Well, I mean OUR summer is ending - but summer isn't really ending.....a few more months of the heat here in Arizona! We spent the day with friends today for one "last hurrah" before each family begins their school year. Monday we will each ease in with a modified schedule of some sort.....The kids had fun swimming, eating pizza, and playing the Wii. What a sweet thing great friends are. After 5 hours together they were still hugging and wishing there was more time. The Lord is SO good to provide us with countless deep friendships we enjoy.
Jonathan and Allie playing peacefully...
Jonathan barely hangin' on!
The alligator....
Alligator eating the seahorse!
The "dolphins" planning a strategy to get away from the "dolphin killers"
Today the kids worked together to bake mouth-watering oatmeal raisin cookies. Madison organized an assembly line sort of situation which worked so that each of the kids had a part in mixing the cookies together and then they all helped to put them on the cookie sheets. I came very close to sitting in a chair, sipping my coffee, and reading a book! But, alas, it didn't happen. There was a little intervention needed at the end of the process (after the lovely photos) - but overall it was a extraordinary group effort!
Here is a picture of Madison and her sweet friend, Hannah. They celebrated Hannah's birthday by spending the day together. Madison is so blessed to have quality friends to spend time with! The fun thing about this picture is that the girls are wearing their mother's handmade outfits from almost 30 years ago! Last week when Madison wore my outfit (made by my mother) to church, Hannah said - "I have an outfit exactly like that!" Who would have believed that they are the exact same pattern, made by the girls' grandmothers many years ago for their moms! And now we are all friends? Just funny and cute.
Madison and Ryan have been working hard on their swimming for 3 months now. Earlier in the summer they began swim team at the YMCA and now have joined Mesa Aquatics, which is a USA swimming club. They get to swim in a beautiful, brand new Olympic size pool just 5 minutes from our house! We are impressed with how they've improved on their freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, and butterfly! They are learning to jump off the starting blocks and using different training techniques. Their workout lasts a little over an hour and is 3 days a week, so they are in great shape now!
Of course the competitor in me loves every minute of watching them......(aside from sitting in the 108 degree heat with 2 hot toddlers). Right now they are swimming as "non-competitors" - which means they work out with the team but are not entering any meets. For now - it is a cool way for them to get a great workout and good experiences! Maybe later we'll look into the Olympic Trials...... :)
I have written and rewritten this post 4 times. The only way to do justice to what is on my heart is really to type word for word what I've been reading in "Real Christianity". So here it goes.....just kidding......I won't type out the whole 200 page book! I am realizing there is really not even a way to pare it down or make it short. What he is writing about just seems so applicable today in our world.
Most people know the basic truths of the Christian faith and have heard them over and over but it doesn't mean"that those who know these things intellectually have a deep understanding of their significance or experience their transforming influence in their lives. The appropriate response to these facts would be one of great excitement, true humility, hatred of sin, humble hope, firm faith, heavenly joy, ardent love and unceasing gratitude!" (p.42)
Wilberforce says here is the problem with the experience of those who hold to a cultural Christianity. "If they do not come to terms with their desperate spiritual condition, they cannot understand the infinite value of what Jesus Christ has done nor respond to it appropriately. Their lives are filled, as Jesus said, with the business and vanities of this life." (p.43)
Wilberforce asks, "What does it mean to love God?" then says, "True love is passionate. "Cold love" and "unfelt gratitude" are contradictions. When we love someone, we like to talk about him or her......we want to be with them. We delight in doing things for them. We love to show them how we feel. The mention of their name makes our hearts pound and our faces light up.......Authentic faith responds to the work of Jesus Christ in just such a way." (p.44)
ISMYFAITHAUTHENTIC? Who do I talk about the most? Who do I spend the most time with - or what do I spend most of my time doing? Do I delight in doing my daily tasks for the glory of God? Do my actions and words show my true love for Jesus? Time for some soul searching.
Often when I am exhausted, frustrated, and discouraged I think I need to "get away". Being a homeschooling mother of four kids, wife, keeper of the homefront doesn't really afford me that opportunity too often. On top of that - sometimes "getting away" only means the Starbucks down the road which offers quite a few distractions. Living in the city is challenging if one needs to feel like they are "alone" or to enjoy nature. I am realizing that the world often makes us think we have to travel afar - go to the ocean - be "away" from our children to really be refreshed. Maybe not.
I have not been feeling well for several days and this morning decided to stay home from church just to "catch my breath" and REST......therefore: a little coffee, music, QUIET, my bible. Pretty soon after searching the scripture the Lord is still able to speak to me - regardless of the fact that there are dirty dishes in the sink, unmopped floor, no idea what I am feeding my family for lunch and that I am sitting on my old couch looking out the window at my neighbor's house instead of a beautiful mountain.
My study over the past few days has been on the state of man or the depravity of man......the corrupted ways of thinking, man's outward behavior which flows from his corrupted thinking, his general hostility toward God and His word. It is distressing - the evil that abounds, the sickness, the hurts, the failures, the difficulty of maneuvering about life here on earth. Sometimes it makes me want to roll over and not get up in the morning. But there is reason to press on:
" Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who said, "let light shine out of darkness," has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." ESV 2 Corinthians 4:1-6
There is hope for mankind - but it will not be found in ourselves or by anything WE can do.
" And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" And Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments: 'Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother." And he said to him "Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth." And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, "You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me." Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.
And Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, "how difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!" And the disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said to them again, "Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God." And they were exceedingly astonished, and said to him, "Then who can be saved?" Jesus looked at them and said, "With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God." Peter began to say to him, "See, we have left everything and followed you." Jesus said, "Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last and the last first." ESV Mark 10: 17-31
All things are possible with God. Because of his great love for us, Go who is rich in mercy, will make us alive with Christ even when we are dead in transgressions - he will save us by his Grace!
We can praise God in ALL circumstances because of who he IS - we can praise him in good times, hard times, in the mountains, the desert, in church.......and on my couch with dirty dishes in the sink.
I recently began reading "Real Christianity"- by William Wilberforce and revised and updated by Bob Beltz. Wow - if you have not read this book seriously consider it. I really can't believe that in my years of early education we did not study Wilberforce's role in the fight to abolish slave trade in England. Seeing the movie Amazing Grace was eye opening to say the least and then I picked up the book so I could take part in a summer book discussion at church.
This is an amazingly introspective book and what gets me is that even though he wrote the book in 1797, it is very applicable now. Wilberforce believed that faith was everyone's business and "the advance or decline of faith is so intimately connected to the welfare of a society that it should be of particular interest to a politician." In this book he is not really trying to "convince skeptics or answer the questions unbelievers seem to ask, but to rather point out some of the problems with the beliefs and actions of those who already claim to be Christians."
He does so - point by point.
Thanks to the fact that Beltz has revised the book I can understand it! I know some of the meaning may be different but the ideas are still life changing. Today I was reading the introduction and first chapter " The State of Contemporary Christianity". He talks about authentic faith versus a cultural Christian faith and how important the Bible is to what we believe and how what we believe determines how we live.
Even those who would not call themselves Christians must consider what this man has to say - I think because he was, in my opinion a hero of modern history. Millions of lives were changed as a result of William Wilberforce's desire to change the society he lived in. The motivation behind his love, passion and determination was rooted in his "authentic faith".
"An authentic faith requires an honesty of mind, the consistent use of the mean of knowledge and instruction, the humility that fosters a desire to be instructed, and an unprejudiced conclusion about what this inquiry reveals. If we approach the study of the Bible this way, God fulfills His promises. If we seek and keep on seeking, we will find; if we ask and keep on asking, we will receive; if we knock and keep on knocking, the door to truth will be opened. How can we refuse an offer like this?"
