61 Days of Summer... Day #3

Happy Canada Day!!

Oh to be a cat! This is the life... just lounging on the back deck. Not too sunny today, but still warm.

I saw this on Facebook yesterday, and I just  love it...

Today I read/listened to Genesis 18-30. It is so interesting to read the Old Testament. Some of it seems down right weird. But, in it all, God uses totally imperfect people. Abraham was the one that God chose to grow his people through. His descendants were to be as many as the stars in the sky, and yet he TWICE tried to pass his wife off as his sister to save his own skin. Thank God that He was taking care of Sarah. And then Lot? Wow, what a messed up guy that was. But, God doesn't say we have to be perfect to be used by him. God saved Lot and his family, even though Lot tried to give his daughters over to some of the people in Sodom so that he could save his visitors.  Seriously? And he was the most righteous man in the whole city.

A promise in Genesis 22:14 -  So Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide. And to this day it is said, "On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided."

61 Days of Summer.... Day #2

Last night, as evening arrived and the temperature began to cool, we went blueberry picking. I had received an email about the start of picking season from the organic blueberry farm, and I didn't pay careful attention to the start date, only the hours in each day. So, we were the very first pickers of the season, but it technically only starts today. The people didn't seem to mind and they said they would never turn a customer away as long as they had berries! We picked one bucket each. 28lbs of berries. Delicious.

This morning, day #2 of summer, Todd brought us breakfast in bed. Each of us got a cute little bowl of blueberries to round out the tray. That was a nice way to start the day!

Here are some of my gladiolas. I have picked them to give to our friends who are celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary. I love glads, and they were actually pretty easy to grown in my large planters.

Today's Bible reading is Genesis chapters 9-16. God keeps his promises... he said he will never destroy the earth by flood again and he established his covenant with Noah.

Gen 11:10 - When Shem was 100 years old, he fathered Arpachshad two years after the flood. Doesn't really answer my question from yesterday about whether Noah's boys were triplets, but it shoes that perhaps Shem was born after Noah was 500, like around 501 or 502 years old.

61 Days of Summer... Day #1

It is summertime. The season says so, the weather says so, and having 61 days off from school says so, too. Today is the first day of my summer holiday. The kids have been off for a week already, and they will get an additional week at the end of the summer. The kids get 75 days, and I am very happy for my 61 days.

This morning I am sitting with my coffee and some beautiful hydrangeas that I got from our staff wrap up BBQ yesterday. A sweet hummingbird graced me with its presence and my cat is sitting to my right, basking in the sun.

I am reading through the Bible this summer. I am in Genesis. Today I've read Genesis chapters 1-8.

Gen 1 -  Sitting in my garden/back yard I see God's hand of creation and renewal. In Genesis 1 and 2 it says God provided streams coming up from the earth to water everything. I'm thankful God provides me with water for my garden, too.

Gen 4 - Abel was the first person to die in the Bible. As I read this it struck me that the first person to die was as a result of murder.

Gen 5 - When Noah was 500 years old, he became the father of Shem, Ham and Japheth.  Were they triplets? I've never noticed that before.

I love the promise in Genesis 8:22 - As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.

Art in Whistler

While we were in Whistler, we spent some time at the Audain Art Gallery. There was a wide range of traditional and contemporary Native artifacts. Steve loved this carved wall.

There was an impressive collection of Emily Carr paintings, and according to the Whistler tourism website:

"The collection includes The Crazy Stair, a painting by Emily Carr which recently sold at auction for a record breaking $3.3 million. This price was the highest ever paid for an Emily Carr at auction, the highest for a work by a Canadian woman artist and the fourth most expensive work at an art auction in Canada."

I love traditional button blankets. All three of my kids have made one as part of their Grade 4 First Nations studies.

Basketball shoes... creative, for sure!

Steve, the art critic! Bless his heart - he did it for me! I'm glad there were comfy benches for him to sit on in most of the rooms.

Beautiful painting... wait, that's a window Steve!

I asked ahead of time if I was allowed to take photos. They said as long as I did not use a flash then I was allowed to take all the pictures I wanted. But, selfie sticks are apparently not allowed!! I am sure glad I brought my real camera along so I didn't get in trouble! I don't actually own a selfie stick, so I guess I would have been ok, anyway!

This amazing mask was made with the hair from horses' tails. And it was massive!

The following two masks were part of the collection from the 1800s.

The building itself was a piece of art. I loved all the lines and shadows that you could find. It is a much bigger building that you would imagine from just what you see looking at it from outside.

Steve's favourite piece of art at the Audain was right outside the window... he calls this "Cats at Play!" It was fun to see that they are still making additions and improvements to this impressive art gallery. I would love to return to it the next time I am in Whistler to see what has been added. (Hopefully it doesn't take another 40 years for me to get there!)

This is the totem pole that was in the centre of town.

Loved these bronze sculptures of faces.

And, of course, the Master Artist is always at work. Without question, the most beautiful artwork around Whistler is God's creation of mountains.

So, this is 40...

Happy Birthday (Birth-month!) to me... It started before my birthday with a weekend getaway to Whistler. This was my first time in Whistler, (yes, ever!) and it did not disappoint. Loved it there.  Want to go back!

Steve thought I should have 40 pics of me for 40 years, but I think we made it to about 16...

My actual birthday was pretty special, too... my class celebrated me all week long :) and my family gave me a delicious chocolate cake and gifts. From my family I also got candles, a tabletop fountain, flowers and a garden gnome. Love them all!

Thanks to everyone that made this day extra special.

Eucharisteo

 

Eucharisteo. Before you run away, let me break it down. I didn't know that word, either. I thought it meant taking communion at church. That's eucharist. But, "eucharisteo" is the full word meaning "thanksgiving".

In everything give thanks (1 Thess 5:18). I've quoted that many times. Do I do it? I write thank you notes, even though they aren't as common anymore. I get my kids to write thank you notes, too. It's more than that.

Thanksgiving - the time we sit around and eat a really big turkey, everyone hoping that I picked out a big enough bird so that there will be leftovers for the whole next week. We go around the table and say what we are thankful for. Our family, our home, our country, our good school. It's more than that.

During the past year the ladies at my church read the book, "One Thousand Gifts" by Ann Voskamp. I work on Thursday mornings so I couldn't be part of the book club. Then, a few weeks before the end of the school year my friend said, "Have you read One Thousand Gifts yet? You should. It's not easy but it's good. And it will be good for you."

I just finished chapter 2. Voskamp asked me (because clearly this book was written just for me!), "How do we live fully so we are fully ready to die?" She shares about reading the title of the book that she noticed another lady reading while she was at the hairdresser's, "1000 Places to See Before You Die." Voskamp goes on to question if that is the secret of life. She asks, "Is that it? Are there physical places that simply must be seen before I stop breathing within time, before I inhale eternity? Why? To say that I've had reason to bow low? To say that I've seen beauty? To say that I've been arrested by wonder?" And this next line is the kicker... "Isn't it here? Can't I find it here?"

Me too. That's what I need to ask too. Why do I dream of seeing the world or living somewhere else? Why do I think that if I stop trying to "get ahead" and just be grateful for right here and right now that I have given up? I have been blessed. Beyond measure - blessed. Way beyond anything I deserve. The Bible clearly states that I deserve death, "For the wages of sin is death" Thankfully the verse doesn't stop there, "but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Romans 6:23". But without the gift of Jesus it would be death for me.

So why do people think they "deserve" so much. I hear it all the time: "So glad you could take that trip, you deserve it." or "Get the dessert, you deserve it!" huh? How about this one, "Who cares if the mortgage is more than you can afford, you DESERVE it!" Why in the world do people deserve things they can't afford or don't work for? I don't get that. 

That brings me back to thanksgiving. I choose to live in thanksgiving today. Whatever the day may bring, it is a gift. Jesus gave thanks on the night that he was betrayed (1 Cor. 11:23). How could he do that? He said "thank you" when he knew what was coming the next day. When the 10 lepers were healed, only one came back to thank Jesus. And it was the Samaritan - the foreigner. Jesus said to him, "Rise and go, your faith has made you well." (Luke 17:19). As Voskamp points out, Jesus had already healed him, so what is this bit about his faith making him well? She goes on to say that "well" refers to being "whole" or "saved" from the Greek word "sozo" which means salvation. "It means true wellness, complete wholeness. To live sozo is to live the full life. Jesus came that we might live life to the full. He came to give us sozo." The leper that came back to say thank you received sozo at that moment. That's the moment that we receive a full life, a healed and whole life - when we live in thanksgiving. 

Earlier this week, during family Bible reading, my kids asked for the 10 Commandments because they had been learning them at my parents' house the previous week. So, I opened up to Exodus 20 and read the chapter. That is a passage of scripture that I have read a hundred times, maybe a thousand times, but it still jumps out at me when the words "do not covet" come off the page. Don't look at what someone else has and think, "They are so lucky. They don't deserve that as much as I do. Why did God bless them that way and not me?" Busted! And my head and heart need to be retweaked. Thank you for the world so sweet, thank you for the food we eat, thank you for the birds that sing, thank you God for everything. Really, do I need more than that? He has given us this day, and our daily bread, so say thank you and believe it. 

Eucharisteo = thanksgiving. Charis = grace. Chara = joy. 

Living a life of thanksgiving will ultimately bring with it grace and joy. They are part of the same word. 

 

The Bluenose

My artistic mother created this watercolour of the Bluenose back in 1967. I am now the proud owner of this work of art. It was in her high school art class, she thinks it was grade 10, and her teacher gave her a B. How can you grade artwork? She painted this on the piece of cardboard that you find at the back of a pad of writing paper. She did it one evening, at home, with some basic watercolour paints.

 
 For more info on the Bluenose, here is a link: Bluenose