Purpose and the horsetrailer parade

The weather has been beautiful here in the heartland. Everything is green and beautiful and you can smell the lilacs blooming. It brightens the soul. But, this time of year has a big negative aspect for me. It's time for the "horse trailer parade" as we've come to call it. We live on a county road that connects two highways and is also kind of a gate to the back roads. If you're coming from Illinois into Missouri wine country, you probably cross our road. Horse enthusiasts pass here constantly heading to the many trail rides that take place every weekend. It's been a dream of mine to have my own horses since I was a little girl. In third grade I lied and told my teacher that I didn't finish my homework because I was busy taking care of my horse. My parents weren't amused. You'd think a childish dream would go away with maturity. Like how my little brother wanted to be a stunt driver and my cousin wanted to be a ballerina. But, this one's only gotten stronger. I get to ride occasionally because much of my family and my husband's family has horses and mules. And to me, the only high greater than being on a country road in the saddle with leather reigns in my hands is God revealing himself in a mighty way. These two often occur simultaneously. But, the horse trailer parade hurts. It's all weekend long, every weekend. And sometimes on weekdays too. I've counted four of them pass the window since I started typing. I want to be out there. I love the sound of the birds along with hooves rhythmically hitting gravel. Some city-friends of mine were discussing their favorite smells once and I chimed in with horse-sweat! Yeah, I got some puzzled looks. The hurdles to this dream coming true are exceptionally high. It's a very expensive hobby and I want to do it right, not just throw up a fence and find a hand-me-down saddle. And God hand-picked my spouse for me, who is not a horse person and who has a pretty expensive dream of his own. He wants to have a race car. Ice that cake with three kids and .... well...... summed up... it aint happenin any time soon. In fact I often pray that God would just take the dream away. I'd like for it to just go away and not come back. Let me be repulsed by the thought of shoveling stalls and cleaning tack. But, it doesn't happen.

It's amazing how right when you need something and expect God to deliver on it, it shows up. I got an e-mail from one of my sister-in-laws a couple weeks back and read it without giving it much thought at first but didn't delete. Then this week I was looking for an idea for my presentation at our monthly Women's Mission group at church of which I'm the mission study chairman and the e-mail popped back into my mind. It was from an interview that Rick Warren had given. He's the pastor of Saddleback church in California. (the Saddleback irony hasn't gone unnoticed) Here's an excerpt from that interview according to the e-mail.

People ask me, what is the purpose of life? And I respond: In a nutshell, live is preparation for eternity. We were not made to last forever and God wants us to be with him in heaven. One day my heart is going to stop, and that will be the end of my body, but not the end of me. I may live 60 to 100 years on earth, but I am going to spend trillions of years (trillions is less than a drop in the bucket, just my thoughts) in eternity. This is the warm-up-act, the dress rehearsal. God wants us to practice on earth what we will do forever in eternity.

The reason for our problems is that God is more interested in your character than your comfort. God is more interested in making your life holy than he is in making your life happy. We can be reasonably happy here on earth, but that's not the goal of life. The goal is to grow in character, in Christ likeness.

God expanded on this message to me personally. He said he has eternity to spoil me rotten, right now he needs my obedience. He needs to see what I'm made of. Will I hate the people in the horse trailer parade or be happy for them? Will I put the needs of my husband and children ahead of my dreams? Will I harbor bitterness?

Anytime I ever think of heaven, I imagine horses. I don't think that's an accident. The first thing I imagine isn't the crystal sea or the streets of gold. It's mountains with riding trails that go on forever. He has eternity to spoil me, and he intends to do just that. Right now, we're character-building.

My thoughts for the day.

Okay, I know that my creative blog may not be the best place for this but, I'm home completely alone and NEED to let this stuff out! I'm not a philosopher by any means, just a child of God and studier of his word. I just finished watching Julia Sweeny on one of the movie channels talk about "letting go of God". I'm more than a little puzzled by the whole notion of atheism. The view seems so narrow. She talked about morality like it's something we've evolved into because it just makes sense. Ok. Who's morality is she talking about? I'm assuming she's an American and living in this nice little comfortable bubble our Christian relatives created for us. Somewhere in China, right this very minute, soldiers are storming a home and taking away the baby that a couple was hiding because it's their second child and they're not supposed to have it. The soldiers will take that baby out and kill it because it's illegal for it to exist. Things like this go on all over the world! If you ever look at a Christian map of the world you'll see the difference! The highest concentration of Christians live in the U.S. and Europe. Ironically, these are the same area's where human rights are taken the most seriously. For someone to say that we've evolved into our moral values because it's good for us to have communities and families must be living in Never Never Land because as our own country moves slowly away from Christian values the family is eroding! If ya'll haven't noticed the divorce rate has increased a little bit over the years and more and more children are being born to single mothers. And what about science? What's the foundation of everything? If the Bible, which is filled with scientific observations and prophesy is just a collection of ramblings then why is it still around? We've had some brilliant people exist on the earth since it's conception. Shouldn't someone have killed it dead by now if it's weren't what it claims to be? Ms. Sweeny made some ill-informed points about the Bible in her documentary that just focused on the surface stuff. She didn't do any digging, obviously, into the real reason's for the flood and other biblical events. She just read it, one version, one language, under the guides of one religion, and assumed it was folly. The Bible is crammed full of scientific assertions that the people of the time couldn't possibly have known. I'll give some examples! Hey, I'll even start with the first one! The six day creation. Yeah Genesis says that God created the world in six days. That includes humans. Scientists assert that our universe is 16 billion years old. How do you reconcile that?! Well, who's clock are we talking about first of all? Our universe is finite, everyone agrees on that. It actually had a beginning and is expanding at a rate of -10^12. Well take 16 billion years x 365 days and you get 6,000,000,000,000 (aprox). Take out the expansion rate of the universe and guess what.... 6 days. My,my, my. So is the earth 16 billion years old, yes. Was it created in 6 days, yes. The Bible is always accurate! Always! When we read something we can't rationalize, perhaps we should do a little digging. I'll give another example. This one is from the oldest book of the Bible, Job. You see, it was actually written before Genesis. Not before the events of Genesis! It was penned first. Job 38:31, God asks Job "canst thou bind the influences of the Pleiades, or loose the bonds of Orion?" These just happen to be the only two parts of the constellations, visible to the human eye, that are in direct gravitational bondage to the earth!!! That fact wouldn't be discovered for centuries after the writing of Job. Let's talk dimensions of reality. Modern day particle physicists have discovered, through physics, that there are actually 10 dimensions. It can be proven mathematically. Math is the universal language, it doesn't lie, it's not subjective. 4 dimensions are directly measurable, you operate in them every day, 3 space and 1 time. 6 dimensions are infer-able only by indirect means, meaning with mathematical calculation. Get ready for an eye opener! In the 13th century, a man named Nachmonides studied the book of Genesis and concluded that there are 10 dimensions, with 4 of them being "knowable". We're still way back in the old testament folks. I have a question for anyone willing to discuss this with me. Evolution asserts that this is all just random chance, down to the ity bity code written into each of our DNA. If you had a deck of cards, standing in your living room, and threw that deck of cards into the air, would they ever land in perfect suit? I'm talking four perfect stacks; hearts, diamonds, clubs, spades, and in perfect order? What if you did it ten times? What if you did it a million times? What if you spent your entire lifetime, stopping only to eat and sleep, throwing those cards into the air? What if you then taught your child to keep going upon your demise who taught his child who taught his child? Would it ever happen? We're just talking about a deck of cards. Pretty simple. You've got gravity on your side......