Marsha's Blog

  Good morning,     I’ve been enjoying your perspectives on this little run we’re doing, exploring of the “Armor of God”.  I’m having fun wondering what the next ‘item’ will be each week, but I’ll have to say I was almost stumped on the shoe issue.   I have a sister who absolutely loves shoes, but I must have been behind the door when that gene was passed out.  Tony is even worse; he has a total of three pairs of shoes.  Runners, a good (expensive and orthopedic and all that) every day pair, and a dress pair that give him a pained expression (good for funerals).     But what about this verse?  Ephesians 6:15, “and as your shoes the readiness to announce the Good News of Peace”.    Our profession and calling was (and still is) being missionaries, and by its nature we’ve always been sensitive to opportunities to  “Go where no man has gone before”.  But is that what Paul is really talking about here?  Now that we’re retired from most of that galavanting around, aren’t we still in “standby

  Last week we thought about the belt of truth.   That takes me back to an earlier story in 2 Kings 6. Remember that poor servant of the prophet Elisha? All he could see was the surrounding enemy, and all he could say was (loosely translated), “We’re gonna die.” All it took, though, was a good dose of truth, and the realization that “there are more with us than there are with them” (6:16). I hope you’ve all had occasion to throw that verse at your own circumstances, and take comfort in its truth. This week Tony decided to lead the way amongst our friends and have the first cataract removed.  I know many of you out there can relate to the pure JOY he feels now that he can see clearly again. He had no idea (as he’s been reminding me over and over and…) how the years had gradually clouded down his vision until what he thought was ‘normal’ was indeed pretty compromised.  Now he’s leaping and dancing around because he’s seeing leaves and colors again. The doctor told him that cataracts ‘suc

  Okay, I promised you that we’d take a walk together through the armor of God in the next few weeks. Let’s go:   As I read Ephesians 6, the first thing that leaps out is that Paul is referring to powers and principalities that are not of this world. And, when I think about it, that fact of life is becoming more and more apparent these days. I also think it’s a sign of the times.     Maybe I’m oversimplifying here, but it seems that there was a time when life, as we know it,  was more tied to spiritual values. Some folks call it “superstition”, but it’s more than that. Then, as “science and logic” picked up, Satan had to pick up his game and come at us in more subtle ways. Now, though, as Revelation prophecies begin to be fulfilled, he has to “go back to the basics ”   and pull out the more overt spiritual attacks.     We’re seeing things happening now that in the past generation were just not so much a part of life, (late term abortion for example) and it tends to create in us an unea

  So I was thinking about preachers this week. Besides being married to one, our circle of friends contains a lot of folks who either were, still are, or hope to be preachers. I’ve even been accused of being a preacher myself, but as a Southern Baptist woman, that idea doesn’t fly very far. Be that as it may, I don’t see anything against “pontificating” about this or that, and in fact a lot of folks would say that’s what I’m doing right now, through this blog. Not preaching tho. Nope. Anyway, I heard somewhere that there are two types of preachers: those who open their Bibles, lock onto Scriptures and preach out of them. That is called exegetical hermeneutics….. I think. Then there are those who look around at life, find a sermon, then open their Bibles and find the appropriate Scripture to match. Tony insists that it’s not that simple, but that the best preaching comes from both the written Word and the lives that illustrate it. All the preacher has to do is tie the two together, add

  Well, we’re back safe and sound from our ‘big adventure’ in the outback.  From the sounds of things, our neighbors had a bigger adventure than we did, since the forested “green belt” behind our house decided to burn itself up. Check my Facebook page for pictures. And if that wasn’t enough, our kids got together and did a “home makeover” in our absence, involving a lot of yard work, but also a radical transformation of my office, complete with new furniture, new curtains and “junk organization” that I had been putting off for years. The Aussies have an expression for how I felt:   Gobsmakered . And I was … totally.   If we had known all this was going on while we were away, we might have been as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, but we didn’t, and our Outback Adventure was nothing short of magical. Motorhome life was surprisingly luxurious, possibly spoiling us against all future camping treks. But I have to admit, we breathed a huge sigh of relief when we