Developing all the time, the wiggler is getting everything she needs to thrive and more I am sure. Love grows and when she will be able to move to us under her own power resistance will be futile and we will be fully assimilated into her world!
Here she is having an excited chat with her father.
Here she is smiling at her aunt.
Love grows.
1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2The same was in the beginning with God. 3All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4In him was life; and the life was the light of men.5And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. John 1:1-5Father in Heaven I thank you for these precious eternal gifts who you have chosen to place in our family. I pray that they will give the life you have given back to you through the work of your Holy Spirit. Thank you for showing us Your glory and character through marriage, childbirth and family. Thank you for being born into this world and dying to give us the freedom to love one another!
William Cook is now with us here on planet earth. Welcome.
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.
(James 1:17)
I found myself in a conversation today about Sunday school. Very few people in our church are willing to volunteer their time to care for their own children and the children of their fellow church goers. Why this is might be a mystery but then again it might be as plain vanilla ice cream. I have my thoughts on the matter but I will leave them slumbering restlessly in the recesses of my mind.
The real revelation I had during this conversation was the sudden idea that when Jesus reclaims His creation there will no longer be children as we know them today. There will no longer be anyone in bodies that age. There will no longer be any reproduction of people at all. There will be only everlasting life, a reality without time in a new heaven and earth with God as the single greatest focus of His creation. Our human relationships as we know them will fall away. I find that this thought initially causes me distress in my current situation but I know that what God has for us is always perfect and find peace in that very truth.
Right now we are privileged to have been children, and have children in our lives. We live in a culture that calls children an interference to our personal lives and provides any number of convenient ways to store them or even do away with them before they can appear on the scene. The same popular culture portrays adults and parents as literal idiots and families as chaotic and dysfunctional in the music, movies and television shows it produces. To view children in the light of this world is to recognize they are the ultimate parasite. The challenge is to recognize who they are in the eyes of God and the indispensible role they play in stripping us of ourselves and conforming us to the image of Christ.
If we are of the family of God we must see children for who they are and behave accordingly. Children belong to God until they have awareness enough to reject Him. A baby is a gift from God to a couple who have developed an intimate relationship, but they are not the origin of this new life and are best serve to acknowledge who is. Each of us is responsible for a child’s well being just by virtue of their presence in our lives. In as much as we are the sole focus of our creator so much so that He sent Jesus to live with, and finally die for us. We need to follow this example in our own lives. We need to live with, and give our lives daily for the children God has given us in our time and place.
How terribly, then, have the theologians misrepresented God in the measures of the low and showy, not the lofty and simple humanities! Nearly all of them represent him as a great King on a grand throne, thinking how grand he is, and making it the business of his being and the end of his universe to keep up his glory, wielding the bolts of a Jupiter against them that take his name in vain. They would not allow this, but follow out what they say, and it comes much to this. Brothers, have you found our king? There he is, kissing little children and saying they are like God. There he is at table with the head of a fisherman lying on his bosom, and somewhat heavy at heart that even he,the beloved disciple, cannot yet understand him well. The simplest peasant who loves his children and his sheep were--no, not a truer, for the other is false, but--a true type of our God beside that monstrosity of a monarch.
George Macdonald
I hear it all the time. Working with children is a gift. Not true! There is no gift only a sacred responsibility. You were once a child. You have been there yourself. You are in fact no different than a child and to be inept in relating to children is to be equally inept in relating to your peers in matters of sincerity and openness. We are all truly called to be servant to the child. They are honest and raw. They forgive easily and love freely. They are transparent and for that reason are certainly intimidating, but they are here to remind us daily of who Christ is calling us to be.
We are off to a roaring start at STF Ballast Point! We have tons of enthusiastic little people and plenty of volunteers. Here is what I am talking about!
I am looking forward to another four days of this blessed uproar and I am so thankful to all the mothers at our church who dedicate days and days of their time to see that this event happens. May the kingdom of God see many new sons and daughters added this week!
Out back Jack and Sydney Harbor make everything authentic Outback.
The bye bye buggy is a life saver.
They did not let the heat stop them.
Scott is not Fat and has an amazing woman to be his wife.
Mrs. Cathy is an amazing artist
Our church dances for the Lord like you would not believe. We just call it choreography.
Children are born evil but we keep them around because they are just to cute!
It could be that babies are born into the world with perfect knowledge having just come from the creator. They arrive fully aware of all the mysteries of the universe and no way to tell us what they will soon forget just as we did before them.
Hey to all,
Tomorrow (Sunday) morning (Sat night for you guys) I will be leaving here. Flying through the clouds over the wide ocean to come back home. Man, I can't believe its been 7 weeks here. 7 weeks...and 1 great God. One Who Is here and One who is moving, calling and drawing His own to Him...like the wind, I see His Spirit moving in. There is a thunderstorm of great proportions brewing in the sea...moving in, getting closer. It's like the gale that sweeps in before that storm...warning the inhabitants of that land that something is coming. Someone Who Is. He hears the desperate cries of those who are here already...those who plead and work for Him, crying out for the blind, the deaf, the lame, the dead...they are crying out for miracles. And He is coming, He is answering. He is whispering to those people. Telling them to look up at the sky. For He is coming. Gathering those whispered prayers unto Himself, with a force that even the gates of Hell cannot contain, this great Thunderstorm is coming. The glory of the One and Only is coming to this land. And it will come crashing, winding its way through the land, purifying, up to the mountain. It will creep through the mist that shrouds this mountain. And His creation will receive the salvation that it groans for...
look up. listen. do you hear Him?
the journey is just beginning...
dancing in the rain,
christine
John 4:23-26
23 But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him.
24 God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.
25 The woman saith unto him, I know that Messias cometh, which is called Christ: when he is come, he will tell us all things.
26 Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto thee am he.
