In Similitude of Covenants

The Lord led the Children of Israel out of Egypt. Once they crossed the Red Sea (near the north end of what is now known as the Gulf of Suez) and were on the Sinai Peninsula, instead of turning northeast to go directly to the Land of Canaan, the land that had been promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Israel for an inheritance, the Lord led them southeast, taking them down the west side of the peninsula and bringing them finally to Mt Sinai, or Horeb, a distance of about 340 miles. This was the same mountain where Moses had seen the burning bush and received his call from the Lord to deliver Israel out of Egypt earlier in the same year.

On the trip to Sinai, the Children of Israel had witnessed and been sustained by several faith promoting occurrences. Miraculous things continued at Horeb, including receiving instructions on building a tabernacle (a precursor to the temple they would eventually build in Jerusalem) and several items that were to be kept in the tabernacle. After giving instructions on building the tabernacle itself, the first artifact the Lord instructed Israel to prepare, to be kept in the tabernacle, was the Ark of the Covenant (Numbers 10:33), also known as the Ark of the Testimony (Exodus 25:22).

The Ark continued with Israel for almost 900 years, with one brief interruption in about 1070 BC when the Philistines took it during a battle with Israel but returned it later the same year. In about 586 BC, the Ark passed out of Israel's hands again when Israel was conquered by Babylon. Although there are several theories as to the Ark's current location, the two most credible place it at sites considered sacred and therefore not available for archeological exploration.

We are told that many things in the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament, are types, symbols, or similitudes of Christ (2 Nephi 11:4, Mosiah 3:15). As suggested by its name, it seems to me that the Ark of the Covenant has its symbols as well. One of those is it being symbolic of the covenants we make with Christ.

The Ark was a chest of acacia or shittim wood, which is a beautiful wood.

Acacia trees are native to tropical and subtropical regions of the world, including the Middle East. It is a beautiful wood.

The wood of the Ark was overlaid with gold, 2½ cubits long, 1½ cubits broad and 1½ cubits deep. As the Lord described the manner in which the Ark was to be constructed, using the finest of materials, this seems symbolic of the nature of covenants; we are to give our finest efforts in making and keeping our covenants. They are not something to be entered into lightly, or treated lightly once made.

The handling of the Ark by Israel was a serious matter. Prayers were recited before it moved or rested (Num. 10:35–36), and during its progress it was treated with the greatest reverence. The Lord had said the Israelites were not to touch the Ark (Numbers 4:15), hence there were rings installed at the corners so that poles could be inserted and used to transport the Ark without actually touching it. There is the story of Uzziah being smitten for touching the Ark as the oxen pulling the cart it rested on stumbled (1 Chronicles 13:9-10). Likewise, our covenants are to be treated with great reverence and care.

When the Lord gave Moses the instructions on the Ark of the Covenant, He spoke of the purpose of the Ark and its role in their relationship with God. The Ark of the Covenant, or Ark of the Testimony, was the resting place of the scriptures, or record of the Word of God (Exodus 26:34, footnote b, Deuteronomy 31:26), which were kept inside the Ark, under the Mercy Seat. It is at the Mercy Seat that the Lord said He would meet us and commune with us (Exodus 25:22). This seems, to me, to be symbolic of the scriptures as a source of revelation

Israel was instructed to place the Ark within the temple, behind the veil (Exodus 26:33), which, to me, is symbolic of the sacred nature of covenants, not secret but not out on display for general view. Placing the Ark within the Holy of Holies seems akin to the additional level of preparation and worthiness required to enter the temple, a privilege reserved for those willing to make additional effort and give extra attention to qualify to enter the temple.

Another symbol the Ark represents is deliverance. After Joshua had been called to lead the Israelites they again came to a body of water that was separating them from the Land of Promise. This time it was the River Jordan. As the priests who were bearing the Ark stepped into the water, the water parted, allowing Israel to pass through on dry ground (Joshua 3:15-17). By bearing the Ark in the manner the Lord instructed, Israel was at last enabled to enter the Promised Land and possess it. Likewise, our covenants, kept as the Lord requires, will deliver us into all that the Lord has promised. 

I liked the similitude between the Ark of the Covenant and the covenants we make with the Lord. Keeping those covenants will result in some blessings, many of which are incomprehensible to me. But one of them I can understand, an eternal family. And so to help me remember the role covenants play in being able to have my family forever, I got something to remind me. Something made of acacia wood, like the Ark of the Covenant.

When John the Beloved was on the Isle of Patmos, he saw into heaven.  One of the things he saw there was the Ark of the Covenant (Revelations 11:19), resting in the temple. The message of John’s revelation is one of deliverance, of triumph, the victory of Christ. Our covenants, faithfully kept, will, by the grace of Christ, enable us to participate in that victory, and thereby I can keep my family into eternity.

Another Try

I've been reading in the news, the last little while, about a comet from the outer reaches of our solar system that is making the rounds around our sun right now.  So far out it would take it 80,000 years to make the trip.  That's a long ways.  It was discovered last January and the guy who discovered it was able to have it named after him, a guy named Greg Leonard.  Its technical name is C/2021 A1 but its short name is the Leonard Comet. It is the biggest, brightest comet of the year and, because it is supposed to be visible right now, sometimes gets called the Christmas comet.  When I first started reading of it I got the impression that it would be bright enough to be visible with the unaided eye, but, as part of an attempt to see it, saw that there have been no reports so far of anyone seeing it without some kind of magnification.  Although binoculars have been enough for a lot of people.

But it was worth a try.  So tonight we went out north of town, which is relatively free of light pollution, and gave it a shot.  The time it's visible, in our area, is short; it has to be dark enough for it to show up but before it dips below the horizon. While we never saw the comet, we got to watch a very nice sunset.  This is Venus, in the southwest sky.  The comet was supposed to be slightly below and to the left a little of Venus.  It felt a little bit like when I was trying to catch a glimpse of the Humanity Star a few years ago.  

Maybe we just didn't stay out long enough. After all, it should be visible up until just before Venus slips below the horizon. Maybe we'll try again in a couple of days and stay out until Venus goes out of sight.  Still, it was a fun evening, a nice time with Brombeere, out in the dark countryside, watching the sun set.  The comet is supposed to be visible for the rest of the year as it makes its way toward the sun.  It is not expected to survive the trip around the sun so it may or may not be back in a few months.  It's already getting dimmer and some experts think that may be because it's already starting to break up. In any case, it's expected to get ejected form its orbit around our sun and get hurled out of the solar system, never to return, if it survives that long.  But it's getting lots of attention right now.

A Tough Repair

Several years ago, not long after we moved into this house, Brombeere was out doing the local yard sales and came across a rocking cow.  That's right, not the usual rocking horse, but a rocking cow.

That was a pretty unique find so, of course, she bought it and brought it home.  It has been loved by our grandkids ever since.  Even when it wasn't getting ridden, it was always near by, always ready for a ride.

It's a fine, sturdy little rocking cow; colorful, well built, and solid.  Very creative.

Perfect in every way except for one thing: it was missing an ear.  Over the years we have searched and searched for a replacement ear.  That's not something you can just run down to the hardware store and pick up, but each time we found a friend with woodworking skills, we'd asked about getting a replacement ear made.  Unfortunately, in all the years we've been looking we were unable to find anyone willing to tackle it.  It's a unique shape and basically needed to be hand-made.

Then one day Maulbeere's husband was over visiting with her, saw it, and volunteered to give it a shot. That was amazing!  He took the remaining ear off and took it home with them.  Then, several days later, they were back with a new ear!  We knew he dabbled in woodworking, but had no idea he was up to this kind of work.

So he brought it back and put on an initial coat of stain.  There was some interesting help with that (a very interested young man), but he kept things under control quite nicely.

Once he had it stained and it had dried, he took it downstairs, along with the original ear, which he had used as a model, and put them both on the cow.

Now the little rocking cow was whole again!  We talked with him about doing some additional staining on the ear, it's not quite a good match.  But the hard part is done, the ear is made and on!

Brombeere is a happy grandma again!  The real test will be when a grandkid climbs on and takes the cow for a ride; the ears double for the handles to hang on with.  But we're halfway there, the ear is made and attached!  All is well in the world again!

Welcome Back!

For Christmas of 2012 we had an addition to our family, a wonderful pig!  Fisher Hobbs came to join our family!  A talented, meteorological pig, Mr. Hobbs was useful as well as decorative.  Unfortunately, the weather he was so good at reporting was also rather hard on him.  After only a year outside decorating the yard and reporting the weather, his finish was really showing some wear.  So when fall came around, in order to protect his finish, he went in the basement so it wouldn't get any worse.  That was quite the effort; he is made of cement, you will recall.  So, because he was so heavy, it got really easy to just leave him down there; hauling that little pig up those stairs was quite the effort.  The little porker is roughly 17" x 13" x 8" but in that compact shape he weighs 62 pounds.  Actually, I was surprised that was all.  It felt like more than that to me.  But the scale said only 62 pounds.  I'm not sure what kind of paint Erdbeere used when she first painted him but he was looking pretty sad when we brought him in.    

 Definitely showing some wear.   

But a close inspection showed it was just peeling and flaking paint, not damage to the cement.  So, after all these years, I decided it was time to spruce him up and get him back outside.  Ugh.  That meant getting serious about getting him back up those stairs.  Unfortunately, our summer last year ended up a little crazy and the oinker never made it up the stairs that year.  Had to wait until the next summer, this summer.

The first step was hauling the 62 pound porker back up the stairs.

It was actually Brombeere who brought Mr. Hobbs back up the stairs.  We had been talking about it one morning and then she suddenly appeared with him in the kitchen.  I was a little surprised.  

Once upstairs, he found a new purpose: holding down a rug we had on the deck.  The wind was forever trying to lift and move the rug across the deck but Mr. Hobbs put an end to that.  The pig's got skills!

Mr. Hobbs spent the rest of the summer on the deck, doing a mighty fine job of holding that rug down and keeping it mostly in place.  Before he went to work the wind actually blew the rug clear off the deck a time or two.  But never again, as long as Mr. Hobbs was on the job.

Another thing Mr. Hobbs did, as he was busy holding down the rug, was constantly catch our attention.  After so many years of having a dog around and letting them out the back door for potty breaks, we kept seeing Mr. Hobbs, as we'd walk through the kitchen, standing by the door.  It kept making us think we needed to let the dog back in; that's just how all the dogs have always done it: stand by the back door and wait.

Mr. Hobbs didn't get his make-over this year.  We've already had snow and the temperatures are low enough now that nobody wants to spend the time outside painting in the cold.  Besides, most paint likes to be applied when it's warmer.

The snow melted off pretty quick but still, winter has arrived and warm days would be unexpected at this point. While he will spend the winter outdoors, faithfully reporting the weather, he will not get painted this year.  That will have to wait until next year after it gets warm again.  Good thing he's a patient little pig.

Not Such a Good Year

Having retired now, Brombeere has wanted to do more in the yard, particularly with the garden.  So earlier this year we bought our own rototiller and a few days later I tilled up half the garden space.  That was an adventure all its own.  But, in any case, we were off to a good start.  

Later that same day, Brombeere came out and did some planting.

Mostly, that day, she planted her tomatoes; she really likes fresh tomatoes.  She did plant some other stuff, some beans right next to them.  The beans were planted from seeds.

Brombeere had heard about using cardboard to keep the weeds down so, since we had a bunch laying around, she laid some of that out around her tomatoes in the hopes it would help.  And then, to keep the cardboard in place, she laid out some wood "cookies" we had, on top of the cardboard.  The thinking was the cardboard would eventually decompose into the ground anyway so it wasn't a lot of extra work.  And if it did keep the weeds down that would be a good thing.

The next week I got the tiller out again and did the rest of the garden space.  I like this tiller, its much easier to use that the one we rented last year. 

So, at that point, the whole garden space was tilled and ready for planting.

Brombeere also decided to plant the space right next to the garage with garden vegetables instead of the ornamental plants that had been there before.  So by the garage she planted a different variety of tomatoes she got from Blaubeere.  

We normally have waited until after Memorial Day to put in a garden in those years we've planted one.  That is because there often is a frost late into May.  This year was no exception.  All these plants Brombeere had planted, she'd done in mid-May.  

Then, sure enough, just before Memorial Day weekend, there were several nights of low temperatures, a couple cold enough that we covered everything we'd planted, just to be on the safe side.

It paid off, the frost came and went and everything we'd planted survived.  We had also done some work on the plumbing at the house so that our outside taps worked better, making it much easier to water the garden. We were off to a great start.

By the tomatoes, Brombeere planted some beans and onions.  No squash or pumpkins this year. I was a little surprised because Brombeere really likes zucchini and summer squash, and I like butternut and acorn squash.  We've grown it in the past but not this year.  

Then, one day in June, Blaubeere and her kids came over and helped us with a lot of garden work.  That was fun.  

That was fun.  They worked not only in the garden, planting herbs, but also with some other work around the yard.  Her boys helped trim several trees near the garden, in the hopes of letting a little more sunshine get to the garden.  They also helped put in a decorative space under the trees near the garden.  

So summer progressed and the tomatoes grew.  Soon they were blooming out and things were looking pretty promising.

Both in the garden out back and along the side of the garage.  At this point it was hard to tell the difference between the new varieties of tomatoes from Blaubeere and the regular ones in the garden. But it was fun to see them growing.

Brombeere also planted a bunch of marigolds along the edge of the garden, by the tomatoes.  That's supposed to help keep out bugs.  Marigolds have long been one of my favorite flowers, they're so easy to have around.

After a while the little green tomatoes began turning red.

There were lots of red tomatoes growing on all those vines.

For as promising as it had looked during early and mid-summer, we didn't get a whole lot of stuff out of the garden this year.  We got quite a few tomatoes, both the normal ones and the ones from Blaubeere, but not as many as we had hoped for.  The beans didn't do anything, which was real surprising.  We only got a few onions, much less than we had expected, considering how many starts Brombeere had planted.  Blaubeere had given us some chives, which probably did better than anything we planted, we got lots of them.  She also gave us some basil and rosemary, which did okay, but not as well as the chives.

The end of our summer was pretty busy, including a trip to Hawaii for a wedding and another trip out west shortly after the wedding.  Despite being one of the warmer Octobers on record, we were gone a lot and not here to look after the garden much.  But by then it was evident that the garden was pretty much done anyway.

Then it cooled off fast in late October and early November and frost put an end to the garden.

When I was talking with Brombere a day or two ago, about how her garden had done this year, she commented that we would have been just as well off to have made several more trips to the local farmers market, or one of several vegetable stands that spring up around here every late summer and fall.  That might have been true this year, given how disappointing the garden produced this time.  But Brombeere still derives a lot of enjoyment from working in the yard.  And while buying fresh produce from the farmers market or a vegetable stand is certainly less work, there's a lot to be said for the satisfaction of having stuff you've grown yourself on your dinner table.  We did have fresh tomatoes and lots of chives and other herbs in our salads this summer.  It was good.  So we'll write off this summer and likely give it another shot next summer.  It's a work of faith and hope, and yummy deliciousness when it works out well.

A Late Ride

I thought the biking session was over but we had some unseasonably warm weather today and the wind wasn't too bad so I slipped out for a ten mile ride. That was fun. 

That means I did manage to triple last years miles. It also is the latest in the year I've ever been out. Well, not counting when I was in Germany where we rode year round. Two nice little milestones. And there's a couple of days next week that are looking promising. Who knows, it could happen!

Another Season of Bikey Fun

This year's bike season began earlier than normal because of a few warms days that dried out the roads and warmed the air enough to get out on our bikes.  So we did!

While the roads and sidewalks were dry, there was still plenty of snow all around.    

It wasn't a long ride but it was the earliest I'd ever been out since I began riding bikes a few years ago. But it was good to get out. That was in late February.

Of course, it was still early and the temperature plunged back down to seasonal so it was nearly a  month before it was warm enough to get out again.  But it did, and so even though it was had been a  while, we eventually did get out again.  Spring was well under way and it was getting pretty nice by this time.

Because we'd gone out west, to be with Heidlebeere as she was sealed to her husband, we didn't get out again for almost another month. That was a very worthwhile diversion. 

Good riding days were getting to be more often so I was able to get out more often.  That was nice.

We had a very wet June, it rained so often that I didn't get out a single time during June.  But July began and it didn't rain as often and I was able to get out again. Then, unexpectedly, Brombeere began talking about getting me a recumbent bike.  I had talked off and on about getting one but had pretty much given up on the idea but now that Brombeere was talking it up, I wasn't about to argue about it so we ended up getting one.  I had already done a lot of research on what kind I would want so it was just a matter of going out and acting on it.  And so in July I ended up getting a recumbent.

As the season was getting on, I began to roam farther and wider on my bike, particularly since the recumbent made things easier when going on longer rides.  There were some areas around town that I hadn't been to for a while.  The last two years I hadn't gotten out as often as before, as much as I had wanted.  Even though the doctors had told me it would take a year to get over my injuries from the accident I was in a couple of years ago, I think it was taking me a little longer than that.  But I was determined to get out more than I had last year.  In July we also replaced Brombeere's bike with a much better bike, one that she found much easier to ride.

And so the summer continued on.  We got out more often, sometimes we got out together, sometimes I went out my myself.

But, in any case, it was good to be out.  And it was good not to come back from rides with aching shoulders, a benefit of the recumbent.  

As in years past, we managed to get in a couple of rides with kids and grandkids, that is always a fun part of the summer.  We got to go for a ride with both Erdbeere and Blaubeere.  I like doing that.  

Pretty soon fall arrived and the colors began changing, that's my favorite time to be out on the bike. The colorful leaves and the long shadows happening earlier in the day, yeah, that's my favorite.

The downside is that it also brings the end of the biking season.  But this year was the third warmest October on record around here so I was able to get out more often and later in the month than the last several years. That was a nice thing. 

I try to have a few special rides I like to get in each season.  We got out on a ride with Blaubeere's oldest, which was a ride from my bucket list, that was the ride to Terrell Island. Another ride I was able to do this year was get out to a county park that is about 11 miles away.  I have ridden out that way before, even got closer than I realized a couple of years ago, but never made it all the way there.  The challenge with going there is that it's an "out-and-ack" ride, which turns the 11 miles into at least 22 miles.  This year I did it, got to the park and back, a ride that ended up being 24.13 miles round trip.  When I got back I discovered that I  had missed my longest ride ever by just .06 of a mile so, of course, I had to try again. I planned out a ride that I hoped would beat the old record and took off.  When I got back I discovered I had easily beat it, a 30.67 mile ride.  That was nice.  

I had also wanted to get more miles in this year than last year.  I'm pleased to say I did that.  Last year's total was just 123.6 miles. This year I more than doubled that.  In fact, I was just short of tripling last year's miles.  My first two years back on a bike were over 450 miles each and I didn't exceed either of those years, but I got fairly close.  Maybe next year.

In the past my biking season has pretty much matched Daylight Savings Time, beginning when it started and ending when it went back to standard time in the fall.  We managed to get out early this year, and I thought that maybe now that I had retired I would be able to extend my biking season a little longer.  But it doesn't look like that is going to be the case, at least not this year.  In looking at the extended forecast, it looks like it's going to be either too cold, too windy, or both to get out any more this year; I suspect the season is pretty much over.  But that's okay, it was a fun season, lots of good times out on the bike this summer.  I like that.  And there's always next year to try again.