Spring fashion statement

The elegant boots in the photo above belong to my husband Walter, but I have been the one wearing them to slog about in our backyard quagmire. They are too big for me but just right for easily slipping them on for a quick task outdoors. Another heavy rain last night left little islands here and there in what was once our yard but looked like a lake early this morning. I donned the trusty boots and took a stroll around to see what had budded out. Good thing I had them on. Water was above my ankles.

Things I found to celebrate:

- Red sails lettuce seeds that I recently planted did not wash away in earlier downpours and are coming up.

Bud on blueberry bush

- Two blueberry bushes that we planted last spring survived and are budding out. One, probably a Tifblue variety, is a shoot from blueberry bushes at my mother’s former residence of 40 plus years. The other is a Brightwell purchased at a blueberry festival. The vendors helped potential buyers like me by having samples of the luscious berries from the different varieties available for tasting.

- Tomato seeds that I had started in a small container are coming up.

- Hooray! Spring just might really be here!

What I’ve been reading lately

A trek through the book of Job in the Old Testament is challenging me, especially the King James Version. I finished reading Chapter 13 yesterday in which Job was asking questions that explore the character of God. Job pleads for understanding about why God is letting such bad stuff happen to him when he has led an exemplary life and honored God.

His “friends” tell him that his misfortune is the result of his sin. Those kinds of friends are of little help when someone is grieving. Job disagrees with them, certain that his heart and actions have been right and his woes are not a consequence of sin. The reader can be certain, too. At the beginning of this chronicle, Job 1: 8, God calls Job “a perfect and upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil.” In the NIV that description becomes “blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”

Helping me to decipher this story are the notes in the Ryrie Study Bible I am reading plus occasional comparisons to my New International Version. Not for the first time I am struggling to return to regular Bible reading after a period of hit and miss. In my reading yesterday, I found this note I had written in the margin on July 5, 1986: “Reading God’s word regularly opens a hatch for creative power to flow through. After abandoning the practice for 11 months, it took seven months of self-coercion for ease of reading and creative flow to return.”

In years past, when I regularly read the Bible through each year, some verse or passage that had barely registered in a previous year would pop out at me. It would be just what I needed to meet a current challenge. Life is much richer, even in the midst of rough patches, when I don’t let other priorities push aside regular appointments with God’s word.

Helpful reminder

When I get behind the wheel bound for a specific destination, any on-the-way errands seem to leak out of my consciousness. Sunday night I was getting ready for an early morning day-trip out of town. I had one must-do stop on the way. Husband Walter returned from a trip to the grocery store and whispered, “I left you a reminder in the steering wheel.” In the steering wheel? His helpful hint worked perfectly. How well he knows me!