not possible to know everything about eternal life, just as it’s not possible to know everything about God Himself, we have a real sufficiency in Jesus , who came from eternity, entered helpless infancy among us, lived, loved and taught us, and in dying and returning from death, gave a path to his followers. He opened eternity to everyone who listens to his voice and follows him. To be a sheep in Jesus’ pasture is to have tasted eternity in time, and on earth.

Jesus didn’t leave his sheep to wander around seeking him or his Father. At Pentecost they received his Holy Spirit to ensure that news of eternal life could be spread throughout the world, and for generations to come: “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me.” (John 15:26)

Today “Eternity” gets a bad wrap, but Jesus presented it to us as a hope and a gift emerging from a well of love that has no end and that shakes hands with “Truth.”

Eternity with Christ is indescribably, everlastingly good.

Love in Him,

Prue

When our grandson was about ten months old, Jack and I were baby sitting with him for a few hours in an afternoon. He was a happy baby and we stayed in his room as he would creep around and pull himself up by a chair. Once or twice I noticed that he let go of the chair and for a second, stood on his own, then plopped back down to the floor. On one of those occasions he actually moved a foot as if taking a step away from the chair. After that, Isaac seemed to be possessed of a determination to walk. We watched him closely as he tried over and over again to stand and move forward. It was a phenomenon to me that he was so intensely focused on the movements of his body in order to stand and walk. Only a few days before this, Isaac was cruising the furniture, apparently without a care or a thought of walking on his own.

As I watched him I wondered what had triggered the intensity of his focus. Nothing we did or said diverted him from his efforts. He paid no attention to us at all. I felt that I was watching something as primitive as creation itself. The baby wasn’t imitating grown ups, but was clearly responding to an inbred urge to walk. He wasn’t laughing, but concentrating while we silently watched a crucial developmental event in his life.

We were awed. This was a spontaneous, unexpected event for us, and in that little boy I watched the spirit and the flesh working together to produce healthy and necessary growth. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—His eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people (unbelievers) are without excuse. (Romans 1:20)

The phenomena of nature give us a glimpse of the limitless variety in the created world. Witnessing some of these things gives us awareness of the power and creativity of our God: The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out to all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. (Psalm 19: 1-4) To witness the struggle of an infant to come into his own and walk is inspiring. Thousands of years ago people wrote the words that would capture their awe and direct it to its source in God. Today our awe is no less than theirs, and we have their words in our Bible. Today Isaac plays baseball.

Love in Him,

Prue

He who does not have faith can communicate concepts, but only a person of faith can communicate faith. (St. Pope John Paul II )

One day when I was with a friend, we went into the kitchen of my parent’s home. My grandmother was sitting alone at the kitchen table with her head bowed in prayer in front of her lunch. My friend and I backed out of the doorway, and waited in the next room. “It’s funny” he said, “but I couldn’t help thinking that someone was listening to your grandmother.” My friend was not a church-going person, or possibly not even a believer in God, but he had been given a glimpse of faith that looked real to him. In truth, he had experienced a moment of grace.

Another moment of grace that I was privileged to witness occurred when I was visiting a friend in the hospital. Carol was suffering from breast cancer, and her mother, widowed just the year before, usually sat with her through part of every day. On this day her mother was late so I stayed until she came. When she arrived she seemed calm and said, “I had to have my tires changed today, and this was the only time they could fit me in. It was so strange. When I arrived, it was as if they had been waiting for me alone. I didn’t have to wait at all. The service man said,’Drive right into this bay. I’ll get started right now.’ When I drove out, I felt as if someone had gone before me and prepared the way. I would have been a lot later if it hadn’t happened this way.” Carol’s mother had received grace.

The Grace of God is like a much needed hug, a glimpse of an imperishable love that is steadfast and not dependent on anything from us. St. Paul famously wrote, “Love is patient, love is kind. . . It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres (1Corinthians 13:4&7) The apostle John wrote, God is Love (1John 4:16)

Grace is granted to many as a reminder of an abiding love. God’s first commandment was to love Him in response to His love for us. The grace of God is a signal and a pathway to return that love, thereby growing closer to Him. My friend received a glimpse of it in witnessing my grandmother praying. Carol’s mother received an unexpected assurance and help that brought a consciousness of being cared for. In both cases, I praised God for allowing me a share in His abounding grace.

Love in Him,

Prue

From the time that Jesus turned water into wine, and his disciples saw it and believed that Jesus was in fact from God, miracles accompanied Jesus in his ministry. There were countless miracles of healing, a miracle of walking on water, of feeding thousands of people with a few fish and a a few small loaves of bread, and the miracles of raising a young girl, a young man, and Lazarus from death.

There were many other miracles, as well, but in one place and time Jesus ministered the Word of God to a people for whom no miracles are recorded. It is the place of a small town in Samaria, Jesus had spoken to a woman at the well outside of town. For a few moments he was alone with her; the disciples had gone into town to find food for them all.

Food had become unimportant to Jesus by the time the disciples returned with it, for Jesus had been been revealing his identity to the woman, something he had not done, even to the disciples as they were traveling. Jesus said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about. . . My food is to do the will of Him who sent me to finish His work.” (John 4:32&34)

Wherever Jesus had gone, he had been mobbed by people seeking healing for a myriad of illnesses and demon possession, but in this small village outside of Israel, Jesus spoke of himself, and most powerfully of his Father God. Other towns begged him to stay and heal even more, but this town wanted Jesus to stay and just talk. They wanted to hear the words of God delivered by Jesus to them, and Jesus stayed two more days with his disciples, for this request was part of the very reason he had been sent by God.

This incident in Jesus’ ministry came to Jesus when he was tired from the press of attention of the people he visited, and the demand for miracles from religious leaders. This interlude has been called “The first church”, for the people believed in Jesus simply by way of hearing his message and his relationship to God. In this village Jesus was enabled to see that his ministry on earth, his reason for coming to earth at all, could find fulfillment, not only in displays of divine power, but simply by the Holy Spirit in the vehicle of the words that he uttered regarding God’s relationships to human beings.

The apostle John wrote, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and Word was God. . . In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. (John 1:1) In an obscure village in Samaria, Jesus and his disciples lived the truth of that scripture.

Love in Him,

Prue

“God is like a fountain from which people draw as much water as the jug they carry will hold.” (St. John of the Cross, The Ascent of Mount Carmel)

The gift of the Holy Spirit ,which was given to the disciples after Jesus’ resurrection, turned each one of them into a jug, containing God’s own Holy Spirit. It happened on the occasion of Pentecost, when the disciples were all together and flames of fire rested on their heads. (Acts 2:3-4)The disciples had been made into jugs carved out by Jesus himself to hold the fullness of God’s Spirit and to pour it out to the whole world, a pouring that would grow and continue long after the disciples themselves had rejoined Jesus in Heaven. The fountain has never gone dry, though there have been times when human beings have wondered if it had.

St. Paul wrote these words to the people in Corinth who had first heard of Jesus and the great fountain of the Spirit of God from himself: “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple, and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?” The people of Corinth were not mainly Hebrews, and not rooted in anticipation of the coming of a Messiah. Paul stayed with them a year and a half to lead them to the fountain of life in Christ. He told them of the resurrection and wrote, “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. (1Corinthians 1:18)

All of the disciples but one brought the fountain of God’s Spirit to the places where they preached and ministered. Peter wrote, “He has given us His very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.”(2 Peter1:4)

The apostle John also wrote of Jesus sharing the fountain of the divine nature: “On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood up and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Who ever believes in me . . . rivers of living water will flow from within them.” (John 7:38)

The disciples were walking jugs of water in their lives, and Jesus remains the fountain of living water, along with His Father God and the Holy Spirit. St. John of the cross experienced that fountain and lived to lead many others to find it as well.

Love in Him,

Prue

Person to Person

Of all the things we had to encounter in living with Lydia, our five year old foster child, the most difficult was her penchant for lying. Lydia told me that her mother had instructed her never to tell an adult the truth of what she was doing or where she was going, just to be “safe.” Lydia thought that lying was a life skill that she needed to practice. I tried many arguments with her, but she was adamant. I had introduced the term “straight arrow,” and told her that it meant “telling the truth in everything. She thought it was an interesting image, but it didn’t apply to her.

One day when we were discussing her need to tell the truth, I said to her, “God wants you to be “straight arrow!” “How do you know that?” She asked. For a moment I was at a loss, and then I said, “I know it’s true because He wants me to be a straight arrow.” I was surprised that Lydia had no return but “Oh.” I looked at her face and saw that my answer somehow made sense to her, and I might have learned more in that moment than she did; but it stayed with her that what I said was true.

It didn’t prevent Lydia from lying , but I could at least say, ‘ Is that ‘straight arrow?’” when I suspected her. She freely admitted , “no” when she had lied. It was a small break-through, but it improved our relationship and my trust.

St. Paul wrote about a “mystery” that had been hidden for centuries until the coming of Christ: To God’s people God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. (Colossians 1:27) Paul acknowledged the mystery of the interaction between human souls and the Spirit of Christ: The son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation, for in Him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth. . . . In him all things hold together. (Colossians 1:15-16)

It held together for Lydia that I was telling her to do something that I had been told to do. It held together that it must be true, and that she was entirely willing to accept being a “straight arrow,” if I was one. Fostering children, whose perceptions had been shaped far from my own, in circumstances I could hardly imagine, would not have been possible for me without the presence of Jesus’ Holy Spirit in our person to person interactions.

Love in Him,

Prue

My grandparents lived on a small dairy farm in New York State. They had four children including my father, another son, and two daughters. For a while Grandpa took a job delivering mail to supplement his income. Grandpa learned that a man on his route had talked to a neighbor about the man’s plan to leave his family and not return. The man even told the neighbor what day he was leaving. Grandpa held the mail of the man who would be leaving, until his last stop the day before that man was to go. Instead of putting the mail in the box, Grandpa rang the doorbell and, being a neighbor, himself, was invited in. It was after dinner, and Grandpa sat in the kitchen across the table from the man.

Grandpa didn’t come home until the next morning, The man he visited never left. Today no one knows what they talked about, or how Grandpa managed to stay there so long, but the incident became a legend in our family.

“Mind your own business” is an expression I heard and even used when growing up. “Mind your own business”: seemed like the height of wisdom to me, and sometimes it still does, but it wasn’t Grandpa’s wisdom on the day and night he spent talking with a man who planned to leave his family: For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Ephesians2:10)

The Bible has many passages about the care of “neighbors,” as well as the great parable of the Good Samaritan, where Jesus defines “Neighbor.” Our world has far fewer small farming communities such as Grandpa’s, but it is still full of “neighbors” around us, some of whom can be found in our own families. Paul wrote to the Galatians, “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” (Galatians 6:2) This is humble advice, and even “small” advice, which, in a a complex, very fast moving and changing world is easily obscured, and often totally ignored. Jesus, however, placed love for our neighbors next to the love for God Himself: The most important command is this: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

(Mark 12:29-31)

Grandpa didn’t think twice about sitting up all night with his neighbor, in spite of all his own chores waiting at home. His well worn King James Bible was by his bed, when it wasn’t by his chair.

Love in Him,

Prue

For he himself (Jesus) is our peace, who has made the two groups (Jews and Gentiles) one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility.. . . He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. (Ephesians 2:14)

From the moment that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, the angels sang to shepherds of peace. It was peace that he brought to earth, peace that would change the whole world. Today it is peace that prompts and fills countless Christmas carols, and peace that today we still covet, and sometimes blessedly experience.

In the eighteenth century the poet William Wordsworth wrote a poem entitled “The World is Too Much with us”, recognizing that there is a dimension and a reality that establishes peace in human beings, that is opposite to the “world.” Wordsworth lived before there were even simple telephones, but he knew the need for peace.

When Paul wrote that “he, himself is our peace”, he was introducing the Holy Spirit, given to the disciples by Jesus after his resurrection, to people who could recognize the Spirit in Jesus’ words and deeds. The coming of the Christ child was the beginning of a peace that could come only from the God of peace Himself. God knew that “the world” could not find it’s own peace, and He also knew that He alone could provide that peace. Zachariah, the father of John the Baptist, predicted the peace that would come into the world with first the birth if his son John, and then the birth of God’s son,Jesus: “And you, my child, will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for Him, to give his people knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace.” (Luke 1:76&79) Nothing is more peaceful to see than the face of a sleeping infant., and the shepherds and wise men went without hesitation to find the baby sent by their God.

In Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount he lifted the veil on the heart of God’s blessings: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” (Matthew 5:9) Every one needs peace in his or her life, and in Jesus, God has freely given us the way to find it.

Love in Him,

Prue

“Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives . Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” (John 14:29)

If there were ever a time when one might be afraid, it would be the night that Jesus was arrested, and his disciples fled the scene. Peter’s fear caused him to deny three times that he even knew Jesus. The “high” of being a disciple and even a friend of the healer and holy man loved by crowds of people, had disappeared, and the disciples were confronted by the world of authoritarian religious leaders and of Rome, the very “world” that Jesus had said was not for him.

There is a fifteenth century proverb of unknown origin concerning two women in the same house, implying that human relationships can be inherently hostile and even warlike; and that such hostility is inevitable. This is the condition of the “world.”

Jesus’ words about peace were given to men who could barely receive them at the time, but would ultimately spread Jesus’ words and demonstrate Jesus’ truth . They received from Jesus the Holy Spirit which enabled them to live the reality of his peace.

St. Paul was full of the Spirit of Jesus when Paul wrote to the Philippians: Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:7)

The “Peace that passes understanding” is a call to a reality that is not of our own making. It comes from another Person, and requires a separation and a surrender from our own motives to embrace a better way. Jesus’ resurrection opened not only his grave, but our graves, as well. It exposed a hope that had not been accessible before that event, and opened the very channel for a peace that passes understanding. Jesus conveyed to his disciples before his death :I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world! (John 16:33)

Jesus, and later, Paul, were both expressing the path opened by Jesus, by which human beings could experience and embrace peace in the midst of turmoil and even chaos. The peace that passes understanding comes from God’s Holy Spirit, and became available to us when Jesus overcame the world.

Love in Him,

Prue