It’s settled. My next vacation is going to be in Rome. I will stay in the Villa Eden and it will be 1954. So, time travel will be involved as well.
And I shall need full use of Anita’s kelly-green dress and the yellow polka-dotted dress with the orange bolero.
The dashing man: Now I shall see you again?
The American girl: I don’t know. You see I’m rather afraid of you.
The dashing man: Afraid? Of me?
The American girl: Well not because of your reputation. You see, I’ve discovered you have an exciting mind, something that handsome men rarely have. And the uh – combination – might be too much for some one as responsive as I am.
Think he fell for that? You betcha!
Netflix Instant Queue is just such a wondrous thing.
All the flowering trees and shrubs are running about 4-6 weeks early this year. Including my Golden Rain-tree just outside the kitchen window. Joy-maker.
Deuteronomy 32.1-3 NLT
“Listen, O heavens, and I will speak!
Hear, O earth, the words that I say!
Let my teaching fall on you like rain;
let my speech settle like dew.
Let my words fall like rain on tender grass,
like gentle showers on young plants.
I will proclaim the name of the Lord;
how glorious is our God!”
Joel 2.21-24 The Message
Fear not, Earth! Be glad and celebrate!
God has done great things.
Fear not, wild animals!
The fields and meadows are greening up.
The trees are bearing fruit again:
a bumper crop of fig trees and vines!
Children of Zion, celebrate!
Be glad in your God.
He’s giving you a teacher
to train you how to live right—
Teaching, like rain out of heaven, showers of words
to refresh and nourish your soul, just as he used to do.
And plenty of food for your body—silos full of grain,
Our family-all-time favorite worship leader (the leader on our first ever Hosanna’s! Integrity cassette worship tape: He is Exalted), has a video blog!!!
Kent Henry: Great voice. Spirit-led. Full of wisdom and grace. Passing it all on to the next generations. He played at Heaven Fest 2009 and it was awesome!
AND, on this one, he is teaching from my favorite book of the Bble: Ephesians!
“The times of refreshing come from His presence because of the power of redemption…(references the song “The God of the Redeemed”from Brian and Jenn Johnson at Jesus Culture).
“Don’t let the devil ever stop you because you’ve fallen in sin…keep using your gift. This is a secret I learned years ago, this is from the heart of God to yours. The devil will try to condemn you and confound you to the place: no more prayer, no more playing the guitar, piano, whatever you are doing in your church, teaching, but do not stop. Don’t let him stop what’s going on in you in terms of redemption. Use your giftedness as God is perfecting His holiness on the inside of you.”
Now-what is cool/weird is, perplexingly…I went to bed singing an old hymn from my childhood that I honestly cannot remember singing for the past 30 years. Maybe I have, but it isn’t like a favorite song or anything. It is vcoming together…Today must be for exploring redemption….by the blood of Jesus…
Wayne Jacobsen thinks we have missed the point in our Sunday School story. He suggests that we have called it The Story of the Prodigal Son and maybe missed really seeing what an incredibly loving father, representing the Father, is actually so central.
I won’t retell the story here, but you know it. You know about the son who saw his father as the money-man, Give me what I want so I can do what I want to do, and the older son who saw his father as the task-master, I have to do all the work to earn what I need…
But what did the father really want?
This father wanted an intimate relationship with both of his children. He wanted them to know how deeply they were loved and to experience their love in return. He didn’t want his sons’ obedience, but their hearts. Knowing this would happen only when the son truly understood who his father was, he risked it all by letting the son have what he wanted. Only by coming to the end by himself would the son recognize what had been important to the father all along.
“As a parent of adult children I understand that. There’s nothing I prize more with my children than those moments when we share the honesty and intimacy of friendship. When they know I love them, and they respond the same way to me, there’s nothing better.
“That’s the point of Jesus’ story. The father was not manipulating the son by anything he did. He was only loving the son at the deepest possible level. That love explains why the father let him go in the first place and why he rushed so hard to embrace him. He knew his son’s sins had been punishment enough. He ran because he didn’t want his son to hurt one second longer than was absolutely necessary. His pain had brought him home. Nothing else mattered.
“God feels the same way about you. He’s not interested in your service or sacrifice. He only wants you to know how much you are loved, hoping you will choose to love him in return. Understand that, and everything else in your life will fall into place; miss that, and nothing else will make any difference.” Wayne Jacobsen, He Loves Me, Learning to Live in the Father’s Affection
Later in the chapter the author says that everything in our lives {everything?!?!} hinges on this one simple question:
Do you know how loved you really are?
He loves me, He loves me lots…He love me, He loves me lots…
Me: On a quest to understand the Father’s love, His heart towards even me…made me remember this old song (1981) by Benny Hester, “When God Ran”
And now, my prayer for my own battered-performance-driven heart and for all the people I love and for 40,000 who will come to Heaven Fest 2012 where we are building a platform to communicate the Father heart of God to this generation…
“And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge —that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” EPH 3.17-19 NIV
I used to watch The Porter Wagoner Show when I was a kid and Dolly Parton was naturally, exquisitely beautiful (not the stretched, nipped and tucked angularity of today). Waaaaaaaay back when!
The old shows are popping again on obscure cable stations.
I want to know:
Whatever happened to Cheryl and Teryl, the twin, singing sisters who sang on an episode of Porter’s show after Dolly was gone?
But a spring day in Colorado? Oh, my. Like no where I have ever lived. It is cool, breezy and sunny. I have flung open the window and am singing to one of my YouTube playlists.* and my brain is happily intoxicated by the fluttering of the Aspen leaves and the birds singing along with me.
Spring-green leaves dancing happily. I just focus in and…Life.
*Totally had to resist singing along while I was taping because, yes, it turns out Todd Rundgren is totally my perfect vocal range. Haha.
Where hath my youth gone??? Well-he is still performing, that is where! PLEASE COME TO DENVER, David Cassidy!
Heck, please google your name and stumble upon this blog and leave me a comment. :) For which I would write another whole blog (if you do a search, you’ll see I have mentioned you before a time or two, with great love and affection)!!!
Note–how I suddenly began writing directly to David Cassidy himself as if he actuallymight read this. Haha. A girl can dream, can’t she?!
And in case you don’t know how serious I am about loving David Cassidy, see my kids’ Mother’s Day tribute to me in 2008. They recorded their own tracks and they lip-sync’ed to mimic a real Partridge Family experience. LOVE.
People standing 4 feet away might not even notice.
1: a small rotating windstorm of limited extent; any of several relatively small masses of air rotating rapidly around a more or less vertical axis and advancing simultaneously over land or sea, as a dust devil, tornado, or waterspout.
2 a: a confused rush : anything resembling a whirlwind, as in violent action or destructive force. b: a violent or destructive force or agency; any circling rush or violent onward course.
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“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
Your perfect love is casting out fear
And even when I’m caught in the middle of the storms of this life
I won’t turn back, I know you are near
And I will fear no evil, For my God is with me
And if my God is with me, Whom then shall I fear?
Oh no, You never let go
Through the calm and through the storm
Oh no, You never let go
In every high and every low
Oh no, You never let go
Lord, You never let go of me…
I can see a light that is coming for the heart that holds on.
There will be an end to these troubles, but until that day comes,
Still I will praise Him, still I will praise Him…” (Matt Redman, “You Never Let Go”)
Just as I finished writing this, the tornado sirens went off and a storm passed violently through. Rain came down hard. Minutes later, the birds are chirping and the sun is shining and it. is. still.
