Pint glasses and empty coffee mugs

yesterday sunny and 50, today snowing and cold (i refuse to look at the actual temperature)  where art thou o spring?!


a real mainah told me the other day that the only way to deal with this prolonged winter is to embrace it!  Get out there, and love it!  I have to admit, even after feet of snowfall this year, there is still something magical about snow.  


   Isaiah 55:10 

¹⁰ As the rain and the snow
   come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
   without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
   so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,

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Phil and I keep 'on-going-cups'.  This always includes on-going pint glasses and on-going coffee mugs.  I like to drink my water from my used coffee mug rather than my pint glass.

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My sister is getting married in less than a month.  She sent me bridal portrait previews this week that she took in a tulip garden!  Absolutely breath-taking.  Spring brings hope and celebration.  It begins the new year.  It is a new year indeed. 


Many of you may know this already, but this is my formal announcement:  the new for us this year is my return to school.  I was accepted into the University of Southern Maine's Family Nurse Practitioner Program!  


Keeping in line with our normal...change!  It seems as soon as I am comfortable and confident in what I am doing, when I've found that natural flow, that is when God says, 'okay...moving on now'.  While I am excited about the next few years, I'm also rattled with thoughts of inadequacy and insecurity.  And then I hear His Spirit, 'fear not, little one, for I am with you'.  


He has gone out before us and prepared the way.  As His children, we have this promise.  And oh what peace this brings to my life.  


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The last couple of weeks I have been glued to BBC Live Feed watching scenes from Japan and Libya.  I am not surprised by these things because our Lord said they would be so.


"When you hear of wars and rumor of wars, do not be alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are the beginning of birth pains." - Mark 13:7-8


While I am not surprised, it does not mean that my heart is not also broken at the same time.  I have noticed my desire to pray to God every chance I get.  In the car as I drive, I sing psalms of praise and recall powerful hymns from my childhood.  When I'm in the bathtub, I put down my book and just talk to God because He is there and I miss Him.  


Its easy for me to become 'tunnel-visioned'.  We get busy, we work, we play, etc. We see just our view from our little window.  When we ask for His view, it broadens dramatically and my focus become clear again.  I need this regular 'vision-check-up'.  


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I've been reading in the book of Deuteronomy over the last few weeks.  A guy came into the YMCA on tuesday morning while I was reading and he asked me from what book was I reading.  I told Him the Bible, and various others that I had out that morning.  He said he knew it was the Bible, but what book? asked.  OHHH, Deuteronomy I responded.  He stuck out his hand and said, Hi, I'm Andy, a pastor from Massachusetts and I'm teaching on the book of Deuteronomy right now.  


Be encouraged by the Word of God.

Deuteronomy 11

Love and Obey the LORD

 ¹ Love the LORD your God and keep his requirements, his decrees, his laws and his commands always. ² Remember today that your children were not the ones who saw and experienced the discipline of the LORD your God: his majesty, his mighty hand, his outstretched arm; ³ the signs he performed and the things he did in the heart of Egypt, both to Pharaoh king of Egypt and to his whole country; ⁴ what he did to the Egyptian army, to its horses and chariots, how he overwhelmed them with the waters of the Red Sea^[a] as they were pursuing you, and how the LORD brought lasting ruin on them. ⁵ It was not your children who saw what he did for you in the wilderness until you arrived at this place, ⁶ and what he did to Dathan and Abiram, sons of Eliab the Reubenite, when the earth opened its mouth right in the middle of all Israel and swallowed them up with their households, their tents and every living thing that belonged to them. ⁷ But it was your own eyes that saw all these great things the LORD has done. ⁸ Observe therefore all the commands I am giving you today, so that you may have the strength to go in and take over the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, ⁹and so that you may live long in the land the LORD swore to your ancestors to give to them and their descendants, a land flowing with milk and honey. ¹⁰ The land you are entering to take over is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you planted your seed and irrigated it by foot as in a vegetable garden. ¹¹ But the land you are crossing the Jordan to take possession of is a land of mountains and valleys that drinks rain from heaven. ¹² It is a land the LORD your God cares for; the eyes of the LORD your God are continually on it from the beginning of the year to its end.
 ¹³ So if you faithfully obey the commands I am giving you today—to love the LORD your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul— ¹⁴ then I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn and spring rains, so that you may gather in your grain, new wine and olive oil. ¹⁵ I will provide grass in the fields for your cattle, and you will eat and be satisfied.
 ¹⁶ Be careful, or you will be enticed to turn away and worship other gods and bow down to them. ¹⁷ Then the LORD’s anger will burn against you, and he will shut up the heavens so that it will not rain and the ground will yield no produce, and you will soon perish from the good land the LORD is giving you. ¹⁸ Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.¹⁹ Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. ²⁰ Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates, ²¹ so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land the LORD swore to give your ancestors, as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth.
 ²² If you carefully observe all these commands I am giving you to follow—to love the LORD your God, to walk in obedience to him and to hold fast to him— ²³ then the LORD will drive out all these nations before you, and you will dispossess nations larger and stronger than you. ²⁴ Every place where you set your foot will be yours: Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, and from the Euphrates River to the Mediterranean Sea. ²⁵ No one will be able to stand against you. The LORD your God, as he promised you, will put the terror and fear of you on the whole land, wherever you go.
 ²⁶ See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse— ²⁷ the blessing if you obey the commands of the LORD your God that I am giving you today; ²⁸ the curse if you disobey the commands of the LORD your God and turn from the way that I command you today by following other gods, which you have not known. ²⁹ When the LORD your God has brought you into the land you are entering to possess, you are to proclaim on Mount Gerizim the blessings, and on Mount Ebal the curses. ³⁰ As you know, these mountains are across the Jordan, westward, toward the setting sun, near the great trees of Moreh, in the territory of those Canaanites living in the Arabah in the vicinity of Gilgal. ³¹ You are about to cross the Jordan to enter and take possession of the land the LORD your God is giving you. When you have taken it over and are living there, ³² be sure that you obey all the decrees and laws I am setting before you today.

the audio below is from morning worship in my living room while tiny snowflakes played outside...