The Final Touch

If you are tired of the cold and snow, raise your hand!

Got this from a friend/colleague and just had to share it! It has snowed here, I believe, every day since New Year’s Day — and quite a few days in Decem­ber as well. The white stuff is piled high around our house and community.

Oh, and yeah — it’s COOOLLLD: –20s air tem­per­a­ture much of this week, and that doesn’t even count the windchill!!

Any­one in a warmer clime care to do a house-swap for, say, three months or so? Liv­ing here builds char­ac­ter — but I think I’ve got enough char­ac­ter for the time being. Hey, and you could get in on the result­ing sand­bag­ging in March and April, too! You’d like that, wouldn’t you?

Suu­ur­rrre, you would!!!

photo © 2009 Pearl Vas | more info (via: Wylio)…and find­ing that the one who goes free… is you!

That’s how some­one has defined “for­give­ness.” That def­i­n­i­tion is cer­tainly exem­pli­fied in a human-interest arti­cle I read online today.

I encour­age you to take a few moments out from what­ever you’re doing — well, yeah, from read­ing my blog! — to go read this incred­i­ble, true, feel-good story. It’s “warm and fuzzy,” all right, but it’s too pro­found to be sappy.

I won­der how many of us could do the same as Steve Watt did. Of course, by God’s power, any of us could, but it’s still very hard to imagine.

The real take-away here is how both men were impris­oned, though only one was behind phys­i­cal bars, and how both men are now truly free.

Take a read!

“Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” –1 Corinthi­ans 1:31

As promised, here is my “boast­ing in God” story:

The day before yes­ter­day, one of my 6-year-old’s reg­u­lar babysit­ters (whom he adores), a 5^th-grader who lives next door (daugh­ter to the friend I wrote about yes­ter­day), was charged with walk­ing him home from school. Gabe chose to be dis­obe­di­ent and to play on a huge snow pile halfway between school and home. When he refused to come with her, she tried her best to rec­tify the sit­u­a­tion, but he ended up hit­ting her. She finally opted to leave him there and came to me, nearly in tears, Read the rest of this entry »

“I have not hid­den your sav­ing help within my heart,
I have spo­ken of your faith­ful­ness and your sal­va­tion;
I have not con­cealed your stead­fast love and your faith­ful­ness…” –Psalm 40:10

My next-door neigh­bor called me yes­ter­day: “I just have to boast about God and tell you what he did for us!” I had to ask her to repeat her words; not only was she on her cell phone with a bit of crack­ling going on, but it wasn’t a word-combination I was used to: “I just have to boast about God…” This Lutheran has been learn­ing a lot from her about liv­ing faith openly Read the rest of this entry »

photo © 2009 Sud­hamshu Heb­bar | more info (via: Wylio)

One of the Scrip­ture read­ings for today, accord­ing to the Daily Lec­tionary I am using, is 1 Kings 10:1–13, the account of the Queen of Sheba’s visit to King Solomon. She jour­neyed to see him because she had heard the reports about his extra­or­di­nary wis­dom and pros­per­ity and, appar­ently, thought they were too good to be true. As it turns out, she is pleas­antly sur­prised to find dif­fer­ently. They exchange lav­ish gifts (she brings him spices in such huge amounts that “never again did spices come in such quan­tity,” and he gives her “every desire that she expressed”), sym­bol­iz­ing, I take it, the mutual respect and admi­ra­tion that has sprung up between them.

Have you ever heard about some­one from some­one else who told you, “You’ve got to meet So-and-so. She [or he] is incred­i­ble! I’ve learned so much from this per­son! She [He] is a great leader / teacher / preacher / parent…!”

I have. Read the rest of this entry »

photo © 2010 ann-dabney | more info (via: Wylio)
”…They shall be radi­ant over the good­ness of the Lord,
over the grain, the wine, and the oil,
and over the young of the flock and the herd;
their life shall become like a watered gar­den,
…and my peo­ple shall be sat­is­fied with my bounty,
says the Lord.”     –Jere­miah 37:12–14

I was impressed this morn­ing as the hosts of “The Today Show” talked about New Year’s res­o­lu­tions. Ann Curry shared Read the rest of this entry »