Thursday

In a Pit With a Lion on a Snowy Day:

A high view of God

According to A.W. Tozer, the most important thing about you is what comes to mind when you think about God.  ...the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like...
Were we able to extract from any man a complete answer to the question, "What comes to your mind when you think about God?"   We might predict with certainty the spiritual future of that man.

How you think about God will determine who you become.  You aren't just the byproduct of "nature" and "nurture".  You are a byproduct of your God-picture.  And that internal picture of God determines how you see everything else.

Most of your problems are not circumstantial.  Most of our problems are perceptual.  Our biggest problems can be traced back to an inadequate understanding of who God is.  Our problems seem really big because our God seems really small.   In fact, we reduce God to the size of our biggest problem. Tozer said a "low view of God...is the cause of a hundred lesser evils."  But a person with a high view of God "is relieved of ten thousand temporal problems."

A low view of God and a high view of God are the difference between scaredy-cats and lion chasers.  Scaredy-cats are filled with fear because their God is so small.  Lion chasers know that their best thought about God on their best day falls infinitely short of how great God really is.

"My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways," declares the Lord.  "As the heavens are higher that the earth so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."  Isaiah 55:8


from Mark Batterson:  You know what the greatest tragedy in life is?  It is someone whose god gets smaller and smaller with each passing day.
Maybe it's time to stop creating God in your image and let Him create you in His.
Something to think about...



Our last beach trip was the perfect day.  This is the time of year I like going to the beach, it wasn't crowded, there was a cool breeze blowing, and the water wasn't too cold.  Beautiful!

Friday

Wednesday





I decided to try this:  Adventures in Encouragement
Who doesn't need a little encouragement.
Sounds like fun too. If you'd like to try go to the link above.

Chuck brought me a little encouragement the other day in the form of flowers. 
These are a few of them.  I like to separate them and spread them all over the 
house.



Stuart, my brother, came over at 6am and we went to
the beach to watch Endeavor leave the space center
forever.  So sad.  It was an awesome sight and a beautiful
day at the beach!


Wednesday

Playing with an old 50's camera
Eric and Sarah


Trying something different.  Chuck says it's finished.
I don't feel like it is.

Tuesday

from Walking on Water Reflections on Faith and Art 
by Madeleine L'Engle:

Lewis Carroll was a storyteller, an artist, as well as a mathematician, and artists often have a more profound sense of what time is all about that do the scientists.  There's a story of a small village where
lived an old clockmaker and repairer.  When anything was wrong with any of the clocks or watches in the village, he was able to fix them, to get them working properly again.  When he died, leaving no children and no apprentice, there was no one left in the village who could fix clocks.  Soon various clocks and watches began to break down.  those which continued to run often lost or gained time, so they were of little use.  A clock might strike midnight at three in the afternoon.  So many of the villagers abandoned their timepieces.  One day a renowned clockmaker and repairer came through the village, and the people crowded around him and begged him to fix their broken clocks and watches.  He spent many hours looking at all the faulty timepieces, and at last he announced that he could repair only those whose owners had kept them wound, because they were the only ones which would be able to remember how to keep time.
So we must daily keep things wound:  that is, we must pray when prayer seems dry as dust; we must write when we are physically tired, when our hearts are heavy, when our bodies are in pain.
We may not always be able to make our "clock" run correctly, but at least we can keep it wound so that it will not forget. 


Something I need to remember.