This is the ‘Love Month’!   :)   Not only this month, but sometimes I am just flooded with thoughts of all the people I love – too many to mention here.   But, included in those is family, of course.  I have just spent considerable time with my grandbabies, and oh, how we love each other!   And then, outside the ‘norm’, I think of how much I loved, and still love all the homeless folks I worked with for three and a half years in Providence, RI.  I know you know how much I love ‘my’ babies and kids (orphans) in Romania.  I am IN love with them!  And, way ‘outside the box’, people I don’t even know but of whom I read – including Prisoners for Christ in countries around the world.

It was such a cold, blustery Sunday evening several years ago when my boys and I were on our way to church across town for the service.  It was that ‘bitter cold’ that a January offers us in New England.  It wasn’t just freezing, it was literally below freezing!  And besides that we had so much snow that the banks where the plows had tried to keep us free to move about were piled so high that it was nearly impossible to see around a corner to get out of a street.  And, some of the back roads were plowed to only a car and a half-width with the snow frozen on both sides.  These were snow-packed back roads with only an occasional sighting of a glimpse of tar.

I just love the Holiday Season.  From a child, it started with Thanksgiving.  We would draw the cornucopias, fat, colorful turkeys and boy and girl pilgrims at school.  On Thanksgiving Day, the older ones would watch football games most of the day.  And then ultimately, we would stuff ourselves silly on holiday.  The next thing we knew, we would be all a-twitter about buying Christmas gifts, finding and decorating just the perfect Christmas tree, hanging up decorations, baking Christmas goodies, and getting ready at church for the Christmas pageant.

O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever!   –  Psalm 30.12b

I read this recently from a Ravi Zacharias writing – that for the Greeks, it was knowledge.  For the Romans, it was glory.  But for the Hebrews, it was light.  He used several verses including, “The people that sat in darkness have seen a great light.”  (Matthew 4:16), “There was the true light which coming into the world, enlightens every man.”  (John 1:9), and “For God Who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness’, is the One Who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.”  (II Corinthians 4:6)

I heard this recently – ‘What if when you got up every morning, all you had was what you had thanked God for the day before?’  That really resonated in my mind and heart, because not only am I not nearly as thankful as I need to be, but often I even forget to thank my Heavenly Father for all that I have asked Him.   And not only that, but I often grumble over my circumstances and what I do have.   As I look around me in both Europe and the States, on the whole I see a less than thankful people.  So many seem to be dissatisfied with what they have, or their lot in life.

This is my birthday month!   I was blessed to have loving parents and many, many happy birthdays growing up.  We could always choose what we wanted for our birthday meal, and since I was born in the hot, dog-days of August, my favorite place to go to celebrate was to Musquash Lake for a cook-out.  It was just two or three miles from our humble little home in Codyville, ME, and getting to swim and splash in the cool lake was ‘the cherry on the (birthday) cake’.  ????

As I write this post from Romania, I have to tell you that there is something a little strange about not being in my own country on the Fourth of July.  I experienced this back in 2000 when I worked with Gujarati Indians in Loughborough, England.  It just felt odd.  And it does this time around, too. 

The Bible is full of examples of fathers.  Good ones, not so good ones, ones filled with wisdom, ones who ‘struggled’ with wisdom, and plenty of other types.  No matter who our father is (was) Ephesians 6.2 tells us to honor our father (and mother) – and it was also the first commandment with a promise.  It was easy to honor my father.  I was one who was blessed to have a ‘good one’ – and one who was filled with wisdom.

Everyone thinks that their dog is the ‘best’. But I, truly, had the best dog – for about 11 years. He was a beautiful smooth-haired Chow-Chow, and his name was Johann Sebastian Bachie. My boys were quite taken a-back by his name, but since they couldn’t seem to come up with anything else, Bachie, it was.