Happy 4th and catching up

Happy Independence Day! I’ve always loved this quote from John Adams’ letter of July 3, 1776, in which he wrote to his wife Abigail what his thoughts were about celebrating Independence Day, with his original spellings:

The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.

You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.

No guns or pomp or illumination here today — Jim is grilling hamburgers later on and we’ll have Grandma over and maybe get into a rousing game of Scrabble. Often we’ll flip back and forth through whatever TV channels have a patriotic concert going on. I hate that we can’t have fireworks in our city limits–we used to get a few specialty ones like little tanks that shot off sparks while it rolled down the street and such. In past years we’ve made it out to some of the bigger displays in the areas, but somehow we didn’t this year. I don’t really like the heavy traffic, but I do enjoy the fireworks. We did go to an Army band concert last night in a downtown park.

I chuckled at how they described their concerts as “missions.” I guess in the military everything is a mission. It was a great night for it — clear and not too hot. There was a nice breeze after the sun started going down. We got a kick out of watching one older man with a walker really getting into the music — standing up much of the time, clapping or moving his hands in time to the music. It was the first time we had been to an event at this park, and we enjoyed it.

It’s been a whirlwind week. I had the ladies’ ministry newsletter/booklet due this week, and Jesse headed for camp on Monday for the week and Jim was out of town the first part of the week, so I thought it would be a great time of quiet to dig into it. But somehow Monday and Tuesday ended up being consumed with errands and other tasks. I was praying the Lord would give me a really good day working on it Wednesday, and He did. It’s really neat how I was writing something that had been on my mind for several weeks, and then this week in my reading from a devotional book and Bible study book, there were sections on the very topic I was writing about that contributed to my thinking and rounded out that section (thank you, Lord!). Thursday was pretty much taken up with Grandma’s birthday, and then the Lord gave me another good day to finish it up Friday. I was really hoping that would be the case and I wouldn’t have to work on it today — I wanted to be able to do family stuff today.

I didn’t get to the computer last night to “play” until evening yesterday, so I figured it was probably too late for the Friday Fave Five. I caught up with some of your blogs then, but it will probably take me a day or two to catch up with everyone.

There’s more “news” but this post is way long already, so I’ll leave you with a few scenes from Grandma’s birthday.

Jesse was at camp and Jason was working during this and the band concert, but Jesse got home today and Jason gets off early tonight, so we’ll all be here for dinner.

Concentrating hard on the Scrabble board. We have to tone it down a bit because she fusses with us over words that don’t make sense to her, like xi and xu. But sometimes when you can play a high-point letter in a way that makes two words at one time using a double or triple space, it’s just too good to pass up.

Happy Birthday, Grandma

Today we will be celebrating my husband’s mother’s 81st birthday later on this afternoon.

Here is a picture of her as a young woman:

With Jim’s dad, I think during their dating days:

I love that picture — looks like it is from a 1940s movie.

From her 50th wedding anniversary a few years ago:

Several weeks ago at Jason’s graduation dinner:

A Thousand Words In Idioms, O and P

Jientje at Heaven Is In Belgium hosts A  Thousand Words In Idioms wherein she asks participants to illustrate an idiom with a photo. I’ve seen a few other friends participating in this an thought it looked like fun, but each week I would either forget or not have time. But I had been thinking of the perfect one for “P,” so when I saw that was up this week, I wanted to join in. I hope it is ok to join in here in the middle — if I need to catch up from “A” I’ll have to do that next week.

They are taking two letters at a time, and this week is O and P.

For “O” I chose “Out of the blue.“

If something happens “out of the blue” it is sudden and unexpected and doesn’t seem to have a visible cause. (I don’t know about you, but looking at this snow makes me feel cooler. But that has nothing to do with idioms.) A quick search of the history of the phrase seems in indicate it arose as a description of lightning.

For “P” I have chosen “Practice what you preach,” which means that whatever it is we tell other people to do we need to be doing ourselves.

When Jeremy was little he loved to “preach” and “play church” (actually I think what he loved most was waving his arms around to lead singing.) So Jim built him this miniature pulpit and he had a captive audience in his baby brother, who I think is just off camera.

If you’d like to see other illustrated idioms or join in, head over to Jientje’s.

Snippets

• Whew! Busy day. I feel like I’ve been “going” all day — and I am definitely not the Energizer Bunny! It’s nice to sit down for a while.

• Jason got his first full-time pay check a few days ago and remarked, “Now I know why people gripe about taxes so much!” Welcome to adulthood, m’boy.

• The boys went to a fellowship at church last week that I missed due to not feeling well, and when they got home I asked them what kinds of things were served. In naming some of the things, Jeremy said something that sounded like “foreos.” I said, “What….?” He replied, “Fake Oreos. Faux Oreos. Fauxreos.” I thought that was pretty clever.

• Had a quick and easy dinner tonight. We had some leftover sausage from Jeremy’s pizza last week and a partial package of pepperoni, so I stopped at the store for some crescent roll dough (love that stuff! What did we do before someone invented it?) and provolone cheese and made pizza rolls. Then I borrowed an idea from Jason’s fiancee that she had made once while she was here and made a few with chocolate chips and a glaze made of powdered sugar, milk, and  a bit of vanilla for dessert. Good stuff.

Mimosa

Sometimes people who work in children’s ministries can get discouraged due to the seeming lack of fruit or the fact that they have some children just a few times and then never see them again. Mimosa by Amy Carmichael tells the story of a little girl who was marvelously changed by just a short encounter with the gospel.

When Amy Carmichael was a missionary in India she learned that some little girls were sold to the temples for immoral purposes. Whenever she could, she tried to rescue these girls, to talk their parents into letting them stay with her instead. One such little girl was named Star. She had been with Amy for a while when her father came, bringing her sister, Mimosa, with him, to try to take Star back. He met and talked with Amy and Mr. Walker, the director, and at one point even stretched out his arm to take Star — yet he felt he could not move, that some strange power was preventing him.

Mimosa saw this. Some of the workers had a short time to talk with her, not even time enough to present the gospel completely. Mimosa asked her father to let her stay: he would not hear of it.

Those who had met with Mimosa longed for her: she seemed intelligent and interested. They lamented that they had not had time to tell her more. “How could she possibly remember what we had told her? It was impossible to expect her to remember……Impossible? Is there such a word where the things of the Lord are concerned?”

Something of what she heard about a God who loved her stayed with her. She knew instinctively she could no longer rub the ashes of her family’s god on her forehead, as was their custom. The women in the house thought her naughty or “bewitched” and beat her with a stick. She was bewildered, but she knew God loved her, in spite of all she could not understand of her circumstances.

After she was married at age seventeen, she found she had been deceived by her husband’s family: He was “landless [and] neck-deep in debt.” It was no shame to be in debt: in that culture: “”If you have no debt, does it not follow that no one trusts you enough to lend you anything, and from that is it not obvious that you are a person of small consequence?” But Mimosa’s character could not endure it, though she had never been taught against it. She encouraged him to sell the land in her name, the only piece of land he had that he had given as a dowry, to pay off the debt, and then suggested they would work. He was amazed at such a thing, but agreed. His unscrupulous elder brother suggested they start a salt market and that Mimosa sell her jewels to get them set up: he would take care of it. He instead somehow misused the money. She gave some money to her mother to keep for her, but then her mother would not give it to her when she asked for it: her mother was angry with her over the loss of the jewels that had been passed to her. “Let thy God help thee!” she told her daughter.

Mimosa went out to pray: “O God, my husband has deceived me, his brother has deceived me, even my mother has deceived me, but You will not deceive me…Yes, they have all deceived me, but I am not offended with you. Whatever You do is good. What should I do without you? You are the Giver of health and strength and will to work. Are not these things better than riches or people’s help?….I am an emptiness for You to fill.”

Thus her life went. She was a derision because she would not worship the false gods or engage in idolatrous practices. She worked hard because her husband would not. There were times when she was weak and could not work that God worked in unusual ways to provide for her. She had three sons; then a snake bite left her husband blind and crazy. In a couple of instances she received a bit more information about the God she loved, and she clung to it and to Him.

Meanwhile, Star was concerned for her sister. She felt led to write to her and prayed someone would read the letter to Mimosa. A cousin did read it to her, as often as Mimosa asked him, but neither of them thought to write back to Star, so she and the ladies of Dohnavur were left to wonder and pray.

A mysterious illness which took the life of one of her sons caused the neighbors to torment her further with their words. They felt it was all her fault since she would do nothing to appease the gods. Mimosa replied, “ My child God gave; my child has God taken. It is well.” Though weak, ill, grieving, and alone, she still told God, “I am not offended with you.”

The years followed in much the same way. She had two more sons. The oldest one was taken by the father (who had regained something of his right mind) to another town to work but, to Mimosa’s grief, required him to rub the god’s ashes on his forehead.

She began to long that her children should have “what she had never had, the chance to learn fully of the true and living and holy God and themselves choose His worship.” It would take too much space here to tell how God wondrously worked out the all the details to go to Dohnavur, even, miraculously, her husband’s approval. Her sister, Star, was strongly burdened to pray for Mimosa and discovered later that was just the time when all of this was coming to pass. Twenty-two years after she first visited Dohnavur, she returned. It can only be imagined what she felt as she soaked up Christian fellowship, learned to read, studied the Bible, was baptized. After a time she went back to her husband, determined to win him. He was in a less tolerant caste, yet amazingly he did not put her away. Her life was not easy. “But then, she has not asked for ease; she has asked for the shield of patience that she may overcome.”

“Is not the courage of the love of God amazing?” Amy Carmichael wrote. “Could human love have asked it of a soul? Fortitude based on knowledge so slender; deathless, dauntless faith — who could have dared to ask it but the Lord God Himself? And what could have held her but Love Omnipotent?“

Barbara likes to…

I saw way back a long time ago on my friend Alice’s blog a fun exercise: type your first name and “likes to” in your browser and see what pops up. Here are some results from “Barbara likes to…”

Barbara likes to quote the anthropologist Margaret Mead.
Nope. Never read her.

Barbara likes to party like her twin.
Don’t have a twin; don’t like to “party.”

Barbara likes to play computer games.
Only a few.

Barbara likes to pass along the wisdom she gained from Aunt Hattie.
I don’t have an Aunt Hattie, but that was my grandma’s nickname. I only wish she had lived long enough for me to have gained wisdom from her.

Barbara likes to work with primitive breeds of sheep.
Um, no.

Barbara….likes to be called “senator” – not “ma’am.”
I don’t have a problem with “ma’am.” In the South that is considered respectful.

Barbara likes to celebrate events in a big way.
Some, yes.

Barbara likes to do one book at a time.
Reading — no, I usually have at least two going at a time. If I were writing one, yes, I think I could only focus on one at a time.

Barbara likes to eat mackerel.
Never had it.

Barbara likes funny stories.
Yes!

Barbara likes writing her books very much!
Well, if I wrote books, I hope I would like it.

Barbara likes to keep things low key
Yep!

So what does this Barbara like to do? Read, play Scrabble on the computer, read friends’ blogs, spend time with my family, do some crafts, listen to good music, go barefoot, eat Mexican food and chocolate and way too many other things, stay up too late, sing around the house, look at decorating and craft magazines, go out to eat, celebrate special days, sing hymns, hear good preaching, be an encouragement….and many other things.

What do you like to do?

Friday’s Fave Five

Susanne at Living to Tell the Story hosts a “Friday Fave Five” in which we share our five favorite things from the past week. Click on the button to read more of the details, and you can visit Susanne to see the list of others’ favorites or to join in.

1. Sunshine! After all the rain last week, it was nice to have almost no rain and plenty of sunshine.

2. Air conditioning! It’s been in the 90s and pretty humid. I can hardly be outside or run through the mall or W-Mart without sweating and turning all red. I don’t perspire in a dainty, ladylike way, unfortunately. I don’t know how I’d live without AC in the house and car.

3. Father’s Day. It was a fun time to honor Jim and make his favorite Boston Cream Pie.

4. Pink accessories and supplies. It’s silly, but this just makes me happy.

I also saw a pink filing cabinet I’d like to get for when I convert Jason’s room into a sewing/craft/guest room after he gets married and moves out.

5. A successful shopping excursion. A former pastor used to say that women could go shopping for a white blouse, hit every store in the mall, not find a white blouse, and still have a good time. Not me!! If I can’t find what I am looking for, I get frustrated. I don’t really like traipsing from store to store looking for something — not for very long, anyway. Yesterday I found shorts for Jesse for camp, a gift for a baby shower, sheets for my bed (I’d wanted some with a pattern but had only been able to find solid ones), and towels with the colors I wanted — all at one store! And at great prices!

I’d been looking for towels with blue and tan and maybe a bit of brown, but at other stores the blue in the towels like that was kind of on aqua blue, which wasn’t what I wanted. I was glad to find these:

And I love this adorable gift bag from the baby department:

And one extra as a bonus — I can’t seem to stop at five.

6. This hilarious post of cartoons at Sally’s. I especially like the farmer in the dell and the squirrel on the psychiatrist’s couch.

Happy Friday!

Booking Through Thursday: Unique Sorting

There happened to be two Booking Through Thursday questions today, probably inadvertantly. The first one had to do with whether there is a book that “evokes summer” or has a summery feel to it. I don’t really have an answer for that one. But the second question is:

Browsing through my blog, I found a link to this post about the “Sorted Book Project.” Go read it. I’ll wait.

The idea is to take a few books and physically sort them in such a way that the titles make some kind of sense … something that I’ve never quite gotten around to doing and photographing, but which fascinates me.

What title/combinations can you come up with? (Bonus points if you actually assemble the books and photograph them, like in the original post

I think some of the participants didn’t click through to the link and aren’t quite getting it because they are posting about how they have their books sorted on the shelves. The question isn’t asking that: it’s asking participants to put together book titles that have something in common with each other or even tell a story through the titles. My favorite one from the link is the fifth picture (at least it is the fifth at this moment) about the sharks.

This was a fun idea — I could probably come up with a lot of interesting combinations if I didn’t have other things to get to today. But here’s what I came up with:

(”Tramp” in that title is a verb, not a noun — like marching.)

Jon and Kate

I don’t watch Jon and Kate Plus 8. I’ve caught just a few minutes of it here and there as I’ve flipped through channels. My fleeting impressions were that Kate was high-strung and somewhat disrespectful of her husband and that Jon seemed to be just…there.

I am very sad to hear that they are planning to divorce. I would hope they’d go for some type of counseling. All too often I have known of people to struggle silently in their marriages and then decide to divorce without trying to get help in the mean time, and it seems once that course of action is decided, the door is shut to any thought of healing and reconciliation. I am from a divorced family. The Bible calls marriage a coming together of a man and woman to become one flesh, and the rending of that relationship is just as painful as real flesh tearing.

But what also saddens me is the “chatter” I’m seeing on various blogs and Facebook about them, especially among Christians, whose speech is supposed to be “always with grace, seasoned with salt,” (seasoned with salt, not primarily consisting of salt.)

I admit I struggle with where the lines are between evaluation and judgment, criticism vs. critcal thinking, discussion and gossip. I don’t always know where the line is that crosses from one to the other.

I do know it is a major mistake to assign motives when we don’t know what is going on in another’s heart.

Of course, inviting the public into your everday lives means they are going to see faults and failures as well as everyday life, and of course we can learn from others’ mistakes. But that doesn’t mean we can’t exerise compassion as well.

Small things

The reading for today in Our Daily Walk by F. B. Meyer really spoke to my heart. I was going to just quote the last paragraph, but really couldn’t leave out the first two. But the last paragraph set off a train of thought about other small things God has used: the “little maid” who told Naaman about the prophet, the book Mimosa by Amy Carmichael about the life-changing truth a young girl heard in just a short time at the Dohnavur compound, and many others.

THE POWER OF SMALL THINGS

“Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed nothing shall be impossible unto you.”– Mt 17:20.

THE GRAIN of mustard seed is the smallest of seeds, but Jesus says that it is a fitting emblem of the Kingdom of God, and the unostentatious beginnings of the Christian era. The number and social position of the disciples was insignificant in the extreme. And the first germ of truth sown in the heart of man, woman, or child, is sometimes equally insignificant. It may be just a sentence, a text, a passing remark which results in a mighty harvest (Mark 4:30-32).

What is it that enables this tiny seed to make such a prodigious increase? It lies in its receptive power, as it receives into its nature the mighty forces which slumber in the soil, the effect of sunbeams, moisture, and air. So long as a little aperture is kept open, there is no limit to the fertility and usefulness of the plant. You may be but a child, and your life seem weak and ineffective, but if you will open your heart to God by faith, He will pour in His mighty fullness, and the tiny seed become a great tree of strength and usefulness, grace and beauty.

Let us not despise the day of small things. Faith may be as a grain of mustard seed, but as it is used it will grow. Your effort to do good may seem so insignificant that it would be hardly missed, if it were discontinued, and yet out of it may emanate some mighty work which will bring help and comfort to thousands. How many orphanages, schools, and philanthropic efforts have owed their origin to the most infinitesimal beginnings. One destitute child cared and ministered to for Christ’s sake has led to another, until finally thousands of little ones have received a good start in life. What could be more insignificant than the beginnings of the Gospel message in many a heathen country. Do not be discouraged. Like Gideon, you may be only a cake of barley bread, but by faith you may overturn the tents of Midian. Like the little lad, you may only be able to place five tiny loaves and two small fish in the hands of Jesus, but He will bless them and make them sufficient to feed the multitude. A stone may bring Goliath to the dust; an arrow may pierce through the armour of the mailed warrior. Have faith in God; Reckon on God’s faithfulness to you!

PRAYER

Lord, increase our faith. Give us a child-like faith to receive what Thou dost offer, and from this moment may a new sense of the presence and power of God, through the Holy Spirit, come to us. AMEN.