Boiling blood

The puppies tore into this mattress last night. Suppose I tear into things on occasion as well.

7/8/07 Sunday
There are a few things that make my blood boil. I will say this carefully so as to not reveal whom I speak of and sort of at respect her privacy. We met a woman today who is a devout Christian and a real sweetheart as far as I can tell. She was widowed just a year ago. There are two daughters, age seventeen and nineteen, who are adopted. They both came from situations of abuse, at least one of them was sexual. One of the girls is mentally slow, slightly retarded from what I gathered. So this wonderful woman is having work done on her house and there are two men doing the work. One is in his late twenties and the other something like thirty nine. One of them took one of the daughters out and the next day the older guy takes the other girl out on a date or whatever you call it. I think he was the one who’s wife just left him and he had just cut his wedding ring off. After three days one of these guys says he is in love and wants to marry the child. The poor woman we talked with could hardly keep a conversation without this constantly surfacing. She had come to church leaving both girls there along with the construction workers. I told her to go home and offered to go with her and talk to these two lowlifes. I think what I said was I could bring a baseball bat. This might have taken the woman back a bit seeing as how we were in church and this isn’t a real Christian attitude. I’m not a Christian, at least not by some standards, and have no qualms about dealing with this in a manner some would be uncomfortable with. I hope things will work out and those of you that pray I ask you to bring this up with God. Nuff said.
These suckers appear overnight. Walk out the door and there's an oil rig suddenly there.

So we had a good day. I can’t remember all of it but I do remember stopping to talk with Ronnie, who sells tractors off of business 20. I wanted to get an idea of how much a tractor big enough to work the five acres we will have available next year would cost with all the accessories. It’ll run about seven or eighteen thousand. Works out to three hundred or so a month. I could mow with the brush hog and make those payments easily till winter hits. It’s good to have an idea about these things so we can plan ahead.

So what else? We went to Luchi’s and splurged on a nice meal. Saw Kevin Burris there so we talked a little. He said I could still go pick up some goat crap at his place but should hurry as he is selling the house. I need to get as much as I can while I can. It’s just hard on the back to lift a garbage can onto the back of the truck even when it’s only a little over half full. He was the Sunday school teacher at the first church of Stanton. He said he would like some of the spaghetti squash so I’ll be sure to take him some. Wouldn’t mind sitting down and talking with him just to try and understand what happened there.

We stopped to see Chuck and Lillian on the way back home. They are the people we had help us clear out this house back when we were first moving down. Haven’t seen them much except a few times at first church of Stanton. They don’t go there anymore either because they had the same feeling of not being accepted. There is something rotten there. You can spout off about the love of Jesus all you want but talk is cheap. Don’t tell me, show me. NO that doesn’t mean do things or give things.

1 Corinthians 13:1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
You can give everything you own to the poor yet not have love. But if you truly love you will have compassion on those less fortunate and help them how you can. Chuck and Lillian have it much harder than we do. They have no running water and are desperately patching up the old house they live in, and doing this as they raise a two and a half year old girl. Lillian has had several heart attacks. Ours is an easy luxurious life in comparison. We are happy to count them as friends, honored even. Cherie and I talked and have decided to help them anyway we can with our limited resources.

Here’s something that boggles my mind and seems to illustrate a mind set that infects this church. They have been running an ad for janitorial help. So Cherie and I applied for the job. You can read about it earlier in this journal. We said that we would be happy to work on the church as a team but only accept wages for one of us. That way they would get two workers for the price of one. Come to find out Chuck and Lillian had made the same offer at about the same time. I brought it up with Pastor Dave and he said he would check on what was going on. The next week it was announced that a decision had been made to use an outside service, which we know doesn’t do a very good job. My cousin is responsible for these decisions. So here are two couples in need, willing to work hard for their church, and here is a chance for this church to provide assistance to those in need, and they choose to do nothing. In fact the ad is still running in the paper. It is there this week. What kind of judgment is going on here? How sad this is. What a poor, even disgraceful reflection this is of the love and compassion Jesus has for all who are downtrodden and disadvantaged in life.
Tonights sunset
Night all.