The Good Portion

Be Still My Soul Be still, my soul: the Lord is on thy side; Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain; Leave to thy God to order and provide; In ev'ry change he faithful will remain. Be still, my soul: thy best, thy heav'nly Friend Through thorny ways leads to a joyful end. Be still, my soul: thy God doth undertake To guide the future as he has the past. Thy hope, thy confidence let nothing shake; All now mysterious shall be bright at last. Be still, my soul: the waves and winds still know His voice who ruled them while he dwelt below. Be still, my soul: when dearest friends depart, And all is darkened in the vale of tears, Then shalt thou better know his love, his heart, Who comes to soothe thy sorrow and thy fears. Be still, my soul: thy Jesus can repay From his own fullness all he takes away. Be still, my soul: the hour is hast'ning on When we shall be for ever with the Lord, When disappointment, grief, and fear are gone, Sorrow forgot, love...

The Purpose of that Baby in the Manger Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb ...

This is my mother Geraldine, looking lovely for my wedding almost three years ago.  She did not use a wheelchair normally, fighting to continue living independently to the last.  But she was frail even then and could not have managed such a big day without it.  She passed away yesterday at the age of 87 from kidney failure.  It was a long infirmity.  Her last seven or so years were lived, amazingly, with only 25% kidney function.  Yesterday, after five days in the hospital, her kidneys finally failed completely. She went to be with her Lord just before six o'clock in the evening with her family at her bedside. In spite of her obvious weakness and recent decline, in spite of her many close calls, in spite of her age and all her preparations, I still find myself entirely unprepared to lose her, or to live without her. Nothing she said, nothing I thought, prepared me for this.  And then, there is so much to do. I knew there would be, but it is still ...

I apologize for the late timing of this announcement, but the decision was only arrived at yesterday morning, and I've been caught up in a flurry of activity since.  Yesterday morning found the hostess of our meeting sick in bed and my own mother in an ambulance on the way to the hospital.  Another of our Chico group has, within the last week, given birth to a first-born son. Under the circumstances and with Christmas just around the corner, I've decided to put our study on hold until the first Monday of the New Year.  Lord willing things will have settled a bit so that we can once again focus on our reading.  My apologies for those following along on-line, but I must consider the ladies in my own fellowship of first priority in these decisions.  Accept my thanks in advance for your patience.

As I announced last week, my dear and gifted husband is hosting a reading group on his blog   of the "10 Essential Penguin Classics"   Dutiful wife that I am, I'm doing my best to read along. This is the second and final installment of our first reading together, Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck.  You may read my thoughts on the first installment here . There are two events which occur early in the story, which set the tone for and inform the events that follow - or perhaps there are three: The dead mouse in Lennie's hand in the opening scene, the putting down of Candy's loyal and beloved dog by the self-serving and uncaring Carlson, and, though this may just be an extension of hints from the dead mouse, there's Curly's crushed hand.  There's been some discussion within our group of the use of foreshadowing, that it can be abused; but the consensus among us seems to be that Steinbeck used it well. I would say, when used rightly, or in this case...

(This week we continue our reading together of the Jonathan Edwards' classic, Charity and Its Fruits. We have just concluded the reading of the "Application" portion of Lecture Two. We will continue with the "Doctrine" portion of Lecture Two in next week's reading. This is the pattern we will be using for the entirety of the reading. The notes below will follow Edwards' own outline directly, with all direct quotes from the text in italics. My goal is to make each post edifying on its own, even for those who are not reading along with us. I will welcome your questions or comments in the form below.)  Our study group in Chico is undergoing some growing pains.  One of our participants just gave birth to her first child this weekend!  Amid the flurry such an event inevitably causes among a small group of women, our study for this week was again postponed. Rather than keep our on-line participants on hold for a second consecutive week, however, I've...

Well, this is a definite deviation from the usual bent of my blog, but perhaps you won't mind.  My wonderfully ambitious husband is hosting a reading group on his blog   of the "10 Essential Penguin Classics" (Penguin, as in the publisher, not the cute tuxedoed bird, or the Batman villain). Being, as always, the dutiful wife I'll be doing my best to read along.  I'm trying to keep an open mind, but I may still have to draw the line at the Greek dramas which I've hated since, well, since they foisted them on me in my freshman year of high school. We shall see. The first we are reading in this series is Of Mice and Men , by John Steinbeck.  I should start by saying, his book East of Eden has long been among my top five favorite works of fiction. I first read it in high school, wrote a paper on it in college, and have read it at least twice since.  I've read Of Mice and Men before, at least once, but not within the last decade.  I've also read Canne...

It's been a couple of weeks since I reached the end of Through Gates of Splendor , by Elisabeth Elliot. I was tremendously moved by the story, but perhaps even more so by the second Epilogue, written in honor of the 40th anniversary of the martyrdom of Elisabeth's husband, Jim. Four decades later her reflections are helpful, her wisdom profound. Until reading this book the version of these events which I carried about in my head were along these lines: Jim and his fellow missionaries went to Ecuador with a passion for a certain tribe. They went; they landed; they were massacred; their widows bravely ventured back toward the murderous tribe and when the killers saw the forgiveness of these women they repented and turned to Christ. "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church" is a maxim proven yet again. I liked that version. It was clean and it made a certain sense. But the actual events were not so neat and tidy, not in the events leading up to the massacre, ...

...here at Casa Mathers. Here's our little "count the days to Christmas thingy", which always tugs a bit at my heart.  Each time I move an ornament from the sky to the tree, I miss the little hands and voices of children begging for it to be their turn to do it. Here's the MagnifiCat, Mango, sitting in front of the stockings all hung on the bookcase with care. (This is the Paul Mathers family we're talking about here!) Here are the curtains I just hung in the room that, Lord willing, will be transformed into a dining room by next holiday season, so we can host feasts again. Oh, and you can catch a little peek, over there to the right, of the offensive wallpaper you may have heard us decrying these past three years. (To the left you can see I've finally begun peeling it away.) And, finally, here's our tree. The fabric draped behind it is to cover, you guessed it, the hallucinogen inspired southwestern wallpaper.