lake

We relived old childhood memories at the lake yesterday.

The leeches were there and the colorful crowd was there sunbathing.

Missing, however, were the various colors and sizes of green algae floating.

Ellie and Anneka

These three chased girls with fat toads, squirted everyone with water, but didn't pester the teenage sunbathers who invaded their swimming space to cool off.

Eight children consumed a bag of cheesy popcorn stuff and a stack of half-melted cookies.

activities

From what I hear, children in these parts are entertained in the summer with activities involving sports. Mostly. 

My children just take swimming lessons because every needs to learn how not to drown. Plus Mark's coordination in sports might be crossed out by my severe lack of being able to do two things at once. I got mixed up twice in my eighth grade basketball career and took the ball to the wrong side of the court. Things don't look promising in that regard for my posterity.

Soccer and basketball and baseball and football and cheer-leading and table tennis and underwater basket-weaving, they all have a camp.

But, if we are preparing children to live as responsible productive, God-serving adults someday, how do soccer skills fit in? Basketball? The "teamwork" reasoning doesn't fly in my opinion unless you count that the loser kids who aren't as coordinated and skilled get to "support" their swift, coordinated teammates and gladly give up playing time so they can win and support the non-losers.

I just wonder, in my decidedly non-conformist thinking, what the advantages would be to more practical skills: gardening camp or baking camp or changing oil in the family vehicles camp. Or how about camp where kids learn how to memorize Scripture and study their Bibles? 

Don'ts

Art is a hard mistress, and there is no art quite so hard as that of being a wife.

So many women exhaust their artistic power in getting married, which is, after all, a comparatively easy business. It takes a perfect artist to remain married - married in the perfect sense of the term; but most of us have to be content to muddle through. - from the preface

Don't worry about the little faults in your husband which merely amused you in your lover. If they were not important then, they are not important now. Besides, what about yours? - from  Chapter I,  Personalities 

from Don'ts for Wives, 1913 by Blanche Ebbutt

looking

Not everyone can be looking at the camera all at the same time. Sam must have been watching a gopher or something out of the corner of his eye

Priya named the kitten Ginger first. Apparently she goes by Tiger too, though.

Here are Buttermilk and Petunia who like to root and will make fine bacon someday.

This one hatched out of the nest in the playhouse and made its way to perch on the hay rake until it could decide where to go next.

Pinknose is an odd, un-affectionate mostly grown cat.

original social justice

So I just read this National Geographic article on child brides.

I get the impression that they feel they are doing some late breaking investigative reporting. And to be sure, there are plenty of unaware readers to be informed.

And last night during some discussion among the 20+ nine and ten year olds concerning being a Christian where it is illegal, one boy (very innocently and truly unaware) said: "Are there really places where it's illegal to be a Christian?"

Now I will almost always be the first to claim I am not among the first to be informed on matters of concern affecting fellow citizens here and around the world. But I will say, straight-up and unashamedly, that as a follower of Jesus Christ, a Christian, both the horrors of child marriage and persecuted Christians are very familiar to me because for most of my life I have been very familiar with many missionaries from many places.

That NG reporter discovered what  those who listened to the prompting of the Sovereign Creator and Saviour of the world to take the name of Jesus to those who haven't heard, have known for years.

Those who would label and castigate Christian missionaries for misguided methods now and in the past should also remember that these faithful ones are the ones who have known about and fought these horrors stemming from a Christ-less existence for centuries by bringing hope. The only Hope for change.

I will also be so bold to say that while we shudder at the thought of parents in India giving up their elementary aged daughter for some old coot to add to his wife collection, we think nothing of letting our own daughters dress like they work the streets in the worlds oldest profession, then keep company with boys whom they have baited. When they turn up with babies and diseases and dysfunctions, we wonder. No, we are no better. We are doing no better at protecting our little ones. No better at preparing them for life than those desperately poor parents in India or Pakistan or Thailand who are hoping to give their child a better life and reduce the mouths that they must be responsible to feed.

In fact, we are more guilty because very few of us are facing abject poverty. We have all the medical technology available at our fingertips. More importantly, we have God's Word, written in dozens of varieties in our language.

I say it's just one more reason why the Message of Jesus Christ remains most relevant because our God is not surprised, He is sovereign. He sees all, He knows all and He allows us to work with Him as He changes hearts and minds. And that's the original social justice.

 See this nightstand? It used to be white with gilded gold accents. 

Now. Oh now. It's quite possibly the coolest thing I've ever seen.

I have this sister that I often dump raw unfinished products off in her lap or her car trunk. Nightstands for one. Old cheap bookcases picked up from rummages for a few dollars. And that's just in the last few weeks.

And she turns out amazing pieces of furniture.