“I cannot thank and praise the Lord sufficiently, that He so comforts me in my tribulation, and that my mind is still fixed to fear the Lord with all my heart all the days of my life, according to my weak ability.”
– Clement Hendrickss, Martyrs Mirror, p. 834-841
A couple of years ago, my youngest uncle moved back with my grandmother Elva, after her hip replacement surgery, having spent a decade driving to her house several times a day to check on her. It’s been hard to convince her that she could no longer live alone safely, but I think she understands it now. But, as a former worker in nursing homes (LVN), she never wants to live in one. She says she wants to live in her home until she “sprouts wings and flies away”.
Continue reading “Why I live with my grandmother”
“God doesn’t answer prayer. He answers desperate prayer.”
– Leonard Ravenhill
In the 19th century, newspapers would sometimes flag articles “Important If True” when their information was potentially urgent but they didn’t have time to verify it before press-time. One wag wrote that churches should put the same sign over their doors.
Even when we don’t fully understand the truth about God and the world he created, even when we’re frustrated when we try to talk about these subjects (“No, that’s not it… what I meant to say was…”), we ought to know that truth really does exist. We might even find that it’s specific, practical, and relevant. And it’s not just important, it’s tantalizing, because it’s so different from the way we’ve been living all our lives. Is the Good News too good to be true? Not hardly.
Unlike most bloggers, I find myself constantly editing and re-editing my earlier posts, sharpening the point I want to make. We need to wake up. We’ve been dreaming.
Elva is what my grandmother’s Texan-German relatives call her – short for Evangeline. She is more than 90 years old, and remembers bouncing on her Civil War veteran grandfather’s knee before 1914, while he called her “My little elf” (in German). She’s fifth-generation Texan, but was raised in a farming community where everybody spoke German, so she didn’t learn English until she started to school. She raised eight children while working in nursing and food service, first in Houston and later in St. Louis.
Continue reading “About Elva”
“The best style of prayer is that which cannot be called anything but a cry.”
– Charles Spurgeon
‘The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernable reality.”…’
‘ “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities…” ‘
— Ron Suskind, quoting a senior advisor to President Bush, in the New York Times magazine, 10/17/2004
“What would you do for your faith; not much, I think. Hence repent, before you are brought to shame.”
– Catherine, burned at the stake, AD 1551, Martyrs Mirror, p. 503
If God hadn’t created the world, nobody would have known the difference, and he could have saved himself a lot of trouble.
