Thursday Morning Muses...

I have been out doing my usual feeding, watering, visiting with my animals. Muffin, one of the little donkey foals was especially attached today. She wanted extra attention, leaving her mother and her friends to eat. She elected to have an ear scratch and eat later. As I looked at her, I admired her. She has the most kind and trusting eyes. She looks at me as if to say, "I know I am safe."
I had to ask myself a question. Do I feel safe? My answer was not as straightforward as Muffin's. Some days I feel very safe, others I feel totally vulnerable. I know this is not what God intends for me. Yet, there are days that contain fear and uncertainty.
I tend to "wonder" too much. I wonder if this will happen, I wonder if that is going to come to pass, I wonder why people are mean, I wonder why people murder, I wonder why I typically like animals better than some people! :) (I'm smiling now.)
All this pondering I do at home is comforting to me. I can be here and I am surrounded by "life." All is content here. All is quiet. I sang OUT LOUD this morning, as I often do when I'm feeding. Today's selection was an old Linda Ronstadt song called "By the Rivers of Babylon." It incorportates Psalm 19:14, in which David prays to the Lord to basically help him keep his mouth shut unless it's something useful. (Anne's interpretation, of course. I don't think I've ever seen it printed in any Bible version quite like that!) David also addresses what he THINKS.
Psalm 19:14 reads: "Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer."
So, we must come before God in with a pure intent not only in our WORDS, but equally important are our THOUGHTS and OUR DEEDS.
Were we kind today? Did we build someone up or did we say or do something to make them feel badly? Did we take control of our thoughts and direct them in a more beneficial path or did we simply allow our self to continue thinking "crap?"
No wonder everyone is tired. There must be a rollercoaster of thoughts going on in every human's mind that is relentless.
People ask me all the time..."Why do you keep all those animals?" They are THE best medicine. No pills, no nothing...just love and nurturing. I was thinking about how often Frieda comes out here and I know why. She could escape too. Did you know she has "her own goat?" His name is Dice. Frieda named him. We were bottle feeding Dice and Sophie when they were babies at Mike and Judy Davis's. Frieda was in love. So, conspirators that we are, we decided to tell Wayne that Dice is actually FRIEDA'S goat and since she can't have a goat in the village, he would live here with us and our goats! HA! I'm know he didn't buy it, but we like to think that Frieda "got his goat" PUN INTENDED! I was petting Dice today and remembering good thoughts and good laughs. The words from my mouth and the mediations from my heart indeed were acceptable in His sight, as I was joyful and thankful for my life, my home, my friends and my blessings.
I also remembered that I need to say on this blog that I've had many people who wrote to me to say that as a result of reading about a friendship between Anne Haley and Frieda Hudson, they have drawn closer to their own friends, their own families and realized how incredibly unpredictable life is. Most importantly, I think we have all seen what can happen in a blink.
A parable has been on my mind as well. Please consider this too, as well as Psalm 19:14. There was the story of how an old man was waiting for Jesus to show up at his house and he prepared a huge feast. (I'll condense the story, but you'll get the gist and we've all heard it before, so you'll know where I'm going with this.) He had put out his finest of everything. He was, as we'd say today, he got all decked out for the occasion. He had killed his fattest cow, and had really put on the dog. A widow showed up and he ran her off in case Jesus showed up and saw such as that at his house. A beggar showed up...same deal. Shoo! The Lord is coming to my house and you can't be trashing my situation here Beggar. The whole evening, the man ran the folks away that had strangely appeared at his door, yet the Lord hadn't shown up. He was getting pretty mad about it all. Irritated with the people just "dropping by," etc. After many hours of waiting for his "guest," he finally gave up. He put away the big spread. I would imagine he threw a little hissy fit that the Lord had stood him up. (And we all know where I am going with this.)
When he cried out to the Lord and gave Him guff for standing him up, which took a lot of brass, I might add! The man got the low down from God.
As we all know, the Lord had been there MANY times that evening. And it was the LORD Himself who was TURNED AWAY.
My friends, we do not know the paths of others we come into contact with. Just because they do not LOOK in accordance with how WE think they should look, act or appear, gives us no right to judge their hearts. That's God's job.
How many times have we had opportunities to serve "the Lord" and we turned Him away? How often have we judged someone because WE did not like the way they look? (This ties in with the "meditations in our hearts" part! We are saying nothing, yet judging up a storm and we think that's ok because we're not SAYING it. God hears it all.)
I will close with this thought. Matthew 25, verse 40 says,"Inasmuch as you have done to the LEAST of these, you have also done to Me." How does that hit you? Hits me HARD. For whatever I have displayed unfairly and biased toward another human being, I have also placed that behavior directly on God. I have sung the song I mentioned earlier HUNDREDS of times. Sadly, my focus was on whether the 5 parts of harmony were correct and in place and that the song was being sung "perfectly." Anne, Anne, Anne. I won't even comment on that. Duh. I blew that one for sure. Here is the song I sang and paraphrased it to work in my life:
"By the rivers of Babylon (which is Ball Creek in my case), where she went down. And there she wept when she remembered Zion. For the wicked carried us away, Captivity requires from us a song. How can we sing King Alpha's song in a strange land?
So let the words from my mouth and the meditations in my heart be acceptable in YOUR sight, over I."
Thank you for reading. I will post about our Frieda when I get to the hospital in a couple of hours.
And Frieda, I'm missing you Girl. I'm missing "us." Just keep on doing what you do, Frieda...being wonderful.
As a post statement, now I'm crying. Faithful Geordie is at my feet, as he always is. When I cry, he looks at me with such compassion. I told him I was ok, I'm just missing Frieda. He jumped up, ran off the porch and started barking. This is what he ALWAYS does when we say FRIEDA. He misses her too and even in his tiny dog mind, he has HOPE and even ol' Geordie expects and waits just like the rest of us. She'll be home before we know it Geordie and she'll be SO glad to hear your welcoming, loving bark.

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