What you do in your house is worth as much as if you did it up in heaven for our Lord God. We should accustom ourselves to think of our position and work as sacred and well-pleasing to God, not on account of the position and work, but on account of the word and faith from which the obedience and the work flow. ~ Martin Luther

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Distractions

 


 
 It is very hard to sit down and write cheerful things on this blog when my heart is left mute by unthinkable, unfathomable things. 

We don't have 'television' so we don't have opportunity to watch the news every day and this is intentional.  This is not because of an ostrich approach, with our heads in the sand, but so that our time will be spent on real news and so that we can get the news without the banter of talking heads.  We still very much follow the news, even when we wish we didn't.  The news from the nation is telling OF the nation, and the non-news is just as telling. And when crime is ignored and non-crimes are punished severely one must wonder what is wrong with people?  But I know what is wrong.    Despair is what fills my skin these days.

I planted two raspberry bushes, two blueberry bushes and a thornless blackberry bush under the looming gray sky yesterday.  My in-laws said I could dig up some baby huckleberry starts from their property to start our own patch here at Hopestead too so that will be next. 

The perennials need attention, the flower circle a good mulching.

Schoolwork still needs to be done and Haydn listened to and a certain little boy still needs to be reminded to go potty before it is too late.

We have had company on Monday night for dinner, a family over on Tuesday for lunch and will have most of my side of the family over on Sunday for a belated Easter gathering...

 and for these little distractions, I am very thankful.

2 comments:

Mari said...

But you need to find joy and happiness in life even when bad things happen. My daughter's birthday is 9/11 and she had about the worst 6th birthday that any child could ever have. That doesn't mean that we don't celebrate her birthday now. If we do not the terrorists win. Bad things happen but you can still enjoy your family, your house, your garden, your life while trying to do good and raising 4 strong, intelligent, loving, responsible, and productive
members of the next generation and growing old with your husband.

Abigail said...

(For the record, what little I know of the beard-cutting makes me think it was a crime, as well, though certainly disproportionate both to the type of sentencing and the flood of news coverage. The "news" gives the people what they want.)

Reading about Kermit Gosnell last week shook my core. This degree of careless wickedness makes me waver in my prayers for God's mercy on our nation. Although mercy, by its very nature, is given to the undeserving, I'm torn about asking for it when faced with the vile slaughter of innocents. For the sake of my children and children's children, I pray for it, anyway.

Although Gosnell's murders are particularly sickening, they are, in essence, no different or more horrifying than the murders that take place within mothers' bodies at earlier points of a baby's development. As a nation, we are collectively condemned both by our murder and by our silence. I pray that God, in His unfathomable grace, uses the sacrifice of these precious ones for good, perhaps in removing scales from the eyes of the self-blinded.

May it be so.