Blog Outage

Just a quick post to let you know that my blog may be offline at some stage during the next 12 to 15 hours (1:00PM Central Time) while we change hosts.

Of Fur Bunnies and Pianos

This morning, when I awoke my son, daughter and husband had already completed most of the housework, so we had breakfast, a very late breakfast I might add, and then the children washed and dried the breakfast dishes.

When they had finished the breakfast dishes, my daughter went off with her dad to collect firewood from one of the local farms, as a HUGE tree has come down in the paddock that they will be sowing very shortly. My son stayed home with me so that he could finish the vacuuming and mop the verandahs. He was still completing the dishes when I noticed fur bunnies along the skirting boards and the carpet near the skirting boards – aargh – this is why my asthma has been so severe, lately,  so I took hold of the vacuum cleaner, thinking that I could actually help with the housework. Silly me!

No such luck – I had nearly finished along the edges of the skirting boards in the loungeroom, and was vacumming one of the corners that didn’t look as if it had been vacuumed for a very long while, when it started. I coughed and coughed, my breathing became more difficult and then the wheezing started. My son was up in his bedroom, and I thought that he was never going to come down, but eventually he did, and I gasped, “Nebuliser,” at him. Of course, where was it? In the car. Where was the car? Not here! Darn it! Usually we are all together as a family, but the wood needed to be cut and the housework finished, and we couldn’t be in two places at once.

He wanted to call an ambulance, but living out here, the calls all go to Adelaide for ambulance, and by the time he had explained where we were, it would have been too late. He jumped on his bicycle and rode the  three kilometres to where my husband and daughter were cutting wood, and found them just arriving there after going to see about buying some oats. He threw the bike into the trailer, and they drove home and set up the nebuliser. I was so hot and unable to breathe, but somehow God sustained me through it all.

There were two lessons learned from this -

• Lesson one is that the nebuliser needs to be with me at all times, which was the reason that we left it in the car in the first place.
• Lesson two is that I need to explain to our children exactly how things need to be done.

Yes, it’s easier to do things ourselves – well, sometimes! It takes time and effort to show our children how we want things done, but how will they learn unless we teach them?

The things of God are learned in the same way -
It is written in the prophets, And they shall be all taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me. John 6:45

My son is learning well, and this afternoon he has used the crevice tool to clean along the edges, and even went as  far as to shift the piano, which hasn’t been shifted for a very long time. Now all that we need to be able to do is to shift it back…  It weighs a ton! My husband and son managed to shift it back, and my son commented, “Now I have gorilla arms – they have stretched that far!” Now, I wonder, how often should we shift the piano???

I praise God that He strengthens us through times of trials, and He gives us His Peace – the verse that I remembered today was:~

Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace,

whose mind is stayed on thee:

because he trusteth in thee. Isaiah 26:3

and He did ~ He kept me in perfect peace!

Dear God…

This powerpoint presentation is another one that we had sent to us from Pastor Quentin, and I thought it was ever so cute – kids really do say the darnedest things! I hope that you get a laugh from some of them.

Painting the Church

This was an email that we received from our pastor, Pastor Quentin, and we truly did get rather a giggle from it ~ I hope that you enjoy it as much as we did – rather a play on words, here.

There was a Scottish painter named  Smokey Macgregor who was very interested in making a penny where he could, so he often thinned down his paint to make it go a wee bit further.

As it happened, he got away with this for some time, but eventually the Baptist Church decided to do a big restoration job on the outside of one of their biggest buildings..

Smokey put in a bid, and, because his price was so low, he got the job.

So he set about erecting the scaffolding and setting up the planks, and buying the paint and, yes, I am sorry to say, thinning it down with turpentine..

Well, Smokey was up on the scaffolding, painting away, the job nearly completed, when suddenly there was a horrendous clap of thunder, the sky opened, and the rain poured down washing the thinned paint from all over the church and knocking Smokey clear off the scaffold to land on the lawn among the gravestones, surrounded by telltale puddles of the thinned and useless paint..

Smokey was no fool. He knew this was a judgement from the Almighty, so he got down on his knees and cried:

“Oh, God, Oh God, forgive me; what should I do?”

And from the thunder, a mighty voice spoke..

“Repaint! Repaint! And thin no more!”

If…

If
I happened to show up on your door step
Crying,

Would
You Care?

If
I called you and asked you to pick me up
Because something Happened,

Would
You come?

If
I had one day left, to live my
Life;

Would
You be part of That
Last
Day?

If
I needed a shoulder to cry
On,

Would
You give me Yours?

Do
You know what the relationship is between
Your two eyes? They blink together, they
Move together, they cry together,
They see things together and they
Sleep together,

BUT
THEY NEVER SEE EACH
OTHER…

that’s
What friendship is.

Life
Is lonely
Without FRIENDS.

What does God’s Word say about friendship?

This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you.
Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you. John 15: 13-15

Jesus lay down His life for His friends (us) – I wonder how many of us, me included, could say the same thing. How many of our friends would we be willing to lay down our life for? Yet, Jesus sets the precedent, and tells us that we need to love one another as He has loved us, and that we are His friends if we do whatever He commands us to do. His command to us is to

“LOVE ONE ANOTHER”