Found It!

 

          I found it!

          “Found what, Peg?” you ask.

          I found the missing jelly feeder bowl. With the help of the rain, almost all of the snow is melted and there it was, sitting right where the snow had buried it. It was beyond my kick zone. I never would’ve believed it would be so far from the post. How it got there, I don’t know. A strong wind? A critter? Your guess is as good as mine.

          I picked it up and there’s no evidence of grape jelly. It was empty when it was knocked down or licked clean by whatever critter knocked it down. A possum, maybe. We’ve had possums on the patio before.

         

          We went to see the tax lady and got our taxes done. Everyone gets an extra six‑thousand‑dollar deduction this year, which was a nice surprise. And I’ll be honest, even with that little bit of good news, taxes still make me shake my head. It just feels like we’re taxed every time we turn around. We pay taxes when we earn money, when we save it, when we spend it. We pay taxes on the things we buy, and if we sell those things later, someone else pays taxes on the very same item we already paid taxes on, and as a bonus, we get to pay taxes on the money we sold it for!

I understand that taxes are necessary. The roads get plowed before dawn so people can get to work. The fire trucks roll out the moment the siren sounds. The school buses keep rumbling down the road. But while we’re over here pinching pennies, stretching budgets, watching grocery prices climb, the people in charge are voting themselves pay raises, better benefits, and shorter work weeks. And when the government shuts down because they couldn’t pass a budget, regular workers were furloughed or forced to work without pay, while members of Congress still received their paychecks. That part has never sat right with me.

I’ll climb down from my soapbox now and show you the pictures I took on that trip.

          An eagle!

 

          Poor Hatch.

A couple of mornings ago, I noticed the right side of his face was swollen. “He’s been in a fight,” I told Mike.

Yesterday afternoon, when I went out to the cat room to leave scraps for the critters, Hatch was sleeping on the shelf.

“Hey, buddy,” I said as I stepped in. He lifted his head, and when I reached to pet him, I saw he couldn’t open his left eye. I went to stroke his back and he whipped his head around, not a growl, not a hiss, but enough to remind me he’s still a wild thing. I pulled my hand back fast.

This morning when I went out to feed him, he rubbed against my leg like nothing had ever happened. I talked to him, set down his food, and when he tucked in to eat, I tried petting him again. He tensed at the first touch, but I kept my hand gentle, and he relaxed and went back to eating.

“How’s his eye?” you ask.

I honestly couldn’t tell. I can’t handle him, and he wouldn’t look at me. But I did touch the side of his face where the swelling had been. It’s gone down, and it feels scabby now.

Hatch is truly feral. He’ll live or he’ll die on his own terms. There’s no way he’d let me pick him up and take him to the vet. All I can do is feed him, talk to him, and hope he heals the way wild creatures do.

 

          Speaking of critters…

I emptied the last bowl of braunschweiger to give the girls their nightly dose of antihistamine and set the bowl and lid down for them to lick out. I found the bowl right where Raini always takes her lickables, but the lid was nowhere to be found. I got down on my hands and knees with a flashlight and started looking under everything. And of course, the moment I hit the floor, Raini trotted over and dropped her ball right in front of me. She thought it was play time. She has me trained. I tossed it for her once, just to keep the peace, and when she brought it back again, I ignored her and kept searching.

I made it a point to pull out the burnable trash can and look there because that’s where the bowl ended up the last time I lost it, but the lid wasn’t there. Eventually I shrugged, shook my head, and gave up. It’ll turn up or it won’t.

Since I was already on the floor and my hands were already dirty, I took a few minutes to toss the ball for Raini. Then I got up, washed (which goes without saying), put the lidless bowl back and grabbed a different container from the cupboard. Then I cut the schweiger into fourths, tossing three into the freezer so they won’t go bad before I have a chance to use them.

Somewhere in this house, there’s a secret stash of missing items — and I’m afraid to find out who’s keeping them!

          I’m as susceptible to advertising as the next person. Even though I don’t need anything, I saw someone endorsing these spray bottles. You can fill them with any oil you want, and it even has a pour spout. Just pull the little tab back that’s on the top and the door at the top pops open so you can pour. Normally I wouldn’t buy something like this, but they (whoever they are!) say the chemicals in canned sprays are really bad for you. Well, I don’t want to use stuff that’s bad for me, so I ordered one bottle. They give you a deal if you buy two, but I don’t need two.

It came this week. I washed it, let it sit upside down on the counter for a couple of days, then filled it with olive oil.

“How do you like it?” I know you wanna know.

I hate it! The oil comes streaming out, not the fine mist I expected. I don’t know how much I’ll use it, but I’m not going to bother returning it. I’m going back to the sprays in a can. I don’t use much anyway. 

So much for being healthier.

          Speaking of healthier...

          I hate taking pills! It’s not that I can’t, I just hate it. That’s always been a barrier between me and taking daily vitamins. I’ll do it for a while, get fed up with taking pills and stop for a while. But I know it’s good for me so I start taking them again and after a few weeks, stop again. It’s a vicious cycle.

          I’ve also been dealing with occasional dizzy spells.

          Somewhere along the line I learned that low iron could cause dizziness and that made me think back to the days when I was giving blood on a regular basis. If I didn’t take Geritol for a week or two beforehand, my iron would be low and they’d turn me away.

          Since I started taking Geritol I haven’t had any dizzy spells.

          In my head?

          I don’t know — but I’m glad.

          Geritol gives me the recommended daily amount of iron plus some other things, but it’s not considered a complete vitamin. I could take it every day but what I’ve been doing is taking Geritol one day and my multivitamins the next. Alternating between a liquid and pills has helped me to stay on track with daily supplements, and I don’t mind the taste of it.

          Here’s a caveat: there are plenty of reasons a person might get dizzy. All I know is this seems to help me and that’s good enough for now.

          Lastly, I painted this week. And despite the fact that I have two pet portraits waiting for me, I decided to try another caricature.

I was using a recipe for skin tone that included ultramarine blue.

“Ultramarine blue will make your portraits look muddy,” I read somewhere.

Did I use ultramarine blue?

Yes. Yes, I did.

I figured since it was just the shadow color — and since I was following a successful artist’s recipe — it would be fine. It wasn’t. It’s awful. I tried to lift it out, but with very little luck. After that, I just played around with the rest of the picture, not caring if it came out or not because it was trash anyway.

“Will you ever use ultramarine blue in any of your portraits?” you ask.

No. Never again.

Onward to the next disaster — I mean masterpiece.

Let’s call this one done.

Love, Don't Love

 

          I love when we spend time together.

          I don’t love when there aren’t any stories to share with you.

          I live a small, quiet life here in the beautiful mountains of Pennsylvania, and truth be known, I rather like it that way.

I guess not every week needs to be an attention-grabbing, heart-pounding headline. Some weeks are just lived, one cup of coffee, one small chore, one moment at a time.

Life here in the mountains has a way of settling into peacefulness. I stand at the sink, washing dishes, looking out the window, watching the birds at the feeders, and I feel happy. I have a warm house, plenty of dishes — what would life be like if I only had two plates and two spoons and two cups? I mused. I feel grateful.

         

          I made homemade breadsticks this week! They’re on a cookie sheet and yes, they are as huge as they look.

          “You only have to eat one instead of two,” my handsome mountain man said.

          They were so good that I ate two that day! I love bread. It’s like my favorite food.

          They were easy to make. The recipe said it serves twelve, I divided the dough into twelve, and that’s how they ended up so big. After they were baked I brushed them with melted butter and sprinkled with parmesan cheese. I even sprinkled a few with Italian seasoning mix.

          Oh my gosh!

          What a time of it I had!

          I said they were easy, and they were. But the recipe is written out in a funky way. The first step is to proof your yeast.

Speaking of yeast, I have to tell you that proofing your yeast isn’t as necessary today as it was back when our mothers and grandmothers made bread. Our yeast is pretty dependable and I never proof it when I make homemade bread. Proofing does not make the yeast stronger, it doesn’t make it taste any better, and it doesn’t change the rise time. In fact, instant yeast was developed to not need proofing. It was made to add right into the flour and proofing it can actually weaken it a little because it dissolves the protective coating. But this recipe calls for the yeast to be proofed, so I proofed it.

          Mix together the water, sugar, and yeast, the recipe said. When you look at the list of ingredients and amounts, the water is at the top, the sugar is in the middle, and the yeast was on the very bottom.

          Why?!

          Why would you write a recipe like that?!

          I mixed the water, yeast, sugar and put it aside.

          The next step was to mix the other ingredients and that’s where I got confused. I put the flour in, listed right under the flour is sugar. I put sugar in. Next was garlic. When I found garlic on the list, my eyes traveled to the front of the line to see the amount, and it said four and a half teaspoons. I was scoopin’ in the garlic powder and after four, I got a big whiff of garlic and thought, that’s a lot of garlic powder. I went back to double check the recipe and aye-yi-yi! It was supposed to be one and half teaspoons! I’d read the amount for yeast, which was written directly under it!

          Luckily I’d dropped the garlic in different places. That helps me keep track of my count. I took a spoon and lifted out two and a half piles — along with some of my flour. I took the measuring cup from the flour bucket and guessed at how much to add back.

          What else did I mess up? I wondered and checked the recipe.

          The sugar! Oh my goodness! The sugar was for proofing and wasn’t for the bread! I shrugged my shoulders and thought, no big deal, it’ll just be a little sweeter.

          It turned out well despite my flubs. I just hope when I make it the right way that it’ll be just as good — or better!

          Speaking of the next time I make them, I’ll divide it into fifteen or maybe eighteen and make them smaller. And the next time I make them, Mike wants me to cook up some sweet Italian sausage and he’s going to use one to make a sandwich.

I shared the breadsticks with the Kipps, giving them six. “They’re wonderful!” Miss Rosie said. “Even after two days they still warmed up nicely,” she told me.

Mine were all gone the next day.

The recipe is called Make Ahead Frozen Breadsticks because you can freeze the dough and bake them later. I wanted them that day and didn’t freeze them, but I’ll freeze some for Miss Rosie, then, when she makes a pot of chili or soup, she can get a couple out, let them sit for an hour or so, and bake them. There’s nothing better than hot, fresh bread right out of the oven, don’cha think?

Raini and I took the garbage out for pickup on Tuesday morning. On the way back I decided to take her for a walk. I let her drag her leash and it left a mark in the snow.

See! I told you it was a quiet week when all I have to show you is drag marks in the snow!

Actually, that’s not quite true. I did take a few other pictures. 

The first thing I noticed was we had a tree down by the pond. It wasn’t a very big one but it’s still going to require a cleanup when spring hits.

Dried milkweed pods decorate the landscape.

Bittersweet red pops!

The truck and bus hoods dressed in a layer of snow.

The wind was blowing cold on my face. I turned and headed for the house rather than going past the upper barn.

Raini knows there’s a whistle pig burrow in this mound and she went to sniff it out.

Then, when she saw me coming, ran for home.

Coming back from our shopping trip, I spot flares burning beside the road just before you go down the hill into Meshoppen.

“Uh-oh,” I said.

A semi had turned up the road by the tire place.

“Where’s the truck?” Mike asked.

“They unhooked it. It’s just a little ways up the road.”

I expected to see a wreck but all I saw were these guys fussing with something.

“It looks like he took out whatever was there on the corner,” I said.

“Yeah, but why unhook the truck?”

“Maybe he thought it was going to explode or something.” That was all I could think of. The next time I go past the place I’ll look and see what’s put back.

My friend Jody came and played Quiddler with me for a few hours one afternoon. I do so enjoy her company and the fact that she’ll play Quiddler with me.

Tiger was feeling neglected and laid on top of our cards.

“Didn’t I take a picture?” I asked Jody.

“Nope,” she said.

“I guess that explains why I couldn’t find it.”

Tiger does the same thing when Mike and I play Skip-Bo. In the photo Mike is trying to coax Tiger into sitting on the papers near us rather than on our cards.

“No thanks,” Tiger said and stayed where he was.

I had to pick him up and move him out of the way. Two minutes later he was back. He is persistent, I’ll give him that.

And that, my loves, is all the jibber-jabber for this week.

Done!

Things Lost

 

          Sometimes, when I’m making my letter blogs, there are pictures I’ve picked to use and for one reason or another, don’t use them. These, and the little stories that go with them, get lost.

          “I’ll use them next time,” I tell myself, only most of the time, I don’t. A new week happens, with new pictures and new stories and I never go back and record those stories.

          You would be surprised about all of things, events, places, all the small moments that we forget about over time. And the only ones that stay with us are usually the ones we want to forget most! Unless you keep a journal, or a blog, and review it from time to time, things get lost in the everyday clutter of life.

          I guess it’s supposed to be that way.

          I wish, even though I don’t believe in wishing, I wish I had a journal from one of my grandmothers. I’d love to read about their days, the joys and sorrows and challenges that made up their everyday life. I’d get a glimpse of what life looked like back then. Honestly, I’d be thrilled to have anything from any of my ancestors, male or female! But, it doesn’t exist. Maybe it does for some people, just not for me.

          “Life was hard back then,” Momma told me. “They didn’t have time or resources to give to journaling.”

          And so, things get lost.

          None of us do life alone. Our lives touch each other’s, sometimes just a brush, sometimes a full, head-on crash! And knowing me, as you do by now, you have to expect you’ll turn up in my stories sooner or later.

Like when you make me laugh.

One of the photos that almost got lost is this one.

 It’s been a month since my cute little redheaded sister sent this photo on our morning love note chain.

“I’m proud. I dressed myself today,” Diane wrote.

If you’re not paying attention you might not notice that she has two different shoes on.

          I laughed right out loud. Such a great way to start my day. And I could totally relate. It’s easy for me to do something like this. I dress with indirect and very dim light that spills out of the bathroom in the mornings so I don’t disturb the slumber of my handsome mountain man. More than once I’ve discovered my underwear inside out or my shirt on backwards. I don’t usually have a problem with my old-lady stretchy pants, though. If I put them on and they don’t cover my backside while the front goes the whole way up to my boobs, I know they’re on backwards!

Diane got all the way to work before she caught her boo-boo.

          “Did anyone notice?” I asked.

          “I showed them,” she replied. “It’s too funny and harmless.”

          “I would never notice,” our beautiful sister Phyllis said.

          It’s moments like these that make me realize how much of life is lived in the in-betweeny spaces, the ones we never think to write down.

          “In-betweeny?” you question.

          It’s not a typo, it’s actually a bit of an inside joke. Our pastor made up that word during one of his sermons and it got such a laugh out of all of us that I just had to use it here.

          Little moments where our lives brush past each other.

          Another small moment, something that doesn’t amount to a hill of beans, was when I snapped this photo weeks ago and didn’t use it.

          “What’s the story?” I know you wanna know.

          Sometimes I think about buying an artist’s glove. Another name for it is a smudge guard or drawing glove. It keeps you from smudging your pencil or transferring oils onto your work surface. Digital artists use them to keep from accidentally touching a part of the screen they didn’t mean to touch. It won’t stop the transfer of paint, but it will help.

          I saw something where someone made a fingerless glove out of a sock. I just happened to have a pair of knee-highs that had a hole in the toe and I was getting ready to throw them away. Perfect timing. I got the scissors and made my own glove — gloves. Two socks, two gloves. They also work perfect for when my hands are cold and I need my fingers to visit with you!             

          The last “lost” picture for this week is this one.

          “What are we looking at?” you ask.

          This is the block and tackle system Mike put up for me. With this I’m able to lift more weight than I otherwise could.

“A block and tackle hanging in your house. Why?”

With this I can put Raini in a sling and raise her all by myself to trim her nails. Mike is very aware that he might not always be here to help me with things, so he tries to make them as easy for me as he can. I, on the other hand, remind him that I might go first. None of us knows our last day on this earth.

When I’m washing dishes, Bondi and Raini think it’s playtime. Bondi brings her little squeaky and drops it at my feet, Raini brings her ball. Then, the whole time I’m washing dishes, I’m tossing toys. Raini’s I toss into the dining room; Bondi’s I toss into the utility room. You’d be surprised how many times I’ve hit that rope! It’s funny because if I was trying to hit it, I wouldn’t be able to. Since I’m not trying to hit it, I hit it about eighty percent of the time. The squeaky hits the rope and comes bouncing back. Bondi, already racing down the hall in anticipation, has to reverse course. Not the end of the world but annoying nonetheless.

“Will you put up a hook or something to get that out of our way?” I asked Mike.

He’s a good husband and fixed it so I can get the rope out of the way when I wasn’t using the block and tackle system. 

Someone who came crashing into my life this week is this pretty lady.

Nancy has been coming to our church for a while now and at some point she mentioned she has critters.

Critters?

You know how to capture my heart, don’t you? Mention critters to me. You know I have a love for all of God’s creatures — even spiders and snakes! I don’t especially want them to live with me, but they all have their place.

“What kind of critters do you have?” I asked Nancy.

“Dogs, cats, chickens...”

I don’t remember what else she said, because when she said chickens, I got to wondering. “Do you want some old noodles for your chickens?” I asked. “Will chickens eat noodles?”

“Chickens’ll eat just about anything,” she said. “Sure. I’ll take them.”

I probably had about twelve or fourteen packages of these fifteen-year-old noodles.

I thought I’d take them to church and give them to Nancy. Unfortunately, Nancy hasn’t been feeling well and missed church a couple of weeks in a row.

“Can we come and visit tomorrow afternoon?” I messaged when she was feeling better.

“I’d love that,” she said.

That day started with a trip to Sayre for a little shopping. We usually go in the other direction but we had to stop at the Fed-Ex store in Wysox and drop off a printer. My printer wouldn’t hook up to the internet anymore which meant that Mike couldn’t use it from his desk. I use a cable to connect to the printer, so it wasn’t an issue for me. The message on the screen said to call Epson support. I called. The tech walked me through a bunch of stuff to fix the issue but it didn’t resolve it.

“You’re out of warranty,” he told me. “But we will make a one-time exception and send you a new printer.”

Cool! But it’s not a new one, it’s a refurbished one.

“Once you get the printer, use the packaging to return your printer. You have seven days from the time you receive it to return your printer or we will charge you for it.”

I’d just filled the tanks, and Epson sent new ink along with the printer, but I still tried to use up as much of the ink as I could.

We didn’t wait seven days because we didn’t want to be charged.

On the way to Sayre I took pictures for you.

I bet I saw five hawks!

“Isn’t it illegal to have the license plate so dirty you can’t read it?” I asked Mike.

“It can be, but even if they stop you they just tell you to clean it off.”

          After shopping, after having lunch at the Chinese restaurant, after returning the printer, we went to see Nancy.

          Nancy has a fabulous place! It was the family homestead and has been in the family for many years so there’s history here.

          She showed us around the house and I was loving all the antique furnishings she had.

          “I love old things,” Nancy said. “I think I was born in the wrong century.”

          I used to think that, too but at some point I realized a few things. First, God doesn’t make mistakes. I was born right when He wanted me to be born. Second, there are so many advantages to living in this day and age that I wouldn’t’ve had back then. Would I write if I didn’t have my computer and spell check? I don’t know. I can see my paper now, full of cross-offs and misspelled words and arrows where I want to rearrange stuff. I don’t have to haul water from the creek, I have electricity, and heat without chopping wood!

          “This is the chest that my grandfather shipped his things home from after the war,” Nancy said.

          How cool is that!

          We had groceries in the car so we didn’t stay too long. I’m looking forward to visiting with Nancy again and getting to know her better. We met the pups but we didn’t venture out through the mud to see any of the other critters. She mentioned the foundation for the old homestead is still there on the property and I’d love to see that as well as the pond that you can’t see from the house. And Nancy knows a lot about herbs and dries her own. I’d be interested to know more about that, too.

          Coming back across the Susquehanna, we see a couple of guys out ice fishing.

          “I wouldn’t be out there now,” Mike said. We saw a warning on the news just the night before to not go out on the ice.

        

          I have two more landscape pictures in my file that were taken on a different day.

          You can see just about forever!

        

          And I have a picture of this historical marker.

          Even though there are a bunch of these markers along the roads we travel, it’s the first time Mike asked, “What’s it say?”

          “Sullivan’s March,” I told him and snapped a picture. Then I read it to him. “General John Sullivan’s army camped on the Sheshequin Flats below, August ninth and tenth, 1779. The seventh and last over-night stop on the way to Tioga Point.”

          I guess I’ve been taking the markers for granted because I thought they all said the same thing. They don’t. So I did a little research on the event.

In the summer of 1779, during the thick of the Revolutionary War, General George Washington ordered a campaign that would come to be known as Sullivan’s March. The goal wasn’t to capture cities or forts, it was to break the British–Iroquois alliance by destroying the network of Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) towns that supported British raids on frontier settlements.

General John Sullivan gathered his troops in Easton, Pennsylvania, and began moving north along the Susquehanna River. If you live anywhere along the Northern Tier, Wyalusing, Standing Stone, Ulster, Sheshequin, Athens — you’re living right on the path of that march. The army camped on the riverbanks, moved in long columns on both sides of the water, and pushed steadily toward Tioga Point (present‑day Athens), where Sullivan joined forces with General James Clinton.

From there, the combined army crossed into what is now New York and carried out a scorched‑earth campaign: more than forty Haudenosaunee towns were burned, along with orchards, cornfields, and food stores that had taken generations to build. The number of people killed in battle was small, but the destruction forced thousands of Indigenous families to flee into the winter with almost nothing. The human cost was enormous and the effects reshaped Haudenosaunee life for generations.

These are quiet reminders that this peaceful stretch of river once carried an army on a mission that changed the map of the Northeast.

Sad, but war is never pretty.

And now you know what I know about Sullivan’s March.

Jenn, my friend and editor, proof read what I had written Saturday night and had this comment.

“Something to add to your Sullivan's info...those troops shot a cannonball at the Standing Stone in the river, breaking off the top corner. That entire campaign is why I roll my eyes whenever people get too hyped about how great Washington was!”

Standing Stone was a forty-foot tall rock that once stood right out of the Susquehanna River. It was a major landmark for Native Americans and early settlers.

Shall we go into the kitchen?

This week I did some baking for my best old West Virginia friend. Besides painting a caricature of Trish, I wanted to bake her some treats as her Christmas gift.

To quote my handsome neighbor, “You can’t get in a hurry about these things.”

I didn’t get in a hurry, that’s for sure. Besides, now she’ll have a treat in February instead of having a lot of treats at Christmastime.

Trish, like my Miss Rosie, is a lemon-lover.

          “What would Ben like?” I asked thinking of her son.

          “Something different,” she said.

          Something different than I usually send her it was. For the first time in my life I made filled gingerbread cookies. I had this cookie at a church function and they were the best gingerbreads I’ve ever had! I got the recipe from Mary, the pastor’s wife. That was two Christmas’s ago.

          You can’t get in a hurry about this stuff, don’cha know.

          It takes a little planning to make this cookie because of the chilling time. You have to chill it after you make it and you have to chill it after you cut them out.

          It was mid-afternoon when I started them and the first chill is for one to four hours. I didn’t think I’d have enough time to finish them before recliner time, so I made the dough and put it in the fridge overnight.

          I’ll tell you what! It’s better to read the instructions the whole way through. I read up to the part that said, roll the dough between two pieces of plastic wrap to one quarter inch thickness, then refrigerate for one to four hours.

          Did I do that?

          NO!

          I’ll just roll it out when I take it out of the fridge, I thought.

          The next morning, when I went to finish the cookies, I read the next step. Cut the cookies out. Hmm. It was at this point that I realized my goof. There was no way I could roll out that hard dough! I had to wait until it warmed up a little. I got out my fancy-schmancy rolling pin with the thickness guide and rolled them out. I used an octagon-shaped cookie cutter. If you chill them after cutting, they’re supposed to retain their shape.

Mine didn’t. They all ended up as circles and that was okay. I didn’t really care.

          I ended up with seventeen cookies. I sent nine to West Virginia, ate one (or two), and the rest went to the Kipps.

          For the lemon-lovers I made my beloved Aunt Brenda’s Lemon Bars.

         And I made Lemon Meltaways.

         And I made a new-to-me recipe called Holiday Lemon Dream Bars. I didn’t care for them and I’m gonna pitch the recipe. I’ll never make them again.

 

          I could call this one done. We’ve covered all of the missed pictures and stories of recent memory and we’ve covered what I’ve been up to this week, namely baking, no painting. But something that keeps coming back to my mind is a dream I had. Maybe it’s important, maybe it’s not. Since I can’t stop thinking about it, I might just as well tell you about it.

          I dreamed I was testifying to you, telling you how much God loves you. It was a very short dream and the only thing I remember for sure is I quoted a book, chapter, and verse from the Bible to prove my point. I remembered it when I woke up but soon forgot the chapter and verse.

“What book did you quote from?” I know you wanna know.

Ezekiel.

          The really weird part of this dream is I didn’t even know there was a book of Ezekiel in the Bible!

My first thought when I woke up was just that.

“Is there even a book named Ezekiel in the Bible or did I make it up?”

          Okay! Okay! I realize that doesn’t make me look too bright, and that’s okay! I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know all the books of the Bible. However, I did know that there’s an Ezekiel in the Bible but that was about all I knew.

I did a little research.

So who was Ezekiel, anyway?

In a nutshell, he was a priest who got hauled off to Babylon with the rest of the exiles, and right there in the middle of that mess, God tapped him on the shoulder and turned him into a prophet. He’s the one with the big, wild visions — wheels within wheels, dry bones rattling back to life — all of it meant to tell a discouraged people that God hadn’t forgotten them. His whole message was this mix of warning and hope, judgment and restoration, like God saying, ‘Yes, things are broken, but I’m not done with you.’

If I was using Ezekiel to show you how much God loves you, which chapter and verse would I quote?

          I’d have to say 34:16.

          “I will seek what was lost and bring back what was driven away, bind up the broken and strengthen what was sick; but I will destroy the fat and the strong, and feed them in judgment.”

          It means God loves you so much that He comes looking for you when life pulls you away. He seeks you when you feel lost, strengthens you when you’re weak, and He never loses track of you or gives up on you. And the verse goes on to show that God doesn’t just comfort you — He defends you. He won’t let anything that harms you go unchecked.

          And I want you to know something else — I really do love you.

I care about your soul.

I want you to be saved, and I want you in heaven with me someday. And I’ll be honest, the thought of you spending eternity separated from God breaks my heart. It brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it. I care about you that much.

Please don’t ever think your sins are too big or too ugly for God to forgive. I’ve committed some very big and ugly sins myself. I’m not going to list them out but trust me — you haven’t out‑sinned me. And if God can forgive me, He can absolutely forgive you. The only thing He won’t forgive is unbelief — turning away from the very One who’s reaching out to save you.

And I know the way the world is going can make you afraid. It feels like everything is out of control and teetering on the edge of war and destruction. But when I look at it through the lens of Scripture, I see it all laid out, not chaos, but the will of God unfolding just like He said it would. And that gives me peace. Because if God is in control of the big picture, then I know He’ll take care of me — and He’ll take care of you, too.

 

With that, we will call this one done.

And remember, you are all in my heart.

Done!