Beloved, your faith in Jesus covers you in a robe of righteousness. In my eyes you are flawless. I give you celebration and glory. Enjoy true and lasting peace with me. We have a permanent relationship, one where you have access to My kindness. You find yourself becoming increasingly joyful. Keep celebrating and experiencing My glory. Keep remembering that I know what I’m doing. I am the one you can trust no matter what.
Patient endurance refines your proven character and leads you back to hope. There you experience My endless love cascading into your heart through Holy Spirit who lives there.
No wonder you don’t give up. For even though your outer person gradually wears out, your inner being is renewed every single day.
Photo credit Pixabay
You are covered over with the righteous robe of Jesus. The judgment for your sins fell upon Christ on the cross. It is finished. You will never be judged for your sins because they are as far away as the East is to the West and never to be seen again. The judgment is for the types of rewards you will receive in heaven.
DiVoran has been writing for most of her life. Her first attempt at a story was when she was seven years old and her mother got a new typewriter. DiVoran got to use it and when her dad saw her writing he asked what she was writing about. DiVoran answered that she was writing the story of her life. Her dad’s only comment was, “Well, it’s going to be a very short story.” After most of a lifetime of writing and helping other writers, DiVoran finally launched her own dream which was to write a novel of her own. She now has her Florida Springs trilogy and her novel, a Christian Western Romance, Go West available on Amazon. When speaking about her road to publication, she gives thanks to the Lord for all the people who helped her grow and learn. She says, “I could never have done it by myself, but when I got going everything fell beautifully into place, and I was glad I had started on my dream.”
My child, I have restored your inheritance. I have chosen you and given you every skill, power, and healing you need. You are my prize, my pleasure, and my portion. I have your destiny and its timing in my hands. There’s a time to live and a time to die. I have all your life on my schedule, and the schedule will not be changed. I take you to many pleasant places, body, soul, and spirit.
When you have problems or questions, I am here to solve them. You have privileges beyond your highest dreams. I give you the best of Everything.
Paraphrase of Psalm 16:6
Oh, thank you, Lord, You are the best of Everything.
I have a planter full of Thanksgiving cactus. I am glad to have them now in order to enjoy them before Christmas. My daughter showed me on her phone that there are three different kinds of holiday cactus: Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving. The leaves tell which one the cactus is.
Pixabay
DiVoran has been writing for most of her life. Her first attempt at a story was when she was seven years old and her mother got a new typewriter. DiVoran got to use it and when her dad saw her writing he asked what she was writing about. DiVoran answered that she was writing the story of her life. Her dad’s only comment was, “Well, it’s going to be a very short story.” After most of a lifetime of writing and helping other writers, DiVoran finally launched her own dream which was to write a novel of her own. She now has her Florida Springs trilogy and her novel, a Christian Western Romance, Go West available on Amazon. When speaking about her road to publication, she gives thanks to the Lord for all the people who helped her grow and learn. She says, “I could never have done it by myself, but when I got going everything fell beautifully into place, and I was glad I had started on my dream.”
“One can begin one’s (spiritual) quest by attending to the desires of the heart, both personal and communal. The Spirit is revealed in our genuine hopes for ourselves and for the world. How brightly burns the flame of desire for a love affair with God, other people, the world? Do we know that to desire and seek God is a choice that is always available to us? “
Elizabeth Dreyer as quoted in Spiritual Rhythms, by Ruth Haley Barton
“Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Romans 12:2
DiVoran has been writing for most of her life. Her first attempt at a story was when she was seven years old and her mother got a new typewriter. DiVoran got to use it and when her dad saw her writing he asked what she was writing about. DiVoran answered that she was writing the story of her life. Her dad’s only comment was, “Well, it’s going to be a very short story.” After most of a lifetime of writing and helping other writers, DiVoran finally launched her own dream which was to write a novel of her own. She now has her Florida Springs trilogy and her novel, a Christian Western Romance, Go West available on Amazon. When speaking about her road to publication, she gives thanks to the Lord for all the people who helped her grow and learn. She says, “I could never have done it by myself, but when I got going everything fell beautifully into place, and I was glad I had started on my dream.”
DiVoran has been writing for most of her life. Her first attempt at a story was when she was seven years old and her mother got a new typewriter. DiVoran got to use it and when her dad saw her writing he asked what she was writing about. DiVoran answered that she was writing the story of her life. Her dad’s only comment was, “Well, it’s going to be a very short story.” After most of a lifetime of writing and helping other writers, DiVoran finally launched her own dream which was to write a novel of her own. She now has her Florida Springs trilogy and her novel, a Christian Western Romance, Go West available on Amazon. When speaking about her road to publication, she gives thanks to the Lord for all the people who helped her grow and learn. She says, “I could never have done it by myself, but when I got going everything fell beautifully into place, and I was glad I had started on my dream.”
When I was a little girl, I had a playmate whose family had chickens in a chicken house. Her name was Patricia, and we always had fun playing together. One day Patricia and I had an outdoor tea party. She had a trained chicken that would lie on its back so we could pretend to have baked chicken for dinner.
My family has always been chicken people. Bill and I have never owned them, but my Mother and Dad had them several times, as did my Granddad and Grandmother.
Several years ago, my parents lived in Ft. Bragg, California, in a small farmhouse. Dad had his salmon boat, and both liked being close to the Pacific Ocean. Mother liked to beach-comb while Dad was out pulling in the shrimp. While we were there, Mother took me out to the shed where the chickens were kept and let me watch some eggs hatching. One took a long time, and Mother decided to help it out. In my ignorance, I told her that I had read that you shouldn’t help them out. She knew better, but she did what I asked and let the egg alone. It turns out that I was wrong, and she was right, and the poor little fellow never made it out of the shell. Some things are better left to the experts.
When I was a child, my Grandmother kept chicken in a small chicken shed near the detached garage. When I stayed with her and Granddad, she let me go out and bring in the eggs. One day they taught me how to turn a live chicken into a baked one. It wasn’t a lesson I’d ever want to repeat, but now that I’m older, I know how important it was for them to give me the skills they thought my family and I would need in order to survive. Back then, there were no superstores as we have now, and they ate whatever they could raise or what they could get from a small general store. They had no idea how far from the concept the future would take us.
Grandmother also taught me, as did my mother, to learn to cook and clean. My mother, who was busy with the restaurant she and dad owned, paid me a dollar to iron a basket of clothes for the whole family every week. My brother and I worked in our restaurant doing dishes and taking out the wooden boxes full of empty pop bottles. Once in a while, I was allowed to fry hamburgers for sandwiches. At that time, people were eating more beef than chicken.
When our son grew up and got married, he and his wife had two children. Eventually, they moved to a place with acreage and used the shed for a chicken house. The family had gone full circle, except that they no longer processed their chickens for food. They just gathered the eggs and used them, and shared them. Once or twice, when they went on vacation, they brought three chickens over to our house. Our son arrived with a trailer attached to his SUV, and the men carried a big cage out and put it on the back porch. We let the chickens roam in the yard, and they cleaned up all the bugs they could find. When the sun started to go down, the chickens wanted back in their cage. Their way of showing it was to jump/fly into our kitchen window. We’d go out and pick them up and carry them in and put them to bed. Their water bowl was on the porch with them. When we woke up in the morning and took them back outside, there was sometimes an egg in the cage and sometimes one or two lying in the flower gardens. Eggs don’t get any fresher than that.
At one point, eggs were deemed to be bad for people. We missed them, and are now glad that their benefits have been “discovered.” Often, scientists warn us about certain foods, such as eggs, and oil and we all obey like sheep, but sometimes I take a look at the mandates and wonder why God put those things on earth if he didn’t want his children to thrive on them. We humans don’t think like God thinks, so it’s a good idea to be familiar with our Bibles so that we will know how he wants us to live.
DiVoran has been writing for most of her life. Her first attempt at a story was when she was seven years old and her mother got a new typewriter. DiVoran got to use it and when her dad saw her writing he asked what she was writing about. DiVoran answered that she was writing the story of her life. Her dad’s only comment was, “Well, it’s going to be a very short story.” After most of a lifetime of writing and helping other writers, DiVoran finally launched her own dream which was to write a novel of her own. She now has her Florida Springs trilogy and her novel, a Christian Western Romance, Go West available on Amazon. When speaking about her road to publication, she gives thanks to the Lord for all the people who helped her grow and learn. She says, “I could never have done it by myself, but when I got going everything fell beautifully into place, and I was glad I had started on my dream.”
The name of this rodent came from the French: porc d’ espine or thorny pig. It is the third-largest rodent in the world. After a gestation period of approximately 112 days, the babies are born enclosed in a thin placental sac. Their quills are soft, moist, and flexible. The quills quickly harden in the air and become prickly.
When porc d’ espine is frightened, he turns his back lifts his tail and slaps the ground. The quills loosen and may stick into an enemy’s face.
Pixabay
At times our small family, Dad, Mom, daughter, son, went into the Sangre de Cristo mountains in Colorado to fish. Dad taught us that skill, and Mother taught us about the names of wild-flowers and trees. Our dog, Brownie, went along too, and one day he got interested in a porcupine and received a snoot full of quills.
The strange thing about quills is that they carry their own antibiotics in a fatty substance inside them. Neither the animal nor its enemy is likely to get an infection from the needles. But Brownie whined as Mother held his back legs to keep him from running away. Dad got his pliers out of his leather tool bag and pulled them out one by one. None of us ever saw another live porcupine, but you know how dogs sometimes twitch in their sleep or move their legs as if dreaming of running? We felt that sometimes he might be dreaming of that awful day when he ended up with a hurting nose.
The quills themselves look like straws with black trim. Native American Indians have used them for generations for their splendid artwork. Each porcupine has 30,000 quills. That’s plenty to twist, wrap, and braid and use for decoration. You see them on dance costumes, leather medicine bags, knife sheaths, and baskets.
God is such a wonderful creator. The Bible says, God works all things together for good, and I believe he has a use for everything He makes. I’d say we’ll never run out of discoveries of his creation, and when we get to Heaven, we’ll probably learn all about them if it’s something we’ll enjoy knowing.
What is that strange creature, and where did it come from? Our local lore tells us that a circus train went through town in the 20’s and derailed and armadillos escaped from it.
In our neck of the woods, they are so common and do so much damage digging holes in yards that there are legal ways to get rid of them. We’ve had several encounters with them but the only armadillo that expired by our hands was the one that had his burrow started at the corner of the house. The length of it when finished could have come to as much as fifteen feet. The problem is that our part of Florida is all sand so it’s easy digging for a small creature made for digging. It wouldn’t take much to make the house tilt and who wants that? We turned on our garden hose and let the water pour into the burrow to flush him out, but our best laid plans failed because he drowned, and we were sorry.
We rarely see them in the daytime, but some mornings when we go outside, we can see that one has been digging for worms in the night. We fill the holes and hope the critters stay in the woods where they belong.
When we do see them in the daytime it’s like this: we hear a loud rustling in the weeds on the other side of the fence. When we find the source of the noise it’s always an armadillo crashing through as he looks for something to eat. If we get close enough and make enough noise, he’ll realize he has company and since he has bad eyesight, he gets up on his back legs and sniffs the air. That tells him he’d better get out of here. He then waddles away as fast as he can, which isn’t at all fast compared with many other small wild animals.
We’ve taken our various dogs for walks on the woods trail. Dogs love to get hold of armadillos and one of them, a beautiful German Shepherd picked an armadillo up in his teeth. The poor creature expired. It’s hard to believe that anything, even those teeth could get through the fatty scales on his back. My dear aunt who was with us on the trail looked back and the dog was digging a hole to put the armadillo in. She said,”He must be a Christian dog to want to bury it.”
Our son and his neighborhood friends played in the woods so much they practically lived there. When they got old enough to carry BB guns, they shot an armadillo and cooked it over a campfire. Now that he’s all grown up he tells me it tasted like pork because of the fattiness.
The guys took a chance handling the armadillo because they sometimes carry leprosy. It’s not a terribly scary thing if you are treated with antibiotics early in the process. Isn’t that miraculous after the scary things we read in the Bible and other places about leprosy?
Armadillos are mammals. The nine banded armadillos we have here in Florida birth their babies into the opening of a burrow. They nearly always have four identical babies born from one egg that splits into four identical embryos all male or all female. They are born with their soft armor on. Mother armadillos are good parents and nurse their young. They are protective too and if the original burrow is in danger, they have been known to move on to another one taking their babies with them. Yes, one at a time.
But just think: If present day armadillos were anything like their long-ago ancestors you would not want to have anything to do with them. They were as big as a Volkswagen Beetle so big that their empty shell would shelter a whole family.
To Christians who believe in God as Creator of everything it is amazing to hear or see the things he has invented. I sometimes envision him at his work bench using his strong hands to make new creatures, or did he already have them all designed from the beginning?
DiVoran has been writing for most of her life. Her first attempt at a story was when she was seven years old and her mother got a new typewriter. DiVoran got to use it and when her dad saw her writing he asked what she was writing about. DiVoran answered that she was writing the story of her life. Her dad’s only comment was, “Well, it’s going to be a very short story.” After most of a lifetime of writing and helping other writers, DiVoran finally launched her own dream which was to write a novel of her own. She now has her Florida Springs trilogy and her novel, a Christian Western Romance, Go West available on Amazon. When speaking about her road to publication, she gives thanks to the Lord for all the people who helped her grow and learn. She says, “I could never have done it by myself, but when I got going everything fell beautifully into place, and I was glad I had started on my dream.”
And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.
DiVoran has been writing for most of her life. Her first attempt at a story was when she was seven years old and her mother got a new typewriter. DiVoran got to use it and when her dad saw her writing he asked what she was writing about. DiVoran answered that she was writing the story of her life. Her dad’s only comment was, “Well, it’s going to be a very short story.” After most of a lifetime of writing and helping other writers, DiVoran finally launched her own dream which was to write a novel of her own. She now has her Florida Springs trilogy and her novel, a Christian Western Romance, Go West available on Amazon. When speaking about her road to publication, she gives thanks to the Lord for all the people who helped her grow and learn. She says, “I could never have done it by myself, but when I got going everything fell beautifully into place, and I was glad I had started on my dream.”
DiVoran has been writing for most of her life. Her first attempt at a story was when she was seven years old and her mother got a new typewriter. DiVoran got to use it and when her dad saw her writing he asked what she was writing about. DiVoran answered that she was writing the story of her life. Her dad’s only comment was, “Well, it’s going to be a very short story.” After most of a lifetime of writing and helping other writers, DiVoran finally launched her own dream which was to write a novel of her own. She now has her Florida Springs trilogy and her novel, a Christian Western Romance, Go West available on Amazon. When speaking about her road to publication, she gives thanks to the Lord for all the people who helped her grow and learn. She says, “I could never have done it by myself, but when I got going everything fell beautifully into place, and I was glad I had started on my dream.”
As you might have guessed from the title, the main reason for this road trip was to visit the Mount Rushmore Memorial which I had never visited. During my North Country Road Trip in 2017 I visited various northern museums from Fargo, ND west to Missoula, MT (mostly along the I-94 corridor). Then after heading south I visited many museums from Idaho Falls, ID to Omaha, NE (mostly along the I-80 corridor). That was a great trip, but I completely missed a lot of the major points of interest in the middle of South Dakota. A lot of those points of interest, for me, were located around the Rapid City, SD area, which included Mount Rushmore and much of the Great Plains history in and around the Black Hills National Forest. That left a big hole in my knowledge of the central South Dakota area, and I wanted to rectify that situation. For these road trips I try to see as much of our beautiful country as I can while visiting museums of all types along the way, but I can’t see it all in one trip. So as a result, I plan my trips for a maximum of 14 to 16 days duration.
My wife, DiVoran, has a grade school friend in Pueblo, CO that she keeps in touch with, and she also has cousins in Canon City, CO near where she grew up. So for this trip, I made plans to start by flying into Denver, CO. This would put me in the relatively close proximity for a visit with friends and relatives. Southwest Airlines cooperated with that plan by having roundtrip non-stop flights from Orlando to Denver and return (free) with my Rewards Points. DiVoran says, “I love it when Bill travels. It is not my passion and I couldn’t withstand the pace of visiting multiple museums in a day and all that daily driving for two weeks. The thing I like best is that Bill sees to it that everything in the house and with my car is in topnotch condition before he departs. It’s kind of like a deal between us. I enjoy just drifting along in my everyday routine. He calls every evening from his motel and we catch up on our days activities and before I know it, he’s home again.“
As I planned this trip, I had been keeping a close eye on the weather. I was concerned that the temperatures in the higher elevations and northern states would be getting cold anytime now. Once a route had been established and reservations had been confirmed, I was pretty much committed to the plan. However, as the day for my trip drew closer, I became a little apprehensive about what the weather was going to be like. The southwest part of the country had been dealing with record high temperatures, but now there was a freak cold front heading southeast out of Canada. Then I got the bad news. The weather in Denver was forecast for 90 degrees on Monday and 35 degrees (with snow) on Tuesday. And here I was flying into Denver on Wednesday. How was this Floridian going to handle the cold weather?
—–To Be Continued—–
Bill is a retired Mechanical engineer living with his wonderful artist/writer wife, DiVoran, of 63 years in Titusville, Florida. He was born and raised in the Southwest, did a tour of duty with the U.S. Navy, attended Northrop University in Southern California and ended up working on America’s Manned Space Program for 35 years. He currently is retired and spends most of his time building and flying R/C model airplanes, traveling, writing blogs about his travels for Word Press and supporting his wife’s hobbies with framing, editing and marketing. He also volunteers with a local church Car Care Ministry and as a tour guide at the Valiant Air Command Warbird Museum there in Titusville. Bill has two wonderful children, two outstanding grandchildren, and a loving sister and her husband, all of whom also live in Central Florida, so he and DiVoran are rewarded by having family close to spend lots of quality time with.
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