Whistling Badger Blog

Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went off to a solitary place to pray. Mark 1:35 I often get up at first light to go sit in the yard, read my Bible, pray, and watch the sun rise.  Life is wonderful but exhausting, and this "mountain top" time is very important for me to get my head on straight at the start of the day.  Jesus often did the same thing, we're told.  And of course there are all those song writers who come to the garden alone, and who love to live on the mountain top, and who rest them in the thought of birds and trees and skies and seas...so I feel like I'm in pretty good company. Six a.m. finds me fixing myself a cup of tea in the dark kitchen, being very sneaky so as not to wake up my wife and daughter.  The Puppy hears me moving around and asks to go out.  She is not trained to stay in the yard or come when called yet, so I take her out and slip her leash over the garden fencepost. ...

This is not my ditch.  This is a pretty ditch. "...by grace you have been saved, through faith..."  Ephesians 2 Summer has arrived at Casa Wilson, and that means a lot of things:  Naps, long walks, longer runs, play time with the Badgerling, lots of outside work, and occasionally, time to think.  Lately, while drilling screws, cutting firewood, and setting irrigation dams, I have been thinking about grace, faith, and works.  There seems to be a lot of confusion about those things.  But after twelve years or so of growing hay, I don't think it's all that hard. We live in the middle of a big hay field, and every year we have the grass mowed and baled.  We keep a few bales for the garden and the chickens, but we sell most of it.  It's fairly easy money; it feels good to know our land is productive, and there is nothing like the smell of a fresh-cut hay field.  It's the smell of life, the smell of growth, the smell of money. Of cour...