10.11.09 MAY YOU LIVE FOREVER!

there's so much i want to share with you! alas i only have 1 hour and 55 minutes in which to do so. so, here goes..Lord, guide my thots.

even though i am a wicked saint yet You keep pouring out Your love on me. i am SO BLESSED! help me love you Lord.

first want to share a song by chris rice called 'thirsty'. it describes me, in spirit, exactly as far as desire goes. my prayer it will describe what i do/be not only what i desire to do/be.
i'm so thirsty, i can feel it
burnin' thru the furthest corners of my soul
deep desire, can't describe this
nameless urge that drives me somewhere
though i don't know where to go.

seems i've heard about a river from someone who's been
and they tell me once you reach it, oh you'll never thirst again
so i have to find the river. somehow my life depends on the river.

holy river, i'm so thirsty
other waters i've been drinkin'
but they always leave me empty like before
satisfaction - all i'm askin'
could i really be this thirsty if ther weren't something more?

I'M ON THE SHORE NOW (this is how i feel increasingly) of the wildest river
and i kneel and beg for mercy from the skiess
but no one answers -gotta take my chances
'cause somethin' deep inside me's cryin'
'THIS IS WHY YOU ARE ALIVE'

so i plunge into the river with all that i am
prayin' this will be the river where i'll never thirst again
I'M ABANDONED TO THE RIVER (this is where i want to LIVE!)
and now my life depends on the river
holy river
i'm so thirsty.

yesterday i came in here to try to get a spanish grammer (failed) and get a head start writing to you (failed). it's too long to explain what happened but approximately an hour of typing was lost. precious Jesus! ever since allentown, precious Jesus!, my heavenly father has been tightening the chain on me. oh how FURIOUSLY, HATEFULLY my flesh rages against Him. but the spirit knows instinctively that every painful lash He gives is exactly right. i huffed out of here yesterday ready, in flesh, to go into full scale rebellion and just DO WHAT I WANT! i got home and God worked it that scott was there working on the porch and the Lord kept me working until 9:30 pm, under the lights finishing up the priming of all the bare wood stuff scott had installed. by then He had gotten me over the worst of my rage and pout and He put me to bed pretty much without much rebellion, except for a bit of cursed bedtime gluttony... and we blame God for bad health without a thot about all our destructive habits!

all the pillars are installed and primed. who knows but shirley's porch (and mine!) may somehow be miraculously finished this fall. that would, weatherwise and otherwise (i need to work, is my thot anyway, for i am still 300+ hours short of the 1040 hrs for 09) , be a notable miracle. tomorrow i will finally get more sanding implements for the grinder and be able to keep plodding thru what seems another impossiblity..but at the same time i am sensing a strong need to try and get the water drain off from the house replaced and made free flowing (another miracle). i finish my last job tomorrow dv and so hope to start digging up and exposing the water system. Lord help me to trust You.

last week i came within a whisker of quitting like i always have done when i face doing things i don't want to do. instead i slogged thru mud up to my neck logging 9.5 hr work and about 20 at home. it is ugly-wretched Lord but thank You for that small victory.

the most urgent of many prayers lately are against gluttony, how to relate at mision evangelica, the-intense-desire-cum-action toward/to leave all my possessions behind and follow Jesus, lips that pour forth the goodness of God, EVERY DAY meditate on/thru 100 verses, satan be put to utter flight in bill's marriage now heading for divorce..reconciliation in Christ...Lord help me/us....

may have lost another friend. joan has been extremely friendly for a long time now. she does dangerous things like giving me her address and phone number on a piece of writing she did, dating a guy she is a total stranger to and then having to fight him off and things like that. in order to create a bit of distance i moved from the role of 'friend' to that of 'father figure' when she started to do some crazy things. she doesn't know Jesus and is certifiably 'boy crazy', a dangerous combination that leads millions of women, desperate to escape aloneness at all costs, to lives of unending misery. so i've been doing my little part. my message: YOU DON'T NEED A MAN, YOU NEED JESUS!!!!!!!! i've been encouraging her to read the gospel of john which she has no interest in. last week i gave her my first written message. it said, 'Jesus says, come to Me all you who labor and are heavy laden and i will give you rest. take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart and you shall have rest for your souls. for My yoke is easy and My burden is light.' she's fading fast. Jesus, rescue joan from spiralling down into unrelenting anger and bitterness toward men because she 'can't get one'.

me llamo es pebapadoodle froda pagan. translated 'my name is ...' paine, my surname, comes from 'pagan'. (this i found in some geneological writing on the family name) paganus is christian latin for a countryman, villager, rustic, civilian, non-militant as opposed to mIlEs (long vowels capped) for soldier, on of the army or heathen as opposed to christian or jewish. (tertullian, augustine) the christians called themselves mIletEs 'enrolled soldiers' of Christ, members of His militant church, and applied to non-christians the term applied by soldiers to all who were 'not enrolled in the army'. it is thot that outlying areas still had lingering ancient idolatry after christianity had been accepted in the roman empire. the etymology of the surname fits well for i am a wretched sinner, i am a pagan with all that is within me...and would totally abandon Christ and His church were it not for the mystery i experience of Christ dwelling within...the hope of glory.

frodo is the hobbit in tolkien's lord of the rings who by an action was God's instrument to bring great good and blessing to the world. this took the supreme effort of destroying what 'protected' him from danger...and he had to do it himself without any help from another. unnoticed and quietly living beneath the earth at bagend in the community of hobbits inhabiting the shire he went straight into the jaws of hell to accomplish the mission and returned a changed man. the surname is where i'm coming from, the middle name a dream, a vision of where i am going? as soon as i read, i sensed deeply that this was a calling of sorts. if it ever issues out and how it issues out remain in doubt.

when i was made a grandfather against my will (no one consulted me, at least) my thot was, ' i'll be ready for that in 30 to 40 years (the plan was, and still is, to sneak out of here early by God's grace... and thus escape) but You do say, in the vein of it being a blessing, '...yea, thou shalt see thy children's children and peace upon israel.' so i best not argue. but anyway they started asking me what i wanted to be called. i didn't have a clue. no name i had ever heard appealed to me. so they started calling me different names in the presence of the child but i, like zacharias, was dumb. then on the occasion of silas' first birthday party, while making his gift of three building blocks and ready to sign the last block, the muse came upon me and i knew my name was to be pepapadoodle...a little etymology. yankee doodle, a ditty song of at least 190 verses, was written by a british army surgeon, dr. richard schuckburg, during the 1750's. the occasion was the french and indian war when the american troops from new england joined the british general braddock in preparation for war. they were a motley crew in buckskins and furs and presented quite a contrast to the spit and polish of the british. it was a mock song. but with so many mocks in life, they can sometimes turn unexpectedly to mock the mocker. some 20 years later yankee doodle was played by the americans when the british surrendered at cornwallis ending the american revolution. my flesh has joined AND AIDED the world and the devil in laying my life waste. i am truly a fool and a miserable failure taken by any measurement...but God may have a last word...

the etymology of the first syllable pe is from pee of low and unnameable origin...at least in public. 'wee' is a cognate. truly, 'he who exalts himself will be humbled' is very descriptive of my experience.

finally bapa, the center, reveals the heart of the grandfather for the bairnie(s?). abba is the aramaic, i believe, word for God and is used in the new testament to describe the believer-to-God-the-Father relationship. abba is inscribed indelibly on our hearts as we relate to God. ba was gandhi's name in his older years and also used by my favorite uncle, hugh in the same time frame...but, after all this vain verbiage...really...what's in an earthly name. i wait for the new name God will give ..'to him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna and ill give him a white stone and in the stone a new name written which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it' (rev . 2.17).

have a good week! love, dad