TURNING A CORNER! 9/1/13

THIS WEEK I think I grew up. Did you know I graduated from the twelveth grade 57 years ago? Well, I did! Maybe, not almost every year, but often during that space of time, I was in my senior notebook retrieving something or other, so I could remember something. Jim and I are in the process of switching a small bedroom with our office. It will make a tiny bedroom bigger. As always I have to look through things and low and behold, there was my senior notebook. I couldn’t resist going back in time and flipping through each coveted page.


BACK in the day we carried a notebook and took it to all our classes and would keep in it our notes, graded homework papers, and stuff. In my senior year I only had two classes that required very much from me and they were lovingly kept, and reviewed, one more time. But this time, boy were my eyes opened. That girl many years ago, didn’t have a clue, nor did she know how to write, spell, understand how to punctuate and to follow a train of thought.

THERE WERE a couple of good papers that I had already turned into proper form and had filed elsewhere. I read and reread some of the book reports and short stories and thought; “did my teacher even read these things before giving me a grade. That’s another issue; the grades on these papers were not even consistent. How could he give me a final grade and I graduated. Believe me when I say; “I never noticed just how inept I was and how dumb, at the age of 18!

WELL, I took out the term paper (which was a copy) because my Teacher asked if he could keep the one I turned in. He gave me an A+ smiled at me and said; “good job!” Then I threw away my dirty, written all over the front and back covers with pencil and ink, notebook! All the names of my friends, quotations and etc etc etc are now just a faded memory! Important? Of course! Relevant today? Not really!

AS I THOUGHT about throwing this memory book away, I thought about Paul talking about us babes in Christ being nurtured with milk. Through the years I needed to look back and think of my self as having accomplished much even at a young age, but since I have become mature in stature and mind, I realized I have outgrown the milk. Especially the milk of my youth!

IN HEBREWS Paul talks about being nurtured upon the milk and then the meat. “For every one who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their faculties trained by practice to distinguish good from evil.   ” Hebrews 5:13-14     I have been living on the meat for quite a few years now, and have lost my desire to be called simply Christian. I have become mature in the word enough, that I know, what I know is what keeps me on this road that will ultimately lead me home. I belong to Jesus!

PAUL concludes by saying;    “But I, brethren, could not address you as spiritual men, but as men of the flesh, as babes in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid foods; for you were not ready for it; and even yet you are not ready. For you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving like ordinary men?”   1 Corinthians 3:1-3

FUNNY the things that go through your mind! As I looked through my old notebook for the last time I really didn’t want anyone to peruse it and I knew I never wanted to see again, just how foolish, silly, and immature I was at 18 and besides that, I knew I couldn’t write a lick.

MY SUCCESSES all come through Jesus Christ. I write today only because the Holy Spirit has a hold of me. When I met Jim, we discovered that together we were nothing until Christ laid a firm foundation under our feet. Building upon Him has established within us pleasures beyond our imagination. Don’t think me of being puffed up or that I exaggerate my condition. God has humbled me enough times for me to know the difference. Turn a corner and see if there are any hang ups in your life and ask the Lord to renew a right spirit within you. By Jane Ann Crenshaw 8/31/13