I am at home again.  Ah, how many Sabbaths will I just stay at home?  I want to go to church, however, the forecast today is 33 degrees C.  

What's in the church, anyway?  Ah, what a question!  There's nothing there technically, at this stage of my life. If I want to fellowship with God and continually expand my knowledge of Him, I do not necessarily have to go to church.  The Bible is open and I can read it myself asking the Holy Spirit to give me wisdom and guide me.  With the advanced technological developments and access to a wide range of information including commentaries on Bible passages and their different translations, I can on my own initiative continually study the Word of God and thereby continually grow in my experiential knowledge of God.

But then Hebrews 10:25 is making me feel uncomfortable--I feel like some convicting spiritual substance of neglect streaming down rapidly in my system even as I type this out...

Yes, I should go to church.  Why not? Only for the sole reason that there is Sister Paz, whom I know loves me.  Hm... I sound so delinquent as this echoes back to my ears. I could not just go to church because of a person.  I go to church to meet God and to be an encouragement to the brethren even if I do not belong to any club or cliche.

Now what? Shall I justify myself today for not going to church? Well, I do not hold any office in the church--and I do not intend to-- because there is so much freedom not being committed to anything.  I remember all those years when I was actively involved in church activities and I could not even get sick, particularly when I was discipling youth for Christ.  Rain or shine, I should be there to open and close the church gate--so to speak.  So am I complaining now about all those years?  Nope!  

There is a right time for everything and those years were just the right time for me to use my optimum energies to minister to others and afterwards to my mother who, two years ago, went to be with God.

Now, that I have a few medical conditions, my ministry now is to my own self and to all the people I love both near and far, in land or sea which I could only do in no other way but through prayer. 

Yes, I have been celebrating Sabbath in my own personal way. Nobody can contest that.  This is between myself and the Lord of Sabbath.

Well, how do I celebrate Sabbath particularly today?

Here I am sitting before my laptop--sharing my thoughts while I admire all the splashes of geranium colours in my courtyard.  God has made me happy--it has been quite awhile when my courtyard is bereft of colours.  It is amazing how they display their warm colours this summer. God must have known I am weary about trivial things like the overgrown grass in the nature strip which Council claimed was already booked to be cut after the many phone calls I made since January.  I could hear the mowing sounds from different directions in my neighbourhood whose major business is to cut their lawn.  

Well, I do not mow on Sabbath.  I  would not clean the backroom of my house, either.  It is Sabbath---I am going to read the Bible in Spanish and possibly write and afterwards I am going to eat noodles for lunch, maybe eat pancakes for afternoon tea and---then give myself a rest.

This is a collage I made to show the geraniums my eyes always love to look at each day until the sun goes down.