skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Thank you to the Mimi Burns Band for their beautiful music, chemistry and melodies on Friday. Also, thank you to the Warbird Brewery for not just hosting this sweet time of music but also for the very first dark beer that I have ever allowed to pass my lips. Shanty Irish rocks.
The Mimi Burns Band will be playing on April 11th at 7:00pm at the Co-Op for a Fundraiser for Eagle Creek.
"I'm a new soul... I came to this strange world... Hoping I could learn a bit bout how to give and take... But since I came here, felt the joy and the fear... Finding myself making every possible mistake.
I'm a young soul in this very strange world hoping I could learn a bit about what is true and fake. But why all this hate? Try to communicate. Finding trust and love is not always easy to make. ” Lyrics from yael naim's song New Soul
Of course some would say this song only resonates with me because it is on the latest mac commercial. However, it is really the lyrics that ring with me. How about you?
la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la...
As part of the mission Susan is undertaking in July to Africa she will have the adventure of visiting Horizon International. A non-profit relief and development organization dedicated to caring for orphans affected by HIV/AIDS. They serve these orphans and their communities regardless of religion, race, ethnicity or gender. Enabling them to break the cycle of poverty and live free from the bonds of poverty and disease.
To check out the experience of Horizon go to:
http://horizoninternationalinc.com/index.html
But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also...
God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Who or what could be more precious or worthy of our pursuit?
"Hearts speak and spirits ask and flesh cries out. The body and the soul and the brain and the heart and thoughts and feelings are all merged into one being we call a person." Rob Bell, Sex God
Being single hasn't taken away my libido. Yet, I am fully aware and in awe of God's truth: "Honor marriage, and guard the sacredness of sexual intimacy between wife and husband. God draws a firm line against casual and illicit sex." Hebrews 13:4.
So what is a girl to do? Sew her knees together? Put on sackcloth and throw ashes on her head? Instead I am going to rely on Jesus;
"With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ's being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death. God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn't deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, He personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that.The law always ended up being used as a Band-Aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it. And now what the law code asked for but we couldn't deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us." Romans 8:1-4.
Do you have a better suggestion?
Susan and I are in the process of sitting before our Father... praying about her trip to Africa this July. As we were discussing this yesterday Susan was sharing her heart to hold and love on babies. She told me of a feeling or thought she has had since she was a little girl ... that she might be given the opportunity to care for a child or children that weren't her biological children. As she anticipates going to Africa her hope is that she will be able to hold and love on some of the orphaned children.
Sunday morning we were blessed to hold Mimi's sweet baby May during Bible study. Susan kept her on her lap almost the entire hour, swaddled in her blanket. Considering the opportunities that might lay before her in Africa. The children she might meet, the friends she may be blessed to make. Breathing deep May's sweet baby smell, a scent straight from our heavenly Father. (okay, Mimi just changed her right before hand :)
While I was watching Susan take joy in just 'being' with May on her lap, I thought of our favorite new perfume. Baby Grace. What could smell better than just being baby grace?
Susan still needs financial support to make this mission a reality. If you are interested in supporting her contact me and I will connect you two.
All day long I field questions. I often wonder, what makes me qualified to answer some of the questions asked of me. I suppose it is that I am willing to answer, or maybe it is because I am the mom, or maybe it is because I am the one who has been around the longest – both at the office and at the house. I am not sure that actually qualifies me, however, maybe it does.
Here are a few questions I have been asked or heard in the past few months:
Why do you think God made people?
How did God start?
What is heaven?
Is heaven truly wonderful?
How big is God?
How did He come alive?
What does He smell like?
Why doesn’t He have everybody believe in Him?
How is He with us wherever we go?
How come He doesn’t get rid of the devil?
How is He everywhere?
What color is God?
How old is God?
What does He wear?
Why can’t we see Him?
How does God stand it when He sees how we treat each other?
Some times questions can be fun … even exciting. Some times questions can cause you just to have more questions.
Interesting to me is that Jesus often opened dialogues with questions or began teaching with questions. However, today I have experienced some “religiosity” that discourages questions or investigating. I just wonder if this is truly godly?
At any rate, I figure God is big enough to hear my questions, my kids questions, my friends questions and Christ’s enemies questions, and decide whether or not he wants to answer them. What do you think?
"Every poem can be considered in two ways--as what the poet has to say, and as a thing which he makes." -- CS Lewis
"For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them."
Now God has us where He wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all His idea, and all His work. All we do is trust Him enough to let him do it. It's God's gift from start to finish! We don't play the major role. If we did, we'd probably go around bragging that we'd done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work He does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.
That's plain enough, isn't it? You're no longer wandering exiles. This kingdom of faith is now your home country. You're no longer strangers or outsiders. You belong here, with as much right to the name Christian as anyone. God is building a home. He's using us all—irrespective of how we got here—in what He is building.
My sister in Christ, Susan sent this to me tonight...
"I cannot shake from my memory, one poor grandmother living with her daughter, son-in-law and three grandchildren (under the age of eight) I learned about at the Global AIDS Summit in 2006. Over a short period of time both parents contracted and died of HIV/AIDS. The grandmother was forced to climb on top of the cities garbage dump and sift through the trash looking for plastic bags to recycle. She would spend the day in the trash to receive pennies for the few plastic bags she was fortunate enough to find. The bags were dripping with filth yet she carried them in her hands as if they were gold. The food that she was able to purchase was only enough for one meal and it was divided between the three children, she often went hungry. Every time I am handed a plastic bag at the grocery store, my mind is triggered to the memory of the grandmother’s face, of desperation — looking for one more plastic bag. This grandmother and her dedication to loving her little family moved me beyond comfort into heartache.
I have tried to shake the memories of the heart breaking stories I watched and heard two years ago at the Global Summit on AIDS in California. The children, their sad eyes and their tear stained faces. About the time I think I just may have buried their faces somewhere so deep within me………… I find Africa is on my mind again.
So here it has come to pass, I have an opportunity to go to Richards Bay South Africa for two weeks this July, with a group called SAMission that I was connected with through the 2006 Global Summit on AIDS and the Church. You can read more about the details of their missionary activity at www.samissionorg .
We are leaving in July; however, I need to collect $2,050.00 by the end of March to enable me to make a definite commitment to go and to pay for my airfare by March 28th. The mission trip’s total cost per person is approximately $3,300.00. Would you be willing to help me fulfill a dream for me to experience God’s love in going to Africa and allow me to love my neighbors that have buried themselves some where in my heart?
Thank you for you consideration, Susan O’Hara-Osborne"
If you have any interest in supporting this endeavor to love on our Neighbors in Africa, contact me and I will connect you to Susan. peace, jamie
“His splendor was like the sunrise; rays flashed from His hand, where His power was hidden.” Habakkuk 3:4
Most every morning begins the same way. Karen crawls over me in bed, (oooh, ouch, whoa, watch it) and gets right into my face and says in a very loud urgent whisper, "Mommy, can we say Good Morning to Jesus yet?" After we have said our good morning prayer she bounces down off of my bed and throws back the curtains. While I ask her “What color did Jesus make the sunrise today?”
Karen is quite the reporter on this magnificent event. Some days are “pink” and other days are “orange” and once in awhile it is “pink and orange with yellow.” If we have gotten up later than usual, she will tell me that the sunrise is “blue.” Now that it is later in the year, she usually reports that the sunrise is “black!” Armed with this breaking news, Karen often goes off to find her siblings to let them know exactly what color Jesus made the sunrise that day.
I find it a sweet joy each morning to participate in this daily celebration. The dependable splendid sunrise is a shadow of the one we have prayed to … our faithful Jesus, “He is like the light of morning at sunrise on a cloudless morning, like the brightness after rain that brings the grass from the earth.” 2Samuel 23:4
I hope the next time you catch the sunrise, you take time to notice the colors and dwell upon the Lord’s faithfulness.
Posts
