Gold Fish and the Tank of Death

Gold Fish and the Tank of Death

I love fish, pet fish. I love gold fish and I love fresh water, tropical fish and I love Beta fish. Two years ago I ventured into the unknown world of the home aquarium. It all started one Sunday at the local markets. I fell in love with a tank full of gold fish and joyfully I selected two comets that were excitedly looking at me and just asking to be bought. I borrowed a friend's old fish tank, cleaned it up, purchased pretty coloured stones for the bottom  and even bought a plant to make the fish feel at home. Alas, those fish died and so did the next lot of gold fish and the next. I started to feel like I was a fish murderer. By now we had progressed from a borrowed tank to our own purchased fish tank. Then started the  *Research Project*. Going from pet shop to pet shop, that specialised in fish, my friend and I asked question after question. It was here we discovered that a fish tank must “cycle”. A tank needs to mature in their levels of bacteria and nitrates to allow the fish to thrive in their enclosed environment. I hastened this process along with the purchase of a product called Start Smart which added the necessary bacteria to the tank. Now my fish were growing, staying alive and even thriving. They were named. Joseph was a beautiful Black Moor, who interestingly enough, slowly turned a flaming orange colour, and Rachel was a gorgeous golden comet. Over the space of several years we ventured from gold fish to fresh water tropical fish and even into Beta Fish. Eventually we had five different fish tanks full of brightly coloured fish. I regularly cleaned the fish tanks in such a way as to not disturb the bacteria cycle, which I checked weekly through a Ph testing kit.

In my laundry cupboard are a stack of white cloths I use for a variety of household cleaning. I clean something and then I pop the cloth immediately into the wash. I also use these same cleaning cloths to wipe the algae off the inside of the fish tanks each week. One week I was working my way through the fish tanks cleaning them one by one, starting with my gold fish tank. I was taking their filters out to clean, Ph testing the water, topping the water levels up (which included adding a special chemical to the water to make it fish friendly), adding some bacterial drops to the water and of course wiping the inside of the tank clean of the algae. Approximately an hour after cleaning the fish tanks my goldfish, Joseph and Rachel, started to swim with their bodies slightly tilted. Very quickly they belly sided up and were trying to struggle around the tank upside down, gasping as they went. Slowly they sank to the bottom of the tank and there they died. I was shocked and in grief. It was so sudden. I looked at the other tanks and the fish were alive and thriving. What had I done to make a difference in the gold fish tank to their environment that would annihilate them so quickly?

Several hours later I realised my terrible mistake. I had not used a clean cloth in wiping the algae off the tanks. I had used a cloth I had previously used only once, with a little bit of window cleaner on our bathroom mirror. I had not placed that cloth immediately into the wash. A tiny amount of cleaning fluid still on the cloth poisoned my entire tank. The other fish tanks were fine because the gold fish tank had absorbed all the cleaning product. I had killed my poor fish.

I pondered the thought of what I had done and I realised how much that reminded me of an unforgiving heart. God calls  us to forgive others and He empowers us to do so but when we don’t allow Him to work forgiveness in our lives towards others it becomes a bitterness deep inside of us. Sometimes we are not even aware of it’s existence. It becomes like the cleaning product on my cloth seeping it’s way through the entire tank until it’s deadly poison works to kill life itself. An unforgiving spirit brings bitterness, resentment, anger, jealousy and hate into our hearts. It affects not only our thoughts and our words, our spiritual experience, but even our physical health. Have I got unforgiveness deep in my heart? Do I see the fruit of it in my words, thoughts and my attitudes.  May my prayer be “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”Ps 139:23, 24

Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. Eph 4:31,32

Wrong Directions

Wrong Directions

My husband grew up in New Zealand and moved to Australia as a young man. We had visited New Zealand twenty five years ago and we had not been back since, until several weeks ago. Our nephew was getting married and an invitation to attend the wedding came our way. With great excitement we planned our trip. We would spend one week with our family and we would spend one week touring the south Island. Two of our three adult daughters would be able to fly over at different times and would also meet up with the family for the wedding. For months before the trip I was busy planning with military precision where we would stay, where we would visit and printing maps off Google Maps NZ. This was going to save $75 on hiring a GPS to go with the car hire. Finally the day arrived and we landed at Christchurch airport, joyfully our nephew and his family met us, and we were able to hire our car and locate our accommodation with ease. The city had changed considerably since my husband had lived there, with the added transformation of  large portions of the city’s major buildings having disappeared in the earthquake of 2011. His sense of direction was gone. We were reliant on my printed google maps. 

On our first full day in Christchurch we planned to drive thirty minutes out of the city into the picturesque country side to a small town to visit another nephew and his family. Our youngest daughter had already flown in the previous week and she was enjoying staying at their house. With trusty google maps in hand and the directions written down on how to get from our accommodation to their house, we set off down Blenheim road, a main road in town. None of the directions seemed to match up with the streets we were seeing. Where was the round about we were meant to turn at? Where was the road we were meant to go down? Up and down a several mile section of Blenheim road we drove. We ventured off in the general direction of the country town that was to be our destination but we quickly returned to the familiar area just outside our accommodation. 

We decided to return to where we were staying and take a second look at google maps. Sure enough, when we double checked, we discovered that I had typed in the wrong street number for our addressWon. I had typed in 103 Blenheim road when it should have been 308. I had placed our location  on the wrong side of the road several miles away. As a result none of the directions in the very beginning for getting from Blenheim road to the road that led to the country town were accurate when we tried to follow them.

It made me ponder about God and His word. When I pick up God’s Word it gives me the directions for life. It shows me the path to take and the destination that is mine. Do I come to the Bible with preconceived ideas of who I think God is? Do I read the Bible looking for my beliefs to be validated? Can I find myself led astray or not understanding the Bible simply because I came to it with my own understanding? Am I willing to be led by the Holy Spirit? Am I willing to lay down my own ideas and trust God and be taught by Him?

Prov 3:5,6 Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.

Contentment

Contentment

My husband, Michael, and I raised our three, now adult daughters on an Australia sheep and cattle property. Here, for many years beautiful, white Charolais cattle were born, raised and sold for beef or breeding purposes. They are gently natured cattle, large and muscular. In Australia cattle are kept in large, fenced paddocks all year round and moved from paddock to paddock as they eat the grasses down. The one thing cattle tend to do is look over the fence. They are sure everything is better on the other side of the fence. We have a saying, *the grass is greener on the other side of the fence*. This is often how cattle view their world. We use different fencing for sheep than we do for cattle. Cattle need stronger fencing. I have seen cattle who have been placed in a paddock fenced for sheep, all working together, leaning against fencing in an attempt to push it down so they could make their way into the other paddock. The grass is always greener on the other side, or so it seems. 

One day a cow’s desire to stay close to the fence and  to spend her time looking over it created quite a dilemma for herself. At the time I noticed her she was in a high and dry, grassy paddock at the back of the property, ready for calving with other pregnant cows. We had had a lot of rain and we were flooded in at the front of the property and to get out to town, we had to take a long drive through the muddy roads at the back of the property and then through a  locked stock gate and finally through a neighbouring property. As we drove out we noticed the cow in labour. We stopped to see how things were going. Everything seemed in order except she was awkwardly standing close to the stock fence. We drove out of the paddock, rode the many miles into town, picked up necessary supplies and came back in the way we had left. We arrived back at the paddock with the Charolais cow who was still waiting by the stock fence. This time, however, she had a problem. Whilst in labour, she had backed up against the stock fence and at the exact moment of birth the calf had slipped right out and through the large open rectangles in the fencing and was now on the other side of the fence, separated from her mother. The mother cow was anxiously bellowing at her baby to come back over. The baby, still wet from the recent birth, was calling pitifully back to her mother. I managed to climb through the stock fencing to the other side with the calf. Now the mother cow started to panic. She did not want her calf touched at all. She started to run up and down the fence and bawl louder than before. I was busy trying to catch a wet, very slippery calf who was dutifully trying to run up and down the fence beside her mother. I grabbed the strong,squirming calf and held her firm whilst my daughter pulled at the bottom wire of the stock fence. Pressing the calf down I pushed her under the bottom wire of the fence where she was joyfully united with her mother.

Do I spend so much time “gazing over the other side of the fence” that I put my self into a place of discontentedness? Can I be like that cow hovering so close to the fence that it creates unnecessary problems for me. God calls me to be content. To be peaceful and happy. 

Heb 13:5 Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

Phil 4:11 for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content

1 Tim 6:6 Now there is great gain in godliness with contentment

Cockroach Killer

Cockroach Killer

Where I live, in sunny Australia, we have large, icky, creepy cockroaches. I don’t like cockroaches at all. They scuttle merrily around having a very happy cockroach life but I spend my time mercilessly eliminating them. I purchase cockroach baits and place them strategically around the house to attract them to their death. I suck them up in the vacuum cleaner. I scream for my hubby, Michael, to come and  kill them for me. I squish them to a pulp with any shoe I can find. I will grab them inside several tissues and run frantically to the toilet and flush them to a watery grave. I spray them with cockroach killer. I hate cockroaches and I only want to see them dead. Even when I have been sound asleep I have responded to a cockroach. One hot, summer evening Michael and I were peacefully sleeping. Suddenly he felt something on his side of the bed and it woke him up and yes, sure enough, a cockroach was on the bed. No, Michael didn’t attack it. He let it run frantically past himself, under his legs and towards me. The thought actually crossed his mind as to how long it would be before I responded. I went from being fast asleep to leaping out of bed in about two seconds. Yes, I am a cockroach annihilator. Recently, however, I have discovered the ultimate in producing cockroach deaths. It’s Borax. It’s actually based on the mineral boron and it is a poison to cockroaches. I just don’t put borax, which is a fine,white powder, out into little, tin foil trays for them to eat. I actually make it very attractive. I mix it with white sugar. Now the poison is sweet and it appears delicious and attractive to cockroaches and it’s killing them off. 

Just like I am a persistent enemy to the cockroaches and I am always finding ways to take their life away from them we too have a persistent enemy who doesn’t want us to have eternal life.

John 10:10 The thief ( a symbol of satan) does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy

1 Peter 5:8 Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

Just as my most successful method for stealing the life away from cockroaches is to mix something sweet and pleasant into the poison so our enemy often uses the pleasures of this world to lure us away from Jesus our source of life.

In Heb 11:25 we find Moses made a choice to be part of God’s people, who were at that time slaves “than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season.” Moses had been adopted by the Egyptian Pharaoh's daughter from an Israelite family. He had the wealth, the power, the position and the pleasures of the world within his grasp. He chose to turn away from the sinful pleasures that would steal the pleasures of God in his life and He did not become the next pharaoh. We could be lining up today at museums to visit not just an Exhibition of Tutenkhamen but we could have been viewing the mummified corpse of Moses or visiting his pyramid in Egypt. Instead Moses chose the pleasures of eternal things. The joy of the Lord. At the end of his life he was resurrected and taken to heaven.

Ps 16:11 You will make known to me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; In Your right hand there are pleasures forever.

What will be my choice today. Do I choose the pleasures of this world that will distract me from a relationship with Jesus? Or do I choose the pleasures of an abundant life of joy and peace in a relationship with Jesus now?

Jesus says..John 10:10 I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.

1 John 5:12 He that has the Son has life; and he that has not the Son of God has not life.

Flying High

Flying High

My American friend and I created a long list of all the things we wanted to do together when she was visiting me in Australia. One of the things on that list was to fly a kite. Not long after she flew into Australia, the weather was perfect for kite flying. Off to the sun swept beach we went with the colourful kite in our hands. At the beach we had plenty of strong wind currents, lots of wide open spaces, and no trees or power lines for the kite to get entangled on. We unpacked the kite and put it together excitedly. Finally, we were ready for take off. However, we both had lots of trouble getting the kite up in the blue skies. There was a lot of wind and we kept running all over the beach trying to get the kite to catch a current at the right moment. We discovered that day that there were three different air currents at work, at three different altitudes. The very first air current that we were hitting was actually making the kite head wildly up in the sky then do a complete U turn and dive speedily back down to the ground. It seemed almost impossible to get the kite up and past that first layer of air currents. Finally, we broke into the second air current. The kite now stopped making a U Turn and diving down. It did, however, keep wanting to move into the air currents to the right of itself and when it did that the kite lost stability and would start to head down again. We would have to keep running towards the sand dunes to get the kite to ascend into the sky again. It wasn’t  until it reached the third and much higher set of air currents that the kite really began to fly without difficulty. It seemed to move with ease among the currents and showed no sign of wanting to come down.

 

Sometimes I can be like that kite. When I am closer to the things of this world I can’t seem to get anywhere spiritually. I keep falling and my life keeps taking U Turns away from God. God is calling me to get closer to Him, to move away from the things of this earth that keep dragging me down. As I move away from the things of earth and move closer to him, I start to have a more successful Christian experience. I enjoy the things of God more but like the kite in the second set of air currents I can at times still experience instability spiritually, I can still get dragged down. God is wanting me to soar like the kite in the third set of air currents. To be so close to Him that the things of this earth don’t cause me to dive down. He wants me to experience a joyful and peaceful and successful Christian life.

Col 3:1, 2 Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth.

Paterson's Curse

Paterson's Curse

My husband, Michael and I  used to live on an Australian sheep and cattle property in the Southern Highlands in the state of N.SW. Here we raised our precious, now adult, daughters. Michael had grown up in New Zealand by the beach and I grown up by the Australian bush. My husband had studied a farm technology course so he knew a bit about farming. Michael was actually working in the area of landscaping and not farming and he was managing a twenty acre garden around the main homestead on the sheep and cattle property . We also lived on the property, which was two thousand and five hundred acres of dry,grassy paddocks. It ran Cross Bred and Merino sheep as well as Charolais and Angus cattle. As a working farm, there were many well fenced off paddocks and the cattle manager would work to move cattle or sheep around between the different paddocks.

One thing I noticed about the usually dry paddocks was the presence of a beautiful purple flower. It was delicate. I could drive around the property or even view neigbouring properties and see the presence of this lovely flower. Sometimes entire paddocks would be full of the flowers and they presented a gorgeous field of a sea of purple.

There was, however, one thing Michael knew about those purple flowers that I did not know.  They had a name. They were called Pateron’s Curse. How could something so lovely and so delicate be called a curse?

Pateron’s curse was introduced into Australia from the mediterranean region many years ago. It is actually a weed. It can produce 10,000 seeds during the spring and those seeds can lie dormant over the summer and then as soon as the rains come they germinate by their thousands. Paterson's Curse literally takes over a paddock and there is little grass left for the cattle and sheep. However, it is worse than that. Besides being a dominate weed, if eaten, they destroy the liver of  sheep, they reduce the animal's weight gain and can affect the wool clip and can lead to death. Farmer’s control it chemically but there are currently 6 different weevils and beetles that have been released into Australia to  control and kill off Paterson’s curse. 

So here is something so beautiful yet apparently so harmful.

In the Bible our hearts are compared to the earth and what our hearts produce is compared to either herbs or thorns/briers. In  other words the Bible says our hearts either produce fruit or weeds. 

Heb 6: 7,8 For the earth which drinks in the rain that often comes upon it, and bears herbs useful for those by whom it is cultivated, receives blessing from God;  but if it bears thorns and briers, it is rejected and near to being cursed, whose end is to be burned.

I am challenged by a thought. Is my heart and life producing  beautiful flowers like Paterson's Curse, an appearance of loveliness but really a curse to myself and to others? Is my heart and life producing fruit, a blessing to myself and to others?

 Gal 5:22,23 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

Perceptions

Perceptions

My husband, Michael, is a landscape manager for the beautiful grounds of a retirement village, which includes a hostel and a nursing home. This past Christmas, like every other Christmas, the residents have showered my husband with Christmas cards and an assortment of gifts from chocolates to an Australian tradition of shortbread biscuits. This year, however, he received one gift that we had never received before. He received a gift voucher from a shop called Dan Murphey’s. I had never shopped in Dan Murphey’s before because this is what Aussie’s call a *grog shop*. They sell alcohol. Michael and I are both committed Christians and we don’t drink alcohol. Now here we were with what appeared to be a useless gift voucher. Several days later Michael came home with the good news that a work mate had told him that Dan Murphey’s has a small selection of non alcoholic wines. I googled the shop and discovered the information was indeed correct. So while my husband was at work, my friend and I went off to use the gift card. We parked the car at the shopping complex and started to look for where Dan Murphey’s was located. We finally found the shop and together we went in. We stood there totally lost. There before us was aisle after aisle of every assortment of alcoholic beverage available. We were able to ask for assistance and we were shown a very small section at the very back of the shop where they had  a few  non alcoholic wines. These would be perfect on our Christmas table, I thought, and with much anticipation my friend and I chose 6 bottles of assorted reds and whites, and placing them in a shopping trolly, we proceeded to the check out. The lady at the check out was so very kind and helpful and packed them immediately into a box for us to transport them easily to the car. She had grabbed just any box beside her and there she placed our bottles of non alcoholic wine for safe keeping. My friend and I exited the *grog shop* pushing a trolley with the word “Dan Murphey’s on it, with six bottles of non alcoholic wine now encased in a box that clearly read Chardonnay Wine and the Vineyard it came from. We stood there in an apparent dilemma. We laughed and worried all at once. From all outside appearances we had just purchased a carton of alcohol. We had to push the trolley right through the main shopping centre, down escalators to the car park far away. Everyone we passed would assume we had alcoholic wine. This was probably not the time to bump into anyone we knew or sort of knew. Nor was it a time to be spotted at a distance by anyone we knew or sort of knew. With a laugh and a hope of anonymity we made it safely to the car.

The whole escapade reminded me of this verse 1 Sam 16:7 For the Lord does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” How easy it is to misjudge a situation and to receive the wrong perceptions just by what we see or even hear about a person. This took my mind one step further to another question. What do I think about God? Do I misjudge Him? Have I looked on the outward appearance of a situation and thought I understood God from it but found I was wrong? The Bible says in 1 John 4:8 “God is love”. Do I only ever see goodness and love or do I misjudge Him? 

Ps 100:5 “ For the LORD is good; His lovingkindness is everlasting.”

Ex 34:6 "The LORD, the LORD God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth.”