In Christ, we are thankful for no more condemnation!

Dear Lord!

Sin is upon me like the color of my skin, sometimes. What do I do? I didn't expect temptation to affect me and accuse me and assault me everyday.

Others have made it look easy. They don't seem to struggle. I feel like I'm the only one coming with the same thing to you everyday.

Yet, Your Word has promised deliverance from sin and shame and though I don't feel it yet in my experience. I am aware that You never lie.

I am trying to keep myself from clinging to my sin and regularly taking it to You, until You deliver me from it's presence, I am confessing it. Because I know that when You are done with sin and death You will wrap it all up and throw it away from Your good presence. In that day, I want to be clinging to Christ and not to the sin which has a payday coming.

Now, there is no condemnation. I believe that. I feel condemnation and I feel shame and I feel accused, sometimes. Fear is the tool of Christ to help me to flee to You, from my sin. Please, Lord, help me remember to flee to You, even when I don't want to.

I want to let it go. I don't know how, but I am asking and requesting Your help to be clinging to Christ today and especially in that day. Deliver me, for the sake of the shed blood of Jesus. I trust and desire to walk in obedience, Help, Lord,

Amen.

I hear the Saviour say, "Thy strength indeed is small; Child of weakness, watch and pray, Find in in Me thine all in all." Refrain: Jesus paid it all, All to Him I owe; Sin had left a crimson stain, He washed it white as snow. Lord, now indeed I find Thy pow'r, and Thine alone, Can change the leper's spots, And melt the heart of stone. For nothing good have I Whereby Thy grace to claim; I'll wash my garments white In the the blood of Calv'ry's Lamb. And when, before the throne, I stand in Him complete, "Jesus died my soul to save," My lips shall still repeat.

Uncle Barry looked me right in my face to have a talk one day.

I loved him very much. Uncle introduced me to the concept of love portrayed on screen. I guess, I had never really thought about it like that. But now, at 50 it is something I look for. Probably because of his making me aware of it. He never called Jeanette MacDonald's name, but he said, you poor young people will never really see love on the screen like we have seen in our day. I really wondered what he was talking about. How can you not say that "Love Story" had expressions of love on the screen? I was defensive about the love that I was exposed to on screen in my day. Uncle, what are you talking about? He said when great lovers looked into eachother's eyes and the screen turned black and the rest was left to the imagination. When the communication was real, he went on. I tucked these criticisms in my subconscious and then when I saw Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, I knew what he meant. Their communication on screen was the best I've seen and we young people would do well to take this glimpse of reality or height of human expression on screen into our experience. Like taking in a great sunset, there will be others, but never that beautiful one again.

Where are the Angels?

Where were the angels? Great Expectations. Pip, Abused children. Beaten, Scorned, Where are the angels?

"You are in trouble! She is out with a vengeance against you."

The words that terrorize! "She is crazy with anger. There is no recourse. No one can save you from the wrath." is the sense of confusion that comes when overwhelming fear is used to motivate children. Not all fear, but overintense use of authority...

Children see only the wall. {I have most certainly been there.}

The Plate on the wall when the brother in law got up had cherubs in a circle around, as if to say, someone did see. Seemed no one saw. Seemed no one intervened. But, someone did see. The angels carried news to God and God was most certainly involved in the need of that poor child who would greater take a chance with a strange savage than to trust his sister. Burdens notwithstanding. With what measure you meet is most certainly seen by the angels. Who saw this happened, you might ask? God did see and the angels were on that plate looking at the injustice of the severity that this lone child experienced.

In Great Expectations, it is as though the cinematographer knew that the angels were watching the whipping of that boy and placed that plate right there to signify the interaction of heaven with children's cries.

There was a crooked woman, it seems the movie cinematographer started the movie with. There was a woman whose heart could not be touched by the orphaned-ness of her brother. There was a woman who thought that her work of caring for her brother would be seen in heaven. Granted, that she didn’t send him into a work camp, somewhere and live her life in ignorance of his state. But, her condition of soul could not see the sad estate of this orphan. No maternal comforts to soften the life blows. No, she adds to his sore estate by severe punitive actions. Doesn’t the Bible say spare the rod? Oh dear. He was out in a grave yard. He took the spanking as though it was a usual situation.

Is it wrong to spank a youngun? Maybe not. But, this was unusual severity and the plate on the side with angels, said to me, that someone saw.

Fear that hardens your heart to life... Fear that discourages the soul from endurance is often inflicted by a loving intention of fear.

If you have ever seen your life flash before your eyes at the thought of facing the wrath of an elder person, you will see the flashes of God’s presence in Great Expectations. God nurtured hope out of hopelessness. God used a convict, escapee to raise the condition of a poor misfortunate soul. Who saw? Who could see the eyes of hopelessness? Only an escapee from the hellish condition of the prison could see the futility of the life of this poor child. He probably went to church every Sunday and people looked into this child’s eyes and no one saw the condition except this inmate. What a judgment. What is godliness. Visiting the fatherless and widows and keeping oneself unspotted by the world. Where was God when beatings and hopelessness abound? His eye is everywhere, but I love that picture of the angels on the plate as though they were the only spectators of this family’s abusive parent. What else can we do? Where else can we go? God made a way for this poor child.

Proverbs 9 Wisdom has hewn out pillars. The Foolish woman has her reasoning and hewing,also. The foolish woman and the crooked woman is very busy, as well. She is busy crushing the dreams of those who are around her/him. God sees and He has made a way for PIP. For His own glory.

timeliness vs. respect Take 1

What a curfluffle, you and your dad engaged in over the getting to church! Why can't you just keep quiet and not cause a curfluffle? Because you are my Emmy. Words and words and write vs. right, vs might vs. mites. We have to be so specific. Did you mean to be on time or not? Did you mean to be respectful or not? There are ways and times and expressions appropriate for the moment. I will leave you to work out the details of how you speak to your father about rightness or slightedness. I say don't slight and you don't always have to be right. My advice is always, shut up and say the thing at a more appropriate moment, which is after you are on time for church. Or, just shut up!

It is a soft word...that turns away wrath! Darling daughter

We must watch our tones, darling. We get frustrated at our situation, surely it is true, but our tone must show our kindness, even in frustration. You taught me that, through life, dear girl. I don't know how many times that I have punished you for the words that were in my heart that came out of your mouth. Still, your honesty is admired by me, but I do wonder, if your heart knows how to express the humility to God that it ought. You are a woman and there is little that I can say now that millions of spankings have been lain upon your bottom. Honor of authority of your father and mother is a reflection of your respect for God. Just think about it! And know that I love you!

It is just like your room to be the birthplace of needed grace and true conflict.

That is where grace is needed from God. Conflict and pain, lack of understanding and difficulty on all sides and there, God lends His grace. That is certainly where grace is born. In the darkness of our sinful estate is where grace is born. God sends and patches our darkness and lights our path and crushes our pride and grants His power, when we can't depend on any other, there is God. No, mother can't handle it, that is certain. No, father can't carry us, positively. Only God can handle the trouble that arises. Foes assail, friends disappoint us and we are cast aside, but not cast off from God's presence. Only He is a friend unfailing. I hope you always remember that.

Are we praying, like Petunia, for our nation?

Thank God the passing of the bill to avoid some of the aspects of the fiscal cliff. We must learn to pray for the men in our lives, as paralelled in Cabin in the Sky. What a picture of prayer, Petunia was to pray for her "Little Joe" not to die? I see a figure of Christ and the Church in the United States pictured here. The church in the US is wedded to a nation who is gambling with the future everyday. It is tricked and duped and always promising to come to Christ, one of these old days. We pray and fall on our knees, but we are not called to gamble our very souls for the soul of this wayward nation. We must pray and distance ourselves from thinking that we can pay for the sins of our loved one. God, we pray that You would not let our "Little Joe" nation die. We pray that we would learn as a nation to be loyal to the truth of Christ above our own lusts and temptations. May we learn to cherish the church of Christ in our nation and not use it to manipulate the faithful for gain. In God, we live and move and have our being. May we be faithful to pray for our nation, but not enter into its' gambling habit.