Up the Sunbeam

-- Hello, Friends! Anyone here? I've been gone so long I'm not sure I even belong here anymore. The demands of school and team assignments have prevented me from being here like I'd like to be, but my heart is still here even when my words are not. May I tiptoe back in and offer a little something? ~~~~~~~~~~ This is what California's Central Valley looked like in June 2010 when we took a family trip to Disneyland and points south. Green, lush, and every available acre growing crops to provide food for millions, maybe even for you. Tomatoes by the truckload were passing us down the length of I-5. As we ticked off the miles, we passed field after field of blackberries, tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, sweet potatoes, asparagus, grapes, beans, strawberries, melons, lettuce, rice, peppers, spinach, corn, and cotton. Interspersed between the fields we saw orchard upon orchard of almonds, walnuts, pistachios, figs, olives, kiwi, lemons, plums, apples, cherries, peac...

-- "Faith is the heroic effort of your life, you fling yourself in reckless confidence on God. " ~ Oswald Chambers ~ Like a suspended blue marble, earth spins in space, while we six billion souls cling to it like tiny magnets, wanting desperately for it to be solid and sure. It. Is. Not. From the rocks beneath our feet, to the governments over our heads, to the markets that buy and sell our livelihoods, nothing is immovable.  It is all shifting sand and in times like these, we can't fool ourselves into thinking otherwise.  We can scarcely turn our wide-eyed gaze from the rumbling and shifting landscape of our lives right now because the What-If's are looming large and threatening on the horizon. Shall we wring our hands in despair and just keep staring?  Shall we run in a panic to gather our families and our belongings and hold them tight?  Shall we batten down the hatches and hope the ship can withstand the deluge? Or . . . . . . sha...