I grew up in a rural area in the Ozarks.

My siblings and I knew our boundaries, and by today’s standards, they were wide.

I made multiple trips daily up the road to the general store my dad owned.

I walked to my Grandma and Grandpa Stephens’ house, which was about a mile away.

I made treks to the Bill Tyree Branch and to my friend Kay’s house.

Within those wide limits, my parents had placed specific restrictions.

I wasn’t to bother neighbors for a drink of water or the use of their bathrooms.

Since I was the oldest child of four, I was to look out for my younger siblings.

And I was never to go inside the house of Herbert and Peggy (not their real names), an old couple who lived in our community.

Herbert waved and said howdy from their front porch every time I walked past their house.

I helped Peggy pick her strawberries, because her old, bent back hurt.

One day as I walked past their house, Herbert called to me, “Come in for a while. I’ll let you play my organ.”

I loved getting a chance to play an organ.

My Aunt Freddie had one. I had spent hours pushing its knobs and pressing its keys. I had learned to play I Dropped My Dolly in the Dirt.

Aunt Freddie also had a hymnal, and I worked to learn to play Love Lifted Me and other hymns.

Anyway, when Herbert invited me inside to play his organ that day, I went with him.

I sat on the organ bench and played my Dolly song.

I don’t know how my mother knew I was inside that house.

I know only this.

Without knocking, Mom walked through Herbert and Peggy’s  door.

She stepped behind me, and with loving arms, she lifted me off the bench and took me home.

She rescued me from a child-molesting beast.

My mother’s actions reflect the message of the old hymn, Love Lifted Me.

The spiritual application of this story is hard to miss.

Out of great love for His children, God set limits for our protection.

I have crossed God’s boundaries many times and played into the hands of the greatest beast of all.

God knew I would.

So He sent One who, with loving and bloodied arms, would reach out and rescue me.

The old hymn speaks the truth.

 Love Lifted Me.

When I serve potatoes, I rarely begin with potatoes.

I begin with a box or a bag.

In my freezer are bags of hash brown potatoes and french fried potatoes.

In my pantry are boxes of potatoes au gratin and bags of instant potato flakes.

In my refrigerator sits a container of factory-made mashed potatoes ready to be heated in the microwave.

I do have a five-pound bag of “real” potatoes, a shriveling, budding mass of semi-solid ovals that will probably be thrown out.

That sums up my list of “potato” items.

In my mother’s kitchen, the only “potato” item was a ten-pound bag of raw potatoes, replaced weekly.

More days than not, Mom first scrubbed and peeled, and then fried, mashed, baked, or boiled potatoes. They were a staple in our diet.

But I seek speed and convenience in my relationship with potatoes.

In fact, I seek speed and convenience in almost every area of life.

You probably do too.

We want quick gas station stops and drive-through ATM’s.

We snatch information from Siri or Google to avoid visiting a library and doing research.

We zip in and out of grocery stores to buy foods our parents grew in gardens.

For the ultimate in speed and convenience, we drive up to a window on the side of a building, and someone hands out our dinner in a bag or box.

We’ve got speed and convenience down to an art.

We may even seek a quick and easy relationship with God.

We don’t have time for a relationship nourished with daily prayer and Bible study.

We go to church when we can, and we limit our intake of scripture to what the minister reads aloud each week.

Or we skip the drive and stream a church service online.

We utter our only prayer of the day after we go to bed, and fall asleep in the middle of it.

As for that old-time religion practiced by earlier saints?

Nah.

We don’t have time for that.

—————-

I am adding my usual autumn caution. NEVER drive through a deep pile of leaves.