Ezra

This week the reading for Bible is Ezra 1-7. How does the restoration of Jerusalem compare with your life?

This afternoon I had a wonderful restorative nap! The lilacs are starting to bloom but it goes below freezing last couple of nights. I've prayed about our fruit trees, so we will see down the road. Sometimes God says yes and sometimes He says no or sometimes He lets Satan have his evil way. We just have to trust that the most important thing in the end is Jesus will provide our eternal life if we accept His gift of eternal life.

Some people are so afraid of forever. Does one have to be old to look forward to forever or do you have to feel great lack in your life, in some manner, to desire eternity. I remember being young and hoping Jesus wouldn't come back until I married and had children. We forget that these are earthly values based on heavenly instilled implants in our brains. Because, if God thinks marriage and children are so important that He put those desires into our brains, don't you think that somehow the model got skewed with time on sinful earth and perhaps things we've heard about heaven may be from the difficulty of understanding. For instance,in Ezekiel, God shows him the Holy Spirit's working and poor old Ezekiel, he does his best to try and describe it. But it sounds like Star Trek stuff. People say based on the Bible that we won't marry and have children. But the Bible says we will not marry as on earth and will be like the angels and apparently they have great joy and love in their lives so probably it is better than this earthly thing of marriage. You and I both know that inspite of loving our spouse, marriage is a difficult thing a lot of the time. So not marrying, like on earth, must have some wonderful aspect of loving and being loved that we can't understand, that sounds like it's weird and lonely whereas it is anything but. God loves us and loves us to be happy. Why would He not give us great joy and love?

Can you imagine not hurrying like we do now to get everything done in 24 hours? We'll have eternity to do things, no rush to get things done so we can fall asleep and do it all over again. We can actually take time to enjoy every aspect of life, whether the cooking of a meal for pleasures sake, or learning to paint, or building our homes exactly how we want them. We will be able to travel to other universes and meet the people and taste new cuisine and admire their buildings and travel their back lanes and view their natural wonders of water and land. Our minds tend to be small and childlike in our desire to understand, only when we meet God will we see clearly and be able to understand the vastness of God's abilities and His purposes for our good.

I think it's going to be good to have our sinful passions removed, too. No more guilt at eating too many bad things, like a whole bag of potato chips in two days or a quart of icecream at a pop. We'll have no warped needs to fill ourselves with the love of food, but we will enjoy the appropriate amount of food at meals and take great pleasure in them. We will have all of our love needs met. And I don't think we're all going to look like emaciated little models, there will be many body types but not obesity or anorexia.

And hey, no electric bills! Because Jesus will be our light!

So, you all plan on visiting me! My porch will always welcome you for cold lemonade and needlework or whatever craft you enjoy and later when we get hungry, I'll whip up something yummy and we will eat and sit around and talk and laugh til we decide to do something else spontaneous. Looking forward to heaven and then the new earth and seeing you there.