Lots of Life Tidbits

Wow, there are so many lovely pictures on the Internet. When I saw this one I thought, "Ahhhh, heaven must have gorgeous places like this!" Seriously! When I imagine heaven, crystal clear water, fields of colorful flowers, breath-taking landscapes come to mind. Imagine, if God created this world with so much beauty, how much better His heaven must be! For no sin is there! No cruelty and selfishness and all that other mean stuff that is so prevalent here! Wow, I really want to go to this place.


Movin' on.

I have really been in a chatty mood here lately, haven't I? Let's see...some odds and ends from my neck of the woods.

I read in the Focus on the Family magazine about this year's National Day of Prayer. It's May 7 and the theme is Prayer ... America's Hope! I guess they are going for the " hope" thing since Obama made that popular. Anyway, truly prayer is a great thing! The verse they are using is Psalm 33:22, "May Your unfailing love rest upon us, O Lord, even as we put our hope in You."

I had a fantastic Bible study as I read and reflected on Mark earlier today! First of all I was amazed in the first 5 chapters how often demons recognized Jesus as the Son of God or the Holy One from God! It had never struck me before, but it really jumped out today. Also in Mark 1, we find a man with an unclean spirit in the synagogue! Interesting! I've heard pastors say that the devil goes to church each Sunday. In this case, he must have been in the synagogue on Saturday!

Also what stood out to me is when Jesus called his disciples how they immediately forsook what they were doing to follow Him! James and John even left their father with the hired servants to follow Christ! I wonder if I would be that willing to forsake all and follow Jesus. Or would I make excuses thinking the time was not right or surely Jesus wouldn't expect me to go lookin' like this! Hmmm, hmmm.

And finally, something I loved from Mark 5. When Jairus wanted Jesus to heal his daughter. They were on their way to Jairus' house when word came that his daughter already died. I imagine the sadness that assaulted Jairus as those horrible words came. Possibly he thought, "Oh no! Oh no! We are too late!" But see what verse 36 tells us:

Ignoring what they said, Jesus told the synagogue ruler, "Don't be afraid; just believe."

Ah, our God of Hope! Wow! We don't have to be afraid when Jesus is near! And the good news is that He is always near. He has promised to never leave or forsake us! So we can choose to live by faith enjoying the goodness of knowing Jesus has everything under control. "Don't be afraid; just believe." Love it, love it, love it!




Today I also read this great blog post where the author discusses how free thinking atheists were wondering how everything started. Since they have foolishly (in my opinion) dismissed the possibility of God creating the world, they have to come up with a plausible answer. Afterall we ARE all here so how exactly did that happen? Ha, ha....check out Michael's post for a quick peek at those intellectuals' answer. They mock the fact that a snake talked and other crazy, no, impossible stories from the Bible so they have to come up with something really logical, right? Certainly God couldn't do anything outside of our logic and, oh say, work in the impossible things! *hmph!*


In other news, Andrew signed up to take a scuba diving class at the end of April and first of May. I baked a coffee cake recommended by my friend, Joni. She got the recipe from her Kraft magazine and when mine came, I decided to try it as well. Instead of cherry pie filling, I used apple. It's very moist and tastes great! This morning I listened to my cousin, Cory, as he hosted a talk radio program. He had a guest who made an interesting statement. I will maybe write about that another time once I muse over it a bit. I think this is quite enough for now.

Ciao!