Warm Spell

After last week's crazy cold snap, followed by snow on Friday, this weekend was quite a pleasure.  Temps jumped into the 60's!  Seriously. It felt like we could frolic around outside in our bathing suits, though we didn't of course.

Today it is warm but very very wet.  I believe tomorrow is supposed to be warmer, and still wet.  Lots and lots of rain.  The water tables are probably high because snow melted and now days of rain.  We live on a hill and never get flooded; I hope others are as blessed.

Friday the temperatures will plummet and the winds kick up, though nothing as bad last week!  Lows in the teens, though.

Today I get to stay home all day, which makes me very happy.  The last few days have been busy!  Monday I worked much of the day then went to the chiropractor. She beat me up in a very healthy way. It hurt a lot, but I feel much better today than I did on Monday.

Yesterday I helped a friend with cleaning (just for an hour or so) and then went to Sam's with Rose. Kevin's new job means he has less flexibility with his schedule, so I'm doing more shopping. Not a favorite activity of mine, but I'm thankful for the money to feed our family. So thankful.

Kevin has been toiling away at our taxes.  He's very detail oriented and he can figure out stuff that makes me want to scream.  We have a somewhat complicated tax return this year with college expenses coming off, and an investment that didn't pan out.  He thinks he finished it all up last night, which is great.

Naomi and Lydia are doing well in school.  Naomi wrote an art history paper and got 100% on it :-).  She has a heavier load than she's carried before (17 credits) and I encouraged her to focus on her computer classes and not worry too much about art history.  As I've said to both girls, we don't expect straight A's.  We just want them to learn, and work to the best of their ability.  So far the best of their ability is almost straight A's, but I don't want them to be obsessive about grades like I was at their age.

I am reading through the Gospel of Matthew and was struck by this passage this morning:

Matthew 6:22-23 English Standard Version (ESV)

22 “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, 23 but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!

How can the light in a person be darkness?  I'm not a theologian but my thinking is that someone can be focused on a particular belief which is actually wrong.  I mean, people can believe something very firmly, and base their lives on that belief, and be WRONG.  Most of us in this country would say that the 9/11 hijackers were totally wrong.  I have no doubt they died in what they believed was the glory of jihad, and found themselves in Hell for the murder of thousands.  And yet, they were clearly very committed to their cause in that they killed themselves in the attacks.

It's a warning to me because...culture is so very powerful. We grow up believing something is true, and yet it may not be true.  Slavery in the South (and in the North, earlier) wasn't just accepted, it was embraced in our country.  And I'm not an expert but I KNOW many white slaveholders claimed that it was "better" for the blacks to be enslaved, that they liked it!  That they were too simple and stupid to take care of themselves, so it was better that they were slaves!   RIGHT!!!!  Someone wants to be enslaved, to have their children torn from them, for them to be denied an education, to be beaten for real and imagined mistakes or errors, to be fed and clothed and housed poorly.  And yet, I have no doubt many of those people truly believed that slavery was good and right and better not just for the whites, but for the black slaves.

Ick.

So yeah, it is important to cling to something beyond ourselves.  The Bible is my guide, and the Holy Spirit is my source of wisdom.  Of course, there are those who point out (correctly) that slavery was not condemned in the Old or New Testaments, and that is true!  And I don't quite understand that, but it seems to me that the Lord was focused on the heart instead of on changing the Roman culture.  Slaves were encouraged to not worry about their freedom, though they should take a chance to be free if they could.

But here is the more important thing. We should always focus on the 'harder' thing for us.  The slave owners in the South would point at the Scriptures that said that slaves should obey their masters. They ignored the following:

Galatians 3:26-29

26So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, 27for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.   

Clearly, we are all one in Christ. Therefore, no one should treat his brother in Christ poorly.  A slave owner who truly read this and absorbed it would treat his slave as a brother. There was no such thought in the American South, where there was such horrible racism.  I don't believe slavery was quite the same in Roman times as slaves (while often treated poorly) were often highly educated and sometimes freed and adopted as sons of the master.   

Complicated stuff, and I need to get the kids moving on school. But the important thing for me is to keep asking for wisdom from the Lord about what is actually TRUE as opposed to what is cultural.  Because sometimes the culture is right, and often it is wrong.