We Are Still Here!

Hello, Dear friends.
It has been way too long! Our computer was taken out by a storm ...and I have sadly not been able to blog. I miss my little "home" on the internet terribly, but I hope to be back to blogging very soon! I am at our local library typing this, but I am unable to load pictures on this computer. What would my blog be without pictures?
Hope to "see" you soon.
Love and peace,
Eileen

Wonderful YOU!

You are wish...
You are promise...
You are future!

Can you say that when you feel discouraged today?

I am wish. I am promise. I am future.

Try this just for today....whenever you think a negative thought, or feel upset...repeat this verse to yourself:

"I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; wonderful  are your works, and my soul knows it very well."
(psalm 139:14)

You are defined by your identity in God, your maker. Nothing else...period!

You are wonderful!

Petals In The Wind

Apple blossoms flower the dining room table, and another one slips off to flurry down in the breeze. I think to myself that I need to take them outside and put them to rest. Their bloom has surely given way to a mess.

I'm drawn back to the words of a teacher I once worked with : "I never bring real flowers in the house- only artificial ones. The real ones just make too much of a mess." I remember being horrified (seriously) by the very thought of no real flowers in the house! I wasn't married yet, but I already had visions of the lovely flowers that would fill my home with beauty and lavish scent.

Now I have to laugh; you see, I still bring fresh flowers in, but they ARE A MESS! And I think Of dear Ms. Maclin's words every time I clean up a flower mess. So today, I'm sitting on the bench, trying to fix my vacuum, and it stinks. It smells like Roy, our lab. I can't imagine not having him inside with us, but no matter what we do, he just has a more "doggy" odor. And I'm thinking about all these messes that could be avoided?

And that's just it. There is a price for being real. Flowers that bestow scent and loveliness fade and die. Dogs smell and shed hair. Children change clothes, muddy floors, squeeze toothpaste all over the place, spill juice, and make all manner of messes ...

But imagine a world with no Lilac smell, no cuddly dogs breathing soft on the sheepskin rug, no little feet pitter patting towards you with  pink boots and bathing suit. Imagine a life of artificiality, where it's all fake. The house is clean: no flower messes, no dog hair to vacuum, no fingerprints to wipe....

But no life. No life, because life is messy. The passion and beauty of real living, real relationships, emotions that swell and fill come at a price- the price of being vulnerable to the pain, the discomfort, the mess. And so many times, because I don't want the mess, I choose the artificial. I sacrifice the living that runs deep for surface living that shields but doesn't penetrate, that' s safe but not overflowing- a lifeless void that does not infuse all who God is. Because He is real, and there is no substitute for the breath of a living God.

So many times we bring "artificial flowers" into our souls, because we don't want the mess of " real flowers." We choose to keep relationships shallow and flat, because we're afraid of the dying- the death of emotions, the death of loneliness, the death of self.

When I choose to love someone in a way that is authentic, I give pieces of myself away; those emotions that bloom and flower may some day be petals in the wind. But if my soul has become more beautiful through that loving, even if for just a short while, that beauty will never fade. Real relationships edify and sculpt a soul for eternity.

"I fly those flights of a fluid and swallowing soul, my course runs below the soundings of plummets."
~Walt Whitman

Never

I have lots of books. LOTS. I guess other people have lots too, because in the book I was reading last night (one I had picked up at a book sale) this is what was written in it:

I like that idea- writing the date I finished reading a book. Unfortunately, though, I rarely read nonfiction books start to finish. I read snippets here and there as they catch my interest.

Last night I was reading The History Of The Atomic Bomb. I had cleaned out a book shelf over the weekend, and this book was in my potential "give-away" stack  (not anymore).

So there I was, on Easter night, no less, reading about the atomic bomb. And I read the most fascinating account:

In 400 BC the Greek philosopher Democritus first speculated on the existence of particles so very small that they could not become any smaller. He called these particles atoms, a combination of two Greek words meaning 'that which cannot be cut.'

More than two thousand years later Isaac Newton revived the idea. 'It seems probable to me,' Newton wrote, 'that God in the beginning formed matter in solid...particles... even so as to never wear or break in  pieces; no ordinary power being able to divide what God himself made in the first creation.' (p12)

More than two thousand years.
Two thousand years for an idea to take hold.
Two thousand years of the mind wheels spinning.
Two thousand years of cocooning, incubating, percolating.
but still breathing, still alive.

And oddly, this new insight to the discovery of  the atomic bomb infuses hope. It all makes sense.
Two thousand years. Two thousand years ago, Christ died on a cross saving me from my sins today.

Love takes long.
Love takes long, but love never fails.
That is a promise I can hold on to!

"Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears."
(1Corinthians 13:8-9)

Love is a verb. Love is an act of faith.We love the unlovable, love the impossible, love the dying, love the disfigured, love the very people in our lives that cause us the most pain. God can take that love and heal. God can take that love and restore wholeness..because...

Love never fails. never.

Anna

Anna.
Her name means gracious, one who gives, or favored by God.
She cut her hair. She played. She wore her new dress. She slept. She swept.
I love this girl!