God, the Holy Spirit

 15 “If you love me, obey my commandments. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, who will never leave you. 17 He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth. The world cannot receive him, because it isn’t looking for him and doesn’t recognize him. But you know him, because he lives with you now and later will be in you. 18 No, I will not abandon you as orphans—I will come to you. 19 Soon the world will no longer see me, but you will see me. Since I live, you also will live. 20 When I am raised to life again, you will know that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. 21 Those who accept my commandments and obey them are the ones who love me. And because they love me, my Father will love them. And I will love them and reveal myself to each of them.”

22 Judas (not Judas Iscariot, but the other disciple with that name) said to him, “Lord, why are you going to reveal yourself only to us and not to the world at large?”

23 Jesus replied, “All who love me will do what I say. My Father will love them, and we will come and make our home with each of them. 24 Anyone who doesn’t love me will not obey me. And remember, my words are not my own. What I am telling you is from the Father who sent me. 25 I am telling you these things now while I am still with you. 26 But when the Father sends the Advocate as my representative—that is, the Holy Spirit—he will teach you everything and will remind you of everything I have told you.” (John 14:15-26, New Living Translation)

We’re still studying John chapter 14, and once again, the eleven verses here seem like a lot of words. They are important ones, though, because they talk about the Holy Spirit.

It took me a long time to figure out Who or What the Holy Spirit is. I mean, we can picture God the Father. We see Him as an elderly man dressed in white reigning on high. That’s probably not even close to how He actually is, but at least we can picture Him as Something.

God the Son, Jesus, is even easier. We’ve all seen enough movies and TV shows portraying Jesus as a man with longer dark hair and a beard. We feel we can relate to Him because He’s made out of the same flesh.

But God the Holy Spirit? What does He look like and what does He even do?

"He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth. The world cannot receive him, because it isn’t looking for him and doesn’t recognize him. But you know him, because he lives with you now and later will be in you.”

This is how I think of the three Persons of the Triune God. The Father is above us, the Son walks beside us, and the Holy Spirit dwells within us. I don’t need to have a picture in my head of any of them, because I feel each of their presences, above me, beside me, and within me.

The Grand Canyon Trip

 Journal of Our Journeys

Chapter 18 - Big Hole in the Ground

In June of 1977, we took off for Arizona and the Grand Canyon. This was the first, and well, only trip that I remember Mom asking for my input. All the other years, Pat and I just packed our stuff and jumped in the camper when it was time to go. I am sure they told us where we were going, but I don't remember ever being asked where we wanted to go.

Maybe it was because Pat graduated from high school that spring and wouldn't be going with us on this trip because she had to work. Here is the crazy thing – guess where she worked that summer, as well as the summer before? A campground. Isn't that ironic? Her science teacher, along with his wife, ran a campground just north of town, and he had asked Pat to help out there. After all the camping we had done over the years, you would have to believe that she had at least some of the qualifications required to do the job.  

Whatever the reason, Mom asked me that spring where I wanted to go on vacation. And I came up with the Grand Canyon. So, a week after Pat graduated, we left her home to have her own shenanigans and headed to the southwest.

It was a different trip. It was our first major trip in the new fifth wheel and the first one without Pat. I must admit that I got pretty lonely. Maybe Dad sensed that I would be, and that was why he gave me the task of being the keeper of the camper log. I kept track not only of the towns we stayed in, but also the mileage and the cost of campgrounds and gasoline. I even had a column for comments on the campgrounds.

This trip cost us $269 in gas and $75 in campgrounds. Hmm? In this day and age, you can't get a one-night hotel stay for $75, and on this trip, we were gone for two weeks. Dad kept track of the MPG, and we averaged just under 10 miles per gallon. I suppose that's not bad, towing that 26-foot trailer with the old pickup. I don't think a similar rig 30 years later would do any better.

The Grand Canyon was indeed awesome. It is one of those places that you can't wrap your mind around. It is just so big, immense, kind of like Niagara Falls. Your eyes can only take in so much at one time. The colors are constantly shifting; if you only stopped at one scenic overlook and spent the day there, you would feel as if you had seen several views because the light is always changing.

          On the way home, we drove through the Four Corners area, where the states of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah meet. A 30-mile drive into Colorado is Mesa Verde National Park.

From the year 600 A.D. to 1300, the ancestral Pueblo people lived here. Their homes were often built into the overhangs of the many cliffs in the area. The largest such dwelling, Cliff Palace, has 217 rooms and is estimated to have accommodated 250 residents. As large as Cliff Palace was, it was hard to picture an entire village living there.    

Our next diversion was the Black Hills of South Dakota. As long as it was on the way, we couldn't resist visiting again, even though Crazy Horse still looked the same.

A problem sprang up when we encountered a detour in Lead, South Dakota, and took a wrong turn. We ended up driving up a narrow city street that grew narrower and steeper the further we went. We soon realized that we had to be on the wrong road, especially when the road suddenly ended at a dead end.

Well, Mom was not too happy. Remember the episode with the railroad tracks when we were smelt fishing? Remember that I couldn't recall Mom's reaction clearly? Well, I remember her reaction to this miscalculation, and it wasn't to compliment Dad's navigation. 

It wasn't anyone's fault except for the highway crew, who couldn't accurately mark a detour. Mom had a few words, and Dad just slowly, cautiously turned around. I don't know how he did it; the driveways were all only wide enough for one compact car, and the street wasn't much wider. 

I started feeling that I preferred the pickup camper. I had rarely ridden in the truck's cab, so I never heard any of the arguments between Mom and Dad, and I'm sure there had been others over the years. From the bed above the cab, I would also have had a better view of the turning, although it would have only been half the fun with the much smaller rig.

Of course, thinking about the driving skills Dad employed to park the fifth wheel in the Red Barn, I don't know how I could doubt his ability to navigate it around a dead-end street in Lead, South Dakota.

Integrity – Weepy Wednesday (for a somewhat different reason), episode 8

 

My father-in-law, Lloyd Kincaid, passed away on November 1, 2007, at the age of 82. He served in the United States Army during World War II, from 1943 to 1945. On October 4, 1947, he married Trink, and they had three sons together, the middle one being my hubby. He worked as a meat cutter and later as a cabinet maker.

But what many Wisconsinites remember him for is that, from 1973 to 1990,  he served first in the State Assembly and then in the State Senate. And that he had more integrity than anyone I've ever heard of in politics.

Fairly early on in his career, a bill came up that would adversely affect the people of his district. He represented small rural communities in northern Wisconsin, and this bill was designed to help residents of larger cities at the expense of towns like his.

When his political party learned that he intended to vote against this bill, the party's leaders told him that if he didn't vote for it, they would find someone else in the party to run against him in the next election. They could guarantee that this person would win.

He would have nothing to do with it. He met with the leaders of the other political party, and they told him they would support him. So, he switched parties. (And to be clear, in case you research this and discover which party is which in this story, it doesn't matter. In our current political climate, you are either a Democrat or a Republican for life, and Lloyd would have chosen to switch parties no matter which one he started with.)

The moral of that story is that political parties have wielded this kind of control for decades. Reminds me of the movie "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington". If the television networks weren't already run by one party or the other, they would be playing that movie incessantly right about now.

Maybe if our current leaders in high places had their priorities set on the people they serve, rather than mindlessly following their party, the world would be a better place. Maybe they need to be reminded of that. And maybe in the next election, we need to remember that and vote for the person and their beliefs, rather than the party they are affiliated with. 

LLoyd in the middle standing behind Tommy Thompson

Ask for anything in Jesus’ name

Verses 8 through 14 from the 14^th chapter of the Book of John.

8 Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.”

9 Jesus replied, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and yet you still don’t know who I am? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father! So why are you asking me to show him to you? 10 Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words I speak are not my own, but my Father who lives in me does his work through me. 11 Just believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me. Or at least believe because of the work you have seen me do.

12 “I tell you the truth, anyone who believes in me will do the same works I have done, and even greater works, because I am going to be with the Father. 13 You can ask for anything in my name, and I will do it, so that the Son can bring glory to the Father. 14 Yes, ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it!” (John 14:8-14, New Living Translation)

     For me (and others), the Book of John in the New Testament can be difficult to understand. The apostle often repeats himself to stress what he is getting at, but it makes the text monotonous instead of enlightening. He also uses a lot of symbolism and flowery language. But John also wrote the words his Lord and Savior used.

     That being said, I’d like you to read the above verses again, this time as one of the original disciples hearing Jesus speaking these words for the first time. Listen for His passion and conviction. Just like He wanted all of the people of His time saved, He wants all of us saved as well.

The Fifth Wheel and Big Red

 Journal of Our Journeys

Chapter 17 - The Fifth Wheel

 For years, Dad had been looking at fifth-wheel travel trailers. In the 1970s, they were still a novelty in camping. Also called goose-neck trailers, the style was more commonly used for horse trailers at the time.  

I will never know what Dad's fascination with fifth wheels was. We looked at so many of them over the years that I never really thought that my mom would cave and let him buy one. When we first got the pickup camper, we thought that it was so amazing. You can't even believe how excited we were by the prospect of getting a fifth wheel.

I was excited anyway; by the time Dad really got serious about getting a new, larger camper, Pat was a senior in high school. Her days of camping with the parents were numbered. I would be the lone child to continue the tradition.

After all the dreaming, Dad found someone he knew who was selling their practically new fifth wheel. The couple had bought it a year or two before, and after only one trip, the wife decided that camping was not for her. Obviously, she had never camped in a tent. The fifth wheel was more like a motel room on wheels.

So, camping in the fifth wheel really wasn't like camping. Besides the private bedroom over the bed of the truck for Mom and Dad, this thing had a full bathroom with a shower. The refrigerator was practically as large as the one we had at home, and the kitchen even had an oven. We didn't do much baking in it, though, using it mostly for storage.

Several weeks after returning from one trip with the fifth wheel, Mom was looking for one of her cake pans. It dawned on her that she had left it safely in the oven in the trailer. Ever the helpful daughter, I scampered out to the camper to retrieve it.

Well, not only had Mom forgotten the cake pan in the oven, but she had forgotten that there was still rhubarb cake in it. Ooh, it had gotten all moldy. Not only was it moldy, but the acid from the rhubarb had actually eaten holes in the metal cake pan.

This next part I will never be able to describe accurately; you would have to actually see it to picture it. When we had the pickup camper, Dad always parked it in the sixteen-foot-wide spot between the garage and the house. The area wasn't long enough for the fifth wheel, so for the first year, Dad parked it next to the garden in front of the house.

It soon became apparent that that was not going to work. When he retired, Dad had built a large pole barn behind the house and the garage. The mastery came when Dad backed the fifth wheel between the house and the garage and then angled it into the red barn.

(See the red barn in the back and that narrow space between the garage and the house? Yikes, is all can say.)

The best part was the clothesline poles along that route. People who had never been to the house could not fathom how he could not only back the trailer between the buildings but also navigate it past the clothesline poles, which were directly in his path. Little did they know that the poles easily pulled out of sleeves buried in the ground.  

The year after buying the fifth wheel, Mom and Dad decided they needed a new truck to pull it. The teal pickup that had come with the original camper had been replaced years earlier with a forest-green Chevy. Now, it was time to replace that one.

Mom and Dad went to Wausau and ordered the new pickup from the Ford dealer downtown. I even got to go with them, though my input was not taken into consideration. They picked out a bright orange truck to match the orange strip running down the side of the fifth wheel. The new truck also had an extended cab, so that there was room for someone to sit in the back seat. That was usually me, as the dog sat in the front seat between Mom and Dad.

Remember, this was 1976, when few pickup trucks had an extended cab, and hardly any had four doors.

(The AMC Matador was one of the ugliset cars built.)

        We named the new truck Big Red, and believe it or not, it is the vehicle I learned to drive on. Sure, I practiced on Mom's white AMC Matador and used it when I took my driver's test. But I drove Big Red as much as the car. Dad even would occasionally let me drive it while pulling the fifth wheel, only on back roads, though, at a slow speed, such as our road, which was fraught with ninety-degree turns.  

Other Aunts and Uncles - Weepy Wednesday, episode 7

On this depressing series of the deaths of loved ones, today I planned on revisiting the night my mom died. But yesterday, Hubby and I went to the funeral of one of his aunts; the funeral for another one of his mom’s sisters had been exactly two months ago.

Naturally, I wasn’t as close to either of these aunts as I was to my own, but they were still sweet ladies who lived full lives and loved their families.

And their numbers are dwindling. I believe that my generation of relatives – me, my husband, his brothers and sisters-in-law, and cousins – are the ones who soon will be all who are left to carry on.

We’ve had quite a few picnics at our house with these relatives, so that’s where the pictures are from. 

 2014 - Susie, Lois, Louise, cousin John, mother-in-law Trink, Joyce, Bill and Gerald (5 are gone)

2018 - Bill, his wife Pat, Joyce, Lois, her husband Larry, Suzie, Louise, and Trink (3 are gone)

2021 - Linda, Lois, Louise, Suzie, and Joyce (2 are gone)

Anyone from his family interested in coming for another picnic this summer?

Jesus is the Way, the Truth, the Light

         I’d still been having a hard time coming up with a theme for my blog posts during Lent this year. The only thing that kept running through my head was, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” from the book of John, chapter 14.

         So, I thought, what else does that chapter say? And is it all worthwhile to share?

"Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me. 2 There is more than enough room in my Father’s home. If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? 3 When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am. 4 And you know the way to where I am going.”

5 “No, we don’t know, Lord,” Thomas said. “We have no idea where you are going, so how can we know the way?”

6 Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. 7 If you had really known me, you would know who my Father is. From now on, you do know him and have seen him!” (John 14:1-7, New Living Translation)