To Bring Him Joy

  “ Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?” Isaiah 53:1 Christmas day in our household was weird as it usually is. Of course, we don't really know what is normal for everyone else but we assume ourselves to be weird. A lot of times we are ok with that – other times we struggle. It is who we are. We didn't get a tree put up until Sunday evening and it was never adorned with anything but the lights that came on it. (Actually, it is a simple kind of lovely.) Also, I still hadn't purchased any presents for anyone. Only one of us had achieved buying a present for every member of the family. Others were at various stages, two of us had attempted but came away empty handed. So there I was on the day our Christian culture opts to celebrate the birthday of our Saviour even though it probably is not the anniversary of His birth, asking ,with a bit of whine and angst, “God, what are we going to do? What do You...

  This blog post is in response to both a blog and a sermon. Recently, Trent Hunter wrote and shared a blog about listening to a sermon. You can find it here http://www.desertspringschurch.org/blog/?p=3220 . It resonated with me, as years ago my pastor at the time, Ronnie Rogers made a comment from the pulpit about our worship on a Sunday not just happening during the music part of the service. In our listening to the sermon we should continue to interact with God. It has changed my worship on any given Sunday, how I sing, how I listen, how I participate in the service. I think that we feel that when we are singing we are worshipping or that we can worship when we pray if we are giving praise or thanks but that we don't feel like we are worshipping when we are listening to a sermon. It is though we have to talk to be worshipping. It is rather arrogant of us, really. Actually, we ought to be listening through out the service, through out the week, daily, moment by moment ...

Elmer Fudd has been a part of our family life for quite a while now. I don't really remember how long. I don't even remember for sure how we came to have him, I think possibly a kid's meal toy from somewhere. He actually wasn't even the original figure. I'm not sure who originally started the game. We've had a couple of the vultures that didn't know what to do but were part of a great barbershop  quartet. Also I believe we had a King Kong figurine at one time. But "The Fudd" as we lovingly call him, made the trip 4 years ago from Oklahoma to the Land of Enchantment. He rode in the housing of the speedometer of our black suburban, known as the Subbubble, but mostly just as the sub. He has been kept around because of a game that my husband started with the family so many years ago, when the KRHs were children.  We now would call it Find the Fudd. Anyway, Cary, started hiding these kid's meal figurines around the house, sometimes in such obvi...

“ James, a slave of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ” James 1:1a HCSB I 've been reading the book of James in the Bible almost daily for several days now. It is so cool to take a book of the Bible and do this. It helps you to see so many things that you probably didn't notice before. I try to read the whole book at one sitting, after all, it was written like a letter. I know that we don't write or receive letters much any more, especially not long ones but I think if you were to receive one you would sit down and read the whole thing. I have done this with some other books of the Bible as our teaching pastor suggested it last year ; plus , some reading plans that I had seen also suggested it. Anyway, this year as those posts about reading the Bible through came up, I thought I needed to pick this up again and felt led to James. I was about to do this one day when God stopped me very short on this first half of the first verse. I was quite surprised beca...