Thanks for the birthday wishes. Thougt I would share some pictures of the fun.

 It was Addie’s first time on skates but she zipped along right from the start.

Austin and Alex went skating some last year. Austin is 11 and Alex is 10. I wish I had caught a picture of them helping some of the younger crew. It was fun to see.

Erica (9), Grace (5), and my friend Allison. It was Erica’s first time on the ice and Grace’s second.

James (7) was fearless even though he had never been on skates before. He fell a lot but bounced up like a ball!

Erica (9) taking a short break.

Austin (11), Kolya (13), and Alex (10). They had a blast. Since we got snow yesterday, it wasn’t crowded.

Relaxing while the zambonie took care of the ice.

Enjoying the chocolate and mint cake Allison brought me.

Another shot of cake!

Addie (7) is such a shy and reserved child.  I wish I had half her spunk.

James, me, and Grace

Me, Elena (7) and Addie (7). It was Elena’s second time skating. She did great too!

Okay, maybe it was a strange party for someone turning 39, but it was a lot of fun. I had a blast watching how much fun they all had. And they all got along well. Together with me and Allison skating, there were 10 of us. The snow made it so that the rink was fairly empty, that was good for me. I am not a great skater. It hurts my ankels, but, like I said above, I love the fun the kids have with it.

Hey all. Well, today is my birthday. I’m 39 and I don’t feel like I’m that old! And everyone guesses me about 15 years younger than what I am. So, in some ways, 39 is just a number.

It’s going to be  a busy day. I need to shower, shovel snow, and then meet a friend for lunch. That will be nice. Then I’m off to work at the bookstore for 4 hours. After that, I have Austin and Kolya for dinner. After dinner we are going ice skating. In some ways I am throwing myself my own “kid” birthday. Alex (10), Addie (8), Grace (5), and Elena (7) are also meeting us there. I’ve taken a few of them skating before and they loved it. I LOVED how much they enjoyed it. Anyway, they are kids I really enjoy. So, they may not be all that cognizant that it is my birthday, but I like the idea of spending the time with them.

I need to fun. Oops. I meant “run,” but I think I need to FUN to!

Hope you FUN as well.

I had someone comment on my last post asking if I had ever gone to URBANA. URBANA is a student missions conference through InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. I went in 1990 as a student and then staffed it in 1993, 1996, and 2000.

In 1990 there were over 18,000 students there. We had it at the University of Illinois. Our main session each morning and evening was in the dome shaped Assembly Hall. There are lots of entrances and we usually used all of them. Imagine our surprise when the buses let us off at one entrance. But we didn’t think that much about it, really. At the end of the evening, they announced that we all had to leave out that one spot just like we came in. We had had major ice storms and the ice was melting. It was falling off the domed roof and there was concern that someone would be injured. Thus, we all had to use the one covered entrance/exit.

It took me about 3 hours to exit and get back to the dorm. The amazing thing was that the whole time we were all singing praise songs and hymns and laughing and talking. The U of I told the leaders that they would NEVER have tried it with an “ordinary” crowd. Praise God!

That is a fun memory.

We use a ton of paperclips at work. As a result, there are two huge boxes full of the mega size paperclips. The other day, someone asked if I needed anything from office supply. I asked for the little size paperclips. I was surprised at the reaction I got. It appears that everyone else in the office hates those little paperclips. But they consented to get me some and I have been happily using them.

Why did I want the little ones? One of the things I’ve been doing at work is checking documents. When the documents are done, I paperclip the enclosed fee onto the document. If it is a 1-4 page document, it often seems to me that the check is about ready to come lose when I use the big ones. I like to know the check is on their firmly. The other issue that I have with the big clips is that they are often all stretched out and bent and odd angles. Again, it makes it difficult, in my mind, to clip something securely.

I use both — depending on the need.

Today, I was checking documents. I wondered if an analogy could be made to life. Am I like the secure little paper clip in my life or the big, bent, stretched out one? I’m probably more like the big one then I would care to admit! I’ve been feeling frazzled lately. I think it is all that I have going on and the holidays coming and all of that . . . . Sometime in the next few days, I need to find some down time. I’m just not even sure where to look for it!

So, which are you? The little clips or the big clips?

Okay, so maybe the analogy is a stretch, but I was bored with what I was doing and I just got to thinking . . . .

Salt. Ice melt. Whatever you want to call it is at a premium in my area right now. My city has been having lots of freezing rain and such. And everyone is out of salt. I tried to get some yesterday and then called my friend and pastor, Mark, to see if he had any. He didn’t. But today, he called to tell me that a local nursery had sold some for cost to people. He snagged the last two bags — one for his family and one for me!

I was really impressed with the nursery selling it for cost. I had jokingly told Mark he probably could have sold my bag on the “black market” for good money. Actually, a guy at work walked into a little store yesterday and asked if they had salt. They said they didn’t. He asked, “Do you want some?” I guess there was instant silence among the cashier and a couple customers. Then they said, “Yes!” He said, “Me too!” I guess he knew them . . . .

I’ll have to remember that nursery. I don’t do a lot of planting, but they probably deserve my business . . . .

Well, it’s been interesting working retail this holiday season. I know people are busy, but I’ve begun to wonder if people even notice the cashiers or the people working the floor to help them find that specific gift. I don’t think most do. It’s a little like being invisible unless you totally mess something up! (Happily, I don’t think I have – yet. Though I did take a call from an angry customer last night. I had nothing to do with it and was happy to pass it on to a manager.) I know it is a service industry, but I had never thought before about how service sometimes implies invisibility.

My advice — say “Thank you” or give a compliment or if someone did something really good, get their name and tell a manager. These people are working many hours (mostly on their feet) for very little pay. Most, I’ve discovered, are working this and something else. That adds up to long hours. Being kind is especially true if people might know you are a Christian. Depending on what you are buying (a Bible or something), they might suspect. If you treat them poorly because they are “the help,” it reflects on God.

And being kind is always a good thing.

This past year was a rough one. A year ago last fall, I fell off a horse and broke my tailbone. I don’t know that I’ve ever felt something so painful! I couldn’t walk or sit comfortably. I couldn’t bend without aggravating it. I resorted to a donut pillow to make it through work.

At the end of March I was playing Hide-and-Seek with my 5-year-old niece. As I stealthily tip toed up the stairs, I missed a step and fell all the way down the stairs. I sprained my ankle, my knee, and fractured a couple of fingers. I suppose I should have been grateful that it wasn’t my dominant hand, but do you know how many things require two hands to do them? I made huge messes in the kitchen and because of my ankle and knee they were painful to clean up.

Within a month, a dear friend had died and I was an emotional wreck. I ended up with major stomach problems. I couldn’t keep anything down for 8 days and had to go to the ER to get fluids.

I mention all of these times because they are times when I felt helpless to do even the most basic thing. And with that helplessness came a sense of hopelessness. What was the use of trying?

Recently, I was watching a TV show. They referenced Dante’s Inferno. In the story, Dante visits the eight circles of hell. The quote they referenced was a quote on entering hell, “Abandon hope all who enter here.”

Abandon hope. Most of probably don’t like the sound of that. I don’t know that Dante’s description of hell is accurate, but in this one thing, I think it is probably right. Hell, it would stand to reason, would be a hopeless place.

I admit that there are times that I’ve abandoned hope. I tell myself that things won’t get better. I say that I could pray but God wouldn’t hear me. I tell myself all the things that are wrong with me. My thinking often does me few favors in times like those.

Luckily with prayer, counsel, and sometimes medication, I’ve come out of those dark places of the soul.

But really what brought me out of those places was that even though I may have abandoned hope at times, hope –the HOPE – has never abandoned me. In fact, that HOPE – Jesus – came from heaven to earth and then to the cross so that I would never have to truly be without hope.

Matthew 1:22-23 says, “All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet. ‘The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel’ – which means ‘God with us.’”

Immanuel. God with us. I remember learning once that the more literal translation means something along the lines of “He will pitch his tent among us.” In other words, he wasn’t just passing through. When God came to his people, he dwelt among them, lived among them.

And His presence remains with us to this day. Immanuel. God with us.

We may abandon hope, but HOPE never abandons us. HOPE goes to the ends of the earth so that we know we need never be without hope. Immanuel. God with us.

I stopped in the bookstore tonight to pick up a couple more things. I commented to one of the people I work with about how quiet it was. She agreed and then said tomorrow wouldn’t be. She reported that the Jars of Clay lead singer was going to be in for a book signing and bring in all the “religious fanatics.” She went on to complain that when she sees someone buy a Bible she doesn’t even bother asking them to donate to the holiday book drive because she knows they never will.

I mentioned that I was a Christian and I had donated. She started to differentiate between being “religious” and being “spiritual.” Then she made the comment that she is a “pagan” and that she is “spiritual.” Unfortunately, she was cashiering or I would have liked to have explored it all some more with her.

I’m not saying that we all have to give to absolutely everything, but I was saddened by her observation. (I don’t know if it is accurate or not. In some ways, that doesn’t matter. It is still her perception.) So, did you know you are being watched? And sometimes what we do says more than our words!

You’re being watched . . . . Is what you are showing people a good reflection on God?

It’s been a crazy week so far. I don’t know where the weekend went and now we’re halfway through the week. Sunday night the house got decorated for Christmas. Monday I worked 16 hours. Tuesday I worked and spent some time in the evening with a friend and her girls. Today I went to work, had an appointment, worked some more and did a little Christmas shopping.

How much more Christmas shopping do you have? I think I’m just about done but have a few things to pick up. Now comes the ordeal of packing! How do you pack with two cats? I may have to put them in another room while I do it or I think they will make a mess of things. I know they would. Actually, I can’t really leave wrapped packages out. Katy likes to chew in paper.

I hope you are all having a good week!

Can you imagine it? The nation of Israel was use to regular contact with God – even if they didn’t always like what they heard. But then the prophet Malachi spoke. He spoke judgment on the people and their leaders. Through Malachi, God declared that Israel was profaning His name. Malachi 1:10 says:

“Oh, that one of you would shut the temple doors, so that you would not light useless fires on my altar! I am not pleased with you,” says the LORD Almighty, “and I will accept no offering from your hands. 11 My name will be great among the nations, from the rising to the setting of the sun. In every place incense and pure offerings will be brought to my name, because my name will be great among the nations,” says the LORD Almighty.

God calls them out for bringing injured, crippled, or diseased animals. He calls out the priests whose teaching, rather than building up the people, has caused them to stumble. He calls out the nation of Israel for marrying the daughter of a foreign God.

But then comes a promise that Israel has heard before in Malachi 3:1. “See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” says the LORD Almighty. And in Malachi 4:1-3 1 “Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace. All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble, and that day that is coming will set them on fire,” says the LORD Almighty. “Not a root or a branch will be left to them. 2 But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. And you will go out and leap like calves released from the stall. 3 Then you will trample down the wicked; they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day when I do these things,” says the LORD Almighty.

It is what they have been longing for years and years and years. It is promised again. How their hearts must have leapt!

But then another warning at the very end of Malachi: 1 “Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace. All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble, and that day that is coming will set them on fire,” says the LORD Almighty. “Not a root or a branch will be left to them. 2 But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. And you will go out and leap like calves released from the stall. 3 Then you will trample down the wicked; they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day when I do these things,” says the LORD Almighty.

 And then, probably the most terrifying thing that had ever happened, happened to Israel. God was silent to the nation for 400 years.

So, what happened over those 400 years? Scripture is silent there. But my guess is that the remnant that God speaks of elsewhere in Malachi was faithful. They kept the stories alive. The people must wait for the Messiah. They must remain faithful even in the time of silence. They had to hold on to hope.

What is hope? I looked it up on Wikipedia. This is some of  what I found. I’ve included the parts that I think are applicable to Biblical hope:

Ø      Hope implies perseverance. Hope is holding on when you cannot see the outcome. For some of us, that holding on is like being in a tug of war. We strain against that which would pull us down. For others of us, we are holding onto a life line – maybe the side of a cliff and struggling to wait for our rescuer. (We’ve probably all been there at times in our lives.)

Ø      “Hope is often the result of faith in that while hope is an emotion, faith carries a divinely inspired and informed form of positive belief. Hope is typically contrasted with despair, but despair may also refer to a crisis of faith . . . . hope caries a connotation of being aware of a spiritual truth.”

Today, at church, Mark Savage spoke about Mary being a person of faith. He sees this in her response to the angel telling her that she will bear the Son of God. Hers is one of immediately submitting to God’s will. There is not questioning, no “How can this be?” or “What will people think?” And she would have had a legitimate worry as to what people might think! If she was believed to be an adulteresses (and she might have been seen this way because being betrothed was being married without the physical relationship), she could be stoned. Honestly, I think that would have worried me. But Mary completely and immediately submits to something she cannot have  fully comprehended.

It is faith, but it is also hope. It is hope because it shows that even though God had been silent for 400 years, Mary still chose to believe that God would fulfill his promise. She was part of Israel, hanging on to the edge of the cliff waiting for a rescuer, a redeemer. Faith and hope is what kept Israel believing the Messiah would come. Faith and hope is what made Mary answer the way she did: “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May it be to me as you have said.”

May we all have the faith and hope of Mary at the this holiday season.