Little Man

This is Wyatt at Sunday School right before the program. He doesn't look to be full of Christmas cheer. I think he was much happier when he was holding his new little puppy buster, and building a snowman. I hope I let my kids be kids when they were little.

Wyatt, Buster and Frosty

Isn't this about the cutest little boy you've ever seen? I remember this day.

A Winter's Day

Such






A long long time ago we can still remember how we used to watch the children laugh and play. And if we had the chance..........

More Quotes

Even though it is Christmas and the whole world is in celebration, my thoughts are still on death. But maybe I'm not so far off track because I really believe that death is an escape from life into eternity. And eternal life is really what Christmas is all about. A miraculous birth of God's own son. Why did God need to save all humanity in this way? Couldn't he just have changed the way of things without sending himself to suffer and die to change the fate of all human souls? I believe that He has to work in the order of his own creation to restore it, staying within the laws he set forth.I don't pretend to understand the unknowable but it makes sense to me that suffering must be important in some way. I don't know how else to explain an all powerful God allowing the pain and suffering throughout the ages. It frustrates me when people ignore this fundamental problem.

So many people try to wrap God up in a pretty little package with an instruction manual included. I think it is an attempt to gain a sense of safety and order; to make life palatable. The pop Christian culture filled with books, music, concerts, etc. seems like packaging to me. Beneath it all is a God that we can't really understand. A God who came to us as a baby, that grew into a man that was rejected and murdered to save us. A God who supposedly can intervene but often allows great suffering such as the holocaust and the genocide happening now in Darfur. I'm not going to solve the problem of pain, no one can. But I also can't gloss over it and pretend there isn't a problem, or begin to think I know God and can decide for all people that I am right.

I believe there is something more beyond this life and I believe it is very good. And right now that is enough for me. Here are the quotes I found:

Death is the golden key that opens the palace of eternity. -Milton

Death is like thunder in two particulars: we are alarmed at the sound of it, and it is formidable only from that which has preceded it. -Colton

Nature is the glass reflecting God, as by the sea reflected is the sun, too glorious to be gazed on in his sphere. -Young

THE SOUL SURVIVES! the arguments from reason by which the immortality of the soul is maintained are well known. But there is another argument, the scope of which has been so immensely enlarged in modern times that the disregard of it by the ancients does not count against its inherent validity. this is the general consent of the race. The future existence of the soul has been held as a matter of popular belief by the people of every age and country. It is found among the Chinese, the Egyptians, the Hindus, the Persians, the Greeks and Romans, the Druids, the Celts, the Germans, the Slavs, and a great variety of uncivilized tribes in North America and South, in the centre of Africa, and in the islands of the sea. there are exceptions, but these are just enough to confirm the rule. The great body of the human family in every age have held, as they hold now, that the soul survives the body; and there is no way of accounting for this unanimity but by admitting the truth of the doctrine. Either it was derived by tradition from our original ancestors, who obtained it from their Creator, or it's evidences lie so deeply impressed upon the constitiuion of man that they compel assent. A judgement held so long, so widely, and by such different races, must be deemed to be correct. -G. F. Wright

Ok, that's probably enough for this post!

Time

Two ways of thinking, the of time and the way of eternity and timelessness are both part of man's effort to comprehend the world in which he lives. Neither is comprehended in the other, nor reducible to it, each supplementing the other, neither telling the whole story. - Robert Oppenheimer

A World of Time
"In the beginning..." The opening line of the most famous book in all history, heard so many times, in so many languages, by so many people has become passe. The full meaniing and significance of the phrase is seldom discerned. It is obvious that with the first words of Genisis we have been taken from the realms of the infinite and placed in a world of the finite. A world of the beginnings and endings. A world of Time. -Lynn Grant Robbins

From the moment we are born
we agree to be taken at our end
Lifted upon murmurs of the others
that we choose to leave behind
~their hoarse and parched whispers spoken softly into the safety of the night~
conversations never had
confessions uttered in the regretful honesty of lost time

We make our fall from the earth
our heavy bones starving to settle
within its cold and damp salvation
And in our last breath we leave our heaviness behind
And we are welcomed
Lifted upon wings of time high, high, high
Into the thinning elevation of the sky

From there we blink down at the world in startled dismay
Surprised by our successful survival
within the turbulent current of time
And soothed by our own vacancy
we remember back to our first breath where we choked and gulped
Taking the air into our burning and unfolding bodies
knowing precisely that this is where we first began our descent

-LAURA HUME

Please share any thoughts or quotes you have. I have been studying this theme for years. I have more I will share later. I think what I am seeking is an explanation of a God who is powerful but somehow limited by his creation of time. What do you think. Please share.

Jeannie

THE BROKEN CHAIN

"WE LITTLE KNEW THAT MORNING THAT GOD WAS GOING TO CALL YOUR NAME.

IN LIFE WE LOVED YOU DEARLY, IN DEATH WE DO THE SAME. IT BROKE OUR HEARTS TO LOSE YOU,

YOU DID NOT GO ALONE; FOR PART OF US WENT WITH YOU, THE DAY GOD CALLED YOU HOME.

YOU LEFT US PEACEFUL MEMORIES, YOUR LOVE IS STILL OUR GUIDE; AND THOUGH WE CANNOT SEE YOU, YOU ARE ALWAYS AT OUR SIDE. OUR FAMILY CHAIN IS BROKEN, AND NOTHING SEEMS THE SAME; BUT AS GOD CALLS US ONE BY ONE, THE CHAIN WILL LINK AGAIN."

Life

"Death is simply the shedding of the physical body, like the butterfly shedding it's cocoon. It is a transition to a higher state of consciousness where you continue to perceive, to understand, to laugh, and to be able to grow." -Elizabeth Kubler-Ross MD
I believe this is true. I believe Wyatt is exploring and enjoying a new life. I think God gives us nature to see His promise of eternal life. The caterpillar changing to a butterfly, leaves falling from the tree then budding again in the spring, these things demonstrate life continuing. I miss Wyatt so much, but I firmly believe only this physical life of time keeps us apart. We'll be together again.

Another Christmas!

The dinner party

Last weekend I got a wild hair and decided to host a small dinner party. And I do mean small, just one couple, in case this thing tanked on me. We invited our good friends, Greg and Karen Park, over on Sat. night. I shopped just a little for food, since this being my first time and all, I wasn't going overboard. I decided on chicken cordon bleu for the entree, just pulled it out of the hat since it sounded good. I googled "menu plan" and came up with the rest of the menu. So, we had chicken cordon bleu with wild rice and fresh green beans tossed in lemon butter. I must say at the risk of a swelled head, it was delicious. And not even slightly hard! I totally did not stress over anything. Jeannie prepared dessert, triple fudge brownie sundaes with a caramel sauce. Delish! Afterwards we played games and visited. It was a totally delightful evening and I plan on doing it again soon!