Good Times With the Youngest

It has been busy here at the cottage lately.  Youngest Son and I left the house before 8 this morning, and I didn't get back home until 5 PM.  We went on college tours. 

I did not wear this hat.  I.  Did.  Not.

Youngest Son insisted that 1.  I try this hat on, and 2. model it outrageously, and 3. that he snap this picture with my phone.  We were killing time at a Tar-ghay local to the area ("Target", pronounced in my best French accent...).  He insisted that the hat looked amazing on me.  I sent this picture to The Preacher and asked him what he thought.  His response?

"I like your cowboy hat picture better." 

Whatev, preacher man.  Actually, I'm glad, because in real life, I could never pull off wearing a hat like this.

Friday, we are invited to tour a small college and attend their basketball game.   Fun times...fun times.   Bear with me, if posting gets a little sporadic.  I have a scholarship recommendation to write for a young friend - she's going for a big scholarship, the Alexander Graham Bell.  I am so proud of her, and happy to be writing the lengthy recommendation, but the deciding board is highly discriminating and my essay has to be written "just so".

I may have also taken on another editing job, we'll see.  Silly me.  I need something else to do....like a two hundred fifty-plus page book, for a friend of my friend Neil Silverberg.

And we have Regional Tournament in Nashville next week (basketball) followed by  National Tournament coming up  in March, followed by a pastor's conference in Atlanta, followed by Youngest Son's high school graduation ceremony in May.

But there's much I am itching to share with you...glorious thoughts on the Gospel and how grace is the only impetus towards true transformation.  I wouldn't tell you that if I hadn't experienced it for myself.  I've been made free from some real stuff - fear of man not the least of the list.

A Blog Recommendation

I've said it before.  I'll say it again.  There are blogs I've followed in the past, and I've "unfollowed" them, for various reasons - mainly, when a blog strains at being profound, or becomes doctrinally shrill.  That bores me.

And when I quit following - I quit, baby.  As in....I've never, ever, not once been back.  Too many good, positive, inspiring, funny, thought provoking and informative blogs out there to keep reading someone whose perspective on life is uninteresting or ...strange.

I don't recommend many blogs.  Seriously, I think I've recommended less than ten in the years I've been a blogger.   I don't think that is a reason to brag - I think that needs to change.  I need to make more time to share with you some of the beautiful blogs I have stumbled across in my stolen moments of "lolly blogging"....which is an activity akin to lollygagging...which, now that I think about it, has a nauseous connotation to it.  Makes me think of choking on a Dum-dum.  Where do those old sayings come from?

Without further ado, please do visit my friend Wendy.  She's begun a brand new blog:

Diapers and Dishes

My friend Wendy had her fourth baby at age forty, and made it look good, honey.  That alone deserves a medal.  I am a mere forty-five, and chasing my grandson around on a part-time basis wears me out some days.  She has also been on a gluten-free eating adventure for several years now.  And she's the real deal.  She loves baking and cooking and experimenting in the kitchen, and if you are one of the manymanymany with gluten issues, her blog will bless you....so get in early on this one.  You'll make yourself proud, someday, to say, "I knew her when she just started that dang blog...and now look.  She's got her own cooking show."

That Wendy.  She might go all "Pioneer Woman" on us, and become rich and famous.  But it won't be because she moo'ved to the country to kill her own cows and live the not-so-simple life, and tried to make it seem so hippy-happy.  (No offense, Pioneer Woman.  I'm sure you'd be the first to say that lifestyle isn't for everyone...)  Wendy's blog will be beloved because of her mad skillz at the kitchen counter, her sweet spirit, and her love for God's Crowning Creation (drumroll please):

PEOPLE.  As in, human beings.  Sorry, if you thought I was going to say "Nubian goats" or "chickens", and you got all excited.  No, not poultry.  Not pastures.  Not mountains.  Not "nature". People.  People are God's favorite, and they are where Wendy likes to invest.

You'd do well to go getchoo summadat.  I'd do well to get myself summoradat. When it comes to loving God's Crowning Creation, I think Wendy outdoes me, and I love to have it so.  Click on the link, right up there under the picture of her blog header, and it'll take you to a new blog to love.

Prayer App, and Prayer Journal for Selah Thoughts

 This is the app I use.  It makes a pleasant sound, three times a day, and it reminds me to pray for those I have personally placed on the list for that day.  This app is for Android users, and I love it.  I recommend it.  It is called "Prayer Pop" - and if you enjoy praying set time prayers, you'll love this app, if you have a smart phone.

And now...since you asked me...here is a humble picture of a page of my art journal...the one I use when I read Scripture and certain books, and beautiful ideas seek to come out and play on the pages, and want to be made more beautiful. It is a very relaxing practice - the way I personally approach the whole "lectio divina" thing - sacred reading.  (Post-edit - I don't call it "lectio divina".  Some in the liturgical church do.  I just call it...readin' my Bible.  I don't even call it "devotions".  The act comes too naturally, and is too integrated into who I am.)  Combining reading with "art" (if you can call it that) slows me down, and makes me glad to focus and meditate...and make a bit of "art" as I read along and "Selah" (which means to "pause and deeply consider").

Grace

"Grace is the recovery of that which is oldest, and most original - the heart of God as expressed through Jesus Christ.  He was the plan of God from before the foundation of the world."
~Sheila Atchley

I wrote this in my art journal last night...using colored inks and scroll-y borders.  No photos yet...I'm keeping it private for now, as I attempt to master dabble in both art journaling and mixed media art.  I use inks, guache paints, watercolor paints, collage, pastels, and charcoal pencil.  But the art journal I use for reading and recording thoughts is mostly .01 and .05 micron colored ink pens.

Somehow, using color and Scripture inspiration, the words and phrases come to me easily...I guess because my brain is working on both the beautiful ideas, and making the beautiful ideas more beautiful.

I love it.

Quotable Quotes

"A new beginning!  We must learn to live each day, each hour, yes, each minute as a New Beginning, as a unique opportunity to make everything new.  Imagine that we could live each moment as a moment pregnant with new life.  Imagine that we could live each day as a day full of promises.  Imagine that we could walk through the year always listening to a voice saying to us, "I have a gift for you and can't wait for you to see it!"

Imagine!"

~Henri J.M. Nouwen

Old Covenant "Shadows"

The Old Testament (Covenant) is a book of illustration.  The New Testament (Covenant) is a book of explanation.

Please, let the New explain the Old.  Please, please, please.  I will shamelessly beg you, if that will convince you.  Please let the Cross be superimposed over your understanding of Old Covenant. 

Please let "Moses and Elijah" disappear from sight, and see the Lord Alone...Jesus, in all His glory.

Never, ever read the Old Covenant through any other lens or perspective but the Finished Work of Christ, unless you just love having a veil over your head.  In the Old Covenant  (which those who were His loved it, indeed.  It was all they had.  Profound, huh?) they looked forward TO the coming Christ.

From our vantage point, we look back THROUGH the Finished Work of Christ.  Any other perspective - whether that be law for the sake of law, or keeping the law in an effort to be blessed and mistaking that for Biblical faith - any other perspective will at the very least make you a poor Bible scholar, and will at worst make you a Pharisee.

Please, fear God in your approach to His Word.  Fear Him enough to turn loose of your Old Covenant perspective, no matter how secure or holy or mystical or special or important or spiritual it has made you "feel".  He has spoken in these last days through The Son.  In no one else is the Father "well pleased".  Put yourself  IN Him, by grace through faith, not through your own efforts to be well pleasing.  This is revelation, and I pray that you can finally hear it.

But you sort of have to humble yourself and want to hear it.  Or at least I had to.  Maybe you are the exception to every precedent.  That still is no nevermind to me, so long as you hear and you see and you put your whole trust in He who once walked the streets, two thousand years ago, breaking rules left and right, but fulfilling the law down to the last jot and tittle.  Oh, the cleverness and surpassing wisdom of God!


Strive to be a good student.  Rightly divide the Word of truth.  Rightly.  Divide.  It.  One is illustration, the other, explanation.

That Was SO 46 Seconds Ago!

46 seconds ago, there was Another Super Bowl Victory for a Manning.  I'd rather a Manning get another trophy than a Tom Brady any day.  No offense to my Patriot-Fan friends, but...

holla! 

I'm feeling smug.