The Week In Words

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Welcome to The Week In Words, where we share quotes from the last week’s reading. If something you read this past week  inspired you, caused you to laugh, cry, think, dream, or just resonated with you in some way, please share it with us, attributing it to its source, which can be a book, newspaper, blog, Facebook — anything that you read. More information is here.

Here are a few that caught my eye:

I saw this at Bobbi‘s in a longer fictitious poem about what Joseph’s (Mary’s husband) point of view might have been at one point in his life. From what I could tell it is by John Piper from the Desiring God site.

There’s something worse than death,
And loss of faith, not loss of breath,
Is what he fights.

Seen at Challies:

I have taken my good deeds and bad deeds and thrown them together in a heap, and fled from them both to Christ, and in him I have peace. —David Dickson

I have trouble with the right perspective of both, and I am glad that my peace is in Christ and not my deeds.

This is the time of year when people make goals or resolutions. The following two might help with that. The first I saw at Simple Mom from a link at A Holy Experience:

“A goal without a plan is just a dream.” ~ Dave Ramsey

And I saw this at Semicolon’s from (From Donna at Quiet Life — I don’t know whether Donna is the one who originally said it or of she quoted someone else.

“A discipline won’t bring you closer to God. Only God can bring you closer to Himself. What the discipline is meant to do is to help you get yourself, your ego, out of the way so you are open to His grace.”

So true. Sometimes we can get so caught up in setting up our disciplines as if so doing will make us right with God, when the disciple is a tool, not an end in itself.

I saw this at nikkipolani’s Friday’s Fave Five:

The bend in the road is not the end of the road unless you fail to make the turn.”

That just really resonated with me with all the changes we’ve faced this year.

Lisa Notes recently shared a link to “Amazing Blogging Lessons From Albert Einstein.” This jumped out at me — Einstein’s words in quotes, the writer’s words following:

“Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.” Don’t waste your time trying to create a successful blog, dedicate your time creating a valuable blog. If your blog is valuable to others, it will succeed.

And finally, a good hope for the new year, from a friend’s Facebook:

“What heavens are laid up in Jesus! What rivers of infinite bliss have their source, ay, and every drop of their fullness in Him! Since, O sweet Lord Jesus, Thou art the present portion of Thy people, favor us this year with such a sense of Thy preciousness, that from its first to its last day we may be glad and rejoice in Thee.” -Spurgeon (Morning and Evening)

If you’ve read anything that particularly spoke to you that you’d like to share, please either list it in the comments below or write a post on your blog and then put the link to that post (not your general blog link) in Mr. Linky below. I do ask that only family-friendly quotes be included. I hope you’ll visit some of the other participants as well and glean some great thoughts to ponder.

And please — feel free to comment even if you don’t have quotes to share!

Lucy Maud Montgomery Reading Challenge

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L. M. Montgomery Reading Challenge Carrie at Reading to Know is sponsoring a third annual Lucy Maud Montgomery Reading Challenge. The idea is to read anything of Montgomery’s and/or watch any program based on one of her works sometime between now and when the challenge ends Jan. 28. Carrie has a post up today where we can log our intentions and will have a post up Jan. 28 to wrap it up, and of course we can share on our own blogs our thoughts about our reading and watching along the way. And she’s also sprinkling a few prizes throughout the month!

I read through all six Anne books as well as Rainbow Valley and Rilla of Ingleside and a couple of collections of her short stories just after the Anne of Green Gables movie first came out. I had never heard of Anne or LMM before and was enthralled! I think I have reread them at least once since then and wanted to revisit them again, and doing so with other people increases the enjoyment. Last year I reread Anne of Green Gables for this challenge, and this year I am going to be very open-ended and just plan to read the next ones in the series until the month is over. I’d like to at least read Anne of Avonlea and Anne of the Island, but I don’t want to plan much beyond that in case I decide I want to read something else this month as well. Eventually, some year, after I work through these first eight books again I want to go on and explore some of LMM’s other books. I also rediscovered on my shelf Looking for Anne of Green Gables: The Story of L. M. Montgomery and Her Literary Classic, a biography of LMM. I haven’t read it yet and can’t deicde whether to try to this month or wait til I’ve read all six Anne books.

So, those are my plans. I look forward to a cozy visit with these old friends, perfect for cold winter days.

So High the Price

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One of my Christmas gifts that I’ve been nearly wearing out already is a CD by the Steve Pettit Evangelistic Team titled So High the Price. I know some of you aren’t familiar with the Pettits, but some of you are. They find songs that have such depth in the words paired with wonderful melodies that bring out the message of the song, and the singing and orchestration just all meld together into music that almost always touches my heart and draws me into worship of God. The title song was new to me but the words engaged me on the first hearing. I was all prepared to tell you that since it is fairly new, there wasn’t a full version of the song online, just a snippet, but I was delighted to find the a video of the Pettit Team singing this song on YouTube. May you be blessed by it as much as I was and continue to be.

So High the Price

Lord of Glory, reigning in His Majesty,
Ruling long before the worlds formed.
Yet when darkness claimed His own,
He stepped from Heaven’s throne
To bear a cross, and wear a crown of thorns.

So high the price He paid, the nails the cross, the grave.
Such pardon He bestowed, such grace He showed.
No greater sacrifice, He gave His very life.
So deep His love, so high the Price.

Son of God so willingly He took our place,
Clothed in robes of frail humanity.
Fragile flesh and blood, priceless crimson blood
Offered up for sin at Calvary.

Buried, like a beggar in a borrowed tomb,
Everything for nothing, so it seemed.
But death could never stand
Against the nail-scarred hands,
And power of Heaven’s resurrected King!

So high the price He paid, the nails, the cross, the grave,
Such pardon He bestowed, such grace He showed.
No greater sacrifice, He gave His very life.
So deep the love, so high the price.
So deep the love, so high the price.

Words and music by Deborah Cruise Bailey and Marty Funderburk

Happy New Year!

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(Graphic courtesy of the Graphics Fairy)

I launch my bark on the unknown waters of this year,
with Thee, O Father as my harbour,
Thee, O Son, at my helm,
Thee O Holy Spirit, filling my sails.

From The Valley of Vision

Hoping for you all a wonderful 2011 with a knowledge of God’s love for you and a resting on Him for whatever He has in store.

★˛˚˛*˛°.˛*.˛°˛.*★* .
˛°_██_*.。*./ ♥ \ .˛* .˛。.˛.*HAPPY NEW YEAR 2011*
˛. (´• ̮•)*.。*/♫.♫\*˛.* ˛_Π_____.♥Everyone♥ ˛* ˛*
.°( . • . ) ˛°./• ‘♫ ‘ •\.˛*./______/~＼*. ˛*.。˛* ˛. *。
*(…’•’.. ) *˛╬╬╬╬╬˛°.｜田田 ｜門｜╬╬╬╬╬*˚ God bless

Friday’s Fave Five

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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.

This is a hard week to narrow the favorites down to just five! But I’ll try.

1. Christmas. Everything about it — the food, the family time, the right blend of…everything. I could make a “Fave Five” just from Christmas! It was a wonderful day — our first white Christmas with a bit of snow. Being able to have all the family together was the best part. And getting to have Jeremy home for an extra couple of days due to problems with his flight was a special bonus.

I mentioned this briefly in my Christmas post, but Jim had received a certificate for Heavenly Ham for something he did at work three years ago — only them we didn’t have one of their stores where we lived. That’s one of the hazards of working at a place where you don’t live, I guess. I suppose we could have gotten one near his job and kept it in a cooler to bring home — but we just never did. But now we live in a city where there is a Heavenly Ham store, and the certificate didn’t have an expiration date and wasn’t confined to one location, so we were able to use it. I hadn’t realized how expensive those things were — we still did have to pay some, but it was delicious.

2. Games. I mentioned earlier a couple of rousing games of Apples to Apples. Another friend told me they found that game boring. It’s always a riot with us. We always read all the descriptions on the cards (though you have to watch out for a very few of them that are inappropriate), and the voices and inflections everyone uses are so funny, and the way we each defend or try to discredit the cards everyone else plays. Then at the end we each read the cards we won as if they described us. In one game I got “Woebegone” and “Friendly” and remarked that that was an odd combination, then Jeremy said, “You are the Eeyore.” Maybe it was one of those “You had to be there” moments, but that was a time I most wish I could have recorded all the funny things people said. Then Jesse got a Kinect as his “big” present and it’s been fun as a family to play games on it.

3. Found money. This was actually before Christmas. Earlier in the year Jesse had accumulated some money from allowances and gifts, and I told him he shouldn’t carry it back and forth to school but should take it out of his wallet and stash it somewhere. So he did — and forgot about it. Even through our move it remained hidden until he discovered it in December. He was thrilled to have a little more money to use for Christmas — he said he always felt bad always having to get the cheapest things on everyone’s lists, like socks, though I assured him that was always fine.

4. Fondu. Mittu got a fondu set for Christmas and she and Jason made a meal for us with it Sunday night. It was only the second time in my life I had ever had fondu. It was good and enjoyable.

5. Mulled cider. Jim got a mulled cider mix on a recent trip and I made it one night this week. I hadn’t had it in a long time and it was so good.

I keep thinking of several “bonus” faves I could mention, but I’ll be a good girl and obey the rules this time. 🙂

Happy New Year to you all!

Flashback Friday: New Year’s

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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.

How did your family celebrate New Year’s when you were growing up? Was staying up on New Year’s Eve a big deal? Was it a date night for your parents or was it a family occasion? Did your family have any particular traditions for New Year’s? Were resolutions emphasized? Did you do fireworks? Watch parades or bowl games? Were there church activities you attended? Did Christmas activities extend into the new year? Was the Epiphany a focus?

We never had a set tradition or routine for New Year’s Eve. Sometimes my parents went out, I think sometimes we got together with other people, most times we stayed home. We did get to stay up late, and I think we watched the ball drop in Times Square on TV. We did fireworks sometimes.

My dad probably watched football on most New Year’s Days, and I think maybe the kids watched parts of the parades in the morning. We did have black-eyes peas for dinner, supposedly for luck, though I don’t know what they were supposed to have to do with luck. 🙂 Resolutions were not a big deal, though I tried to make some for several years — it was more just a day to relax before school and work started back up.

When I started going to church as a teen-ager, my church often showed a film on New Year’s Eve and I think had some kind of refreshments afterward. I liked that then, but when another church did that when I was older, a middle-aged mom, I dozed through most of the film and was very cranky afterward. 😳 In subsequent years they played group games, and that made it much easier to stay awake and alert.

The church we attended for the last twelve years had a New Year’s Eve service, but not all the way until midnight: our pastor wanted us to be able to be home before the roads got unsafe with drink-impaired drivers. We usually lived in an area that did not allow fireworks, but last year Jason and Mittu lived outside the city limits, so we took a bunch of fireworks out there and made munchies and had a nice time. We haven’t talked about any plans this year yet. If we’re home we do usually watch the ball drop in Times Square on TV — there is just something about that moment that’s really neat. I remember the year of Y2K as they showed New Year’s celebrations in different countries, being relieved that so far none of the other countries had any problems as the clock turned to 12:00 a.m. and hoped that bode well for us, too.

We do usually take down the Christmas decorations around that time. Sometimes we shop. We don’t watch football and we don’t have black-eyed peas (I like them but my family doesn’t). 🙂 We have never attended a church that celebrated Epiphany, though some pastors mentioned it and they did note that the wise men came some time after Jesus was born (maybe as much as two years) and not while they family was still in the stable in Bethlehem.

So, though New Year’s Eve and Day are probably some of our most nontraditional holidays, I enjoy them as a last bit of vacation before the routine starts back up again.

Retrospective Stray Thoughts

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At the end of December the first couple of years I blogged, I did a look back at the first post from each month. In the course of looking through old posts, I found several favorites that I wanted to note as well, so I began making a list of first posts of the month plus favorites. I think this year I’ll just list a couple or three favorites rather than the first post of each month. I don’t know if anyone gets anything out of this except me, but I enjoy it. 🙂

I hope you’ll forgive two retrospective posts in one day, with this and the look back at the top 10 books of 2010, but I wanted to get them both posted before the end of the year — which is tomorrow — and I already have the Friday’s Fave Five scheduled for tomorrow.

January:

Thankful in everything.

Finding God’s Will For Your Life.

February:

Spontaneity vs. scheduling.

Light Thoughts For a Dreary Day.

March:

God’s Help For God’s Assignment.

The Face of Jesus.

April:

Am I the only one who…?

May:

Wanting things to be “perfect.”

The blessing of hymns.

An original poem...

June:

Findings.

Big changes coming…

“Fret not thyself because of evildoers.”

July:

Spirit-lifters.

“What Keeps Us From Real Rest?”

A fond farewell from the ladies’ group.

August:

Do You Have the Son?

“David encouraged himself in the LORD his God”

September:

Exposing kids to evil.

In case he needs my prayers…

October:

Colorlessness.

Inner peace. (Not what you might think from the title. 🙂 )

98 books and book series that have enriched my life.

The Gospel and Christian Fiction.

November:

I guess it is time…

The ministry of showers.

December:

Christmas grief.

A Perfect Christmas.

“That’s just the way I am.“

I see I am woefully inconsistent in my capitalization…

I didn’t delve into Friday’s Fave Five posts — that has become kind of my round-up of what’s happened over the last week — or any other meme. I am sure I might have pulled a few favorites from there.

Sometimes it helps to go back and remind myself of things the Lord has taught me, and this look back through posts has been an exercise in that respect.

Top 10 Books of 2010

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This week I finished compiled the books I read in 2010 — 55 this year, with a handful of others partially read. It’s been fun to look back over and remember them. It was a struggle to come up with a top 10, but here’s what I finally chose, not in any particular order. The first five are non-fiction, the rest fiction.

1. Hoping for Something Better: Refusing to Settle for Life as Usual, a Bible study through the book of Hebrews by Nancy Guthrie, reviewed here.

2. Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross: Experiencing the Passion and Power of Easter, essays on various aspects of the death and resurrection of Christ from people such as Charles H. Spurgeon and Martin Luther to John MacArthur and Joni Eareckson Tada, compiled by Nancy Guthrie, reviewed here.

3. Parting the Waters:Finding Beauty in Brokenness by Jeanne Damoff, reviewed here, about the near-drowning of her teen-age son and the struggles, growth, and lessons of faith and beauty resulting from it.

4. Same Kind of Different as Me by Ron Hall, Denver Moore, and Lynn Vincent, reviewed here. The cover says it is about “A modern-day slave, an international art dealer, and the unlikely woman who bound them together.” But it is about so much more — poverty, prejudice, the true nature of benevolence and grace, and the great things two men on opposite ends of the economic spectrum learned from each other.

5. Our Daily Walk devotional by F. B. Meyer.

6. A Distant Melody by Sarah Sundin was reviewed here. A WWII story about two ordinary, flawed human beings who found each other despite a number of obstacles.

7. Christmas at Harrington’s by Melody Carlson. Sometimes second chances don’t come easily, but they do come.

8. This Fine Life by Eva Marie Everson, reviewed here. A privileged small-town girl falls in love with a man with a shady past, and their developing relationship, even after the wedding provides lessons in forgiveness, perseverance, and friendship.

9. Words Unspoken by Elizabeth Musser,  reviewed here. A young girl witnesses her mother’s death in a car accident, blames herself, and even a year afterward ha panic attacks when she tries to drive. An elderly man who helps young people learn to drive takes her on as one of his last students, and they impact one another’s lives.This was particularly well written in that strands of different people’s lives who at first don’t seem related are woven together beautifully.

10. Where My Heart Belongs by Tracie Peterson, reviewed here. A prodigal daughter story, but with unexpected layers.

btt button I am linking this to Booking Through Thursday which asks us which books we read in 2010 are the best, worst, and favorite. Those are the best, I would have trouble narrowing it down to one favorite, and I’ll leave the worst. I mentioned in individual reviews over the year a couple that I did not like for various reasons, but I don’t want to be any more negative than that.

I’ll also be linking either this or the whole list of books read (or both) to Semicolon. She hosts a weekly review of books on Saturdays, a great place to see reviews of books you’re thinking about reading or to compare notes with someone who has read the same books as you. This particular Saturday, January first, she has reserved for book lists: “a list of your favorite books read in 2010, a list of all the books you read in 2010, a list of the books you plan to read in 2011, or any other end of the year or beginning of the year list of books.”

 

A lovely Christmas

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I was thinking over the last few days that I should be keeping a notepad nearby to keep track of so many things I loved about this year. Alas, I didn’t heed my own advice, so some things may have been forgotten already. But here are a few:

Jeremy came home Wed. night!

It was such fun getting packages in the mail. Most were from online ordering, but we received a few surprises — including a duplication, or actually, a triplication — which will result in a blog giveaway one day next week. 🙂

It snowed Christmas morning! Not a whole lot, but enough to give us our first white Christmas ever (at least at our own home. We may have had snow one Christmas when we were in Idaho to visit my husband’s folks.)

So much about Christmas day itself — bringing Grandma over, our usual Christmas morning breakfast of cinnamon rolls, sausage rolls and cinnamon sliced apples, Jim reading the Christmas story, gifts given and received in love, a scrumptious lunch — Heavenly Ham (almost free with a gift card Jim had received three years earlier when we lived in a town without that particular ham store) — (and someone to share lunch duties with — Mittu made several dishes), naps, leftovers, a couple of rousing game of Apples to Apples, trying out Jesse’s new Kinect, more snow but not enough to cancel church Sunday, watching a couple of videos together.

Jim reading Christmas story from Matthew

Grandma checking out a gift basket from Jason and Mittu

Silly hats…

Jeremy was supposed to fly back to RI Monday night, but his area was experiencing a blizzard with 10-12 inches of snow. He could make the first leg of his flight but we weren’t sure about the second. We didn’t want him to get stranded at an airport in between here and there. But the flights were all scheduled on time, so we dropped him off at the airport — and he called a while later. His plane was delayed, then it was discovered it had a flat tire, and by the time they got that all fixed there was no way he could have made his second flight. All Tuesday’s flights were booked up by other travelers who had been stranded due to weather, so the earliest flight out was Wednesday morning. I’m so glad he got to stay for a while longer, and that he wasn’t stuck in an airport for a long time.

This was from our first good-bye Monday night:

I didn’t take any of our second good-bye in the wee hours this morning — I stayed in my pjs and didn’t go with them this time. 🙂 It was lovely to have him home for that extra time.

There is a bit more to our Christmas week, but I’ll save it for the Friday’s Fave Five post. All in all it has been a great week.

 

Christmas Reads

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I mentioned earlier that it has only been in the last few years that I’ve tried to read books having to do with Christmas during December. I don’t know why it never occurred to me before! Maybe I just thought December was too busy. But I’ve used some of the devotional ones in place of my regular devotional plan, and I usually have a novel in progress all the time anyway. So I thought I’d sum up my Christmas reading in one post.

Devotional or Non-fiction:

Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus: Experiencing the Peace and Promise of Christmas, several essays on various aspects of Christmas from an assortment of preachers and writers from years ago as well as from current time: Martin Luther, Spurgeon, Martin Lloyd-Jones, John Piper, and others, compiled by Nancy Guthrie. This isn’t strictly a devotional book, but that’s how I used it this year and last. This is an excellent resource. I don’t know if I’ll use it every year, but I can imagine using it again and again.

Let Every Heart Prepare Him Room: Daily Family Devotions for Advent by Nancy Guthrie. This is designed for family devotions and is written on a level that children can understand, but it works fine for personal devotions as well. They’re fairly short but they do give food for thought for the day. And I like that it covers 31 days rather than ending at Christmas like so many other Christmas devotionals do.

25 Ways, 26 Days to Make This Your Best Christmas Ever by Ace Collins. I am a little more than half-way through this one. This one wasn’t grabbing me as much as the others were — maybe because I was already going through another couple of non-fiction or devotional Christmas books. The author discusses some of the different aspects and traditions of the season, the history of some of them, their symbolism, and ways to make them more meaningful. The histories are especially interesting, but I wish he had documented more of his explanations of origins. And though I appreciated his justification of some of these traditions for Christians, I felt as though he were saying “You should do this” rather than “It’s okay to do this.” Traditions that enhance the meaning or celebration of Christmas are wonderful, but every now and then they can feel burdensome, and I know many who want to pare down what they do at Christmas in order to keep their focus from becoming fragmented. Nevertheless, this is a great resource, especially if, as a Christian, one is concerned about the “pagan” practices surrounding early Christmas and winter celebrations.

The Greatest Christmas Ever: A Treasury of Inspirational Ideas & Insights for an Unforgettable Christmas. This is a compilation of quotes, poems, recipes, and tips. I have a slight objection to the title — Christmas shouldn’t be a competition. But otherwise it was an okay book.

Fiction:

Finding Christmas: Stories of Startling Joy and Perfect Peace by James Calvin Schaap. This is a collection of short stories. I think I won it during a blog contest last year, received it during December, but wanted to wait to read it til this year. The title describes it well — the main character in each story has some kind of moment — of understanding, clarity, connection. I enjoyed it.

Treasure of Christmas, a collection of three stories by Melody Carlson. Melody is, I think, the queen of Christmas Christian fiction. The three stories or novellas are: The Christmas Bus, in which a bed and breakfast owner, upon learning that none of her adult children will be home for Christmas, decides to keep her establishment open during the holidays. A strange, abrasive old woman and a young expectant couple in a hippie bus are among her visitors, and she begins to wonder if she made a mistake. The Gift of Christmas Present, in which a young woman learns after her mother’s death that she was adopted. She discovers and visits her birth grandmother and is mistaken for an applicant for hired help, which she decides to go along with. As she learns more of her family, the less sure she is of them, and the harder it is to “come clean” and tell the truth. A startling, disturbing revelation shakes her to her core. I was a bit concerned about the third, Angels In the Snow, because people can get kind of weird about angels. But this did end up in the right direction. An artist has recently lost her husband and son and goes to a friend’s cabin to heal and to see if she can unblock her artistic creativity again. A mysterious pair of footprints and an unexpected visitor impact her progress.

I find a lots of Christmas stories, especially made for TV movies, to be very sappy and sentimentalized. Melody’s stories are anything but. Her characters wrestle with real, serious issues and pain, and the endings are good but not saccharine. I enjoyed this quite a lot.

Christmas at Harrington‘s is another by Melody Carlson, and I won this one from Mocha With Linda‘s Booked for the Holidays giveaway (thanks Linda!). I loved this book — and those of you who read my book reviews know I don’t say that about every book I read. Lena Markham has just been released from prison, having served time for a crime she did not commit. She just wants to start over in a new place, so her parole officer sets her up in a new town. When a secondhand red coat inspires a department store owner to hire her as Mrs. Santa, Lena discovers she really enjoys the job. But the past is hard to keep hidden, and hers will threaten her job as well as her new beginning. This was poignant to me because a blog friend’s husband was released from prison this year as well, and I saw some of his struggles echoed in Lena’s. Some people judge her and make it even harder for her to catch a decent break, but others go the extra mile to help and support her.

I was surprised to get a decent amount of reading done during this busy month, but those little snatches of reading here and there do add up, and reading both fiction and non-fiction in Christmas themes enhanced my enjoyment of the season. A couple of others caught my eye that I am saving for next Christmas. Perhaps you’ll be inspired to try some of these next year as well — or even in the next few days if you’re wanting to prolong the “Christmas spirit.”