These Lively Oracles

And old woman had her minister over to visit with her for some afternoon tea. “Why don’t you say Grace, Reverend?” she said. The minster smiled, and prayed as follows…  “Oh Lord. You know that I don’t care much for full fat milk or butter. And you know too that I don’t care much for eggs. And you know full well that I don’t really like flour. But when those things get all mixed together and baked, I really do like cake. So Lord, help us to remember that when things come my way that I might not like, and when my life gets mixed up, help me just to relax and wait until you’re finished mixing so that I can look forward to that delicious warm cake. Amen”. It’s an innocent little story that is meant to illustrate a point about waiting on God. But it reminded me of something else that happened to me long ago. Many years ago I helped a man move some equipment to a different city 100 miles away. While we were there a woman that the man knew fed us with some cake and tea. The cake was so ...

I toasted some scones for myself recently. My American readers might know these as “biscuits”. In the U.K. we call them scones, and that in turn will start a whole other debate about how to pronounce the word. But that’s just an aside – I toasted some scones for myself recently. When they were all nicely browned and the butter on them I went to the fridge to get some jam (jelly). I lifted the jar out and spread some on my food but once I had taken the first bite I knew right away something was not right. I called to my wife, “honey, which shelf do we keep the jam on?” She replied, “It’s on the bottom shelf in the cupboard”. I looked at the fridge. “Noooooo”, I said. “The jam in the fridge”.   “That’s not jam”, she replied. “That’s chutney”. Long story short – The chutney was scraped into the bin and some jam retrieved from the cupboard. I didn’t really enjoy the scones as I knew my lovely wife was glaring at me from the other room. Ofcourse, this is all entirely my fault. It is. Yo...

Life is never simple nor runs smoothly. Not for anyone, anywhere. Particularly when it comes to our past. We all have acquaintances that we don’t really care to keep in touch with. Or we have had jobs that we never really enjoyed and would never really go back there again. There will have been places that we didn’t enjoy being at and we purposely decide not to visit those places again no matter what the circumstance. We all have our various experiences, places, people and scenarios that we would be glad if they stayed in our past. King David, in his later years found himself in a situation that he had been in before. In his youth, David had confidently walked into the Valley of Elah and fought the giant, Goliath. 1st Samuel 17v43 And the Philistine (Goliath) said to David, “Am I a dog, that you come to me with sticks?” And the Philistine cursed David by his gods… v50 So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone, and struck the Philistine and killed him. Th...