Lego's Lead to Dying?

There are some that have the ability to craft a story from a simple experience and can pull out some eloquent truth, I less often have this ability. I admire it! Tonight I was reading one such person's blog about Lego's and got to thinking . . . about dying.

My grandparents lived their retirement years in Tucson, Arizona. We would go visit them most summers. I always declared that 'people were not meant to live in the desert', deserts are desolate and dead, you have to claw for food from the hard ground and create dams to gain water, crazy!!!

Now, I find myself calling a desert 'home'. All this week the desert has been blowing getting everywhere, blowing in the streets (i even saw a small but strong 'dust devil' a mini tornado), creating a fine dust coat on anything still. A positive is that it has caused a dusty haze over the normally brutal sun. It has been cooler. The desert has been well even desirable, oddly enough.

Then tonight the winds started really blowing and the power flickers. As we stood on the roof tonight marveling at the limited view and the grit in our teeth and eyes, using our tarha (head cover) as a dust mask, I thought about the change that comes with dust and death.

Every time we experience the awesome yet gentle prying that the Lord does in our heart, minds and attitudes, a death happens, but it also brings life. I am reminded that the Lord calls asks even insists that parts of us die, but the good news is He also is in the practice of resurrection. He will bring life in spite of death, maybe not life how we thought, but life that lifts His name higher!

I find this whole haboob season a lot like how we dye to things. It's ugly, scary, unpleasant, painful and usually effects others, it can sometimes even limits our view of life and the future. We travail and weep, we pray and read, we do everything to cling to sanity and Jesus. Then it slowly lifts and we feel dazed and a bit stunned by the change around us, then eventually cleansed, fresh and definitely more in love with Jesus. The Lord brings life to us by our death. An upside down logic that our Savior loves!

This dust that is swirling and gusting outside now seeming even scary will continue through the night. It might even cause some damage. But when it blows through and has poured out more and more sand, it will rain, always it rains. It will rain, it might even thunder and lightning. It might even pour and flood. But oh that rain is a treasure! That rain cleans everything! Absolutely everything cars, cats, dogs, the air, sidewalks, roof tops, clotheslines, railings, streets, and people. Jesus can and will come and wash us afresh and anew like that. Oh the Glory!

This has been a season of dust and grit, pain, even embarrassment, for me personally. But I can with confidence say I am thankful for it. I know that in those seasons change is happening! I am moving along with Jesus, closer to Jesus. We are moving!

Rats Rats Rats

When we got back from Kenya for Holiday we had rats in our flat . . . beyond GROSS! there are two things to bear in mind when thinking about this suybject:

1-I sleep on the floor

2- We live on the second floor

We settle in for the night and my roommate arises for the next day and our friend #1 runs across her foot. These kinds of experences happen off and on for a week. We then go for death . . . at this point we know there is one and he is using our washing machine as a place of refuge. In Sudan death of rats is not usually routine. A fact that baffles me. So we set the trap (that will leave them alive), FWAAAM! Got one in the middle of the night. I arise first and he's caught! I then see his friend a few minutes later. Friend #1 gets death by drownding. Contestant #2 is hiding that day in the washing machine, that night we suit up to get him. Unsure if he has escaped.

He was gone . . . sadly.

A few days later he met the end of his life. We never caught the #3 we saw a few days later . . . but a few days later the "plumber" came and found 5 plugging the sewer to our building. Beyond Gross!

How we got them living on the 2nd floor i don't know, but we were told later they probably crawled up the toilet, gag me! I am not convinved that is possible.

Just another day in Khartoum!