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No merit of my own

Posted on June 21, 2007 by Barbara Harper

I was reading tonight of an acquaintance who was thinking of going into a religion that is very much based on one’s works plus the church’s directives plus Christ for a right relationship with God — and my heart is so pained. I wish folks could see and understand that we can’t “do” anything to earn a right standing with God except repent and believe. One old song says it well:

My hope is in the Lord Who gave Himself for me,
And paid the price of all my sin at Calvary.

Refrain:
For me He died, For me He lives,
And everlasting life and light He freely gives.

No merit of my own His anger to suppress.
My only hope is found in Jesus’ righteousness.

And now for me He stands Before the Father’s throne.
He shows His wounded hands and names me as His own.

His grace has planned it all, ‘Tis mine but to believe,
And recognize His work of love and Christ receive.

(Words and music by Norman J. Clayton)

But a song is only as good doctrinally as it is based on Scripture. And the Scriptural basis for this one can be found in the following:

Titus 3:5 Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost;

6 Which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour;

7 That being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

Romans 4:4 Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt.

5 But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.

Ephesians 2:8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:

9 Not of works, lest any man should boast.

Book Review: To Fly Again

Posted on June 21, 2007 by Barbara Harper

It’s beginning to look like Book Week here at Stray Thoughts, isn’t it? 🙂 Sorry about that. The last two I have just finished up in the last couple of days. I normally would have spaced out the discussion of them a little more except that the Spring Reading Thing Wrap-Up is today!

I had read Gracia Burnham’s In the Presence of My Enemies during the fall reading challenge, the story of how she and her husband, Martin, were captured by Islamic militants in the Philippines and held for a year, ending in Martin’s death during a rescue attempt. Gracia has written another book with Dean Merrill, To Fly Again, which kind of updates us on how the family is doing and shares more of what she has learned in the time since this ordeal. Actually, the whole title is To Fly Again: Surviving the Tailspins of Life, using an analogy from her husband’s experiences as a pilot.

Gracia, as her name implies, is very gracious in her dealings with others, yet she doesn’t shy away from facing the hard questions and problems she has dealt with. She deals with many topics — faith, anger, confusion, impatience, forgiveness, contentment, praise, and so much more, sharing something of the wrestlings of her own heart and mind, always coming back to the God Who loves us and is trustworthy even if circumstances are excruciating.

This book is an excellent read, really, for anyone, but especially for those who have gone through a crisis and wrestled with some of these same topics.

I want to share just a couple of excerpts. In a chapter dealing with praise, she writes:

I am not claiming that the praise of Paul and Silas directly triggered the earthquake. But I do believe it is fair to say that affirming the goodness and power of God is always appropriate. It tells God we have not lost our bearings. We still know who is ultimately in charge of the world. And we invite his intervention in the midst of our trauma.

She refers to the battle King Jehoshaphat faced against overwhelming odds in II Chronicles 20 and is prayer that “We do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon You.” The king then appointed singers to walk in front of the army to sing to and praise the Lord — and the Lord provided a marvelous ad unexpected deliverance. Later in the same chapter Gracia writes:

In the battles of our life, when we face overwhelming threats to life and limb, it is always good to praise the Lord. It states a higher reality than what we see with our natural eyes. It affirms our place in the hands of a loving and strong heavenly Father, who will never stop caring about our welfare. He is, indeed, worthy of every accolade we can offer, whether circumstances seem to agree or not.

In another place she quotes a poem by Annie Johnson Flint that I think sums up the experience of those whose lights are to shine in dark places, as the Burnhams’ did:

His lamp am I, to shine where He shall say,
And lamps are not for sunny rooms,
Nor for the light of day;
But for the dark places of the earth,
Where shame and wrong and crime have birth,
Or for the murky twilight gray
Where wandering sheep have gone astray;
Or where the lamp of faith grows dim
And souls are groping after Him.
And as sometimes a flame we find,
Clear-shining, through the night
So bright we do not see the lamp,
But only see the light:
So may I shine — His light the flame,
That men may glorify His name.

Booking Through Thursday: Golden Rule Days

Posted on June 21, 2007 by Barbara Harper

The Booking Through Thursday question for this week is:

Since school is out for the summer (in most places, at least), here’s a school-themed question for the week:

Do you have any old school books? Did you keep yours from college? Old textbooks from garage sales? Old workbooks from classes gone by?
How about your old notes, exams, papers? Do you save them? Or have they long since gone to the great Locker-in-the-sky?

I don’t have any text books from elementary or high school — those all had to be turned back in to the school. Workbooks, notes — I don’t know if I have any from that time. If I do, they’d be in boxes of papers in the shed that I need to go through.

I do have several texts from college days: probably all of the ones from my Bible courses, several from my home economics courses: nutrition, meal management, child care, and sewing books. I also kept the textbook from History of Civilization (the first history class I liked, largely due to the teacher, and the last one in my curriculum), from my English and American Literature classes, from my Advanced Composition and Rhetoric class (that course title scared me, but it was just a basic writing class) and my trusty Harbrace College Handbook from freshman English which was a quick reference guide to basic rules of English. I also kept notes from several of those classes (and actually do have them in a filing cabinet by subject rather than in a box!) One special project I kept was a study of what the Bible had to say about raising children. I did keep several research papers I wrote as well.

Now — have I looked at any of that since school days would be a different question. 🙂 Actually, I have looked at many of the textbooks for reference. Some of them are outdated now and much of the information can be found online, but some I would keep because I know where to find what I am looking for easily. Others I keep for sentimental reasons. Probably through the years to come some of them will be gleaned out as I make room for more books (unless I want to start a library….)

Book Review: Persuasion

Posted on June 20, 2007 by Barbara Harper

I just finished reading Persuasion by Jane Austen this morning, and so far it is my favorite of the Austen books I have read. I have a video of it from 1995 with Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds as the main characters, and the video, as I remember it, is remarkably faithful to the book. The book I checked out from the library is an Oxford World’s Classic with footnotes in the back explaining some of the practices Austen refers to or phrases she uses and several appendices explaining the “ranks” of the time as well as dances, the navy, etc. There was also an alternate ending, several lines of which were included in the video (now also available on DVD).

Persuasion was Austen’s last novel. The story flowed, for me, much better than Sense and Sensibility did. There is no witty repartee such as there was in Pride and Prejudice and there is a lot less sarcasm than in either of those books, though peoples’ foibles are in evidence. Persuasion is the story of Anne Elliot. She is the quiet and not very well-favored daughter of a man who, despite his initial wealth, has gone into debt due to indiscreet spending. His late wife had economized and kept things in check, but with her gone, the expenses rose. The best way to deal with the situation and “save face” among their social set was to move to Bath and rent their home to others.

Anne’s father and older sister don’t dislike Anne so much as they just disregard her as being of any importance. It’s not clear why (unless I missed it) except they are both selfish and vain creatures and seem to disregard anyone who can’t raise them in their social standing. So when the younger married (hypochondriac and complaining) sister, Mary, is ill, Anne is sent to help her.

Seven years earlier Anne had been in love with a Frederick Wentworth, but had been persuaded by a longtime family friend, Lady Russell, who has more or less taken Anne’s mother’s place as adviser, that it would not be a good match. As it turns out, the wife of the couple renting Anne’s home is Frederick’s sister. Anne doesn’t feel she’ll meet him, though, since she is out of town visiting her sister and will then travel on to Bath to her new home. But she is surprised to find him among the party of friends of her sister’s in-laws.

Frederick, now Captain Wentworth who has made his fortune in the Navy, is still smarting from Anne’s earlier rejection, so their conduct around each other is very polite but distant. Anne discovers her feelings for him have not changed.

It is peace time, so naval officers have time to spare, and Captain Wentworth is looking to get married. He seems very interested in Anne’s sister’s sisters-in-law. And later Anne’s estranged cousin, Mr. Elliot, attempts to make amends with the family, and people seem to think that he will eventually marry Anne…

If you don’t know the story, I’ll leave you there to find out what happens.

I liked Anne’s character. Somehow she has escaped the foolishness of the rest of her family and seems not only normal, but reasonable, kind, thoughtful, and gracious. I don’t remember if this is stated, but it seems she took after the mother who had passed. One thing that spoke to me was that, in situations where many of us would have been miserable (such as with the complaining sister), she was glad that she was able to be of use to her family. To my shame, I have to confess that that’s not what I would be thinking in the same situation, and that was a rebuke to me.

Overall it is a very sweet story about the power of different types of persuasion and the ease of being persuaded the wrong way by outward appearances. Anne learns to avoid being at the mercy of others’ persuasions and learns to know her own mind.

Four Layer Dessert

Posted on June 20, 2007 by Barbara Harper

I was in the middle of making this dessert this afternoon when it occurred to me to take a picture of it and post the recipe, a la Barb. 🙂

Four Layer Dessert

2/3 cup butter or margarine
2 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
3 tablespoons sugar
8-ounce container whipped topping
1 8-ounce package cream cheese, softened
1 cup powdered sugar
3 cups milk
2 3-ounce packages any instant pudding mix

Turn oven to 350 degrees. Place margarine in a 9 x13 baking pan and place in oven until margarine is melted. Remove pan; add graham cracker crumbs and sugar; mix well, spread evenly over bottom of pan and bake for 7-8 minutes. Let cool.

Mix the cream cheese, powdered sugar, and 1 cup of the whipped topping and spread mixture evenly over the graham cracker crust. Mix the instant pudding mixes and milk and spread over the filling. At this point you can refrigerate the dessert for 15 minutes, if you’d like, so it congeals a bit. Spread the remaining whipped topping over the top and refrigerate 2 hours.

You can make up the graham cracker mixture in a separate bowl and then put it in the pan: I’d just rather do all of that in the same place.

We usually make this with chocolate pudding, and, if you’d like, you can take a Hershey’s candy bar and vegetable peeler and shave little chocolate curls over the whipped topping. But another variation we like involves fruit. I use banana pudding and, in between the cream cheese layer and pudding layer, I add strawberries cut into bite-sized pieces and banana slices (in which case I guess it should be called Five Layer Dessert). Here is a picture of the layer with the fruit. I didn’t take a picture of the completed dessert because it just would have looked like whipped topping.

Our church has “family camp” on Wednesday nights during the summer with different men in the church or guests speaking on some topic relating to the family, then we have a fellowship afterward, usually with some theme involved. Tonight it is supposed to be “Fruit Filled Desserts.” I don’t make pies very well. They taste ok, but they’re not very “pretty.” So I went with this dessert instead.

You may notice the little bowl above the pan. Well….whenever I make this, I always want some right then. There is always a chance that it might be gone before I get to it at the fellowship, right? And if I take a scoop out of the finished product, it will be really obvious (though I have thought of doing so and leaving a little paper that says “Inspected by #12” in the empty spot. 🙂 ). So today I thought of putting a spoonful of each layer in a different bowl for me to…ah….taste-test. 🙂 😳

Works-For-Me Wednesday: Gleaning ideas for banquet, shower, and party themes

Posted on June 20, 2007 by Barbara Harper

For 14 years I went to a church that had an amazing group of people who coordinated the social functions of the church — banquets, father-son outings, church picnics, etc. At any kind of banquet (they had three annually: a sweetheart banquet in February, later changed into a “Midwinter Banquet” to be more inclusive of everyone in the church rather than just those in relationships; a missions banquet in the fall, and a ladies’ banquet in the spring) they had beautiful and imaginative ways of working a theme out into the decorations and favors. It didn’t occur to me until my last few years there to start a file to record some of these ideas for future use. I made file folders for the different types of banquets and a couple more for baby and wedding showers, then I would include a copy of the program and maybe even a page of notes of some of the details. In the shower files I’d include a particularly cute invitation or ideas about games or centerpieces, etc.

Several years later I found myself the coordinator of the ladies’ group at church, and one of our functions is the annual ladies’ luncheon (used to be mother/daughter banquet, but once again, we wanted to make it more inclusive). I haven’t copied any of the ideas verbatim — in fact, I think I have only used one variation of one of the themes there — but sometimes it is inspirational just to flip through that folder. The memory of seeing a theme creatively worked out through the details of a banquet spurs more creativity in applying the process to different themes.

You could even expand this to include a file for different types of party ideas. We’ve had the generic birthday parties at the putt-putt place and simple ones with just cake and ice cream and presents, but a few times we’ve had themed parties — a train one, a Lego one, an army one, and a detective one — that were a lot of fun. The Family Fun magazine web site has tons of ideas for themed parties. We found a few ideas for the detective party just by searching on the internet, and what we found plus a little thought led to more ideas.

I’m starting a Word document to jot down other theme ideas as they come to mind to possibly be worked out later.

(An updated P.S.: You can also find a wealth of ideas for banquets/luncheons at the Creative Ladies Ministry site, a book called Let’s Plan a Party from Regular Baptist Press, and the Sweet Monday ministry for ladies’ meetings).

For more works-for-me tips, visit Shannon’s place at Rocks In My Dryer.

Book Review: Renovating Becky Miller

Posted on June 19, 2007 by Barbara Harper

Renovating Becky Miller by Sharon Hinck is one of the books on my spring reading challenge (which is rapidly drawing to a close this week!!) I had read Sharon’s first book, The Secret Life of Becky Miller, last year (it was one of the first books I discussed on my blog!) and just loved it — the characters and situations and struggles were very real — so I knew I’d get the sequel as soon as I saw it. I finished it last week, but this is my first chance to sit down and get my thoughts together.

Becky Miller is a young Christian mom, married with three children, heading up the women’s ministry at church. In the first book she struggled to “do big things for God.” Each chapter started with a “daydream” in which Becky somehow saved the day. This book starts each chapter with a spoof of a movie scene (I didn’t realize that at first because I hadn’t seen the first film alluded to. 🙂 I thought it was a spy scenario like the first book might have had. After a while I began to realize those scenarios were strangely familiar — then I “got it.”) It was fun figuring out what movie the scenes were from. I got most of them even though I hadn’t seen all the films. If I had just read the back cover of the book more thoroughly, it would have given me a tip-off.

Becky faces a number of pressures — her new job at a new church is taking a lot more time than she thought it would; the people there feel that increasing and expanding their programs will reach more people for Christ, so there are constantly new projects and more work added on; her husband’s mother is having physical problems and comes to live with them; something’s bothering her husband, but she can’t get him to open up; something is wrong with one of her closest friends, but she can’t get anyone to tell her what the problem is; her husband think they need to find a new home, and the ideal one in their price range that just needs “some fixing up” is an old farmhouse. Becky think the bigger house in the country will mean a slower, simpler lifestyle, and the “fixing up” will be a good project to draw the family closer. If you’ve ever had a house that needed work, you’re probably smiling and shaking your head right now. 🙂 On top of all of that, the leg that has been having problems since the accident she had in the first book is getting worse because she is so busy with everything else she hasn’t had time to do her physical therapy.

In other words — she is under a lot of pressure.

I could relate to thing on so many levels. The first home we purcahsed was a “fixer-upper” and we didn’t realize how much money, time, and energy it was going to take. I head up the ladies’ ministry at church, and though we haven’t had any church growth pushes, there is always the pressure to do more. We have had parents in just for a short time but have had discussions about what we might need to do in the near future, as many in the “sandwich generation” have. I’ve had physical problems that I wished the Lord would just go ahead and heal so I could get on with my life and minister for Him more effectively. Just keeping in touch with your family (even living under the same roof it is all too easy to just pass by while getting other things done) and trying to be a good mother to your children can be enormous pressure, not to mention these other things.

At one point, Becky asks, “Lord, is serving You supposed to feel like this?”

I think many of us have asked or have felt like asking that question.

I’ll leave you to find the answers Becky found in the book.

Because I have four bookcases filled to overflowing already, usually after I read a book, if I really don’t think I will ever reread it, I pass it on to my mother-in-law or someone else. But I am keeping the Becky Miller books. I want to revisit them again some day. Once again the characters and the struggles were very real (even though my kids are older than Becky’s, I could remember a lot of the “young mom” struggles, and some of them still apply though in slightly different forms) and the answers Becky found, though not new to me, were wonderful reminders.

If I had a rating system, this book would get the highest rating, plus a couple of plus signs. 🙂 It’s everything that good Christian fiction should be. It will have you smiling in some parts and pondering its truths in others.

By the way, Sharon Hinck has a website and a blog and a “Book Buddies” newsletter you can sign up for. She has another book out already, The Restorer, that is on my to be read list. It is a fantasy, and I have no doubt she can handle it well, from the fantasy preludes in her chapters of the Becky Miller books!

Time Travel Tuesday: Cooking Experiences

Posted on June 19, 2007 by Barbara Harper

My Life as Annie hosts Time Travel Tuesday in which we look back at some time in our lives in relation to the topic of the week. Last week I suggested our first cooking experiences might be a fun topic, and Annie graciously decided to use that idea for this week’s theme. Thanks, Annie!

I don’t remember exactly what my first cooking experiences were — I think I received a Girl Scouts cooking badge. But the first thing I remember cooking was fried chicken when I was maybe 11 or 12 or so. I must have had some experience with it before this — I can’t imagine starting out with this on my own! But for some reason I was cooking fried chicken with a friend — and we were so afraid of the hot oil that we’d drop the chicken in and then run to the back door. That sounds like a disaster in the making, doesn’t it? But somehow we avoided setting the house on fire or burning ourselves. I also remember making oatmeal cookies with a friend — it called for brown sugar and we didn’t have any, so we just used regular white sugar (I didn’t know then about the emergency substitution section in most cookbooks). The cookies all ran together — it looked something like those pizza-pan sized cookies you can get at the Chocolate Chip Cookie Factory, only they didn’t have those then, so we couldn’t claim we were imitating them. 🙂 They tasted good — they just didn’t hold a cookie shape.

I also remember now being younger than this and roasting a hot dog over the flame of a gas stove with a fork.

By the time I got married, I had been cooking for my family of 8 for a while — I would usually at least get dinner started before my mom came home from work — so having to take on meal preparation wasn’t that big a leap for me. I do remember when we were dating and both in the dorms, we didn’t have access to ovens, so a popular thing to make for one’s boyfriend was one of those boxed cheesecake mixes. Often at dinnertime you’d see a girl going to meet her guy with a cheesecake she’d made, and I do remember making those for Jim on occasion. I don’t remember what the first meal was that I cooked for Jim, but I remember a couple of early cooking disasters. Gravy was something that took me years to learn. I do fine with it now — though we pretty much only have home-made gravy when we have turkey. But my first attempts were awful. I remember one time getting my electric hand-held mixer out and “beating” the gravy right in the pan to try to smooth it out. Another time, the texture was ok, but it was really, really light. I thought I had read somewhere that red plus green made brown, so I put a few drops of red and green food coloring in. It turned very green, and nothing I tried made it look a normal color. For some reason, instead of dissolving in tears I started laughing hysterically, then Jim came in to see what was going on. I couldn’t make myself eat it — the color was just too awful. But we joked about green gravy for years, and for years I also kept a jar of ready-made gravy in the cabinet “just in case” mine didn’t turn out.

Another time I was making popcorn the old fashioned way in a saucepan with some oil in it (this was before the days of microwave popcorn. They had then these big popcorn poppers usually with a yellow plastic domed lid — but we didn’t have one). I had a little can of popcorn that I thought was enough for one batch. I was talking with Jim while I made it, and he saw me dump the whole little can in and knew it was too much, but just sat back to watch what happened. Blissfully unaware, I kept talking and shaking the pan back and forth — when suddenly popcorn erupted over the sides of the pan and spilled everywhere. I don’t remember exactly how I reacted — I’ll have to ask him — I think I just said “Oh! Oh!” He did help me clean it up, after he stopped laughing at me. 😀

Updated: I am adding this in after my initial post because I just remembered it. 🙂 Once in our early married years, when I was trying to be the frugal Mrs. Housewife, I discovered rutabaga was only 19 cents a pound. I had never made or even seen it before. But I got some and came home and looked in my cookbooks to see how to make it. There was a recipe to include it in mashed potatoes and another recipe with apples. So I made the mashed potatoes — and the rutabagas turned them kind of an orange color, but they tasted ok. The apple dish was “ok” but not spectacular. When my husband came home, he noticed the mashed potatoes were off-color, but he was trying to be polite and not say anything, while I was anxiously awaiting his comments. Finally I asked him how he liked the potatoes. He cautiously said, “What’s different about them?” I told him about the rutabagas — and he was thoroughly grossed out. That’s one of the few things that he just thoroughly cannot stand. When I mentioned that the apple dish I had made for dessert had rutabagas, too, he said, “Oh, no, not the apples, too!” So — no more rutabagas for this household, no matter how cheap they are. 🙂

You can read more “time travels” back to early cooking experiences at Annie’s today. Feel free to share yours, too, and add the link in there!

Ladies Luncheon

Posted on June 18, 2007 by Barbara Harper

The ladies’ luncheon went well. We had a lot less people than usual due to so many people being out of town or having family obligations. Even as busy as the May schedule is around church and school, it seems to be a better time for this, so I am going to go to the church office this week to try to secure a date.

I think I mentioned before that the theme was “The Heart of the Matter” taken from I Peter 3:3-4, “Whose adorning…let it be the hidden man of the heart.” Our colors were pink and chocolate brown. I have a tendency to go kind of Victorian with decorations for things like this, so I was trying to make it look more contemporary. Several ladies spent a couple of evenings “adorning” hearts with scrapbooking paper (what’s funny is that I didn’t even make the connection with adorning until Saturday) and putting them on wire stems for use in the centerpieces. I posted pictures of some of them here, but here is one shot of them.

Then I mentioned earlier that my original idea for centerpieces wasn’t going to work because it was too tall — and I didn’t realize this until the Thursday before we were to decorate on Friday evening! So part of Thursday was spent scrambling around trying to find an alternate solution. I did find some smaller vases at Wal-Mart for 97 cents and some smaller sprigs of greenery at Michael’s for 99 cents. I really think the bigger centerpiece looked better and I liked it better and it could incorporate more of the hearts — but the little ones “fit” better on the tables.

I forgot to bring my camera when we decorated Friday night, so I just took a couple of hurried pictures Saturday. I wish I had taken the time to get better shots, but here is one of the tables.

I found those pink and brown napkins at Hobby Lobby — thought the brown ones looked delicious, just like chocolate. 🙂 We scattered around some of the heart cut-outs from some of the different sized craft punch things I had around the center of the tables (we had also used some in decorating the individual hearts). Above each place setting we set the favors, little heart-shaped tins from a company called beau coup (they have scads of heart-shaped items!) I special ordered M&Ms in brown and pink and had the pink ones printed with different kinds of hearts found in Scripture (a merry heart, a pure heart, etc.). The picture I took at the time didn’t show the words on the M&Ms — they were turned over. 🙄 So here is a shot taken of one at home:

By the way, this is what a 5 lb. bag on M&Ms looks like:

I didn’t think it looked like much — but it goes pretty far. We still have some left over.

I had washed out all the little favors beforehand and set them out to air dry so there wouldn’t be any moisture left to cause the candy coating from the M&Ms to melt.

I don’t know if the tins were meant to be ready-to-load — they probably were — but I couldn’t help thinking of all the hands that would have handled them from the manufacturing through the sending processes, and it just made me feel better to know they were all clean (have I mentioned being germophobic?) Then — I had let them sit out overnight Thursday to thoroughly dry. The next morning, Jesse thought he heard something n the enclosed fireplace. Jim looked, but didn’t see anything. When he moved the fireplace insert out a little, a bird that had been trapped behind it flew out — and flew upstairs into the kitchen where these were on the table! And the dog, who was still inside (we bring her in at night) followed the bird up there! My husband assured me the bird flew around the outside of the room and not across the table, and the dog was too interested in the bird to pay attention to the table. Honestly, if there had been time, I probably would have washed the tins out again just to be safe (I am that fanatical about cleanliness in relation to food — sadly not about cleanliness in general, as my floors and desk can attest), but there just wasn’t. I didn’t see any feathers or dust or debris or anything on them, so I carried on as planned.

But to get back to the luncheon…

Our speaker was Beneth Peters Jones, for those of you who know her. She is always a wonderful speaker, very down to earth and funny, yet always drawing the focus back to God and the grace He gives to fulfill what He requires. One of the most gracious people God created. We had tried to schedule her for a couple of years, and she was very willing and interested, but she was always out of the country when we had asked before. So that was one plus to having the luncheon outside of our normal time frame. Some of the ladies there said they had never heard her, so I was glad they were able to.

Overall everything went very well. We always have this catered, and the food was great. I am so thankful for ladies who helped set up and clean up. To those of you who prayed for calmness of heart, mind, spirit, and body for me as I had asked earlier — thank you. The Lord abundantly answered!

And though I enjoy doing this — it is nice to have it over. 🙂 My mind is till buzzing, though, and I jotted down a couple of different theme ideas to consider for next year along with a few ways to implement them.

I want to come back later today to talk about a book I finished last week, and I have a couple of other posts simmering on the back burner. I need to catch up on housework today and sort out the receipts to turn in to the church office and other assorted tasks. And I need to figure out what to do about those curtains in my family room! I received the fabric I ordered a while back but haven’t even opened the box. I hadn’t thought about lining them when I ordered the other fabric, so I need to decide about that before I can get started, plus look at trim to match the fabric. So my next project is all lined up and waiting…

Honoring the Fathers in my life

Posted on June 17, 2007 by Barbara Harper

Exodus 20:12: Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

Leviticus 19:32: Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of the old man, and fear thy God: I am the LORD.

My father passed away several years ago, but I want to honor his memory. He did not come to know the Lord until 6 years before he died, and though he had a lot of problems, I honor the position the Lord gave him as my father. He did love me in his own way and tried to do right as he knew it. One of the major things he taught me was to have respect for those in authority.

I want to honor my step-father. I honestly had problems with the idea of a step-father having any say in my activities when I was 15. 🙂 I have written here and there before that after I became a Christian, God had to teach me that honoring and obeying my parents was a matter of obedience to Him regardless of whether they were Christians or were doing the right thing. After that I wondered how a step-father fit into the picture. Then one day I realized that Jesus had a step-father — Joseph. The Bible says Jesus was subject to both Mary and Joseph, even when they didn’t understand him (Luke 2:50-51). Over the years I have come to greatly respect my step-father as a steady, dependable man who cares for his family, is an extremely hard worker, and would do anything in the world to help those he cares about.

I wrote earlier about my “spiritual mom,” Mrs. C, and the godly influence she was in my life. Mr. C was a shining example of a Christian father to me, and I am so glad the Lord brought them into my life.

I honor my husband as a caring, thoughtful, sweet, fun, loving companion and father to our boys.

And I honor my heavenly Father who gave me life, loves me dearly, brought me to a saving belief in Christ, speaks to me through His Word, shows me His love and care in a hundreds of ways every day.