The Importance of Pressing On

                                     

Bouquet et Cartes bu Catherine Beyler

Good Day, Ladies.  Today if I could, I would send you all a bouquet of fresh flowers, so in lieu of that, the above photo will have to suffice. 

This morning, a reader sent me this hymn with the lyrics written on it and so I am sharing it and thinking about some of the things the song means.

 Please click on the picture to hear the song.

At the end of the video, the scripture appears that has the phrase from a scripture,  "as many as be perfect."  In the Koine Greek, the original language of the New Testament, the word "perfect" means complete. 

The Bible indicates that all who obey the gospel and become disciples of Christ are complete, or sufficiently equipped.  A well-rounded person is complete. There are several meanings of the word "perfect" and this one has a spiritual application that means a person who has become a Christian is complete. 

 You can do a word-search, using the Websters 1828 dictionary and the Robert Young Analytical Concordance to the Bible will have the words broken down into the different meanings in scripture. The word "perfect" in the Bible also means to fulfill or to accomplish. 

Another thing that appears in the song are the words "table land." This is a geographical term that describes a piece of land jutting out of the lower land that also is flat like a table. It is sometimes called a plateau or a mesa. A famous table land is The Atherton Tableland in Queensland, Australia.  So, when you hear this song with that knowledge, you will know that heaven's table land is a spiritual term describing the practice of rising above the petty problems (the tale-bearing, the jealousies, the negative) of life. It might even indicate sitting down to a feast while obstacles, difficulties and problems occupy the lower ground.

This brings me to the theme of the song, "Higher Ground."  It speaks of a Christian pressing on, not resigned in defeat. A defeated person can accomplish nothing and will be neglecting life's responsibilities. Of course the reference to higher ground refers to a higher code of life and a separation from wordly concerns. It means to elevate your mind to a higher plane, living above the tawdry and undignified conversation or unBiblical way of life.

Other ladies have discovered the futility of waiting til the "right time" to do things they have always wanted to do in the home. You can wait til a war is over,  wait til the news media broadcasts better news, or until someone you know gets their life together. You can wait until all the troubled people around you settle down and quit agitating, but you may wait years.

 Some people never stop being troubled, and when they solve one trouble, they invent another! So it is best not to wait until the conditions are perfect before you accomplish the things you really want to do. Sometimes the enemy comes in and discourages a lady who is teaching her children or guiding her home, making it a haven for her husband, by indicating it has no value. A lady at home must press on and gain ground in her spiritual quest to have a home life that glorifies God.

I received an email from a lady who has allowed me to relate this to you: She stated that one day she looked back on her life and discovered she had been putting everything off. She always wanted to knit a sweater, sew a bag, rearrange her furniture, write a workbook for young girls about homemaking, paint a picture to hang in her dining room, buy a new bedspread for her bed, and fix up her front porch. She always intended to have a weekly time to write a letter to someone. She was always going to sort through a box of old papers. She was longing to teach her children a series of life-lessons she had learned. She was always going to do something. She was always going to go to Weight Watchers. She was always going to take an online art class. 

She realized she had been putting it all off until other things in her life settled down: a complaining relative, uncertain weather, instability in the nation and possible financial troubles.  

One day she analyzed the situation and discovered the following things:

1. Most of the things she feared never occurred. 

2. Unpleasant things that did ocurr,  never quit, no matter how long she waited. After one crisis subsided, another crisis appeared.
3. She had spent a great deal of her life being anxious, unhappy and frustrated, and this had developed into a depressing personality.

4. She only had power over what she could accomplish and could not let the troubles around her stop her from achieving her goals.

She spent the rest of the year doing all the things she had always wanted to do, and it was the happiest time she had in a long time. She had to discourage the discouragers from stealing her time and her will to do good things. She had to press her way forward and not stop to dwell on the negative reports, or things she has no control over.

Ladies, any time something good is being done, there will be someone of a darker mind intent on stopping it.  It is like the rebuilding of the walls, an event recorded in Nehemiah. As they were doing the Lord's work,  the naysayers gathered round and jeered at them. They made fun of the work. The trolls and haters of that time and period taunted that the whole project was "weak." The prophet told the dedicated people to  keep working. You can read more about this in Nehemiah 4:1-23. (You should be able to click directly on the verses here.) The most significant words in this chapter are:

"Be not afraid of them." (Nehemiah 4:14) 

Achieving our goals can be likened to travelling to a destination. On the way, many distractions beckon us, until we forget where we are going. I am sure many of you have actually done that on the way to put a book away in a bookshelf. Sidetracked Home Executives, a book written by two sisters who had trouble with being sidetracked, gave several illustrations of heading down the hallway to put something in its place and being distracted by other things.  In the same sense, life can do that to you if you allow it.  In normal living, there will always be troubles, and there will always be people who will never reconcile their problems. So rather than wait for all that to "settle down", it is better to keep pressing on the upward way and complete our responsibilities, serve our families, spread our influence, study the Bible,  pursue our talents and develop skills.

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I want to share the delightful tea cozies Roxy of  "Living From Glory to Glory" blog has been making. She explains how it is done on her blog, so go and see on my blogroll on the left.  This is that tea-time fabric I saw at Hobby Lobby.  Notice the co-ordinating  rose button she put on the top.  Thank you, Roxy. This tea-cozy is never off my table, and is always warming a pot of fragrant herbal tea.  I like the fabric and was wondering if anyone had any ideas of what else it could be used for. I think it would be nice to frame it! Evidently Roxy is not letting any grass grow under her feet or allowing world events and negative things slow her down!