wartime mind-set

How different would your life be if we were a country at war? I did not ask "would you live differently?" because you just WOULD, there is no question about it.

What would be different in your everyday life ? what would you find yourself able to sacrifice for the greater cause of your country? what would you mourn the loss of as you minimized your standard of living to match the recession/depression's effect on your income? How would you help those around you in need?

We may not be presently at war, and our government may not be requesting our spare bobby pins for the cause, and our grocery stores may still stock the shelves with 100's of goods.... but (as Piper states) there is a battle between "truth and falsehood, Christ and Satan, belief and unbelief" every day of our lives, and i usually sleep through it!

So... what are we to do? My dear friends and i discussed some of this at biblestudy and i will quote some verses and ideas from our discussion... as well as the swirls of thoughts that came (and went..those ones are missing from the page) since then!!

Hmmm... psalm 144 says , "Blessed be the Lord my Rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle".

"Only too soon this life will pass, only what's done for Christ will last"

1 corinthians 10:31 So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do to the Glory of God"

--- If we are a community of Believers at war (spiritually) we need to "be alert" (acts 20:31, ephesians 6:18) and ready to share, live out, and rejoice in the Gospel - Christ on the cross, Christ risen from the grave, Christ our Saviour, repentance, living for His Glory forever, etc. Our weapons are the "gospel, prayer and self-sacrificing love" (2 corin. 10:3-5 & Piper - Don't waste your life)

So what can this practically look like? I need practical theology or it is just something my head knows and my heart aches to understand and live out!!

Here are some of my thoughts (dave and i talked over some of this weeks ago...) as to how we can practically live in our recession-bound country with the "wartime mindset" that uses the gospel, prayer and self-sacrificing love to fight the good fight. (So that we can hopefully say along with Paul: -2 tim 4:7- I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith)

1) trim the grocery budget so that there is more grocery money to buy food for those in need.
2) develop healthy inexpensive meals so that more can be made and given away.
3) make a habit of asking people what they need prayer for.
4) leave paper and pens all over to write down prayer requests and pray for them every time you see them.
5) be a disciplined giver. choose a variety of organizations, etc to support
6) send letters to any not-for-profit organization that has you on their 'please donate to us' mailing list, and ask them to take you off the list to save them the huge administrative costs that amount from mass mailings. (if you do this you MUST do number 5!!!!) (took this idea from Joel Belz, writer for World magazine, the numbers were staggering.)
7) become a disciplined reader of the Bible.
8) Open our eyes to the fact that every breath we take is a gift from God; and exult in the Cross of Christ for every sun rise, warm bowl of soup, letter from a friend, hug from family, or night of sleep (or even sleeplessness!).
9) Find ways to partner with the community in aiding those in need. (do this locally and globally)
10) Read scripture to each other, challenge each other to memorize and share scripture with others!

So... i suppose that could be called my New Years Resolution list. but since 80% of new years' resolutions get tossed after a month or so, i'm hoping it will be more of a long term life goal list...
Anyone want to help me out and keep me accountable to living a life of giving Glory to God??
Does anyone have more practical ideas to add to the list? or ones on my list that seem to be off course?

THANKS!
(man... i had all these fabulous thoughts and paragraphs pouring out of my head as i drove home from biblestudy on thursday, but ... i had a sick baby all afternoon and was unable to record them... but that is okay, i took care of a screaming baby and that is important! ) :)

finally sickfree!

my sweet kids. finally we are sick free in the house. Mercy has an ear infection, but she is successfully fighting it without any medicine, but with lots of prayer and a strong immune system that God created in her!! i am sooo thankful, because she is soooo little to be on antibiotics, i will give them to her if necessary, but the ER doc. said that if we are seeing her improve without the med. then it is awesome to just let her body do what it should!! :)

anyway.

Life is busy. and VERY EXCITING!! This week (thanks to my productive hubby) we booked a naturopath doc. for the family and had our first visit, we booked cello lessons for myself and picked up the rented cello (which is SOOOOO BEAUTIFUL!!! I LOVE IT!!) , we booked swim lessons (finally) for Julia and she begins tonight. i have been SUCH a procrastinator on the swim lessons, i feel badly, but hey, life is just like that. So she begins tonight and is really quite STOKED about it. :)

Now it is still snowing.....and still winter... and still cold... but we are enjoying it. Praise God !!

smiling through the snot

As vulgar as the title sounds, it is true. We are learning to 'smile through the snot... the sleeplessness... the sickness... the teething... the whining ...the 10-17 hour days (for dave) and the surprises of frozen pipes, floods and 6 loads of laundry in one day (due to illness)'.

but here we are... on the last day of dave's long stretch of work... he's hoping to get a few hours of family time in along with all of the work that comes with life. There is joy in the ordinary, and even in the painful if we remember that Christ is our all and we are to be fully satisfied in HIM not in our circumstances, possessions, position, or other things of importance. Because of course these other things are important, and i will not ignore that, but they are not to be all satisfying and all consuming. :)


Here is my sweet baby, teething... she is NOT smiling through her pain, but hey, we can't a 4 month old to be a saint. haha. misery would be well defined by 'a young infant in tears of pain'. Mercy is doing a very good job of making me believe she is in utter distress. poor thing!

and then she laughs. ha! what a funny baby. tears and laughter in the same breath.

that is a bit of our life these days. now i understnad why people 'fly the cold white north' for the month of january!!! hahaha. it isn't a very nice month. but the sky is blue, and it looks absolutely GORGEOUS outside!!! praise the LORD!!

too cold to do anything but blog...

Sadly i am inside. Which hurts me deeply, due to the brilliance of the blue sky and the shimmer of the drifting snow!! anyway.... i am busying myself with cooking and cleaning and sick-child-caring (which has taken much of our time in the last week or two ) . We also have been busy with a 'surprise' visit from Jeff and Tash, which meant a whirlwind of family dinner parties, a games night and some midday visits for the kids. Now they are gone again, and we take a moment to breath before the next week of surprises. for i am coming to see our life is definitely a spontaneous bursting of random (yet sovereign-ly planned) events!! and ... you know... i think i'm okay with that!! haha.
the bottom picture is a headpiece dave made recently (before the last three days of INSANE CRAZY WORK AND REPAIR occurred) isn't it lovely?

anyway. love to all. and remember the less fortunate! Compassion Canada is awesome. give them a glance and share God's love with the world! :)
su

projects

these are pics of us with the van oordts .... the kids had soooo much fun and SO DID WE!! isn't it beautiful out???


above: dave made a dress up head dress, looks very egyptian! :)
above: dave and kyle made this digger-machine for the kids (sam is TOTALLY obsessed with diggers and dozers!!)
above: a blanket i'm making for a friend's new baby, and scraps that julia practices sewing with needle and thread.

THAT is our project summary for the last week.

A FABULOUS TRIP TO THE CITY!!

the Country mouse Family (dave, the kids and i) traveled a long, quiet road to the City to visit City mouse's Family (our dear dear friends' the Van Oordts), and had THE BEST week ever!! This is a couple that dave and i have always loved and enjoyed. They are hospitable, inspiring and thoughtful. As tradition goes, they seem to always bring us out to a cozy, elegant restaurant with fabulous food. This trip we went driving through the woods to walk and sled on the trails, and we had wonderful fellowship times talking and gaming and eating together! There were 7 children and 4 adults in the house - and it was beautiful. Dave and i are now considering having 4 more kids.... hmmmm...
I can't wait until the summer when the City mice visit the Country mice for a BBQ-camping-swiming-hiking-kind of time!!

so THANK YOU j&p and kids, you are a HUGE blessing to us!!!