Well, we are firmly encased under a blanket of snow. And it is quiet–so quiet–in my neighborhood. No cars, practically no one walking by. No leaf blowers. Very nice.
I suppose I should bundle up and go outside, “But for now I am a willing prisoner in this house, a sympathizer with the anarchic cause of snow.” (I really like this poem by Billy Collins about snow.)
And here’s an old song which uses the phrase “We bundled up”.
Our driveway is going to be plowed on Wednesday, so until then, we are stuck at home. I can dig it. Hang in there and I will too.
Well, we were warned about the blizzard conditions that were coming all last week and so were prepared to be home for several days. In fact, I did not leave the house all weekend, but stayed holed up in my cozy domicile. I had plenty of wine and nibblies, so I was not overly concerned. We were lucky and largely dodged the bullet, unlike Kansas City where conditions were pretty dicey. But we did experience “thunder snow” which sent our weatherpeople into paroxysms of delight. Flyover weather–par for the course.
Church was cancelled and so I watched (on YouTube) the service from last week when we were in Mahomet. It was interesting to watch from the virtual balcony and good to see all those familiar communicants. They sang “O Little Town of Bethlehem” which was nice to hear, since we had not sung it earlier during the Christmas season. The lyrics* by Phillips Brooks are so good.
I took down all the Christmas decorations (and two trees) which is quite a job and takes hours and hours. Daughter #1 came over on Friday and helped me, but it is a multiple-day event. I’m sure I will continue to find Xmas items that have escaped my attention for weeks to come.
Today is Epiphany, so don’t forget to watch 3 Godfathers(1948). I watched it over the weekend and it is just a great, great movie. You will recall that it is a loose retelling of the biblical Three Wise Men story in an American Western context, starring John Wayne, Pedro Armendariz and Harry Carey, Jr. It is also the birthday of our lovely daughter-in-law (daughter #3). We will celebrate as soon as the roads are cleared and we can synchronize our calendars!
Here’s Sinclair Ferguson’s resolution for the Christian life. “But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”
It is very frustrating not to be able to include photos on my blog and daughter #1 and I are working on figuring out what to do. I probably will be starting a new blog, perhaps on Substack, very soon, so keep checking in and I’ll let you know.
But honestly, is it even Friday if I’ve been off of work for two weeks? Who is to say? Anyway, I thought I’d share this little bit from a commencement address given by Frederick Buechner at Princeton, on the 250th anniversary of the university’s founding. It feels apropos for the new year.
“‘What are you going to do now?’ was his question, and it is the question still, and it is also the question implicit in the Gospel reading for this first Sunday in June. Jesus has apparently spent the day teaching by the Sea of Galilee with the usual crowd gathered to hear him, but then evening comes and a kind of lull descends and with it the question of what they were going to do next.
Start for home maybe? Find a place to lie down and get some rest, sign off for the day, because God knows the day has been long and hard and nobody can keep going forever? But that is not what Jesus says though there can’t have been any of them readier to call it a day than he was, the star of the show. He is standing at the water’s edge with his tired fisherman friends, and what he says to them is, ‘Let us go across to the other side.’ His answer to the question of what to do next, what to do with the rest of their lives, is simply stated. What he says to them is Go.
…
Keep going, Jesus says, beacsue to keep going is to keep living and to stop going is to stop living in any way that much matters. ‘Let us go across to the other side,’ he says, though who knows how far the other side is or what awaits us when we get there, if anything awaits us at all. And go bravely because if we are the boat and the storm and the fishermen in their helplessness, we are also, we have in us also, the holy one asleep in the stern with a pillow under his head whose presence gives us hope and courage.”
Every January, in addition to catching up with the Westminster Shorter Catechism, I like to read through the Resolutions of Jonathan Edwards.
Resolved, that I will do whatsoever I think to be most to God’s glory, and my own good, profit and pleasure, in the whole of my duration, without any consideration of the time, whether now, or never so many myriad’s of ages hence. Resolved to do whatever I think to be my duty and most for the good and advantage of mankind in general. Resolved to do this, whatever difficulties I meet with, how many and how great soever.
There are a 70 of them. You can read them here. They are worth reading!
It is a new year. Time to look forward. But it is also (and always) a good time to look back–especially to try and see where and how God has been working in your life. He is, you know. Every day, in 10,000 ways.
“The time is ripe for looking back over the day, the week, the year, and trying to figure out where we have come from and where we are going to, for sifting through the things we have done and the things we have left undone for a clue to who we are and who, for better or worse, we are becoming. But again and again we avoid the long thoughts….We cling to the present out of wariness of the past. And why not, after all? We get confused. We need such escape as we can find. But there is a deeper need yet, I think, and that is the need—not all the time, surely, but from time to time—to enter that still room within us all where the past lives on as a part of the present, where the dead are alive again, where we are most alive ourselves to turnings and to where our journeys have brought us. The name of the room is Remember—the room where with patience, with charity, with quietness of heart, we remember consciously to remember the lives we have lived.
-Frederick Buechner, A Room Called Remember
And remember this?
Wonderful! “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom,” the good thief said from his cross (Luke 23:42). There are perhaps no more human words in all of Scripture, no prayer we can pray so well.” (Also Frederick Buechner)
Happy New Year! Live in hope and embrace what God gives you in this life in love.
As Barnabas Piper says, “There is nothing magical or super spiritual about reading the Bible in a year. But there is something super wise and spiritual about prioritizing the reading of the Bible. And every Christian should read the entire Bible.”
Here is a list of some different Bible Reading plans for 2025.
Yesterday I caught up with my Bible reading plan (the Chronological Bible Reading Plan) and finished Revelation. Tomorrow I start a new plan–the 5x5x5 Bible Reading Plan–which I have done before and liked. Having a plan and following through with it has been an anchor in my spiritual life now for three years. I highly recommend it.
Try it or don’t–it’s up to you–but you might like it!
“A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.”
–Theodore Roosevelt
*From “Year’s End” by Richard Wilbur; read the whole poem here.
Did you have a merry Christmas? We did. We celebrated with family here on Christmas eve and Christmas and then went to the prairie for more Christmas there. We also checked out the PCA church in Urbana, and we liked it. I cried through the first hymn, so par for the course. Katie said she was a little bored at the end, but what four-year old enjoys a 30-minute sermon? She held her depravity in check like a trouper. Everyone was very friendly and nice.
Also, the boy and his family moved into their new house!
Unfortunately, I thought I had figured out how to move forward with WordPress, but it seems not, and I am still struggling with photos. So no postcards from our flyover Christmas. C’est la vie. I’ll keep working on it.
Anyway, this is an oldie but a goodie:
“Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns.” (Rev. 19:6)
And this lady makes me laugh. I am in total agreement with her RESOLUTIONS FOR 2025:
I resolve to pray for the health, safety, and wisdom of our President and his team every single day. They can’t do it alone, folks. We have to fight fight fight. Give in on NOTHING. Only “reach across the aisle” to give somebody a noogie.
I resolve never again to “diet” in whatever life is left to me. I will move more, stress less, eat healthily, but never eschew any particular food if it brings me joy. Life is short and getting shorter by the day. Like me.
That’s it. 2025 cannot come soon enough, particularly January 20th. God Bless us every one! God Bless America!
As alluded to yesterday, I am experiencing technical problems with inserting photos on my blog. As it is Christmas Eve, I do not feel like dealing with this problem, so I will be on hiatus for awhile until I can figure this out. Bah humbug, but c’est la vie.
While you’re waiting for Santa to arrive, here’s an interesting article about the Three Kings.
I think this writer is very funny and this post about the “outrageous erasure of women” is right on.
And this is a really good explanation of Total Depravity, a fundamental tenet of Reformed theology.
On Friday Mr. Smith got a shampoo while daughter #1 and I got a glass of wine nearby, after which the OM brought home Chick-fil-A and we watched The Bishop’s Wife (1947). The weekend took off from there. Daughter #2 arrived on Saturday morning along with DN and the prairie girls who were ready to party …
We got dressed up…
…and went to a Christmas party at daughter #1’s house…I would share more photos but WordPress is not cooperating with me so I can’t share them. C’est la vie. Hopefully I can figure this out, but for now…
Well, after last week’s illness, I am back! I picked up a virus that caused laryngitis and couldn’t make a sound for four days! Mr. Smith ran amuck with no one to tell him “No!” in a stern voice. The doctor gave me steroids to make my voice come back and thankfully, the course ends today.
I’ve wanted to do one of those “Morning Routine as a Corporate Girly” videos you see on Instagram all the time because my house is seriously so cozy in the morning. Don’t worry, the amount of effort it would take to record myself walking down the stairs and then repositioning the camera to catch me turning on the lights and making my coffee etc. keeps me from doing so. That, and the sight of myself pre-getting ready for the day.
When I’m sitting on the couch, in my cozy house, decorated for Christmas, with a mug of hot coffee in my hands, and my puppydog who is getting to be very sweet as he matures out of puppyhood sitting on my lap, it is difficult not to feel incredibly grateful. The year has not been without its hardships, of course, but as we approach the final week and a half of the year, I know I am so blessed to be where I am. I hope you feel the same about your lives!
It should come as no surprise that I am looking forward to a holiday break. I am taking two weeks off from work (barring major disaster). Hallelujah! And to include one last Richard Scarry meme before the end of year, I will be channeling BusyTown vibes during this time.
Just kidding, I don’t have any enemies.
I know my mother already included a bit from the last chapter of A Christmas Carol, but I want to include some too.
“Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. He own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.”
dual personalities 