Mary's Heartbeats

So the story goes that Ruth, the foreigner, travels back with her mother-in-law, Naomi, to the town of Bethlehem.  Ruth takes to the local barley and wheat fields to pick up leftover grain to provide food for them.  In the process, Ruth gains the favor of Boaz the owner of the farm.  He specifically instructs his workers to purposely drop handfuls of grain that can be picked up by Ruth, as they are tying up their harvest bundles. . . Gleaning is hard work, especially bending over to pick up a few grains here and there.  But finding a handful or clump of grain would certainly be encouraging and rewarding to find.  Sometimes I am too focused on the task of gleaning.  I find myself tired of stooping, bending, scavenging for small strands of grain.  Maybe I am missing the "handful of purpose" dropped right before me. . . I look outside at my garden and have to admit that that there are numerous "handfuls of purpose".  The hanging jasmine on my...

I am not a big meat eater, even though I was raised on that foundation as a child of the Midwest.  Potatoes and beef provided sustenance for our family.  Vegetables were just tolerated and usually existed only as corn, peas or beans.  No wonder constipation was always an inevitable!  Yet, even in spite of that, there is nothing like a Sunday dinner with Mom's roast beef, gravy, mashed potatoes, along with Dad's favorite Lima beans, and oh, don't forget the gelatin salad.  Perhaps there would be  crescent rolls too.  Sharing it with family including wives or girlfriends or grandchildren that made it even taste better . . .  Just as you could always count on meat and potatoes, there are people that have graced my life that have given me that same savory satisfaction.  Individuals who were who they said they were;  "what you saw was what you got"; basic, down to earth, without pretense, humble, simple and kind.  Individuals who e...