Grandma’s 80th & Misc.

Jana’s face speaks volumes.  Drill. Sergeant.

Henry escaping our room while we were trying to get ready.

I really like the place.  I thought it was cute.

Jana did ads for different years of Grandma’s life.

HEnry playing in a box while we wait for our food.

Angelo, Sophie, Lily and George

Grandma, Jana, Uncle Gerald

John, Brooke, Henry’s birthday twin plus one year, Connor, Drew, Uncle Pete, Aunt Annie on phone, Aunt Rita, Kat.

Aunt Annie, Uncle Pete and a small part of Sheila.

Lily, Abigail, and Henry

Aunt Annie, Aunt Rita, Aunt Teresa

Jacob’s 21st birthday.

Anthony in background

SOOOOOOOOO handsome.

Get ready to walk the breakwater this afternoon.

 

Burger time.

Rocket rider

Our little escape artist.

Good Sunday Morning

I am waiting for my precious little companion to wake up so we can go to church and see daddy preach.  He’s a little exhausted today to say the least – after riding in a car with his mom, Jana and Tia for 12 hours (12 hours because we stopped so much) in a little less than 24 hours to go to my grandmother’s 80th birthday party.  I am so thankful we caught a ride with Jana!  The party was nice – Jana planned that too!  I will post some pictures later. 

Below is the theme that God keeps bringing back to my life recently.  He’s definitely teaching me something or trying.  Now I catch myself when I say that a situation or person bothered me and I don’t want to be in it again.  I try to remember that this life isn’t about flesh and blood.  Situations and circumstances are ordained by God to transform us into His image.  Sometimes that feels like a bummer when you want to run the other way.  But it always feels nice to know that we have a Heavenly Father Who loves us deeply and we are filled with the power that rose Jesus from the dead.  Thank You, God- Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

John 12

The Anointing at Bethany

¹ Then, six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus was who had been dead,^[a] whom He had raised from the dead. ² There they made Him a supper; and Martha served, but Lazarus was one of those who sat at the table with Him. ³ Then Mary took a pound of very costly oil of spikenard, anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped His feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil.
⁴ But one of His disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, who would betray Him, said, ⁵ “Why was this fragrant oil not sold for three hundred denarii^[b] and given to the poor?” ⁶ This he said, not that he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief, and had the money box; and he used to take what was put in it.
⁷ But Jesus said, “Let her alone; she has kept^[c] this for the day of My burial. ⁸ For the poor you have with you always, but Me you do not have always.”

The Plot to Kill Lazarus

⁹ Now a great many of the Jews knew that He was there; and they came, not for Jesus’ sake only, but that they might also see Lazarus, whom He had raised from the dead. ¹⁰ But the chief priests plotted to put Lazarus to death also, ¹¹ because on account of him many of the Jews went away and believed in Jesus.

The Triumphal Entry

¹² The next day a great multitude that had come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, ¹³ took branches of palm trees and went out to meet Him, and cried out:
      “ Hosanna!
‘ Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD!’^[d]
      The King of Israel!”
¹⁴ Then Jesus, when He had found a young donkey, sat on it; as it is written:
¹⁵ “ Fear not, daughter of Zion;
Behold, your King is coming,
Sitting on a donkey’s colt.”^[e]
16 His disciples did not understand these things at first; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things were written about Him and that they had done these things to Him.
¹⁷ Therefore the people, who were with Him when He called Lazarus out of his tomb and raised him from the dead, bore witness. ¹⁸ For this reason the people also met Him, because they heard that He had done this sign. ¹⁹ The Pharisees therefore said among themselves, “You see that you are accomplishing nothing. Look, the world has gone after Him!”

The Fruitful Grain of Wheat

²⁰ Now there were certain Greeks among those who came up to worship at the feast. ²¹ Then they came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida of Galilee, and asked him, saying, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”
²² Philip came and told Andrew, and in turn Andrew and Philip told Jesus.
²³ But Jesus answered them, saying, “The hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified. ²⁴ Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain. ²⁵ He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. ²⁶ If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also. If anyone serves Me, him My Father will honor.

Jesus Predicts His Death on the Cross

²⁷ “Now My soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save Me from this hour’? But for this purpose I came to this hour. ²⁸ Father, glorify Your name.”
Then a voice came from heaven, saying, “I have both glorified it and will glorify it again.”
²⁹ Therefore the people who stood by and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, “An angel has spoken to Him.”
³⁰ Jesus answered and said, “This voice did not come because of Me, but for your sake. ³¹ Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out. ³² And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself.” ³³ This He said, signifying by what death He would die.
³⁴ The people answered Him, “We have heard from the law that the Christ remains forever; and how can You say, ‘The Son of Man must be lifted up’? Who is this Son of Man?”
³⁵ Then Jesus said to them, “A little while longer the light is with you. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you; he who walks in darkness does not know where he is going. ³⁶ While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.” These things Jesus spoke, and departed, and was hidden from them.

Who Has Believed Our Report?

³⁷ But although He had done so many signs before them, they did not believe in Him, ³⁸ that the word of Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled, which he spoke:
“ Lord, who has believed our report?
And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?”^[f]
39 Therefore they could not believe, because Isaiah said again:
⁴⁰ “ He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts,
Lest they should see with their eyes,
Lest they should understand with their hearts and turn,
So that I should heal them.”^[g]

⁴¹ These things Isaiah said when^[h] he saw His glory and spoke of Him.

Walk in the Light

⁴² Nevertheless even among the rulers many believed in Him, but because of the Pharisees they did not confess Him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue; ⁴³ for they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God.
⁴⁴ Then Jesus cried out and said, “He who believes in Me, believes not in Me but in Him who sent Me. ⁴⁵ And he who sees Me sees Him who sent Me. ⁴⁶ I have come as a light into the world, that whoever believes in Me should not abide in darkness. ⁴⁷ And if anyone hears My words and does not believe,^[i] I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. ⁴⁸ He who rejects Me, and does not receive My words, has that which judges him—the word that I have spoken will judge him in the last day. ⁴⁹ For I have not spoken on My own authority; but the Father who sent Me gave Me a command, what I should say and what I should speak. ⁵⁰ And I know that His command is everlasting life. Therefore, whatever I speak, just as the Father has told Me, so I speak.”

Henry Update

Here are some updates on Henry:

• He still hates going to bed.  In fact, he is crying right now because I just put him down.
• He sleeps in his own room for most of the night and sometimes the entire night.
• He likes cucumbers now.
• He still loves chocolate.
• He loves to say hi and bye to strangers.  The other day he grabbed a woman in the store as Dave was holding him because she didn’t pay attention to him.  This wasn’t the first time.
• He likes people who have disabilities whether mentally or from age.  My mom takes care of an elderly gentleman with dementia who doesn’t really like anyone.  Henry loves him.  I think he secretly loves Henry too.
• Henry ran up to a disabled elderly woman the other day and gave her a hug. He didn’t know her.
• He loves the step ladder.  He pushed it into our bathroom and climbs up and down it all of the time.
• He loves to be outside.  He asks to go out a lot.
• He loves the water.
• He loves Maggie and laughs at her all day.
• I quickly went up in the attic to grab something the other day.  When I came back down Henry was half way up the pull down ladder.
• Henry loves, loves to drink juice from a little juice box with a straw.  He acts like it’s the best thing ever and often is very impatient with us if we don’t give it to him fast enough.
• Henry loves watching other kids.
• Our septic got partially dug up yesterday.  Henry just stood very still watching the man dig.
• He is very observant.
• He would open doors but can’t quite turn the knobs yet.  He loves to shut them.
• He loves turning things off – TV, computers, anything.  It’s a button thing.
• He loves to pretend to drive the car.  When Rye was here we sat in the car in the driveway one night while Henry pretended to drive.
• He loves giving his mommy unsolicited hugs and kisses.
• Early this morning he came into bed.  After we got him situated, he whispered “hi” to me.  So sweet.
• He loves playing with his hair or my hair when falling asleep.
• We got him some large blocks that look like big legos.  He loves taking them out of the container, then putting them back in.  Shutting and opening it between each block.
• He LOVES books.  He pretends to read my journal.  He sits and looks at his animal book for long periods of time.
• He loves to play “what’s that”.  He points and says “that”.
• He pretends any small object is a phone and pretends to talk on it.
•   He loves it when his daddy gets home.

Forgot Camera!

This evening, after Dave got home from work, we (Maggie included) all went on a hike up our favorite blueberry hill (it’s our favorite because it has a public trail and it’s stunning!).  The weather was perfect, the view gorgeous and I just felt like I was in a Jane Austen movie – Pride and Prejudice when Elizabeth and her aunt and uncle are near Darcy’s home town hiking.  Magical. 
Thanking God for His creation.  Every time we go up there lately I forget my camera or leave it in the car.  I have taken so many photos up there but none of us gleaning from the left over crop!  So delicious and blueberries are Henry’s favorite!  He is so cute eating them.

P.s – how do moose sleep?  Looking that up right now!  Now that I have seen some near home lately, I am constantly on the look out and talking about them.  Dave and I were wondering how they sleep.

A Dark Night – A Resurrection Morn

I basically want to copy and paste Watchman Nee’s The Normal Christian Life into my blog and email to everyone I know.  I cannot recommend this book enough.  It’s the Finished work of Jesus Christ.  Unbelievable.

 

Here’s an excerpt from tonight’s reading:

When the body becomes our life we live like beasts. When the soul becomes our life we live as rebels and fugitives from God —gifted, cultured, educated, no doubt, but alienated from the life of God. But when we come to live our life in the Spirit and by the Spirit, though we still use our soul faculties just as we do our physical faculties, they are now the servants of the Spirit; and when we have reached that point God can really use us.

But the difficulty with many of us is that dark night. The Lord graciously laid me aside once in my life for a number of months and put me, spiritually, into utter darkness. It was almost as though He had forsaken me—almost as though nothing was going on and I had really come to the end of everything. And then by degrees He brought things back again. The temptation is always to try to help God by taking things back ourselves; but remember, there must be a full night in the sanctuary—a full night in darkness. It cannot be hurried; He knows what He is doing.

We would like to have death and resurrection put together within one hour of each other. We cannot face the thought that God will keep us aside for so long a time; we cannot bear to wait. And I cannot tell you how long He will take, but in principle I think it is quite safe to say this, that there will be a definite period when He will keep you there. It will seem as though nothing is happening; everything you valued is slipping from your grasp. There confronts you a blank wall with no door in it. Seemingly everyone else is being blessed and used, while you yourself have been passed by and are losing out. Lie quiet. All is in darkness, but it is only for a night. It must indeed be a full night, but that is all. Afterwards you will find that everything is given back to you in glorious resurrection; and nothing can measure the difference between what was before and what now is!

I was sitting one day at supper with a young brother to whom the Lord had been speaking on this very question of our natural energy. He said to me, ‘It is a blessed thing when you know the Lord has met you and touched you in that fundamental way, and that disabling touch has been received.’ There was a plate of biscuits between us on the table, and I picked one up and broke it in half as though to eat it. Then, fitting the two pieces together again carefully, I said, ‘It looks all right, but it is never quite the same again, is it? When once your back is broken, you will yield ever after to the slightest touch from God.’

That is it. The Lord knows what He is doing with His own, and He has left no aspect of our need unmet in His Cross, that the glory of the Son may be manifested in the sons. Disciples who have gone this way can, I believe, truly echo the words of the apostle Paul, who could claim to serve God “in my spirit in the gospel of his Son” (Rom. 1:9). They have learned, as he had, the secret of such a ministry: “We... worship by the Spirit of God, and glory in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh” (Phil. 3:3).

Few can have led a more active life than Paul’s. To the Romans he puts it on record that he has preached the Gospel from Jerusalem to Illyricum (Rom. 15:19) and that he is ready now to go on to Rome (1:10) and thence, if possible, to Spain (15:24, 28). Yet in all this service, embracing as it does the whole Mediterranean world, his heart is set on one object only—the uplifting of the One who has made it all possible. “I have therefore my glorying in Christ Jesus in things pertaining to God. For I will not dare to speak of any things save those which Christ wrought through me, for the obedience of the Gentiles, by word and deed” (Rom. 15:17, 18). That is spiritual service.

May God make each one of us, as truly as he was, “a bondservant of Jesus Christ”.

One Living Sacrifice

One Living Sacrifice (Section in The Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee)

…. I start in the middle of the section …

The vessel through which the Lord Jesus can reveal Himself in this generation is not the individual but the Body. “God hath dealt to each man a measure of faith” (12:3), but alone in isolation man can never fulfill God’s purpose. It requires a complete Body to attain to the stature of Christ and to display His glory. Oh that we might really see this!

So Romans 12:3-6 draws from the figure of the human body the lesson of our inter-dependence. Individual Christians are not the Body but are members of the Body, and in a human body “all the members have not the same office”. The ear must not imagine itself to be an eye. No amount of prayer will give sight to the ear—but the whole body can see through the eye. So (speaking figuratively) I may have only the gift of hearing, but I can see through others who have the gift of sight; or, perhaps I can walk but cannot work, so I receive help from the hands. An all-too-common attitude to the things of the Lord is that, ‘What I know, I know; and what I don’t know, I don’t know, and can do quite well without.’ But in Christ, the things we do not know others do, and we may know them and enter into the enjoyment of them through others.

Let me stress that this is not just a comfortable thought. It is a vital factor in the life of God’s people. We cannot get along without one another. That is why fellowship in prayer is so important. Prayer together brings in the help of the Body, as must be clear from Matthew 18:19, 20. Trusting the Lord by myself may not be enough. I must trust Him with others. I must learn to pray ”Our Father...” on the basis of oneness with the Body, for without the help of the Body I cannot get through. In the sphere of service this is even more apparent. Alone I cannot serve the Lord effectively, and He will spare no pains to teach me this. He will bring things to an end, allowing doors to close and leaving me ineffectively knocking my head against a blank wall until I realize that I need the help of the Body as well as of the Lord. For the life of Christ is the life of the Body, and His gifts are given to us for work that builds up the Body.

The Body is not an illustration but a fact. The Bible does not just say that the Church is like a body, but that it is the Body of Christ. “We, who are many, are one body in Christ, and severally members one of another.” All the members together are one Body, for all share His life—as though He were Himself distributed among His members. I was once with a group of Chinese believers who found it very hard to understand how the Body could be one when they were all separate individual men and women who made it up. One Sunday I was about to break the bread at the Lord’s table and I asked them to look very carefully at the loaf before I broke it. Then, after it had been distributed and eaten, I pointed out that though it was inside all of them it was still one loaf—not many. The loaf was divided, but Christ is not divided even in the sense in which that loaf was. He is still one Spirit in us, and we are all one in Him.

This is the very opposite of man’s condition by nature. In Adam I have the life of Adam, but that is essentially individual. There is no union, no fellowship in sin, but only self-interest and distrust of others. As I go on with the Lord I soon discover, not only that the problem of sin and of my natural strength has to be dealt with, but that there is also a further problem created by my ‘individual’ life, the life that is sufficient in itself and does not recognize its need for and union in the Body. I may have got over the problems of sin and the flesh, and yet still be a confirmed individualist. I want holiness and victory and fruitfulness for myself personally and apart, albeit from the purest motives. but such an attitude ignores the Body, and so cannot provide God with satisfaction. he must deal with me therefore in this matter also, or I shall remain in conflict with His ends. God does not blame me for being an individual, but for my individualism. His greatest problem is not the outward divisions and denominations that divide His Church but our own individualistic hearts.

Yes, the Cross must do its work here, reminding me that in Christ I have died to that old life of independence which I inherited from Adam, and that in resurrection I have become not just an individual believer in Christ but a member of His Body. There is a vast difference between the two. When I see this, I shall at once have done with independence and shall seek fellowship. The life of Christ in me will gravitate to the life of Christ in others. I can no longer take an individual line. Jealousy will go. Competition will go. Private work will go. My interests, my ambitions, my preferences, all will go. It will no longer matter which of us does the work. All that will matter will be that the Body grows.

I said: ‘When I see this...’ That is the great need: to see the Body of Christ as another great Divine fact; to have it break in upon our spirits by heavenly revelation that “we, who are many, are one body in Christ”. Only the Holy Spirit can bring this home to us in all its meaning, but when He does it will revolutionize our life and work.

Oh How He Loves Us

He is jealous for me,
Loves like a hurricane, I am a tree,
Bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy.
When all of a sudden,
I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory,
And I realize just how beautiful You are,
And how great Your affections are for me.
And oh, how He loves us oh
Oh how He loves us,
How He loves us all
And we are His portion and He is our prize,
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes,
If His grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking.
And heaven meets earth like an unforeseen kiss,
And my heart turns violently inside of my chest,
I don’t have time to maintain these regrets,
When I think about, the way…
That He loves us,
Oh how He loves us,
Yeah, He loves us,

I copied this from a blog I read…

Fair & Other Stuff

My mother did flowers for her friend’s daughter.  She got married today.

Some flowers she entered into the fair’s contest.

Helping Daddy in the garden.

Henry wasn’t too fond of the livestock at the fair.  I was so excited to show him, though.

Here he is snuggling up to the back of Daddy’s head for protection.

   Cows were scary too!

Grumpy pants.

I thank God several times a day for my little boy.  Such a gift.  He did something so cute tonight.  Dave really wanted me to make him a cake (it was a box with store bought frosting).  After I frosted it, Dave started joking around with me like he was going to put frosting on my arm.  I was screaming no and we were pushing each other around in a joking manner.  Henry came running over and hugged my legs.  He released one of his arms long enough to push his father away.  My sweet little boy was protecting me.  We both felt badly that he thought we were serious, but it touched me so deeply that my little one year old man wanted to protect me.