A couple spoke briefly at our church this morning; Tim and Angie Sliedrecht.

Oh yes...and Avalien (Dutch for Evelyn).

This couple will be going to serve God in Soroti, Uganda in January (God willing; they only have 75% of their pledge at this point).  Angie's sister is also married to a missionary, also working for the same organization and they have been praying that they would at least end up in the same country...

God answers prayers!  Not only are they in the same country, they will be in the same city!

Not only are the in the same city, they are going to be living in the same building (the families will be sharing a duplex).

The organization that they are working for is "International Teams".  We saw a short video (click here to see the one we saw, Soroti, and others) and there is a huge need.  They are pressed militarily, AIDS takes a massive toll, and the native ministers that are currently working there have only a secondary education - if that.  One of the things that will be happening is the education of ministers.

If God is leading you to support a missionary, this is a good team, a good organization and a good place to send your money.

Lost 3 3/4 pounds and hit the 10 pound lost mark!

(that's three boxes PLUS three sticks)

This is at Union Station in downtown Chicago...we missed the train and had to eat Ben & Jerry's while we waited for the next one.

Grab the Scavenger Hunt code. Photo Theme. Join the blogroll. Visit participants.

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I get a couple of devotionals in the mail daily and one that showed up today was by Woodrow Krull from "Lessons on Living".  The title is "Death of a Child".  The email says to pass it on, so I pasted the whole thing under the fold.

I saw that the parent of the child was David, so I was thinking that the child would have been the one by Bathsheba.

But the "child" is a grown up; Absalom.  The love of the father is a steadfast love that never falters, even in the face of betrayal.

The devotional starts:

The late Joe Bayly wrote about the death of the
young from firsthand experience. He lost three
children: one at 18 days, after surgery; another
at 5 years, with leukemia; the third at 18 years,
after a sledding accident complicated by mild
hemophilia. Joe said, "Of all deaths, that of a
child is most unnatural and hardest to bear." He
did not underestimate the grief of parents. "When
a child dies," he added,  "part of the parents is
buried."

Twenty-one years ago, the day before Thanksgiving, I discovered that I had "lost" a child.  Her twin had died early on and I had lost two other babies before, but this one hit me hard.  I know the pain of losing a child, although I had never met this one.

David lost two children.  One at birth, the other as an adult.

Woodrow tells us that God also knows the pain of watching a child die.  Even knowing that the resurrection was coming, what did God feel as He watched Christ die that death?

What do we feel, as move into this Christmas season?  Do we feel the excitement of the shopping, the decorating, the lights?

Do we remember that there truly is "a reason for the season"?  But in the end, that reason wasn't a baby in a manger - the reason for that first Christmas was a horrible death on a cross.

For us, for those who believe, this is the reason that Jesus came to dwell among men.
...continue reading →

This is why I lumped 3 chapters together yesterday - today is Thanksgiving Day.

Chapter 12 is really about priests and Levites - but talks about thanksgiving.

There were priests in charge of the songs of thanksgivings (v.8)...

There were more priests to praise and give thanks (v.24)

They gave thanks at the dedication of the wall that they had worked so hard on (v.27)

They had two great choirs to give thanks (v.31)

Those two choirs sang in the house of the Lord (v.40)

And they remembered the days of long ago; the days of David and Asaph, when there were directors of the singers, and there were songs of praise and thanksgiving to God (v.46)

1 Corinthians 15:57
But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

2 Corinthians 2:14
But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere.

2 Corinthians 9:15
Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!

Psalm 111:1
Praise the LORD!I will give thanks to the LORD with my whole heart,in the company of the upright, in the congregation.

Psalm 107:1
Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good,for his steadfast love endures forever!

Psalm 118:28
You are my God, and I will give thanks to you;you are my God; I will extol you.

Psalm 28:7
The LORD is my strength and my shield;in him my heart trusts, and I am helped;my heart exults,and with my song I give thanks to him.

Psalm 92:1
It is good to give thanks to the LORD,to sing praises to your name, O Most High;

This day, I am thankful for God's goodness.

I am thankful for all that which God has brought me through.  All have worked together for my good, whether or not they felt good at the time.

I am thankful for my family (whether we are related by blood or not).  I am thankful that God is working in my children's lives - in ways I can see and in ways I cannot.

I am thankful for my dear friend, for things said and unsaid.

I am thankful for trials and tribulations, for they make me strong.

I am thankful for times of rest.

This day...I am thankful.

Chapters 9,10,11.

These chapters are spent on confessing and reconnecting.

Mourning for time lost; fasting, sackcloth and ashes. Praise for deliverence.

A covenant made and more numbers.

After I returned to God I went through one of those times. What I had missed, where I had strayed. Not only that, but even the consequences of what I had done would stay with me until "til death us do part".

It wasn't until I understood that (while the "away time" is not erased), God deals with us where we are now. If we are constantly looking backward, we will miss what is ahead.

And there was a lot that was ahead.

The Jews confessed the sins of their fathers. We are not guilty of the sins of our fathers and (while there is generational learning by modeling) there is no generational curse. But we do learn from those who model for us and if we can look at the mistakes made by those who went before, perhaps we can avoid some of our own.

Having examined their fathers, the Jews put their name to a commitment/covenant and outlined what their obligations would be.

When we turn to Christ, we enter into the New Covenant - Christ yoke is easy and His burden is light.  And yet, not so light.  We turn away from the Law, to fall under the "law of love".  And that is not always an easy thing.

Do we fail?  We all do, at some point or another.  It does us good to remember that.

1. Another cup of coffee
2. Bake my sugar free pumpkin pie (the regular one is done)
3. Shop for the rest of my Thanksgiving dinner stuff (green beans, stuffing mix)
4. Eat the minimun number of Weight Watchers points (no more magic marker days this week)
5. Laundry
6. Clean my desk
7. Homework (photoshop)
8. Fix my sidebar (remove old links, add new ones)
9. Shop with my son (he thinks he found the backpack he wants - for backpacking, not school)
10. Clean out my cupboards
11. Exercise
12. Drink all my water
13. enjoy my day off

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!
1. (leave your link in comments, I’ll add you here!)

So far, I have liked Nehemiah 8 best of all.

The wall around Jerusalem is build and the people are settling in. Nehemiah is governer.

The people "gathered as one man" What did they do?

They sent Ezra for "the Book of the Law of Moses that the LORD had commanded Israel." And he read it. He read from early morning until mid day. When he opened the book the people stood. When he prayed, the people lifted their hands and answered "Amen". When they worshipped, they bowed their heads. When the Word was read, their ears were attentive.

When they heard the Words of the Law, they wept.

The priests were there to help them understand and the Levites taught the people.

They read the Word and found that it was the time of the "Festival of Booths". For the first time since the Jews were exiled, they celebrated this holy time. God's people were again connected with the Law, the temple, with Jerusalem.
The "Second Temple Period" had begun.

Today?

I remember when I returned to God - about 16 years ago. Digging into the Word was again new. I grieved for a while, for the time that I had lost.

During those first months I learned from a wonderful Christian woman (a pastor's wife) that taught me a lot about life, about marriage, about God.

What drew me back? It wasn't good preaching, it wasn't "doing the right things", it wasn't hanging out with the right people.

It was the Word.

To be sure, it was the Word that was written in a very unusual place (we were on vacation). This "monument to women" had Scripture that I was familiar with from childhood and I knew that in order to do my job as a mother, I would have to return to God. NOW.

My son was 4, so that would have been 16 years ago.

I've "adjusted" since then. Studied a lot. I've had some very good leaders and good pastors. But in everything, the Word was central to my education.

😉

Lecture exam on respiratory and digestive systems...

I think that once I got to the point where I could see what I was studying, my lecture tests got a lot better.  I'm not as uptight about this one because I can't get an "A" in the class.  As long as I have to have a "B", I might was well be happy with getting a "B"

If you don't like reading a whole lot of numbers, you can skip reading Nehemiah 7.

The beginning of the chapter it says that the Lord laid it upon Nehemiah's heart to take a census and he obeyed.  Nehemiah found the book of genealogies and found the list of returned Jews that had been exiled under Nebuchadnezzar...

(This is a short post - let's just say that there were a lot of Jews.  And servants and horses and singers and...)

Chapter 8 deserves an entire post by itself  😉