Seventies yesterday and today comes the rain and time to contemplate, and peach pie filling today.

I had great success with the apple and the strawberry pie filling so today I am going to make up some peach and maybe huckleberry.  The rain after the beautiful day we had yesterday, as always makes me contemplative.  I am glad to be over the seasonal affects of winter and the rain sometimes brings it back in a rush.  I have made head way on cleaning, and throwing away and maybe the throwing away is the hardest but the best thing I can do.  I do struggle with throwing away so much that I have to do it in a cut and dispose of manner.  Sort of like you would cut some thing, or sometimes someone bad out of your life, do it and walk away, because goodness knows, for me at least, if I put it in a "to throw away pile" and don't dispose of it immediately I will talk myself into needing it again.  I have to throw it away at the moment of decision or it will find it's way back into my clutter, that for some reason I seem to need.  Okay, I have digressed way off course.  Going on....

I have said before that as a child I thought there were cardboard people in my life.  I know that the faith of a child is something we as adults, in Christ, should strive to be; but my mind works overtime, sometimes and in circles, so I have come to a place where I wonder why I thought that.  I was recently reading Job and how the Lord and satan were contemplating his life.  I wondered why the Lord and satan would be playing a form of chess with him.  I then wondered is Job the only one or is the Book of Job just God's way of telling us that each of us are as Job?  The Lord tells us that he is with us always, that would mean each and every moment of the all the days of our lives.  I know for the most part people, in general, say he can't be there every minute of every day, but he said he is, so it is undoubtedly true.  Time, as the Bible tells us is a human restraint and not a restraint on God.  I think God does views each of our lives in the exact same way that the Book of Job tell us he and the devil did to Job.  Satan tried and tested Job, God was there as God for Job to have faith in and in the end God rewarded Job for his faith.  Job got salvation, among other things but the most important was his salvation in the end.  Think about that, what if each of our lives are an individual game between two beings? one God and the other the great deceiver. One who loves you unconditionally, and the other one who just wants to use you as a tool against the other causing pain to the Lord.  I wonder then in some ways, in our lives, if God is so concentrating each time on that individual, in that game of life being played out, are the others that come and go as it plays out, just as card board figures to that life?  Are we all just as cardboard figures in each others lives? chessmen on a grand board? Are we only stage props that can be used to affect each others lives as satan tries to cause pain and misery to the Lord?  Are we each as cardboard to each other while millions of simultaneous games of life play out? do we weave in and out of each others lives as the warp to the real threads of that life?  The Lord so loves us and the devil just plays us against him?  I wonder some times? and as with all things eternal, you and I will never know the ways of God in this life........

I pray that your live is a testament to your love of God, I pray when you are tested, plagued and used by satan that you have the love of God in you heart to give you strength to cling to God in faith.  If not you need to know that God so loves you, he sent his son to die just for you and you can accept that precious unimaginable gift of love.  No gift was ever so wondrous, and given just for you, accept it and the Love God has for you... tomorrow.