Living Hazzardously

Little pieces of our journey with Jesus

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Chickens and pigs and eggs, ohh my.

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I have spent a considerable amount of time and money learning how to “farm” and still today I am learning just as much each and every day.

I remember watching the Matrix, and today I feel like I am living in that Matrix, as just another copper top battery feeding the immense culture that is willing to drain every once of my very being to stay alive… With no regard to me as an individual. So, I farm! I raise my pigs, pay for things like installing water for winter, paying for bags of feed, fencing, waking up early to care for a sick pig, staying up late to care for that same pig that isn’t able to get up. 

Why do I farm? Why do I go to work? Why do I care about SamsPlace? Well, it’s complicated yet surprisingly simple. I see my pigs grow, I see my chickens grow, I collect the morning breakfast from the laying boxes and crack the eggs into my fry pan and feed my family with the food I have invested in. I know what my pigs eat, I know where my eggs are laid, I know what My family is eating. 

Did you know that when you go to the store and by a pork roast that pig most likely grew up in a small concrete bunker? Next to hundreds of other concrete bunkers? In some far away land, most likely overseas? My pigs are in the woods, playing, eating, sleeping… living a great life… HAPPY!

Did you know that the eggs you buy at the store are likely bleached, sanded and washed? Did you know it’s not normal or natural to have 10 pound chicken breasts? Frozen after a diet of salt water to increase the weight of the chicken just before slaughter? I challenge you to go buy that pterodactyl looking chicken breast and drain the extra water out before you cook it, then cook it and see how much water is still trapped in it.

Please don’t get me wrong, I too was the box store shopper that bought the monster sized bag of “flash frozen for freshness” chicken breasts. I would bring them home and cook them up… then we moved “up-north” and we tried to raise chickens for eggs because it’s what you do on a farm… little did I realize that it would lead me to this new chapter of farming pigs, chickens, eggs and garden produce, with ZERO REGRETS!

Im sitting here writing and listening to the wind howl outside like we seldom ever hear, today I was planning a ride, perhaps my last chance to ride but the wind today is not going to subside, and a cross wind on a two lane county road is not the most favorable conditions, so I will just drive a car, or my truck. 

Jess is out west waiting for the new grand baby to show up, I am staying back to run the farm, the business and hoping to get some time at Sam’s Place as well. I am staying very busy, otherwise I would be going crazy with this solitude… My three big pups are very helpful in distracting me from this hollow shell of a life being separated from my dearest and best friend, Jess, we really are a perfect fit for each other and we work well together. 

Anyway, it’s windy and not too cold.  I covered the squash a couple days ago for the freeze warning but I pretty much know what to expect I will find with this crazy fall wind. 

Today I leave you with this thought.. Shop smart because “organic” doesn’t mean healthier, “flash frozen” doesn’t mean fresher, “free range” doesn’t mean better… These are simply marketing tools to charge more to the consumer for things the consumer has decided to spend more money on… “free range” doesn’t mean they walk around and “cage free” doesn’t mean they are living better. Egg shells can be colored, sanded, and washed in bleach, yolks can be “darker” colored and more tasty because of the feed, if all your eggs are identical… well you should wonder why first, I have yet to see a perfectly clean egg, much less one with perfect color, no bumps, no marks… farm fresh eggs, like pork chops and meat chickens don’t actually look exactly the same. In closing, after I have lived in both worlds, buying my food and growing my food, I prefer growing.

Remember, I am a CITY BOY turned country… Born on the south side, raised on the north side and never leaving the country side… ask yourself why, ask yourself… what is it that he has found in the sticks to bring true joy, to a city boy. 

God bless you and yours in this crazy election cycle and don’t forget, things really have gotten worse over the last few years.  I have met absolutely not one person that says things are better. We should consider our votes this year as a valuable gift to the future generations. 

Charlie

Completed in the future

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Have you ever given time travel any thought? What would it be like to travel in time forward to see what’s already done… coming back from the future and knowing who is president? Knowing how long it will take for that Amazon package to actually arrive? Or maybe knowing what investments will pay out so your retirement is actually able to sustain a comfortable lifestyle into your 90’s? 

Yesterday at our family devotional (our kids zoom a bible study every saturday morning from around the world, just to stay connected) we read in Micah a verse about “going out before them” (2:13) and Spurgon got into his devotion about how God has already beaten your enemy, beaten death for us, we have nothing to fear because God has already accomplished victory for us, we do not need to “fight” as he has already done the fighting…..

What confidence should we have? The creator of the universe has already beaten every foe of ours! HE has won the battles, HE has beaten the enemy, everything that can defeat us has already been neutralized before we even arrive. Every war, Every conflict, Every “thing” is done already in the future… but why do I struggle and always feel like I am losing the battle? Why did my son die if the enemy is beaten, in the future? 

What do we say? What do we know? What is the answer to the question… If God is good, truly good, then why is there evil? Is it because God is not all powerful?… If an all powerful God is not good, that would explain evil… OR… If a good God is not all powerful, that also could account for evil… but an all GOOD? all POWERFUL? God? How can evil be in the world?

Imagine assigning our human limits to God, he would be our creation rather than our creator… would our creation stop all evil? Would evil simply vanish? Would our ability to do wrong suddenly disappear? Would we only be able to make perfect choices? Never sinning? 

Evil entered a perfect creation because we wanted to be “equals” yet we cant be equals, God loves us but he also wants a relationship with us… he could have made us to be little toy solders, doing only what we are programmed to do, can a computer sin? Of coarse not, a computer can only do that which its creator has programmed it to do. Humans are a bit different, we can choose to serve God, we can be in relationship with God. Does any sane person believe that a computer can replace a real relationship? No, no sane person would believe that.

There is a verse in the bible about how man makes his own God, he sits down after cutting a tree, cooking his food with that wood he cut and then taking a spare chunk of wood that is left after cooking and carving a God, well actually he carves a god, not God. Does this fool believe this god is greater than the one who carved it? Does this fool really believe this is a god? Does this fool believe this chunk of wood is somehow formed into an image that is greater than the one who carved it?

Every step of the way in creating “Sam’s Place” we see God blessing us, we don’t see us making this building into a god, we see God’s blessing in this endeavor.

It’s not until we truly surrender our will to God that we can see God in our life, until we step aside and let God lead us, we can’t see how the creator has already won our battles. 

God did not time travel to win our battles, he rather created time so we can see how he has already done great things before the time has come. We can not see this because we are in time, God is outside time, God is so much bigger than our battles, so much so that we can not fully understand the greatness of God.

Speaking of time travel, Its time for me to travel to church now, With great love and admiration I leave you with this:

Do you know God or do you know a god?

Does God know you, or does God know of you?

Charlie

Caution! Doors and wind and cussing ahead.

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As we round the corner of this journey, we see a bit of light… is it the light at the end of the tunnel or is it the headlamp of a locomotive? Jess and I have no doubt this work is manifesting in the culmination of God’s good calling on our life. Even when we get hit, we rebound and things work out just fine. 

Last week we pulled the old door out and found a hole where we needed some bagged concrete in the threshold, so we cleaned it out, formed it up and poured it full. NO PROBLEM! Then a fast moving weather front came into town and we needed to cover the masterpiece of bagged concrete that my puppies decided was the only place to “plant the paws” as they blew past the yellow ribbon blocking any reasonable person from crossing… dogs are not human, they don’t even read… “Caution” 

As the weather front started to roll into town I made the quick decision to cover the concrete with plastic to protect it from the impending rain that would surely transition the fresh concrete into a slurry of gravel. 

BUT! The wind hit with no warning and hit so hard and so unpredictably.. I heard the crash, felt the floor shake and turned quickly to see the brand new door that we had leaned into the corner of the entry, laying in a manner that was so unnatural… I instantly recognized the structure surrounding now looked like a bone protruding from a compound fracture… I proclaimed “SHOOT” but it wasn’t the word shoot that flew out of my mouth… The next day I spent a few hours putting humpty back together… you can still see the scar, but it’s fixed, and perhaps it is stronger than the original? 

We waited another day before moving the new door into position, just to give the repair time to cure. The installation went well the next day and I was so grateful for the help I had as we guided the door into its final resting place. 

As I reflected on how quickly my colorful expletive slipped out of my mouth, I remembered where I came from and how my father would have screamed and cussed for hours after something like that. I remembered how he would have thrown tools, smashed anything in his reach, “spanked me” for not preventing this tragedy… Stuff would fly and cussing was normal. The wake of terror I experienced whenever my father was around created more havoc and destruction in my life than I could have imagined and it haunts me still to this day… I remembered I learning how my grandfather would have likely beat my father in this same situation… Looking back and realizing I may have thrown out a cuss word, without restraint, but my legacy, like my father before me, was coming from a long line of abuse. I should just thank God we have come so far from where my grand-father was to where my sons are… Legacy is all I can leave behind for my future family.!  I know I will never even meet many of my future family members but as My father never met my sons and I never met my grandfather, I can still honor them with my legacy… I Pray this trend upwards will continue for many generations. 

I am hoping to start painting no later than Wednesday. God willing, I will have help. But early this coming week, I have to focus on a few items for work. I wish I could just go and paint, but I do have other obligations. So like Nehemiah, we will continue to work on the things I am called to do and praise God for all the help we are getting.