Gratitude Attitude in a Confusing Scary World

   William Cowper (pronounced Cooper) left us many beautiful, sadly nearly forgotten hymns in his troubled life.

  My favorite Bible study teacher, Dee Brestin, shared in her email list a link to a beautiful video of a song of his i'd never heard of. 

  May you find your celebration of Thanksgiving enhanced by the words and music.

  Links disappeared in the text?  Here they are separately:

Wordless Wednesday: A Halloween Not So Long Ago

Fall 1993, at Grandma & Grandpa's house. Here, Max and Boom are with a cousin.

Subtle Agatha and her Subtext

  One of the joys of rereading old novels is all the things you missed before in your eagerness to get the story.  i think i mentioned the one about the fellow whom they thought had defected from England to Moscow, hoping he hadn't, in the British idiom, "gone West."
  Lately i reread one of my all-time favorites, "Cat Among the Pigeons."  The novel is somewhat more than 300 pages long.  In those pages, three women are referred to in terms marking them as unusual.  Essentially, these women are unusual because they do not give way to their emotions in extreme situations.

Saturday Sisters: Hannah, God-Focused

   Things were not right in Hannah's home, or in her larger world.

Wordless Wednesday: God's Tree

       

He Says, She Says: Still Learning How to Talk to Each Other

  This could be me & MyGuy.....

Wordless Wednesday: Big Fence, Little Dog, & Other "Tail-less"es

 Once we invited a clown to Max's birthday party.  He told us

Saturday Sisters: The Shulamite

  Interestingly, the place Shulam doesn't seem to have been mentioned elsewhere in ancient literature.  However,

Saturday Sisters: Having God in All Things

  The rich young ruler was asked to sell all he owned and give the proceeds to the poor.  Jesus was sorry that the man turned away, but we never know what became of him.
  i have some imaginative ideas, but they must remain in the realm of fiction.
  However, we do know about a woman who gave away AND kept her possessions.

January 4: The 10th Day of Christmas

Praise Yahweh!

Listen, everyone! Listen, you! Yes, you right there!

The LORD's redemption is here!

See that little baby?

He is our promised Redeemer.

Watch Him.

Everyone, God has given us a Son, a

Wonderful Counselor, Prince of Peace,

Himself in a Babyform.

      Anna in the Temple

December 29: The Fourth Day of Christmas

WONDER

From the time Gabriel came

Nothing was the same.

A babe, when i know not a man?

Truly the ways of Adonai

are wonderful, unknowable

. . . even strange.

December 26: The First Day of Christmas

The Shepherds Rejoice

Jubilance

Wake up, Bethlehem!

He's here!

Our promised Savior has arrived!

The LORD's angel told us

And it is so. Truly the LORD is doing a new thing.

He has sent our our Savior to

Not the palaces of Jerusalem,

But to a stable in Bethlehem.

Isaiah 43:18,19; Micah 5:2,5a

Saturday Sisters: The Proverbs 31 Woman

   i think everyone gets tired when reading about the Proverbs 31 Woman.  She's everywhere, doing everything, and she does it perfectly.
  But

Saturday Sisters: Sheep, Goats, Dorcas, and, oh yeah, Kindness

"God Gives Sharing"

  i hadn't thought i would share the VBS story here, as it's got fictional liberties taken with it (while remaining, in a larger sense, true  throughout), but there is so much here, both the real life story and the Bible story, that it needs to go here.
  In 2004, i was asked to do one of the Lesson Rooms for our VBS.  The way we did this was,

Living in a 5-Star Wilderness

  That's how Michigan bills its Upper Peninsula. (and if someone will help me add their little R in a circle, i will.)
  If you want wild, away from it all, this could be the place to go.
  According to the Google map, Paradise, Michigan, where we stayed, is 9 hours, 11 minutes from Indianapolis.  MyGuy and i drove it in more like

Blizzard Past

January 3, 1998
Digging out from the New Year's Eve
Blizzard to be Remembered

Wordless Wednesday - My Parents' Wedding Day

May 23, 1948

Saturday Sisters: Mary Magdalene

One of the occasional series~~~

Yes, everything else is worthless when 

compared with the priceless gain 

of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

I have discarded everything else,

counting it all as garbage,

so that I may have Christ.

                                        --  Philippians 3:8 NLT

  Mary Magdalene is one of those Bible people about whom we don't know as much as we think we do. 

   In Luke 8:1-3, she is first mentioned as one of those "on tour" with Jesus, one of the women supporting Him with their resources. Here also, along with the resurrection account in Mark, we learn that Jesus had cast seven demons out of her.

  These are the only mentions of her early connection with Jesus, but how powerful that connection must have been. 

 No longer incapacitated, she used her new life in service of the Life-Giver.

  She was among the few at the foot of the cross and one of the first at the empty tomb. John's gospel records her sorrow in not finding her Lord's body as expected, and her joy when He appeared to her.

  Jesus commissioned her to tell the disciples of His resurrection. She wanted to stay, and she didn't understand it all.

  Still, she obeyed 

  She obeyed, even though the men didn't believe her far-fetched story.
  Guys coming back from death, you know, that's not the normal human experience.  Obviously the dear woman's grief has deranged her.

  There are tantalizing bits of Mary's story that we might like to know, about her earlier and later life, but we do know what we need to know.

  She met Jesus.
       She decided about Jesus.
              She followed through
                       without looking back.

  What about us?  Can we say the same?

But don’t begin until you count the cost. . . . 

no one can become my disciple

without giving up everything for me.

                        --Luke 14:28, 33NLT

Yes, everything else is worthless when 

compared with the priceless gain 

of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

            --  Philippians 3:8a NLT

Saturday Sisters - Martha of Bethany

In the occasional series of meditations ~~
         A lot of women seem to identify with Martha.

Be anxious for nothing but in everything

by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving

let your requests be made known to God.

And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension,

will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 4:6,7

Luke 10:38-42; John 11:1-12:8

  Poor Martha. Everyone criticizes her. But, really where would we be without the Marthas of this world? Jesus didn't criticize either sister.

  But Martha did need to take time with her Master, so that she could rediscover peace in the work that brought her so much joy.

  A few verses before where our story opens (Luke 9:58) Jesus said He had nowhere to sleep. Martha "opened her home." Did she hear, or hear of, those words, and respond to a need?

  Both in her home and at her brother's tomb, Martha didn't hesitate to tell Jesus just what she was thinking. Maybe Mary no longer noticed her sister's sharp comments, but Jesus listened, and heard.

 And when Jesus spoke, Martha listened, heard, and believed.

 She could continue her work, but now she had the peace that is beyond understanding, because she had met the Master.

  And i have to ask, What about me? 

           Am i distracted in my serving, or in my recreation?

                        What does Jesus think of my distractions?

                                          Am i listening?

"Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life;

he who believes in Me shall live
even if he dies,

and everyone who lives

and believes in Me shall never die.

Do you believe this?"

She said to Him, "Yes, Lord,
I have believed

that You are the Christ,

even He who comes into the world."

John 11:25-27

Martha was frustrated and angry

when her work was about pots and pans.

She was calm when it was about Jesus.

Before and After

   This is a portrait of a feeling.
   Dry, alone, with a grey sky and a wide, clear but joyless path of duty before you.
   It's even off-center with stuff in the way. The path is clear enough, but there's bothersome little STUFF in front of you.
   Ever been here?
   This past weekend, i have "worked a Discipleship Walk."  My family knows that, along with the other STUFF i've been doing, it's pretty well consumed all of me in the days  and weeks leading up to the weekend, and i came home Sunday afternoon exhausted.  i dropped the luggage in the living room, collapsed in a chair, then dragged myself to bed for a three hours, dead to the world.
   Why would anyone do something like this?
   Joy.
   The Discipleship Walks that i participate in are a small part of the worldwide Christian Cursillo movement, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursillo.  They go by various names, and are associated with various parts of the body of Christ, aka denominations.  Some are explicitly about the sponsoring church, others explicitly nondemoniational. These weekends are not about conversion.   The Disciples who come on the Walk learn, through talks and experience, the nuts & bolts of Christian life in a way that they've likely never known before, even if they've lived as a Christ-follower for decades. 
   It's exhausting, it's fun way better than an amusement park, it's joyful.  There's ALWAYS more than enough to eat.  Sleep, maybe not so much, but you're only seriously sleep deprived if you don't go to bed when you get the chance.

And the view along the path is a lot more like this now.