Psalm 29, Worship

A psalm of David.

Ascribe to the Lord, you heavenly beings, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.

Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name;

The voice of the Lord is over the waters;

    the God of glory thunders, the Lord thunders over the mighty waters.

The voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the Lord is majestic.

The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars;

    the Lord breaks in pieces the cedars of Lebanon.

He makes Lebanon leap like a calf, Sirion like a young wild ox.

The voice of the Lord strikes with flashes of lightning.

The voice of the Lord shakes the desert;

    the Lord shakes the Desert of Kadesh.

The voice of the Lord twists the oaks and strips the forests bare.

And in his temple all cry, “Glory!”

The Lord sits enthroned over the flood;

    the Lord is enthroned as King forever.

The Lord gives strength to his people;

    the Lord blesses his people with peace.

 

Father, we worship you. Because you are powerful. Because you are mighty beyond our words. Father, we worship you, because you strengthen us when we are weak. Because you give us peace. 

In Everything Give Thanks

1 Thessalonians 5: 16-18:

Rejoice evermore.

Pray without ceasing.

In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.

 

Sometimes I’ve wondered about how I could follow this verse. But on October 18 my mom passed away, and on that day, I realized how this verse can really ring true.

 

Mom was 88 years old. For the last couple months, her health has been going quickly downhill. Some days when I called her, she didn’t answer the phone. Other times when I did talk to her, she was weak and not very clear-headed.

 

On Friday morning, her heartrate went very low, and she was sent to the hospital. By Saturday morning, October 18, my brother Jim said I could probably call and talk to her in the middle of the morning.

 

I did call her, and it was a good conversation. She was alert, aware of all that was going on, and she seemed to have energy. I can never thank God enough that he allowed me to have that last conversation as my final memory with her.

 

In the summer of 2020, Mom had knee surgery, and while she was in the hospital and rehab, I called her every day. Then I asked myself why I just didn’t always call her every day. Long distance phone calls no longer cost extra.

 

So, rather than think how silly I was for not thinking of that sooner, I am just thankful that I’ve talked to Mom almost every day since then.

 

Sometimes we had a hard time thinking of things to talk about. We discussed my kids, my brothers, what I was working on, what we were having for dinner. After she moved into a nursing home three years ago, we talked about the activities they had there and the friends she was making.

 

My husband Murray reminded me of how in our faith, we believe Mom is with Jesus now. That’s true. Mom was a Christian. I told Murray, “I’m not sad for Mom. I’m sad for me.”

 

We had Mom’s funeral service at her small country church in Missouri this past Saturday. Murray said there were maybe 125 people there, to honor Mom, to support my family. This included relatives, members of the church, people from the community. One lady told me she was Darlene, who used to ride the school bus with me. My high school English teacher. Seemed like so many cousins, my three aunts.

 

The minister, Mark, asked people to share stories and memories about Mom.

 

My brother Jim told some funny stories. My cousin Michelle said Mom inspired her to learn to quilt. Several people mentioned Mom’s quilting skills.

 

Murray stood up and said, “Kathy and I met when she was a secretary at the university and I was a student. We decided to get married pretty fast, so she took me home to meet her family and told them we were getting married.

 

“So here was this funny-looking kid with red hair and a blue earring, and Kathy’s mom pulled her aside into the kitchen and asked, ‘Does he have an income?’”

 

Everybody laughed.

 

Mark asked, “Well, did you?” Murray said he held his two fingers out, about a quarter of an inch apart.

 

Mark shared Psalm 23, John 14:1-6, and verses from the last couple of chapters in Revelation, about no more sadness, no more crying.

 

We played the song Mom asked for for as long as I can remember, “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”

 

It was wonderful to be hugged by my brothers. That small church has a precious ministry for funerals held there. They prepare a full lunch for anyone who wants to stay for it. I didn’t know if I could, but I was able to eat and enjoy conversation with people.

 

I told Murray it would be a big change in my life when I couldn’t talk to Mom on the phone every day. I have thought of things to be thankful for, but I know for a long while, I’ll feel a spasm of emptiness in the afternoon at the time I’d usually call Mom.

 

Mom had a rough time with her health during the last few months, and there were surely days when she was discouraged. But just in the last couple weeks of her life, she would talk to me about the occupational and physical therapy she was having. She said, “I like it.”

 

She was hopeful that she would be able to move around her room more by herself and do more for herself. She even said she hoped she would walk again with her walker.

 

That’s how I want to live, hopeful to the end, planning for life. 

Fiction is Happening

I worked on our family’s memoir for four or five years. At the very beginning of that time, I wrote a little fiction, but not in recent years.

 

The memoir is with the editor now, so I’ve been telling myself I should get busy writing fiction again.

 

Finally, last week, it happened. I started a Christmas story about strangers who decided to celebrate together.

 

Then a day or so ago, I had another idea, and I hurried to start writing down the beginning before I forgot what was in my mind. This is a story about a modern-day family trying to survive divorce.

 

Both stories are started on my computer now. I was hesitating to start, worried that I couldn’t do fiction anymore.

 

But, the beginning came easily. Now comes the hard work. I want to keep these stories moving along. I have a folder on my computer with a number of stories that never got past the beginning stages. I don’t want these to end up there.

 

I’m not sure what all will happen in these stories, or how they’ll turn out. But for sure they will help me get back in the groove of writing fiction. 

Guest Author, Becky Van Vleet

 

This is a precious story, filled with courage and perseverance, and excellent mostly unknown (to me) history from Europe and the United States. Thank you, Becky, for sharing with us.

 

When I was quite young, I'd sit cross-legged on our living room floor while Grandma Alzbeta wove tales of her journey from Poland to America. Her words came wrapped in an accent I barely noticed at the time. It wasn't until high school, in my American history class, that I connected the dots. I had a significant piece of history right in my family, sitting at our kitchen table, while our family enjoyed my grandmother’s authentic dishes from the old country. I dropped my timidity and spoke up in class about my Slavic grandmother, sharing bits and pieces of her personal story to emigrate to our country by way of Ellis Island. 

It was in this class I discovered the brutal reality faced by immigrants who had gambled everything on America’s promises. Most traveled in steerage passage on vessels across the Atlantic Ocean enduring filth, disease, and inhumane practices. I asked my grandmother about this. Yes, she confirmed the treacherous journey, adding she was pushed down the gangplank and slammed against hundreds of steerage passengers like cattle. A mandatory tag with the number 215, marking her as cargo in a human shipment, was pinned to her chest.

Like so many others, she gave up her country, customs, family, and friends for a better life in America. A life of opportunity. After all, she’d heard America had streets paved with gold.

The hundreds of thousands of immigrants who came to America in the latter part of the 19^th century and the first half of the 20^th century played a significant role in shaping the United States into the country it is today, building a bold new America. Between 1892 and 1954, more than twelve million immigrants arrived in the United States through Ellis Island. 

 

Each immigrant had their own unique story. Some came to escape intolerable poverty and starvation with very little productive farmland or steady jobs. Others sought freedom of religion and speech from oppressive governments. Some fled to escape massacres called pogroms in Russia in which minority groups were targeted. But what they all had in common was their desire to seek a new life in a strange but promising land. Their fortitude and determination to succeed triumphed.

 

My grandmother’s stories of coming to America took up a restful residence in my mind as a young girl. More than fifty years later, they awakened, prompting me to share them with others in my novel, Her Strength Within. My grandmother Alzbeta was a trailblazer, traveling alone on the SS La Touraine ship at the age of nineteen. She had no idea she was participating in our country’s history. Her inner strength prevailed against extraordinary obstacles.

 

Today, I still prepare stuffed cabbage rolls, borscht soup, and pierogis, using my dear grandmother’s original recipes. For a moment, I can hear her laugh, followed by aye yi yi yi yi! Her spirit lives on through my family.

 

Purchase link: http://bit.ly/3IwYmW1

Becky’s website: https://www.beckyvanvleet.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authorbeckyvanvleet/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/becky-van-vleet-ms-806055181/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/becky_van_vleet_author/

Travel Flashes

Our kids are migrating west, so I guess we’ll be traveling that way. Rebecca and Steve have been in Nebraska for a few years now, and Benjamin recently moved to Colorado.

 

In the past, we’ve driven to Omaha, but we decided that was too exhausting to do in one day anymore. So we flew this time.

 

I haven’t flown for more than ten years, so I was a little anxious. It went okay mostly. Except that I’m a coward when it comes to escalators. I have a hard time finding my balance on them, and I add some screeches and complaints to the experience.

 

Murray said it was great arriving there in only about six hours or so instead of closer to fourteen. On the way home, though, it took more like ten. We had to get off the plain in Chicago because of maintenance problems and wait around for a new plain. But, as Murray said, “You want them to be careful the plain is working okay.”

 

We had a lovely time visiting with Rebecca and Steve. We went to some yummy restaurants, and Rebecca and I went shopping, which is always delightful.

 

I told Steve we must seem like boring company. We just wanted to sit around mostly, falling asleep sometimes. “I’m okay with that though,” I said. “I enjoy visiting with you guys, eating out, and I especially enjoyed beating you all in spades.”

 

We got to eat some carrots and tomatoes from their garden. Yummy. Rebecca showed me one carrot as big as a turnip. She said they’d not picked it soon enough. They cooked some of the carrots in the crockpot with honey and brown sugar and butter and spices. We left before they were done cooking, so I didn’t get to taste them, but I told Rebecca it smelled like something they could pour into a pie.

 

We found a great church with an early service on Sunday. Lovely worship, a good message, and they were straight forward about Jesus dying for our sins. We knew they were a group we’d enjoy when Murray said he saw some who were dressed in shorts and some who wore three-piece suits.

 

Rebecca and Steve are going to be looking for a house to buy soon, so I said good-bye as we left the apartment. Good-bye apartment. Good-bye stairs. We love to laugh about how they had to carry their couch up the three flights of stairs when they first moved in.

 

Next trip will probably be to Denver. But I need to rest for a while first. 

Be Like Jesus, Rerun

I originally posted this on October 27, 2023

 

Philippians 2:3-5: Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

 

My family often prays, “Help us be more like Jesus today.”

 

I like these verses from Philippians. I understand them. Be humble. Put others’ needs above my own.

 

But what about the part that says to have the same mindset as Jesus in my relationships?

 

That’s not possible. Look at the next verse.

 

Philippians 2:6: Who, being in very nature God,

    did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;

 

Jesus is God. How can I possibly be like him?

 

In my relationships? How did Jesus relate to people?

 

In John chapter 8, he was the one who stayed with the woman caught in adultery.

 

In John chapter 9, he accepted the formerly blind man, who was thrown out of the temple.

 

And, oh, what about the demon-possessed man in Mark 5? The violent man who could no longer be bound with chains?

 

Mark 5:15: When they came to Jesus, they saw the man who had been possessed by the legion of demons, sitting there, dressed and in his right mind; and they were afraid.

 

That’s how people who Jesus has related to can be seen—dressed and in their right mind. That’s how Jesus can make me seen, after all my garbage.

 

That’s how he wants me to relate to others.

 

And no, I can’t do it in my own strength. But I don’t have to. There is a better strength I can draw from.

 

Philippians 2:13: for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.

Guest Author, Jack Cunningham

 

This is a great story. I am thankful to know Jack and have enjoyed many of his books. Thank you, Jack, for sharing with us.

 

From Picture to Novel

 

A picture in my fourth grade Alabama history textbook is engraved in my memory— the massacre at Fort Mims during the Creek Indian War (1813-1814). Although it’s romanticized and has several inaccuracies, I’ve wanted to write a story about it for a long time. After thirty years of writing professionally, I finally did. The title: Frontier Circuit, A Story of the Creek War. 

 
            Most folks in Alabama are familiar with this conflict. It started as a civil war between two Creek Indian nations—the Upper Creeks, who lived in south-central Alabama and the Lower Creeks, who lived in southwestern Georgia. The Upper Creeks wanted to keep their traditional ways of life, whereas the Lower Creeks preferred the settlers’ ways. The early settlers called the radical band of Upper Creeks Redsticks, for their red war clubs.

 Other factors played into this war too: a road being built through the Upper Creek Nation, the Shawnee Tecumseh’s visit to the Indian nations in Mississippi and Alabama to stir up strife, and the settlers trespassing on Creek land, to name just a few.

            In July 1813, word reached the settlers in the region that a band of Redsticks had gone to Pensacola, in Spanish West Florida, to obtain arms to fight them, so the militia ambushed them while they stopped to eat lunch on their way home. After a brief skirmish, the Redsticks routed the militiamen.

            Alarm spread throughout lower Alabama. Settlers scattered into hastily built stockades. One of these was Fort Mims, thrown up around the house of Samuel Mims, a man of wealth and influence in Alabama’s Tensaw and Tombigbee settlements. On August 30, 1813, the Redsticks attacked it, and a massacre ensued. 

            As I pondered these people’s fates, I wondered how many of them died without knowing the Lord. Then in rode my circuit rider characters, Thomas Murcher and Phineas Steward. Also, a settlement’s murderous gang which persecuted them and opposed their efforts to establish a church. When the gang leader’s girl, Annabelle Lawson, experiences a dramatic conversion she falls in love with Thomas, and my story began to take shape. If Thomas doesn’t overcome his insecurities and shyness around girls, and if he and Annabelle don’t escape the Fort Mims massacre, they’ll never discover their true destinies.

            I hope readers will take away two major lessons from this story: (1) Live for the Lord, not the world. Fort Mims serves as a metaphor for this. (2) Accept yourself and the way God created you. Thomas’s experience illustrates this.

To purchase a copy of the book, visit

Frontier Circuit: A Story of the Creek War: Cunningham, Jack: 9781732248854: Amazon.com: Books.

Also, visit the author’s website at www.theaauthorscove.com