My Lovely Dwelling Place

A Christmas Medley Rummaging around Lowe’s garden center for the perfect Christmas tree, it began to snow. A starry-eyed optimist might claim to hear, Chestnuts roasting on an open fire… , but I’m pretty sure it was just one of my men passing gas. Jack Frost nipping at your nose …? It was twenty degrees. Yuletide carols being sung by a choir… not my boys. And folks dressed up like Eskimos … the knuckleheads don’t like coats. We get a real tree every year. One year, my husband and offspring actually went and cut one down. It was so cold, wet, and muddy that day – they vowed never to do that again. The last few years our trees have originated from Home Depot or Menards, more recently Lowe’s. We’ve gotten a wide variety of trees – I don’t remember their names. I only know they make me sneeze. One in particular gave me a rash. One had a mouse – that made setting it up very exciting. I’m pretty sure my honey was under the tree when the mouse appeared causing

Fruitful I have the privilege of leading a small group for some ladies at my church. This past week one of the Scripture passages our pastor wanted us to look at was 2 Peter 1:1-9. I loved it so much I decided I had to share it! Now Peter wrote his first letter to encourage those who were suffering persecution for being believers. He wrote his second letter to equip the believers to combat false teachers. Most scholars think he wrote it in prison while awaiting his execution. The letter opens: Simon Peter, a bond-servant and apostle of Jesus Christ. Peter calls himself by his earthly name and the name Jesus gave him. This seemed beautiful to me, because it is true for all of us. We are who we are, yet at the same time, we are who He is making us to be. There’s so much hope in that – so much comfort in knowing He is not done with us. He then refers to himself as a bond-servant. I love this term – It reminds me of a passage in the Old Testament where a

Reasonable I like to read. There are usually around four or five books lying around my house with which I am currently having some kind of relationship.  Recently, I came across this quote by Blaise Pascal, a 15 th century French mathematician, philosopher, and inventor: There are two kinds of people one can call reasonable: those who serve God with all their heart because they know him, and those who seek him with all their heart because they do not know him. This is a rather provocative statement. I really like it – probably because it places me in the reasonable category. But what does it mean to be reasonable? According to Merriam-Webster, to be reasonable one must possess sound judgment. Some synonyms for reasonable are: analytical, coherent, logical, rational, sensible, and well-grounded. This describes absolutely no one running most countries, but that’s beside the point. To say categorically, that someone is only reasonable if they are either

Slaying the Slough of Despond Sometimes I think we are only a conversation away from the “slough of despond”, but maybe it’s just me… Just the other day, as I was minding my own business in a state of relative cheerfulness, I found myself beginning to descend into a morose feeling of melancholy. I pulled out all the stops in an attempt to halt this fall into the abyss… I listened to praise music, read and meditated on Scripture, prayed, cleaned and organized kitchen cabinets, visited a friend, and bought two new flowers for my garden. All that - and a good night’s sleep changed what could have been several days of gloom to peace. I had to work at it. This got me thinking about having a sound mind – how do we get one and how do we keep one? Preparation First, I think we need to fill ourselves up with truth. We can’t only meditate on Scripture when we are down, but rather we need to reach for it every day – be very familiar with it. That way, w