Well, get ready for Wednesday dog content, readers! Yes, Mr. Smith the West Highland Terrier has arrived. He’s full of vim and vigor, hates to be confined, and loves to snuggle while watching TV. We’re still getting to know each other and adjusting to regular nighttime potty breaks, but he sure is cute. He’s named after one of the best movie dogs, played by dog actor extraordinaire Asta, the wire fox terrier.
Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
–James 4:7-8
I am trying to catch up on my bible reading. I fell behind last week. It is a lot, but I am forging ahead. (And it is all pretty great.)
Meanwhile Sunday was the first Sunday in Advent. The year is racing to its conclusion! They have, of course, started playing Christmas music intermittently on the Christian radio station, which can be irritating, but I liked this rendition of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. (A banjo always adds a lot.)
This was very interesting: “Operation Pedestal: Two Lessons for the Contemporary Spiritual Battle From the Relief of Malta 1942”
Anne, of course, has something good to say about being thankful. “It is the gracious passage of time that makes difficult moments endurable. It is the effulgent light of eternity that makes all the difficulties of the present tolerable.”
And this is a good article about a fellow St. Louisan and Presbyterian who died last week: “When grief holds hands with gratitude.”
Grace and peace to you!
The painting is The Penitent Magdalen by Georges de La Tour, circa 1640.
My cup runneth over. Relax and enjoy the Mimosas, the parades, the food, the family, Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987), a fire in the fireplace, living in America, and all the blessings of this life.
And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.
Everyone arrived yesterday on schedule and without much ado. We all settled in for some good times.
Okay, we may have gotten a little silly, but par for the course.
I hope you all are enjoying family time this week and counting your blessings.
Come, ye thankful people, come, Raise the song of harvest home; All is safely gathered in, Ere the winter storms begin; God our Maker doth provide For our wants to be supplied; Come to God’s own temple, come, Raise the song of harvest home.
How was your weekend? I hope it was peaceful and quiet. I spent the weekend getting ready for a houseful of visitors this week. Daughter #1 arrived yesterday and daughter #2 arrives today with DN and Katie. We are ready for some super fun. Unfortunately, everyone has some form of this dread cold (including the boy’s family) and so we will be coughing a lot while having super fun.
C’est la vie.
If only it was that easy.
Have a good week. Keep your focus on the rock of our salvation!
For wherever the soul of man may turn, unless it turns to you, it clasps sorrow to itself…Why do you still choose to travel by this hard and arduous path? There is no rest to be found where you seek it. In the land of death you try to find a happy life: it is not there. How can life be happy where there is no life at all?
Christ is my saviour. He is my life. He is everything to me in heaven and earth. Once while traveling in a sandy region I was tired and thirsty. Standing on the top of a mound I looked for water. The sight of a lake at a distance brought joy to me, for now I hoped to quench my thirst. I walked toward it for a long time, but I could never reach it. Afterwards I found out it was a mirage, only a mere appearance of water caused by the refracted rays of the sun. In reality there was none. In a like manner I was moving about the world in search of the water of life. The things of this world – wealth, position, honour and luxury – looked like a lake by drinking of whose waters I hoped to quench my spiritual thirst. But I could never find a drop of water to quench the thirst of my heart. I was dying of thirst. When my spiritual eyes were opened I saw the rivers of living water flowing from his pierced side. I drank of it and was satisfied. Thirst was no more. Ever since I have always drunk of that water of life, and have never been athirst in the sandy desert of this world. My heart is full of praise.
–Sadhu Sundar Singh
Oh-o-oh, sinner,
When you’re mingling with the crowd in Babylon—
Drinking the wine of Babylon—
Running with the women of Babylon—
You forget about God, and you laugh at Death.
Today you’ve got the strength of a bull in your neck
And the strength of a bear in your arms,
But some o’these days, some o’ these days,
You’ll have a hand-to-hand struggle with bony Death,
And Death is bound to win.
Young man, come away from Babylon,
That hell-border city of Babylon,
Leave the dancing and gambling of Babylon,
The wine and whiskey of Babylon,
The hot-mouthed women of Babylon;
Fall down on your knees,
And say in your heart:
“I will arise and go to my Father.”
–James Weldon Johnson, from “Prodigal Son”
Have a good weekend!
(The painting is “The Prodigal Son” by N.C. Wyeth)
This article got me thinking about babies and our children and how frivolously we speak of them in and out of the womb.
Indeed, “there is clearly more going on than just a remarkable natural process. It is mysterious and miraculous that a creature would be able to reproduce itself.” Entirely new beings! As a grandmother I have relished watching my three grandchildren grow and change and progress. I paid attention to this with my own kids, but I was always so busy and distracted that I probably didn’t notice all that I should. A grandmother can focus more.
It is amazing to see Katie’s vocabulary expand and her ability to express herself increase daily. She is so similar to her mother and her aunt in looks and demeanor, and yet, she is her own little person.
Of course, our twins, born three months prematurely and spending three full months in the NICU, really are modern-day miracles. Even at a pound and a half, they were fearfully and wonderfully made. The fact that they are bright, healthy, normal kindergartners blows my mind every day.
“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.” (Psalm 139:13-16)
The other day I quoted from an article where the author said that we live in an age marked by infantile ingratitude. Don’t fall into the trap of being ungrateful. Be grateful for your parents who bore you and to the God who created you. As Walt Whitman wrote, “As to me I know of nothing else but miracles.”
“He had already had morning prayer and studied the challenging message of Luke 12: “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat, nor about your body, what you shall put on. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing.
Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds?”
There was not one man in a thousand who considered these words more than poetical vapor, he thought as he dressed. Don’t be anxious? Most mortals considered anxiety, and plenty of it, an absolute requirement for getting the job done. Yet, over and over again, the believer was cautioned to abandon anxiety, and look only to God.
Whatever else that might be, it certainly wasn’t common sense.
But “common sense is not faith,” Oswald Chambers had written, “and faith is not common sense.”
He was entering that part of the week in which his sermon was continually on his mind. “Let me say I believe God will supply all my need,” Chambers had written, “and then let me run dry, with no outlook, and see whether I will go through the trial of faith, or … sink back to something lower.”
He put his handkerchief in his pocket, and looked into the full length mirror on the back of the guest room door.
dual personalities 