It’s Day 21 (already!) of the Giving Thanks Challenge hosted by Leah at South Breeze Farm.
I am thankful for the “peace that passes understanding.”
The Lord is at hand.Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Philippians 4: 5b-7
Wow — came across some deep, thought-provoking posts this week as well as some fun ones. Hope you find a few you enjoy!
What is Success? Life in the Upside Down Kingdom by Ann Voskamp, HT to Lisa Notes. I’d urge any of my blogger friends who are Christians to read this if you don’t read anything else here. I need the constant reminder that whatever else my blog is or does, it is first and foremost done as unto Him.
Also by Ann, HT to Addy, When you’re trying to get your priories straight. Beautiful. I’ve been referred to and blessed by Ann’s blog so often that I finally subscribed.
Seeing past what it seems, HT to Lizzie, had me in tears.
‘Twas the night before chemo and Cary Schmidt puts this journey into perspective. HT to Susan.
On a lighter note:
Do you love turkey? — jokes and cartoons for Thanksgiving.
Turkey finger puppet tutorial.
This little girl is soooo cute! She tells the story of Jonah, and though she doesn’t have every little point exactly right, she has wonderful presence, a variety of voices, and a sweet way of saying “sh” for “s”. “Forgive us for being shelfish.”
And if you’d like to spend 3 1/2 minutes listening to some beautiful instrumental music, here you go:
And
It’s Day 20 of the Giving Thanks Challenge hosted by Leah at South Breeze Farm.
I am thankful for living in the age of technology that I am living in. Sure, there are ethical quandaries, but there are with everything. I love having a variety of quick and inexpensive ways to keep in touch with family (as opposed to being able to call only once a month as I did when first married), being able to choose which movie I want to see and play it at home for only $1, having a variety of music available to listen to in various ways, being able to look up anything on the computer — and so on and so on.
(Hmm, maybe I should have broken those down into separate Giving Thanks posts!)
Welcome to Friday’s Fave Five, hosted by Susanne at Living to Tell the Story, in which we can share our favorite things from the last week. This has been a wonderful exercise in looking for and appreciating the good things God blesses us with. Click on the button to learn more, then go to Susanne’s to read others’ faves and link up your own.
Here are five of my favorites from the past week:
1. Finally visiting our library. I pass by the building often and thought it looked so warm and inviting. I’ll gladly take a warm and cozy library over a sleek, modern one most any day. We finally stopped in last weekend.
The front wall of the inside is made of the same brick.
This intriguing little sculpture was out front:
2. A shiny new library card! I didn’t check out anything for me on mine yet — I let Jesse check out a couple of things on mine for a research paper. When you get a new card you can only check our four things at first, so we put a few books on my card so he could save his for a field trip with his class to a different library. I have too many books stacked up to read to be checking out any more right now, anyway, but I enjoyed perusing the shelves.
3. A favorite leftover lunch is a grilled cheese sandwich with leftover meat loaf or stuffing burgers. Kind of like what a restaurant calls a Patty Melt except without the limp, droopy onions (bleah!).
4. A little color still left on the trees. The great majority of leaves are gone, blown off with rain and wind over the past couple of weeks. But there are still bits of color to enjoy here and there, like this tree in the neighborhood:
5. Sweet messages…in more ways than one. 🙂 When Jason heats up a couple of Toaster Strudels for himself and Mittu, he usually writes little messages with the icing. I’m doing good to just get the icing on there when I make them.
Have a great Friday!
Mocha With Linda hosts a weekly meme called Flashback Friday. She’ll post a question every Thursday, and then Friday we can link our answers up on her site. You can visit her site for more Flashbacks.
The prompt for this week is:
What was Thanksgiving like when you were growing up? What days did you usually have off from school? Do you remember any Thanksgiving activities at school, such as a play or a meal? During the Thanksgiving weekend, did you travel to spend it with relatives or did you stay home? Or did relatives travel to you? What was your family’s day typically like? Did you watch the Macy’s Parade or something else on TV? Have you ever attended a Thanksgiving parade? Was football a big part of the day? And of course, we have to hear what your family ate! Were there any traditional foods that were part of your family’s meal? Which of your growing-up traditions do you do with your family today? And if you are married, how did it go merging your two traditions/expectations?
I think we usually had just Thursday and Friday off from school for the Thanksgiving holidays. I’m glad my kids have gotten out at noon on the Wednesday before for the last several years. I don’t remember having Thanksgiving meals at schools where parents or grandparents were invited. Not to be a killjoy, bit I really don’t like that — it seems to me to take away from the family Thanksgiving. I liked what one of my son’s teachers did one year with just a few snacks, then things like pemmican that the original pilgrims and Indians might have had.
We might have done plays or activities at school, but the only one I remember is tracing around our hands and then coloring and adding features to make it look like a turkey (thumb was the head, the other fingers were feathers.)
I don’t remember traveling or having other relatives travel in for Thanksgiving as a child. That kind of thing took place at Christmas but mostly during the summers when weather was better and people had more time off.
I think we watched parades if they happened to be on when we turned the TV on, but it wasn’t a tradition or a “must-see.” My dad was a football fan, so we probably watched whatever game was on — or maybe only if the Dallas Cowboys were playing, I don’t remember.
We ate the usual Thanksgiving fare: turkey, cornbread dressing (we used the terms “dressing” and “stuffing” interchangeably), mashed potatoes and gravy, sweet potatoes, some other vegetable side dish, pumpkin and apple pies. I don’t think we ever had cranberry sauce.
When my husband and I first got married and lived near our alma mater, we often had college friends over, and that was fun, especially since they couldn’t get home.It was nice to provide a little slice of homeyness for them. Some years Jim’s former pastor’s family came to town when he had married kids in college, and they often invited us over for Thanksgiving — that provided us with a bit of homeyness!
My family’s Thanksgiving now is much the same. The meal is pretty much the same: we often have a green bean casserole or Vegetable Medley as an additional side. No one likes sweet potatoes except Mittu and me. We might turn on the parades, we might not. We usually eat around 12 or 1, have pies later in the afternoon, then heat up leftovers or make turkey sandwiches in the evening. For years my dear husband has taken care of getting all the meat off the turkey after dinner and then cleaning the roasting pan for me — that helps a lot because I am starting to get wear by that point. I usually get a nap some time in the afternoon. None of us is into football, but we might watch a video that night (planning on Toy Story 3 this year! We’ve all seen it except Jeremy. None of us minds seeing it again, and he wants to see it with us). Sometimes we might play a game.
Sometimes we go around the table saying what we’re thankful for, sometimes not.
This year we will be especially thankful to be all together again after being separated since this summer.
I like that it is a fairly laid-back day except for the big meal. Even though we don’t have a lot of unique traditions, I love the day as a time to think intentionally about thankfulness and a time to relax with family.
In addition, one of the highlights for me of the holiday and the year is that in every church we’ve been in, there has been some kind of praise service at some point during the week. In that particular service often it takes on a retrospective look back at the year, and it a blessed time of rejoicing with those who have had special blessings or or empathizing with those who have experienced answers to prayer and God’s grace in trials. An evening of laughter and tears and reflecting on God’s blessings!
It’s Day 19 of the Giving Thanks Challenge hosted by Leah at South Breeze Farm.
I am thankful for humor!
“Mirth is God’s medicine. Everybody ought to bathe in it. Grim care, moroseness, anxiety — all this rust of life ought to be scoured off by the oil of mirth. It is better than emery. Every man ought to rub himself with it. A man without mirth is like a wagon without springs, in which everyone is caused disagreeably to jolt by every pebble over which is runs.” ~ Henry Ward Beecher
We have to keep it in balance, of course — I’ve known a few who take it too far, who exhibit little reverence or respect because everything is a joke. But I do think God has a sense of humor. I can’t imagine creating one of these without one:
A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.
Proverbs 17:22a
It’s Day 18 of the Giving Thanks Challenge hosted by Leah at South Breeze Farm.
I am thankful for food! And for the availability and wide variety that we have in this country.
It’s Day 17 of the Giving Thanks Challenge hosted by Leah at South Breeze Farm.
I am thankful for shelter, and particularly for the wonderful home the Lord has provided.
It’s Day 16 of the Giving Thanks Challenge hosted by Leah at South Breeze Farm.
I am thankful for friends, old and new, near and far.
Ointment and perfume rejoice the heart: so doth the sweetness of a man’s friend by hearty counsel. Proverbs 27:9
Here Burns My Candle by Liz Curtis Higgs is set in Scotland in 1745 and drawn somewhat from the Biblical book of Ruth. What does Ruth have to do with 18th century Scotland, you ask? I’ll get to that in a moment.
Lady Marjory Kerr lives very happily with her two Lowland sons and Highland daughters-in-law in fine style, her only sorrow buried in Greyfriars Churchyard. But life is just on the verge of major changes. Bonnie Prince Charlie is heading their way, seeking to build up his army and coffers to take the city and eventually the crown. She would never dream that her loyal sons might some day follow the Prince, that the sordid rumors swirling about son Donald are true, or that daughter-in-law Elisabeth has secrets of her own. As one by one everything she trusts in is taken away, and her own faults and failures become all too clear, she senses a call from a voice she had long ago stopped listening to.
Elisabeth, meanwhile, keeps the auld ways of worship of the moon that her mother taught her, yet her soul is not satisfied and her prayers are not answered. Grieved and disillusioned in her faith, the words of the Buik begin to open her eyes and her heart to the unseen Holy One.
Marjory and Elisabeth, you may recognize, are based on Naomi, the mother in a pagan land who loses her husband and sons, and Ruth, the daughter-in-law who loses her husband and leaves her home and her god for her mother-in-law’s. I’ve mentioned before in other reviews that I am a bit wary of Biblical fiction because so often it takes the story too far afield from the Biblical narrative. I don’t think this story is meant to be an exact retelling or parallel, but rather, the characters and basic plot arc are just drawn from the Biblical story. If this kind of a parallel bothers you, you could probably enjoy the book on its own. I can see the value, though, in exercising the imagination this way to explore a little more what the characters were going through (sort of like if a pastor or Sunday School teacher were telling a Biblical story and then, trying to make it more understandable to hearers, said, “Now that would be like…” and relating it to something the readers might more readily identify with). Knowing that the story was based on Ruth helped to hold my interest in some points, anticipating what was to come and feeling with them what they might have felt in the face of their losses, wondering how Ruth came to be dissatisfied with her own rites and what brought her to faith even when she did not have the best of examples before her, experiencing and understanding Naomi’s bitterness and wondering how and when the Lord first began to call her not only back home to her country, but to Himself.
It took me a good third of the book to really get into it, however. I am not sure why: I enjoy historical fiction, and the details were pertinent to the plot. Liz Curtis Higgs’ actually having been in Scotland was evidenced in the rich details, and I found myself inclined to speak with a wee bit of brogue myself. But, as I said, knowing what was going to happen and wanting to see how it played out kept me reading, and after a while I was riveted and sorrowing along with Marjory and Elisabeth in their losses.
Some readers may be especially miffed at Donald’s character, especially as there is no hint of his particular besetting sin in his Biblical parallel, but Higgs explains in her notes at the end that both his and his brother’s characters were drawn from the meaning of their Biblical names.
Here Burns My Candle is drawn from Ruth 1:1-18. The rest of the story will be told in Mine Is the Night, due out next spring.
Here is a trailer for Here Burns My Candle:
(This review will be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday review of books and the next 5 Minutes For Books I Read It column.)
