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    Tranquil Thoughts from the Texas Hill Country
    Tranquil Thoughts from the Texas Hill Country
    Tranquil Thoughts from the Texas Hill Country
    Ebook308 pages2 hours

    Tranquil Thoughts from the Texas Hill Country

    By J. Herbert Larson

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    About this ebook

    My writings are spiritual. I want to transmit, to create a peaceful , tranquil spirit of faith within my readers.. I want to open up to the believing reader some of the Bible's jewels or whatever one wishes to call them. I want to inspire faith; to feed, to nurture faith in my readers. .
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAuthorHouse
    Release dateFeb 28, 2014
    ISBN9781491840733
    Tranquil Thoughts from the Texas Hill Country
    Author

    J. Herbert Larson

    The author is a native of Madison, WI. He served congregations as pastor in both large urban cities and in rural, small town parishes for over forty years before retiring. For many years he was a monthly contributor of articles to his church body's monthly magazine. He was associate editor for several of those years. He has served on the Board of Regents of his alma mater, Bethany Lutheran College and Bethany Lutheran Theological Seminary in Mankato, MN. and later on his church body's Doctrine Committee. He has translated more than one thousand pages from Norwegian to English of theological material concerning his church body, the Evangelical Lutheran Synod. He has long had an interest in the history of the Christian Church from its earliest time to the present. He is a ten year survivor of colon cancer, a subject he discusses in his second section titled Depression. He and his wife live in Canyon Lake, Texas. To see him in his living room chair is to see a man reading, sketching, scribbling notes which eventually may become prose or poetry of a spiritual nature. He often has to share his chair with his puppy.

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      Book preview

      Tranquil Thoughts from the Texas Hill Country - J. Herbert Larson

      CONTENTS

      The Texas Hill Country

      Foreword

      Tranquil Thoughts And Mountain View

      Part I

      Tranquil Thoughts On Random Biblical Verses Or Themes

      Like A Whisper In The Wind

      The Prince Of Peace

      My Soul Thirsts

      A Rose And A Lily

      Wildflowers To Some Folks, Wildflowers Are Texas!

      Garments Of Salvation & Robe Of Righteousness

      Search The Scriptures

      The Heavens Declare The Glory Of God And The Firmament Shows The Work Of His Hands

      Truth

      Selected Verses Of The Twenty-Seventh Psalm

      Jesus Wept

      Jesus Wept

      Jesus Wept

      What Does God Want From Me?

      Valley Of Decision

      Separation Of Church From State

      Self-Censoring?

      Causes

      Gun Control And Self-Control

      A Good Wife

      Morals

      Providence

      Providence

      Providence

      Reflections Upon The Lord’s Prayer

      Take And Eat

      The Ten Commandments From God In Simple Words

      Hearts Of Oak

      Depression

      Prayer Against Depression Attributed To Ignatius Loyola

      The Beauty Of The Lord

      The Courts Of The Lord

      Great Peace Within

      Crown

      Darts—The Fiery Darts Of The Wicked,

      Easter

      Milk For Growth

      Resolute

      The Silversword

      Thanksgiving

      No Storm Too Strong For Jesus

      Rocks

      Two Men Came To Church To Pray

      Where Do We Go From Here?

      What Is God Like?

      As The Wind Blows

      Church

      Life

      Truth

      God

      Fools

      Grace

      Christ

      Two Peters And Two Pauls

      Gratitude

      The Future

      Inventory

      Love

      Happiness Is—?

      Pain

      Influences

      My Help

      Is It Possible?

      Contrast

      Hate

      Hate

      A Poverty That Is Blessed

      Heredity

      Changing Weather And The Unchanging God

      Freedom

      Mountains And God

      Green Souls? Brown Souls?

      Walking

      Snow

      Evening Beauty

      Science And Truth,

      And Health Restored

      A Hummingbird

      Part II

      Brief Thoughts On Nine Subjects

      On Easter Sunday

      David

      The Language Of Faith

      What A Friend We Have In Jesus

      What A Friend We Have In Jesus

      What A Friend We Have In Jesus

      Jesus At Nain

      Through The Valley Of The Shadow Of Death

      In Heaven

      Part III

      You Meet Some Really Nice People In Church

      Reverend, Do You Ever Counsel With People Who Do Not Belong To Your Church?

      Do People Actually Listen To The Sermons?

      A Soul Massage?

      She Gave Me A Sound Scolding After Church!

      Pastor, I Have A Complaint About Your Sermon Today!

      He Considered Himself A Success

      A Lazy Sunday Afternoon

      Emil

      Late! To His Own Funeral!

      Why The Wedding Started Late Or: Why Everyone In Church Was Snickering!

      Ellen

      Tom

      Henry

      The End Of The Week

      Uncle James

      Agnes

      What Do Pre-Schoolkids Think About?

      Yes! We Pastors Do Work For Our Living!

      "What Was That? What Did You Just Say?’

      There Are Many Things No One Can Understand

      Why Is That? How Did It Happen?

      Sometimes We Pastors Are Given But One Chance

      How About A Walk In The Cemetery?

      How Come?

      Whom Shall We Call? The Sheriff Or The Undertaker?

      A Very Nice Evening

      Pall Bearers

      Arthur

      Arnie

      Truth Really Is Stranger Than Fiction—At Least Sometimes

      What Is It Like To Die? How Does It Feel?

      Three Funerals In One Week

      God Gave Her A Long Life

      Lives Are Sometimes Measured In Hours

      The Sound Of Heavenly Music

      Do You Know Jesus?

      A Trip Abroad

      Good Morning, Your Majesty!

      THE TEXAS HILL COUNTRY

      The Texas Hill Country includes several counties in Central Texas. There are tall rugged hills with only a thin covering of soil over limestone or granite. The Hill Country extends to portions of the northern suburbs of San Antonio and the western half of Travis County, ending west of Downtown Austin. Limestone or granite rocks and boulders with only a thin layer of soil make the area very dry and subject to flash flooding. Several types of Southwestern vegetation do well here, such as yucca, prickly pear cactus, Cedar scrub and Texas Live Oak.

      FOREWORD

      The material before you represents my life. It reflects my youthful years with dad and mother during what I eventually came to understand was The Great Depression of the 1930s, and it reflects a lifetime of service to our gracious God as a parish pastor. Retired for fifteen years I continue to read, to study, to pray, and to write things of a spiritual nature; some of it assumes a poetic form.

      In these pages I believe I represent biblical Christianity, no more, no less, which uncounted persons have written about over the centuries and which have been the spiritual diet of generation after generation of Americans since its founding and continuing to the present. I want to set forth as clearly as I can and as persuasively as I can the beliefs which continue to be my life and I am confident the beliefs also of a significant number of persons throughout our land past and present.

      Mary and I live here with her unmarried son and with two big dogs, two little dogs, and two independent cats. Several large, old oaks stand near the fence in the front of our yard as well as along the back fence. Rocks stretch in a long line from far in the distance, across our land and on. We are mindful of the presence of deer and of the possibility they will block the road for a bit.

      J.H. Larson

      TRANQUIL THOUGHTS

      AND

      MOUNTAIN VIEW

      My family and I had a brief experience with tranquility when we were guests of my first wife’s uncle and his family for camping over a weekend on the shores of Basswood Lake on the Minnesota-Ontario border in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. That experience lingers. It accompanies what Christians refer to when we speak of the Providence of our God. I have become more and more conscious of His direction of my life as the years pass. When we were home again my thoughts were becoming prayers that if our Lord were willing to grant it, we might someday retire to a similar setting, though most certainly in a warmer climate. Back then we had not ventured into Texas. We knew no one here. It was sort of out of the way, we thought.

      It is now over thirty years since our Lord so arranged our lives that we moved here. For several years we lived and worked in San Antonio. We bought a lot in the Hill Country intending, if our Lord would allow us, eventually to build a home where we could grow old together in a peaceful, wooded rural area.

      Elsewhere in these pages of Tranquil Thoughts I write of my wife’s death. I was alone for more than four years before Mary said Yes! to my proposal of marriage. We had worked together at our nearby lake, part-time during the summer. I moved into her home after having sold mine. I sit on our front porch and see trees everywhere. No buildings, except for the peak of a home above the trees, two lots away. In season various wildflowers sprinkle themselves across our acre. Often a deer, or half a dozen deer, can be seen walking in the woods or along the street. It is a peaceful life. It is all an answer to my prayerful dreams.

      PART I

      TRANQUIL THOUGHTS ON RANDOM BIBLICAL VERSES OR THEMES

      LIKE A WHISPER IN THE WIND

      Like a whisper in the wind our voices send

      words which are lost in the sounds of a world

      not tuned to the still, small voice of God.

      Again our voices send whispers into the wind

      Which our LORD sanctioning hardened hearts rend,

      Conveying blessings to all mankind.

      Our voices send gentle whispers in the wind

      To soothe souls wounded by sin’s cruel flood

      As they hear of the Holy Christ’s blood

      Through which we all are reconciled.

      Of old the LORD to Elijah, His prophet, said:

      Go, on the mountains, before Me now stand.

      Then began to blow a mighty wind.

      The LORD, though, was not in the wind.

      Then the earth trembled as never it had before,

      Igniting fire as never seen before.

      But the LORD was not in it either.

      His words to us are quieter.

      Yet again the sound was heard of a still, small voice.

      The LORD was in the still, calm, quiet voice.

      And after the fire a still, small voice.

      Disregard it? Yours is the choice.

      The still, small voice carries the fullness of the LORD.

      To you, to me, to all comes but the word:

      Repent of sin! Believe My Son, by grace be saved.

      1 Kings 19:11-12 God’s Revelation to Elijah:

      Then the LORD said to Elijah,

      Go out and stand on the mountain before the LORD." And behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind, and after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD WAS NOT in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire A STILL SMALL VOICE…

      THE PRINCE OF PEACE

      The war has ended!

      Peace has been declared!

      Peace is a good word!

      Voices rejoice in song

      Praising and glorifying

      Of kings The King

      Jesus Christ!

      Uncounted centuries earlier,

      In the Garden of Eden

      Immediately after Eve

      Had eaten the forbidden fruit

      Of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil

      Even though her Creator LORD

      Had forbidden their eating of it,

      The LORD had given

      His promise of the eventual coming to earth

      as True Man and True God of

      His Son, Jesus Christ.

      Some 800 years prior to Christ’s birth

      Isaiah, one of the Lord’s prophets,

      Was moved

      By the Holy Spirit of God

      To proclaim concerning the Messiah who would come.

      His name shall be called

      Wonderful,

      Counselor,

      The mighty God,

      The Everlasting Father,

      THE PRINCE OF PEACE.

      Isaiah 9:

      It is in His Name that these words come to you

      Asking His blessings to be upon you.

      As you read and ponder

      My Tranquil Thoughts.

      MY SOUL THIRSTS

      Psalm 42:1.2.

      The psalmist David observed deer drinking from a brook.

      My soul is like them he said,

      My soul thirsts for the Living God,

      Again, in Psalm 63, verse 1 he says to his God,

      And also Psalm 143, verse 6,

      My soul thirsts for you.

      The thirst in my soul is quenched by God’s Holy Book.

      His words echo and re-echo in the depths of Christian souls:

      For the Living God thirst our souls.

      My soul thirsts for the firm foundation He gives,

      For a child’s assurance of a loving and forgiving Father

      Who will be with me always and leave or forsake me never.

      A Father who listens, who soothes and eases my pain, whatever it is.

      My thirsty soul wants to know Him,

      not merely to know about Him.

      My soul thirsts for the Water of Life,

      For thirst-quenching drinks from the Word of Life,

      Which Jesus promises believers do satisfy

      So that never again will their souls be thirsty [John 4].

      The sound of other words of David echo in my soul:

      He leads me beside the still waters, He restores my soul!

      Psalm 23:2.3.

      My soul thirsts for the eventual sight in heaven

      of what I now believe:

      "for the Lamb [Jesus] who sits on the throne

      will dwell among them.

      They shall neither hunger anymore nor thirst anymore;

      The sun shall not strike them, nor any heat;

      For the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne

      will shepherd them

      And lead them to living fountains of waters."

      Revelation 7, verses 14-17.

      For my heavenly Father, my Savior Jesus, the Holy Spirit, thirsts My soul

      As it prays He will create the same thirst in every soul.

      A ROSE AND A LILY

      Roses and lilies are among the most beautiful of flowers.

      Horticulturists, nurseries, home gardeners

      —Professionals and amateurs

      Dedicate loving care to them over the hours.

      Roses and Lilies of the Valley

      suggest Jesus to people who know Him.

      He is more beautiful and fragrant and lovely

      Than roses and lilies which gain acclaim.

      Eventually they will wither and die.

      He is

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