Dear Reader:

Yesterday I drove over to Mt. Pleasant to Whole Foods to order some fresh fruit tarts for one of our desserts following our rehearsal next Friday. They looked so good the girl gave me one to take home and try! Delicious!

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While checking out…I picked up two items, a beautiful flowering basket that can take full sun (to replace the poor pansies who don’t want to be out in it directly any more with these high 80’s temps floating around) and this National Geographic Magazine on Jesus and the Apostles. 

Somehow I felt that it was appropriate to buy a sun-loving flower basket along with stories of Jesus since “He is the Light of the World.” The magazine was filled with beautiful medieval art work and new discoveries confirming certain incidents in the life of Jesus that had been held in doubt by some historians.

Hikers, today, can scout the Jesus Trail: which begins in Nazareth and winds 40 miles to Capernaum. Since Jesus spent most of his ministry in Galilee, many key sites can be reached by foot..thus the trail’s motto: “Jesus didn’t take the bus.” He met people, face to face walking life’s paths together.

National Geographic also unearthed a controversial issue that had disturbed some archaeologists…it had to do with the length of fishing boats. They didn’t think boats were big or long enough to accompany Jesus and all his disciples, in that day and time, until a drought unveiled the ” Jesus Boat.”

*It still amazes me how the physical life of Jesus came and went like a spark from a fire…leaving behind no physical evidence of His being, no written first-hand accounts of his stories and messages…nothing more permanent than “doodles in the dust.” YET…

…“The short life and violent death of this obscure Jew soon took on a meaning that eclipsed the blank pages of his years on Earth, filling whole libraries with depictions of what his life produced. Over the ensuing centuries the religion that grew around Him-Christianity-would alter the course of history and become the world’s dominant faith, with an estimated 2.2 billion followers spread across the globe. An inconceivable idea to anyone living in Palestine when Jesus walked there…” (Don Belt)

Truths, that all of us as humans living on Earth can understand and want for us and our children were given to us by Jesus. Love over hate, forgiveness over revenge, kindness to others over self-greed, compassion over apathy, sharing over hoarding, healing over fearfulness of contagion, and loyalty/faith to our Creator, not leaders of men by men.

If one believes in love, it is hard not to be “crazy in love” with Jesus.

Christianity is a matter of faith. Through it we seek to find the answers to age-old questions that define our humanity.

“How can we understand the nature of the universe? How do we fit into the scheme of things? How should be lead our lives? Our striving to comprehend the infiniteness of the world in the here and now-and to consider what might be beyond-is one of the most profound traits that mark us as human.”  (Chris Johns Chief Content Officer, National Geographic.)

The last picture in the magazine shows a nun in a hidden alcove in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem where ‘tradition says a manger stood where Jesus was born.’

Bo Portrait

“From humble beginnings sprang the world’s foremost religion, which still finds power in moments of solitude, reflection, and conversation with God.”

So until tomorrow… My love of solitude, reflection, and conversation with God are three reasons why I call myself a Christian. Before Jesus lived and his teachings taught us differently… we didn’t think we had the right to talk to God one on one…(common man was just too common)…It is hard for me to imagine going a day now without conversing with Him.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

Guess whose birthday it is (officially) today? Miss Eva Cate’s!!! Seven years old…I can hardly believe it! Seven years I have been given to watch my grandchildren grow! How blessed I am indeed!