The Rational Rabbit Hole no. 13

As for God, His way is blameless. The word of the Lord is tested [it is perfect, it is faultless]; He is a shield to all who take refuge in Him.

Psalm 18:30 AMP

Jesus said to him, “Because you have seen Me, do you now believe? Blessed [happy, spiritually secure, and favored by God] are they who did not see [Me] and yet believed [in Me].”

John 20:29 AMP

Embrace the Within.

Are you at peace? I really feel peace right now in my life despite the situations, despite the worries, despite the obstacles, despite everything I am told to fear. I am at peace. And that is not something that I thought was ever going to happen fourteen days ago. There are a lot of things that I didn’t plan to happen fourteen days ago.

Nevertheless, here I am a gentleman farmer and a Christian. Two things that I would have never predicted for my life are now exactly the two main components of my current life. They are the two things that start my day and the two things that bring my day to a close. And during the summer and as I approach retirement, they will become all of my day. And I am so looking forward to that time if it is in God’s plan. A time where I get to devote my time to the two things that are new to my being. The two things that are now quite indispensable in defining who I am.

Maybe these two things are not at all a stretch for where I am now. I was raised in a church and I haven’t been avoiding church. BUT I will never forget the experiences that church taught me about people. And those lessons are supported as I continue my study through the entirety of The Bible and related works. Putting trust in the work of men is a sure way to find yourself in a spiritual dilemma. BUT placing your faith in God and walking in the truth of the Almighty is a perfect, faultless, and blameless way to protect your being.

Likewise, I have been around farming my entire life. My father, grandfathers, and probably their fathers before them through the past were involved in some sort of gardening, livestock, and farming work. With the inevitability of supply chain issues, I moved to shortening that chain to a few steps outside my back porch. And that love of nature and science and experimentation and problem-solving led to so much new knowledge of how to grow food. It didn’t start out great. In fact it began as a failure fourteen days ago, and now it is gaining some traction and I am getting better at repurposing my land into something that will support me as I support it.

And there is a relationship in both of these defining principles. I am constantly in a relationship with learning and sharing knowledge about these principles. I use both these defining principles to make my life and the life of others better. And I find there is great fulfillment and abundance for my being in walking these two paths. Nothing is better than being out in the dirt and the sun and the plants and the animals. Being around God and God’s creation is peaceful and perfect and faultless and blameless. Working the land is a shield and refuge for me from the situations, worries, obstacles, and fears that are brought into the light by mankind. Despite and in spite of that all, I choose peace.

Peace to your house. Bless your soul. The kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Have the day you want. I hope you find whatever you’re looking for.

#ThinkBetter #BeBetter #NoGodsNoMasters #MyBodyMyChoice #MakeYourselfGreatAgain #EmbracetheWithin

The Rational Rabbit Hole no. 12

Heaven and earth [as now known] will pass away, but My words will not pass away.

Matthew 24:35 AMP

Embrace the Within.

Peace to your house. The list of outside work shortened yesterday and I am much sorer today for doing such. Everything I wore yesterday bore witness to the dirtiness and nastiness of working the garden and shortening my supply chain. I started out with just clearing the grass and such away from the spots in the yard where I began planting my lemon grass and marigolds to keep down the mosquito population around the house. Then I moved on to my least favorite and the chicken’s least favorite activity, cleaning the chicken house. I moved almost a dozen wheelbarrows full of dirty cedar chips out and then replaced with fresh cedar chips making certain to keep the nests intact and my decoy eggs in place. By this point, I was rather dirty and definitely sweaty so I moved on to the next dirty part of the process and that was cleaning the rabbit hutches. That involved hosing down and moving the hutches so that rabbit manure could get dispersed throughout the plantation. This job involved a lot of hands on rabbit shit and left me extremely dirty and smelly, however, the messiest of the work for the day was completed. This only left me cleaning the spinach, lettuce, and endive out of the garden in preparation of the beds for the next planting in August. And I was a dirty mess by the end of the process.

The thing about getting dirty is that, at first, I am hesitant to dive into getting myself dirty. I take care to do things gingerly and carefully to avoid getting dirt or shit on me. BUT after a while of working and getting steadily dirtier, that apprehension about getting dirty goes away. I am already dirty so I might as well commit to the process and get things done and stop worrying about what I get on me. So I dive in and stop caring about how dirty I am. I get the work done and just let the filth pile up. I allow the messiness of the work to overtake me as I get things done.

After the work was done, I got into a hot shower and cleaned. I even took the clothes and did my washing immediately after as well yesterday. So, when I was finished with the process, there was no sign that I had been out in the garden working hard all morning. Well, my body surely felt the signs of working and cleaning that comes with the middle of the summer. BUT there were no outward signs on my clothes or on my body that I was once covered in filth.

And yesterday I mentioned how this was quite a metaphor for life because we can sure get covered in a lot of filth. And that is the thing about getting dirty when you start out clean. At first there is apprehension about getting dirty. You’re wary of getting the tiniest speck of dirt on you. BUT once you start getting dirty, you can pick up a lot of momentum. And the dirt and filth and sin just keep piling up and getting you further away from the clean person you once were. And, just like the shower and the washing machine exist to get that dirt and filth off us, there is also a way to get all that spiritual impurity and uncleanliness off of us as well through Christ’s atonement sacrifice for us. So we don’t have to walk around dirty anymore. There doesn’t need to be a sign that we were ever dirty and filthy at all. Our body remembers the time we were dirty BUT there is nothing to show externally that we were ever unclean.

Bless your body, mind, and spirit. Have the day you want. I hope you find whatever you’re looking for.

#ThinkBetter #BeBetter #NoGodsNoMasters #MyBodyMyChoice #MakeYourselfGreatAgain #EmbracetheWithin