Dear Reader:

I love sometimes to look back on earlier blogs or sometimes they just pop up when I go “surfing on the internet.” Yesterday I found a little story/incident I had written about a few years back but then there was another part I had not read that now caught my interest.

Archibald Rutledge (Life’s Extras) wrote about visiting a neighbor who had gotten into some legal problems and was incarcerated. Knowing his wife would be having a hard time without him around to hunt and help her tend to the vegetable gardens…he stopped by to check on her.

Rutledge came bringing staples and a few other items he thought she might need. As he talked to her his eyes strayed over the little wooden mantle with only one object on it…a mason jar with a sprig of rhododendron blossom sticking out. He thought this simple arrangement was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

The wife caught him staring at it and said “I don’t know why…but to have it there helps me. It ‘minds me of God.”

Archibald said that he has never seen another rhododendron blossom without thinking of that woman’s simple faith that was so much stronger than so many other “sophisticated” people he knew.

Archibald started thinking of the colors God chose to put on earth and in the sky…surely these, like the simple flower in the mason jar, were life’s extras too.

“The color of the sky might have been a dingy gray, or a painful yellow, or a plum-colored purple. But it is sapphire; and my philosophy makes me believe that such a color the sky is by no means the result of mere chance. 

Granted that it is the result of the operation of certain laws, forces, and conditions; yet behind it all, is the mighty intelligence of the Creator. And let us not forget that the two colors at which we can gaze longest are blue and green. There is something about them a coolness, a serenity, a spirit of fragrant peace. And as the blue prevails in the sky, the green does upon earth. 

It was the contrast of greens in this photo I took heading back down my driveway this afternoon that caught my attention. I remember reading that there are more shades of green than any other color…going all the way back to the photosynthesis process of plants on earth.

Like in the title picture (Kaitlyn made that mason jar for me) my whole being is yearning to simplify these days. Perhaps that is why the poster on my computer room door keeps this vision in my eyesight as I type.

It is just not my physical space on earth that I am continuously cleaning out and ridding myself of…it is my spiritual “clutter” too that needs simplifying. Perhaps Archibald Rutledge says it best:

He ponders on how high is the heaven? Illimitable. And so, he believes, is God’s love.

…”To a sophisticated person, this sort of belief may seem too child-like. Yet I have the gravest suspicions of sophistication. I have never discovered it in nature; and to me it seems that instead of being a proof of enlightenment and culture, it is the evidence rather of ignorance, and perhaps of folly. It is the triumph of shallowness and sterility. 

The real trouble with a sophisticated person is that he knows too much, not that he knows too little.”

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I love that last line…and I will have to remember it. Another lesson in less is best. Overthinking is one of our worst deterrents along our individual paths of faith.

So until tomorrow…Thank you God for giving me moments of happiness each day… simplified in beauty and faith. These sights “mind me of God.”

*Ambika sent me some happy news yesterday…she and her husband are expecting their second child in July! We are all so happy for you Ambika…hugs and kisses!

***I texted Mandy last night to check on Jakie and asked if he was feeling better (been sick with the flu for over a week now) since getting on some antibiotics…but the answer was only “so so“…He is still running a fever…Jakie is just having a tough time throwing this strand of flu. They are calling the doctor again this morning to see what else they can possibly do. I would personally thank you for prayers for little Jake…with his history of allergy complications and other respiratory issues…his little immune system is having a tough time fighting the flu. We love you Jakie! Get better soon!