1. God Is Love---In His Very Nature

"Some exceptionally gifted men may derive their conception of God from other sources than the Bible, but all I know of God I have got from the Bible, and those who taught me got what they taught from the Bible. In all my dreams and imaginings and visions I see God, but it is the God of the Bible that I see, and I feel Him to be near me. I see ever amid the mysteries of Providence and Grace and Creation 'a Face like my face,' and 'a Hand like this hand.' and I have learned to love God Who gave me such a sure way of knowing Him and left me not to the vain imaginings of my own sin-warped intellect.
In Creation. The love of God gives us a new method of seeing Nature. His voice is on the rolling air, we see Him in the rising sun, and in the setting He is fair; in the singing of birds, in the love of human hearts, the voice of God is in all. Had we but ears to hear the stars singing, to catch the glorious pealing anthem of praise echoing from the hills of immortality by the heavenly hosts!
In His Wisdom. God did not create man as a puppet to please a despotic idea of His own, He created us out of the superabundant flow of overflowing love and goodness, He created us susceptible of all the blessedness which He has ordained for us. He 'thought' us in the rapture of His own great heart, and lo, we are! Created in the image of God were we, innocent of evil, of great God-like capacities.
In His Power. The whole world moves but to His great inscrutable will, animate and inanimate creation, the celestial bodies moving on their orbits, the globe with all its diversified issues and accompaniments, are all subservient to this end.

Yes, God is good, in earth and sky,

In ocean depth and swelling wood,

Ten thousand voices ever cry,

God mad us all, and God is good.

In His Holiness. God walked with man and talked with him, He told him His mind, and showed him the precise path in which he must walk in order to enjoy the happiness He had ordained for him; He rejoiced in the fullness of His nature over man as His child, the offspring of His love. He left nothing unrevealed to man; He loved him. Oh, the joy and rapture of God the Father over man His son!

In His Justice. God showed to man that compliance with His dictates would ever mean eternal bliss and joy unspeakable and life and knowledge for evermore, but that ceasing to comply would mean loss of life with God and eternal death.

That was in the world's bright mornings when the morning stars sang together and all creation leapt in joy, but the wild, wild desolation of sin and disobedience and pride and selfish sinfulness entered and drave a great gulf between God's children and Himself. But, as ever, Love found a way, God came to us and for us, and we this day with chastened hearts and quivering lips and glistening eyes, say all afresh with deep adoration, God is Love.

If God exhibits such glorious love in His Nature, what, oh what, shall we say of the glories of the dispensation of His Grace! That God would have walked this earth had sin never entered is very likely, yet sin did not refrain Him from graciously walking and revealing Himself in communion with men. No, still He came. But men were so blinded by sin that they saw Him not, they knew Him not, while He hewed a way back through the hard face of sin to the heavenly shores."

(an excerpt from The Love of God, by Oswald Chambers)

A Dozen Girls + Snow!!!

Snow trip 2009 has come and gone, leaving in it's wake a dozen tired, red-faced girls. Our traditional trip was a bit different this year due to the fact that when we speedily made plans with only a few short days notice, all the guys were already scheduled to spend their Saturday with Mr. Filteau learning the art of plumbing. So this year it was all girls, moms, and a few dads.

On Saturday morning we all loaded up and drove to Horse Mountain, where we were happy to find lots of fresh snow. Mr. Gross led the way to an awesome slope which we never even knew was there! Upon climbing to the top we were a bit nervous; it sure looked a lot steeper from the top than it does from the bottom! After a few minutes of: "you go!", "no, you go!", I jumped off the edge with my board and was soon followed by more girls.

We decided to make a nice sled run that would be slick and fast, so Juicy and I hiked up with the rake and shovel, thinking that to start a track, we would get on a boogie board and I would steer while she sat backwards and held the rake. Bad idea! In about two seconds, we found ourselves nose first in snow. I got up laughing and looked over to find Juicy with her face and one arm buried in the snow, saying, "I'm stuck!!" She too was laughing pretty hard as I pulled her out.

We then decided that it might be better to stay on our feet while carving the run. :)

Throughout the afternoon it got slicker and faster and all the screaming girls took turns speeding down the hill. Mr. Mayer made a nice jump, which provided for some pretty good action shots and a lot of bruises. What a fun day!!!

The view from the top!!!

The Love Of God

"God is Love.
No one but God could have revealed that to the world, for men, and we all indeed, see nothing but its contradiction in our own limited world of experience. It needs but little imagination to construe the life of hundreds of this city's inhabitants into a vehement laughter at such a declaration as 'God is love.' From shattered, broken lives, from caverns of despair where fiends seem living rather than men, comes the existing contradiction to any such statement. no wonder the carnal mind, the merely intellectually cultured, consider us infatuated, mere dreamers, talking of love when murder and war and famine and lust and pestilence, and all the refinement of selfish cruelty abroad in the earth. But, oh the sublimity of the Abraham-like faith that dares to place the centre of its life and confidence and action and hope in an unseen and apparently unknown God, saying, 'God is love,' in spite of all appearances to the contrary; saying 'Though He slay me, yet I will trust in Him.' Such faith is counted to a man for righteousness.
Look back over your own history as revealed to you by grace, and you will see one central fact growing large---God is love. No matter how often your faith in such an announcement was clouded, no matter how the pain and suffering of the moment made you speak in a wrong mood, still this statement has borne its own evidence along with it most persistently---God is love. In the future, when trial and difficulties await you, do not be fearful, whatever and whoever you may lose faith in, let not this faith slip from You---God is love; whisper it not only to your heart in its hour of darkness, but here in your corner of God's earth and man's great city, live in the belief of it; preach it by your sweetened, chastened, happy life; sing it in the consecrated moments of peaceful joy, sing until all the world around you

is wrought

To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not.

The world does not bid you sing, but God does.

Song is the sign of an unburdened heart; then sing your songs of love unbidden, ever rising higher and higher into fuller conception of the greatest, grandest fact on the stage of Time---God is love

But words and emotions pass, precious as their influence may be for a time, so when the duller moments come and the mind comes to require something more certain and sure to consider than memory of mere emotions and stirring sentiments---consider this revelation, the eternal fact that God is Love, not, God is loving. God and love are synonymous. Love is not an attribute of God, it is God; whatever God is, love is. If your conception of love does not agree with the justice of judgement and purity and holiness, then your idea of love is wrong. It is not love you conceive of in your mind, but some vague infinite foolishness, all tears and softness and infinite weakness."

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(an excerpt from Oswald Chambers' book The Love of God)

(more to come)

I Need A Translator

My hands do fail to understand the language of my soul

And all my great imaginings do rarely reach their goal

I am undone, I cannot speak

I need a translator.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Oh, that my hands would learn to play

The music of my heart!

And guide my pen to demonstrate

The sweetest poet's art!

~~~~~~~~~~~

But they cannot.

I am undone.

I need a translator.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Oh, that my lips would better speak

The praises of my King!

And beauteous pictures in my mind

My painting brush might bring!

~~~~~~~~~~~

But they cannot.

I am undone.

I need a translator.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Still, what I've recieved may I ever give;

No matter how stuttered and poor.

To truly bring my offering

I need a Translator.

"Whithersoever He Goeth"

God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. (Gal. 6:14)

"They were living to themselves; self with its hopes, and promises and dreams, still had hold of them; but the Lord began to fulfill their prayers. They had asked for contrition, and had surrendered for it to be given them at any cost, and He sent them sorrow; they had asked for purity, and He sent them thrilling anguish; they had asked to be meek, and He had broken their hearts; they had asked to be dead to the world, and He slew all their living hopes; they had asked to be made like Him, and He placed them in the furnace, sitting by 'as a refiner and purifier of silver,' until they should reflect His image; they had asked to lay hold of His cross, and when He had reached it to them it lacerated their hands.

They had asked they knew not what, nor how, but He had taken them at their word, and granted the all their petitions. They were hardly willing to follow Him so far, or to draw so nigh to Him. They had upon them an awe and fear, as Jacob at Bethel, or Eliphaz in the night visions, or as the apostles when they thought that they had seen a spirit, and knew not that it was Jesus. They could almost pray Him to depart from them, or to hide His awfulness. They found it easier to obey than to suffer, to do than to give up, to bear the cross than to hang upon it. But they cannot go back, for they have come too near the unseen cross, and its virtues have pierced too deeply within them. He is fulfilling to them His promise, 'And if, I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me' (John 12:32).

But now at last their turn has come. Before, they had only heard of the mystery, but now they feel it. He has fastened on them His look of love, as He did Mary and Peter, and they can but choose to follow.

Little by little, from time to time, by flitting gleams, they mystery of His cross shines out upon them. They behold Him lifted up, they gaze on the glory which rays from the wounds of His holy passion; and as they gaze they advance, and are changed into His likeness, and as His name shines through them, for He dwells in them. They live alone with Him above, in unspeakable fellowship; willing to lack what others own (and what they might have had), and to be unlike all, so that they are only like Him.

Such are they in all ages, 'who follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth.'

Had they chosen for themselves, of their friends chosen for them, they would have chosen otherwise. They would have been brighter here, but less glorious in His kingdom. They would have had Lot's portion, not Abraham's. If they had halted anywhere---if God had taken off His hand and let them stray back---what would they have lost? What forfeits in resurrection?

But He stayed them up, even against themselves. Many a time their foot had well nigh slipped; but He in mercy held them up. Now, even in this life, they know that all He did was done well. It was good to suffer here, that they might reign hereafter; to bear the cross below, for they shall wear the crown above; and that not their will but His was done on them and in them."

Anonymous

Streams In The Desert, pg. 320

Art

Here are some of my recent art attempts. I have always loved watercolors,but I recently took a little drawing class and decided that pencil drawing is pretty cool too.

I never seem to find the time to just sit and draw, but once in a while I will get some burst of inspiration which usually leads to a new wall-decoration. I like to work from photographs that I have taken, which is what the following are.

Ironness vs. Mushiness

just a thought:

If "iron sharpens iron", then mud makes mud muddier.

So let's not be mud!

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Sorry if this comes a little suddenly, but it's been too long pent up and I just had to get it out.

I don't have time to explain, but that's my thought for today! Please consider... and have a nice Monday! :):):)

A Valentine

To:

my Prince, my Love, my Savior

Jesus

You are the Rose of Sharon

You are the Lily of the Valleys.

You are my Beloved and You are my Friend.

You are altogether lovely.

You are fairer than the sons of men.

Grace is poured upon Your lips.

Therefore God has blessed You forever.

I am Yours and You are mine.

Freely will I forget my own people,

yea, my father's house also,

To be Yours alone.

Because You are my Lord, I will worship You.

I will make Your name to be remembered in all generations;

Therefore the people shall praise You forever and ever.

I love You.

Always and forever,

Your princess