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Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! (Philippians 4:4 NIV)

On December 10, 1914, inventor Thomas Edison’s manufacturing plant went up in flames.  According to a 1961 Reader’s Digest article by Edison’s son Charles, Edison calmly walked over to him as he watched the fire destroy his dad’s work. In a childlike voice, Edison told his 24-year-old son, “Go get your mother and all her friends. They’ll never see a fire like this again.” When Charles objected, Edison said, “It’s all right. We’ve just got rid of a lot of rubbish.”

At age 67, Edison started over without letting a single employee go.  Instead of being lost in despair and loss, he focused on starting over with a clean slate, even though he had lost the equivalent of about 23 million dollars today. 

Are you afraid?  Many of us in the United States and around the world are afraid.  Have you seen grocery shelves this third week of March, 2020?  Panicked shoppers are buying up all the toilet paper and other staples.  Multiple articles are posted every day about the coronavirus, with the number of cases in your county and your country, keeping track of the cases and the deaths.

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. Matthew 4:1 ^NIV

Recently I finished reading a book that described some of the most reliable soldiers of the Revolutionary War.  General George Washington called upon them to fight some of the most difficult battles of the war, and time after time they came through.  They went up against the best the British army could send out and held their own.  They sacrificed their health, their homes, and sometimes their very lives.  They faithfully fought with General Washington in the very worst of times, when all seemed lost.  General Washington would not stand alone.

In our yard out by the street there are a couple of buckeye trees.  I did some research online and found some interesting things from a gardening website.  First and most important, the nuts of the buckeye are poisonous – don’t eat them.  I discovered that the only buckeye native to California is Aesculus californica, or California buckeye, and its growth patterns are a little different.  “Aesculus californica is summer deciduous, sometimes defoliating in early July, and it is the first tree leafing out each year.