Dear God

Once again I find myself worrying about the future – what will it bring? How can I know that everything will be alright? Why do I have to keep searching for answers?

Even as I ask these questions, I know that I already know the answers.

Matthew 6:25-34 states: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

The passage couldn’t be more specific – it covers every worry I have.  My favorite part is the last two sentences because they are so true – each day does have enough trouble so why borrow trouble from tomorrow?

Hebrews 13:5 assures us that God will never desert or forsake us and in Romans 8:35-39 Paul tells us that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.  So how can I be sure everything is going to be alright? Easy, if God is for us, who is against us? Romans 8:31.   Plus Philippians 4:19 says “And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.”

1 Corinthians 13:11-12 says “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.  Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”

Growing in God is like that – we start out with the foundation of accepting Jesus in our lives and then spend the rest of our lives building upon it.  We ask some of the same questions over and over as we continue to grow.  The answers to the questions mature with us in that God reveals treasures of wisdom in the Bible the more we study.

I am reading a “Life Principles Notes” from Charles Stanley in which he expounds four foundational truths that we can reflect on when problems pester us:

• God controls our circumstances
• God will meet our needs
• God is always with us
• God loves us with an eternal love

I put “needs” in bold because some of us have a terrible time distinguishing between “needs” and “wants or desires.”  I’m not pointing any fingers – I’m that way too.

If anyone is interested in Charles Stanley’s insights, you can find his website at http://www.intouch.org

Beef & Broccoli

Ordered Beef & Broccoli from the Egg Roll House on my way to work.  I had never eaten it until I lived in Sarasota – we ordered Chinese so often I had to try different dishes and this ended up being one of my favorites.

Now, overall, I would say Iowa has ten times better Chinese food than Florida.  For instance (and a pet peeve of mine), Iowa always includes veggies in with the Sweet & Sour Chicken where Florida doesn’t – it is just lumps of chicken in sweet sauce.

Unfortunately, I am unhappy with the B&B I got from the Egg Roll House tonight.  It is so greasy that I can’t even taste the food.  If it doesn’t send me running for the bathroom in a couple hours, I’ll be amazed.  Florida also puts nuts in their B&B which I like – but they also include mushrooms which I hate.

I can pretty much guarantee I will never order this again from ERH.  Now, I have had it in WL at my sisters and it was delicious so think it must be ERH’s recipe or something.  Whatever the case, I was so looking forward to eating it tonight and couldn’t finish what I put on the plate.  Now I have a little carton still half full of the stuff that will probably go in the garbage can.  There is so much grease in it that the carton is stained on the outside from it.

Hooray for Kenya

Was reading an article about Kimani, a large bull elephant who lives in the Ol Pejeta conservancy.  It seems villages around the conservancy were being raided by rogue elephants who crossed over the conservancy fence line.  In one night, a single elephant could destroy six months worth of crops, leaving the farmer financially strapped.

Kenya Wildlife Service had reluctantly killed 5 of the rogues in the past two years.  Kimani was the last marauder and was headed for the same fate until the group Save the elephants stepped in.

They put a mobile phone SIM card in the elephants collar and set up a virtual “geofence” around the conversary with a global positioning satellite.  Now whenever Kimani approaches the fence with thoughts of plundering crops, a text message is sent directly to the Game Warden who goes out to gently explain to him the conversary’s boundaries.  They do this by shining lights mounted on their jeeps at the elephant.

They have intercepted Kimani 15 times since the project began, leaving the villages elephant free for the past four months.

Kenya is the first country to try elephant texting as a way to protect both a growing human population and the wild animals that now have less room to roam.  Elephants learn from one another thus Kimani is inadvertently training the other elephants to stay away from the villages.

The experiment has been so successful that another virtual fence was set up for an elephant named Mountain Bull in another part of the country.  The draw back of the program is that the chip wears out after two years and must be replaced with a new one.

Hooray for Kenya for valuing their wildlife and implementing a way to prevent Kimani’s death.  If it works on their elephants, I think the US should consider using it for their problem wildlife.  Not only does it warn officials when an animal is about to wander into a populated area, the officials can also track the animal in the wild using the Google Earth software.

I’m not suggesting all animals be tagged – that would be too expensive.  However, rather than killing those who cross over into human areas (though they use to be animal areas so ideally they should have the right) causing panic and chaos, they could tag the animal with the phone card before dropping it back into it’s wilderness (that keeps shrinking) home.  If it comes down to tagging or killing – I’d rather tag.

Kudos Kenya – though you are such a poor country, you find the resources to save your greatest treasures, your wildlife!  Makes me all warm and fuzzy inside. 

Whew!

It is 4:30 am here and finally the town has gone to bed.  Outside the streets are deserted…heavily trashed, but deserted.  Some nights it seems like the ground opens up and swallows all the people because it goes from horribly packed to isolated in minutes.  Tonight was like that.

I can hear all the police departments heaving a huge sigh of relief as they tuck in their ambulances and fire trucks and let their officers take a break.  No more assaults to go to where usually the victim refused medical treatment anyway.  The fight has gone out of people for another night.  All the intoxicated students made it home safely – or made it somewhere safely since sometimes they don’t know where they live.  No more finding bodies tucked in door wells or in the bushes – those have to go to UIHC because they are too intoxicated to move.

You would think that, because the Hawkeyes won today, people wouldn’t feel the need to bash each others heads in but that was not the case.  There were so many fights and injuries tonight – Johnson County actually ran out of ambulances.  We had to back City on a few cases and Johnson County deputies on one because they ran out of officers to respond to cases.

We were short an officer already so that stretched us mighty thin but we managed.  Hard to believe that in 90 minutes the town will be stirring to life again – it never sleeps long.

So Much For That

So much for that wish that we’d be slow and not have a lot of problems tonight.  We have been slammed.  It will probably take me 3 hours to write this one post because it is so busy I can hardly get a sentence finished before someone needs something again.

It seriously amazes me how drunk people think being belligerent and uncooperative somehow helps their case.  I know, they are drunk but you would think they’d have some clue.  Guess I’ve never been so drunk that I had a total leave of my senses.  I’ve been so drunk I passed out once but that must not have been drunk enough.  Maybe I’m a happy drunk.

I am trying to get the stuff rounded up for my conference in Des Moines a week from Tuesday.  Have stuff I’m suppose to take plus I’m running mapquest to make sure I know where I’m going at all times.  I’m actually getting a little excited about it.  I am suppose to wear “business casual”…no jeans, tank tops or flip flop shoes.  Anyone have a clue what is considered business casual? I have some Lee cotton pants but one pair is blue…wonder if they consider that jeans? Will have to think about that more.