Straight From The Hart

  Many years ago I came across a quote from somebody that “God created time to keep everything from happening at once.”  I will add to that the idea that God created the weather seasons to keep our life adventuresome and never boring.  That is definitely true here in Missouri where we celebrate the seasons to an extreme, and sometimes more one season over and over at different times! My favorite season is always the one we’re in at any given time, but spring especially brings joy  to me with its constant stream of promises.  Every seed the gardeners plant, every bud that appears in my husband’s hanging baskets around our yard,  proclaim the promise of new life.  The bright daffodil pokes its yellow head up through the ground and seems to illuminate the grey twigs and leaves that have kept it buried for months.  The purple crocus appears in the most unlikely places to remind us again of the change of the seasons. Gospel song writer Bill Gaither penned a song several years ago called “Th

  My dad died 4 years ago today.  He was 96 years old and he died just two days after I had my 76th birthday.   He was born at Brice Missouri in January 1923.  Brice was situated near the Dallas and Laclede County lines and close to the Niangua River.  The name was changed from Brice to Bennett Spring when the State bought the land from the Bennetts and began to build a  state park in the 1920s and 1930s.  Old-timers still call it Brice sometimes and to my dad it was always Brice.  (And yes that is why we have a Brice Street in Lebanon.) My dad whose full name was Francis Herschel Rowden, preferred to be called Fritz.  He was married to my mom, Wilma Lorea Dame on November 9, 1942 and I was born on August 27, 1943.  My sister, Lois Rowden Nichols, was born in 1945 and shortly thereafter my parents were divorced and my mom took us home to live with our maternal grandparents, Everett and Nellie Dame. So I missed out on knowing my dad for several years, seeing him rarely because he lived

  Amazing Grace. Marvelous Grace of Jesus. Grace Greater Than Our Sin. (Composed August 29, 2021) Our hymnals contain so many lyrics about grace, and the older I get the more I appreciate God's grace. And the more convicted I become when I fail to extend grace to others of God's children. I really believe that the “sin that so easily entangles us as Christians, or trips us up,” is when we are judgmental of others instead of extending grace to those who might have fallen by the wayside. There is an old saying about the church which is often referred to as the army of God - that it is the only army that shoots its wounded.* One of my new favorite preachers, Jentezen Franklin, has a fantastic sermon taken from a rather obscure passage in the Old Testament - Zechariah 4:7 about “grace, grace”. Reminds me a little bit of John’s writing in his gospel where he says: And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace. John 1:16 Grace is like the waves of the ocean

  MARVELOUS GRACE OF GOD God’s grace is unlimited like the waves on the shore An ocean so boundless, rolling in evermore. God bestows it upon us although we are flawed We can’t comprehend it, but receive it with awe. That marvelous grace, so wondrous and free So full and complete that it reached even me It’s God love everflowing, Unconditional love As high as the heavens and the sky far above It rings with the music of sins all forgiven It’s hope for redemption when life’s not worth living It’s poetry with lyrics that speak to my soul It’s just what I need to be completely made whole. It’s food for my spirit, cool water so sweet It’s rest when I’m weary, a soothing balm for my feet Yes, this grace is amazing, and so undeserved It’s knowing my home is in heaven reserved. Written by Joan Hart, January 2019 Copyright January 2019 Joan Rowden Hart

Just Something To Think About... #Blog entry, a devotional thought from God’s Word. I hope it will be as meaningful to somebody else as it was to me when God gave it to me. #death #heaven In my 25 years of ministry I conducted so many funeral services and sometimes I just couldn’t come up with the right words to say. So I did a lot of reading and studying. But the most profound revelation came directly to me from God while studying Ecclesiastes 12:6, ere the silver cord is loosed. I had never heard anyone preach on this, either before or even until this day. I have used it so many times and tonight one of my very best friends lost her husband. He had been sick for so long and was under hospice care so it seemed very appropriate as I shared this with her. I see the “silver cord” as the umbilical cord that tethers our earthly body to this world. While living here, we are able to move about, albeit in a limited fashion. We can eat and drink and take care of our physical needs. B

  SEPTEMBER TIME AGAIN When summer days are waning,and you feel the slightest chill As the daylight turns to twilight; the sun sinks low behind the hill. When sports fans think of football and school schedules start to fill Then you know that it’s September time again. When the garden looks forsaken, but the food is on the shelf And there’s a sense of satisfaction that you grew it by yourself And you’re blessed with the abundance of the year’s new harvest wealth Then you know that it’s September time again. When you dread the thought of winter ‘cause you know it’s coming soon But you revel in the beauty of the ochre harvest moon; “When Autumn Leaves Begin To Fall” is now your favorite tune You know that it’s September time again. When Canada geese fly over in response to Nature’s call And you savor every moment as the leaves begin to fall With colors so magnificent your soul they do enthrall Then you know that it’s September time again. Written by Joan Rowden Hart on Sept. 8, 2017 -

  I have another birthday tomorrow. Eighty years of looking back gives one an excellent vantage point from which to measure time. And living in the heart of the Ozarks where seasons are distinct and reliable give you another way of measuring the nuances of life. There is a season for planting when parents and teachers plant seeds of virtues like honesty and hard work, accountability and responsibility, character and reputation, (and knowing the difference), the value of time and money. Things like “you may be poor, but you don’t have to go dirty!” Then comes the long season of growth. High school and maybe college. That first job and first car. Marriage and children. Raises and promotions. Home ownership. Friendships multiply and deepen. Life is a continuous growing process during this period of time. Still learning something new every day, mostly the hard way - by experience. The biggest mistake we can make in this time of our life is to think it will last forever. It w

  In 1969 Dr. Carrington told me I had arthritis and would have to take 8 aspirin a day for the rest of my life. I was 26 years old and MJ had just been born. Of course aspirin was the only pain reliever back in those days but that's not the point I want to make. I remember the night I prayed about that. I remember the chair I was sitting in and where the chair was. And I remember my prayer: “Lord, if it is your will that I spend my entire life in pain, dependent upon medication, then I accept that. But I know this one thing. You are able to heal me and I have no doubts about that at all. If you choose not to heal me, then you have a reason. And I accept that, but if it is your will to heal me, I accept that too and I will praise you for it. He healed me that night and I was able to fulfill 4 different career paths and be a wife to Milan and a mother to our daughter.  I was not perfect in either of those areas but I did the best I could.  And God gave me the ability to write  and h

  “Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age”..  (James Joyce) I’ve often been accused of being too passionate, of caring too much about certain things.  But I believe that  passion, also defined as fervor or zeal, is  one of the essential core values of human life, along with the Apostle Paul’s Biblical list of the virtues of faith, hope and charity.  Passionate people have strong opinions and usually articulate them very well.  We are also perfectionists, and we don’t handle incompetence in the public arena very well, all of which tend to preclude us from being the most popular person in the room.  I long ago accepted the fact that I won’t have the largest funeral in Lebanon, nor will my obituary make the front page. But not everyone seems to care that much about anything other than their own lives.  T.S. Eliot once said, “It is obvious that we can no more explain passion to a person who has never experienced i

  “A Tale Of Two Families”. Our story starts when three different Bennett families migrated here in the mid to late 1840’s from Virginia and Kentucky through Illinois down to Missouri. About the same time the Brice family migrated to Missouri from Illinois, in search of land which the U.S. Government was selling to settlers for $1.25 an acre. James Brice camped beside a clear stream of water that flowed from a large deep spring and eventually emptied into the Niangua River. He filed a claim with the government for the 160 acres on which the spring was located and kept buying land as money became available until he owned all the land through which the stream flowed on its way to the Niangua. He planted many different crops and built a mill on the stream between the spring and the site of the present day dam. In the late 1840’s Peter Bennett, Sr. and his family settled in the same valley but on the other side of the Niangua River. Peter purchased from the government the land that is

  In the 50 years since 1970, the world’s population has doubled while the number of chickens we eat has increased nearly 7-fold, from   11 billion to 74 billion . So, why do we eat so much chicken? According to the  National Chicken Council , it started with a mistake in 1923. Like many rural Americans, Cecile Steele of Ocean View, Delaware kept a small flock of chickens as a source of eggs. The chickens would eventually become food once their egg-laying days were over. However, one day the local chicken hatchery  accidently delivered 500 birds , 10 times more than Steele had ordered. Apparently, a clerk had written 500 on the order instead of 50. To give you a sense of the size of the mistake, in the early 1900’s the largest farms only had  ~300 chickens . Clearly, Steele didn’t need that many eggs so she decided to raise the chickens for meat. Less than five months later, she sold them for a huge profit. Eureka! A new business was born. Steele’s husband quit his job to help with an