Jesus is the Same in the Old and New Testaments

My husband and I teach K-5th Sunday School once a month at our church.  You might think that's a pretty simple class to teach, but let me tell you, those kids ask and answer some really deep questions.

One week, as we were discussing the Old and New Testaments, a child asked why Jesus isn't mentioned in the Old Testament.  Before I could even answer, and even YOUNGER child responded that He was.  He couldn't explain how, but how impressive that he knew about Jesus in the OT!  I tried to explain a little bit, but had a little trouble expressing what I wanted to say to these kids.

It's been several months now, and our Children's Ministry coordinator just introduced us to a great book, the Believe Storybook.  I LOVE it and it helps tie together Old and New...it helps us to remember that God's love for us is eternal, from Genesis to Revelation...it will help us to see the cohesive story God has revealed through His Holy Spirit to us in His Word.  I highly encourage you to find a copy.  It has helped me just in the few days we've had it to pull together the old and the new.

I am reading through Professor Grant Horner's Bible reading plan.  Each day, you read a chapter in the Gospels, one in the Pentateuch, one in the History books, one in the Wisdom books, one Proverb, one Psalm, one chapter of a Prophet, one chapter of Acts, and one in each of two Epistles.  Seems a little random, but as you read and read and read, you see more and more of God and you are able to interpret Scripture in terms of the rest of Scripture.

ANYWAY, this is my example from the other day:

I was reading Exodus 16, where the Israelites grumble because they haven't any food.  Of course, God provides for them - exactly what they need, even on the Sabbath, when they weren't supposed to pick up the manna.  Can we think of a time when Jesus provided for someone's needs?  There's the feeding of the five thousand and the feeding of the four thousand.  How about when He met someone's needs even on the Sabbath?  How about the guy who was healed on the Sabbath?

Want to try another one?  I love it!  Isn't it great to see that God really is the same yesterday, today, and forever??

2 Chronicles 11 speaks of the splitting of the kingdom and how Levites left "pasturelands and property" to serve the LORD in the proper way.  First of all, would I be willing to do that?  But, back to the issue at hand, in Matthew 19:29, Jesus says, "And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life."  Isn't that amazing?

Exodus 17 - the Israelites fought against the Amaleks, and as long as Moses' hands were raised, they were winning, but if not....Aaron and Hur helped him and were united in purpose.  Jesus prays in John 17 that believers would be united and one as He and the Father are one.

I am excited to see more clearly the link between the Old and New Testaments, and it's really due to the Believe Storybook.  Such a blessing!  I hope you can see the link as well!

Japanese beetles and the Supreme Court decision

I haven't posted in a while.  Not because anything has been wrong, but just because life has been a little busy and I'm having trouble seeing God working through things around me.  Of course, He is, I'm just not doing well seeing it.

When the Supreme Court decided that same-sex "marriage" must be the law of the land, I was not surprised.  I was not impressed, of course, but you'd have to be a fool to have been surprised at the ruling.

This year, the Japanese beetles in my garden have been atrocious.  We have a policy of paying $0.05 per "bad" bug that the children kill in the garden.  Tomato hornworms are $0.25, though, because of the size.  Anyway...over the course of a week, my second son made $100!!!  We finally had to drop the price because, as my dad said, you could have bought a LOT of green beans (which is what they were eating) with that money.

One day, I went out to look...and kill...I had my cup of soapy water, and I just tapped them from above, and they'd drop into the cup and drown.  As I stared at the piles of beetles (some grouped by eights and tens!), I thought, "they're so consumed with sex, they fail to see the impending doom coming upon them."

Seems apropos for this time in our country, doesn't it?  People are so concerned about having sex with whomever and whatever and how many of them, they're missing the real point - the end will come.  Everyone's knees will bow.  We will all confess that Christ is Lord.

Of course, that could flip to apply to Christians too....we're so worried about the sex sin that we fail to preach the Gospel to everyone - including ourselves.

Far away and then up close

Don't you love looking at the landscaping around other people's houses?  I love seeing the different plants, colors, heights, how it changes over the course of a year.  It inevitably brings me to comparing my landscaping to theirs...look at all my weeds....

My neighbors have been working on their landscaping.  It was overgrown and ugly before they moved in.  They've pulled up all the ivy that was taking over the front of their house, yanked out the awful orange and brown....lilies?  Whatever they were, they were UGLY!  They've since put in orderly plants in contrasting colors.  It's beautiful.  I've noticed it over the past few weeks while I was walking.  I started getting a little jealous.  I stopped appreciating my own yard.  I began to want to tear up my perfectly lovely irises...to trim the hedges....to plant something different.

Today I had to go up to the front door of my neighbors to drop something off.  Hmm.  Look.  There are weeds here.  The mulch isn't evenly spread.  Those bushes need to be trimmed too.  I couldn't see that from the road.  It was only when I got up close that I could see that their yard wasn't perfect.

Isn't that the way it is with our lives?  We look at the outside of people's lives and we think they're so perfect.  We KNOW the inside of our lives and can easily see how much we are lacking.

God's Not Dead!

My oldest got the movie, God's Not Dead, for his birthday and we finally got around to watching it last week.

If you haven't seen it, let me recap it a bit.  There's a pastor who keeps trying to get to Disney with a missionary friend from Africa, but things keep getting in the way, a Muslim-turned-Christian woman, as well as a couple of other characters, but the main characters are a philosophy professor and his student.

A lot of things happen in the movie, but at the end, one of the characters is dying and in that moment, I realized what this character as well as every other person on their deathbed realizes.

Your relationship with Christ is the only thing that matters.

Nothing else matters.

Not your family, your friends, your job, your bank account, your meals, your achievements, your education.  Nothing.  

I stress over so much.  And I KNOW that worry adds nothing to my life, yet I still do it.  I worry about what others think, how my kids will do in life, my hubby's job, our financial situation, but at the end, when I'm dying, the ONLY thing that will matter will be where I stand with Christ.

New Life

We are homeschoolers, so we do things a little differently around here.

Last year, when I tried to harvest some dill to make cucumbers, I discovered my plants were destroyed...by little baby swallowtail butterfly caterpillars!  I brought them inside and went to the store to buy organic dill for them to eat.  Yes.  Organic dill.  <sigh>

This year, I have been able to use my dill, but we started talking about the dearth of monarchs in our area.  Wanting to rectify the situation, we ordered monarch eggs.  Not a few.  No...that would have been normal.  I ordered 20.  At least 25 were on the plant we received!

We have all been participating in the care and feeding of the little guys.  They were SOOO teeny when they first hatched!  Now, two weeks later, they're enormous!  I cannot believe how fast they have grown in such a short time.  We are looking forward to all the chrysalises and the new butterflies!

As I sat watching (and listening!) to the little buggers crunching away, I thought of this past year.  It has not been pleasant.  We have faced real challenges - individually and as a family.  We have struggled with our gifting, our calling, our friends, our church, and our trust in the Lord.  Now, God has been faithful, without a doubt.  It's WE who have questioned and cried and prayed and groaned.  But God - He has been where He promised He would be.  With us.

My eyes fell to the instructions on raising monarchs.  I love instructions.  Love 'em.  I love guides and planners and notepads and pens and lists.  I don't always follow them, but I love them!  It should take around two weeks for the caterpillars to turn into chrysalises, then another two weeks to hatch into butterflies.

I love how caterpillars change COMPLETELY during their metamorphosis.  Apparently everything about them, organs included, change into something totally different during this time.

And I thought of the verses in Corinthians:  "behold, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.  The old is gone, the new has come!"  I cried as I realized that these butterflies should be hatching right about the time that our "drama" should be coming to a close.  What a beautiful picture of the transformative work that Christ is doing in each of us.  Leaving nothing old that we understand, that we have had, that we could depend on apart from Him, but changing us into what He has created us to be.


A few days went by and while I was still thrilled with this idea, the "new-ness" had worn off.  Until I arrived at church on Sunday and was asked to read Scripture.  Bet you can guess what verses I had to read.

Yup.  Second Corinthians 5:17-21:  "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.  The old has passed away, the new has come.  And all this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.  Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making His appeal through us.  We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.  For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that we might be the righteousness of God."

As you may imagine, I barely held it together during the reading.  Wow.  Is our God great, or what?  How He ever puts up with me, I'll never know.

But I'm oh, so grateful.

Destruction

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy....  John 10:10

The house sparrows returned two weeks ago.  They went into the tree swallows' nest box, pulled out the babies, and dropped them on the ground.

The kids were crushed...and angry.  The sparrows didn't even build a nest in that box.  All that, JUST to destroy.

We finally killed the sparrows, but it took us two weeks.  We have swallows again...in the other house where the bluebirds were before sparrows killed their babies.  The bluebirds are in the front house now, also trying again.

I took this as a teaching opportunity to remind my children...and myself...that the enemy comes to steal and kill and destroy.  He tempts us into wrong acts...and then throws those actions back in our face.  When we, when I, choose to listen to those temptations, I am joining in the stealing, killing, and destroying.  I think I am being offered something in return for my sin, but satan offers me nothing.  He wants to destroy me.

Sounds terribly depressing, doesn't it?

Well, guess what??  My God has a plan for my life that does not involve destruction.  My God loves me and guides me in the way that's best.  Even if I have fallen into the temptations offered, my God restores me, loves me, forgives me!!  Nothing can separate me from the love of God!!

Bluebirds

We had a pair of bluebirds in one of our backyard bird houses....and then we didn't.

About two weeks ago, I saw a house sparrow going into the bluebirds' house and I decided to investigate.

I discovered broken bluebird eggs (with dead baby birds still in them) around the bottom of the birdhouse.  I was sad, but was also quite concerned that the female had been killed in the house sparrow attack.  We did take care of the sparrow, by the way.

A week or so ago, I saw the female bluebird in our backyard again.  Yay!  We had seen the male bluebird flitting about here and there, but not the female for a bit.

This evening, I was sitting on my front porch steps and I saw the male bluebird fly up to the front yard birdhouse.  I was thrilled!!  They're back!  Maybe there will be a new nest and new eggs and new babies!!

I wondered why I was so excited about some silly birds.  Here's why.  Because they didn't give up.  Because they weren't beaten by that awful house sparrow.  Because it reminds me that God redeems situations that I can't see a way out of.  Because it reminds me that God isn't finished with me, no matter what mess I've gotten myself into.  Because it reminds me that God sticks with it....sticks with ME.

"being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus."  -Philippians 1:6

"Be strong and courageous.  Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; He will never leave you nor forsake you."  -Deuteronomy 31:6