'Tis Mercy All

A Happy Thanksgiving to Everyone!

...always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Ephesians 5:20

Thy mercy my God is the theme of my song,
The joy of my heart, and the boast of my tongue.
Thy free grace alone, from the first to the last,
Hath won my affection and bound my soul fast.

Without Thy sweet mercy, I could not live here.
Sin would reduce me to utter despair,
But through Thy free goodness, my spirit's revived
And He that first made me still keeps me alive.

 

Thy mercy is more than a match for my heart,
Which wonders to feel its own hardness depart.
Dissolved by Thy goodness, I fall to the ground
And weep for the praise of the mercy I've found.

Great Father of mercies, Thy goodness I own
In the covenant love of Thy crucified Son.
All praise to the Spirit, Whose whisper divine
Seals mercy and pardon and righteousness mine.

John Stocker

 

(Do you remember those old Toyota commercials from the early 80's?)

 CJ looking on while we packed Operation Christmas Child boxes - one for each of our five, praying each recipient will come to know Christ as Savior

LAUGH. Go ahead. I sure did. Let me explain: last weekend, we did lots of "preliminary work" to prepare for our long road trip - laundry, shopping, cleaning out the truck. Oh yes, something we pretty much only do when a road trip forces us to. Or when the girls cannot find any shoes to wear because they've all been left out in the truck. I seriously do not remember taking my shoes off in the car as a child...but, I digress...

The big three girls cleared the truck of large debris, like books and shoes and papers and nasty bottles that had rolled under the seats. Then I came behind and cleaned the insides of the windows. Hooray!! That felt good to do!

Next came the floors: a quick run through with our little shop vac. So nice to do it when it's NOT hot, and I'm NOT great with child, DON'T have a bad knee! I thought to myself, Hmm, I could spend a lot of time here putting these floor mats on the ground and vacuuming them, or...I could put them in the washing machine!

Brought them inside, and quickly started stuffing them into the washing machine, because I didn't want BB to see me doing it. He laughs at all the random things I wash in the dishwasher and clothes washer. He busted me though, and rolled his eyes and muttered something about not being surprised, I think.

Flipped on the washer, dumped in a little more soap than normal, for obvious reasons, and went about my other work. Until I heard the ka-chunk,  ka-chunk of an unbalanced load threatening to murder my machine. So I zipped in there and sat down on top of it, at which point it settled down and did its appropriate spinning and whirling. And, at which point BB walks in with the camera, catching me so completely off guard that I just laughed out loud. He felt the need to document my creative cleaning techniques and their resulting side-issues, I suppose.

All I know is it makes me laugh, and that now I have clean floor mats.

But I can't say as much for the interior windows. They are already streaked with the art of dirty fingers, but that's okay too, as my grandmother used to say about all things that weren't worth worrying over.

Well, I can't wait to see my parents and niece and mother-in-law, and the mountains, too. May the Lord bless and keep you, drawing you to Himself at this time, that you (and I!) may know Him better, obey Him more fully, and bring Him glory!

*
Mercy!

511 getting to windex the truck's interior windows

512 vacuumed truck carpets and clean mats

513 kids who jump in the truck and dejunk it with their grocery bags in hand

514 the laundry fairy, this time in the form of my servant-kind husband

515 attending a brunch for a long-desired little one due soon

516 A NEW NIECE, safely here, a gift of God

517 the look on her face when daddy reads her bedtime book three times in a row, using special voices. Every time he reads through it, she makes the same expressions, as though she's hearing it for the first time.

518 a date with EG: outlet mall errand and Starbucks

519 a sweet outing with just the two youngest - CA was precious: climbed all over those put-in-a-quarter riding toys with glee. And I didn't even put in a quarter.

520 the way that the downstairs baby monitor gives me a window into much hilarity and sweetness upstairs (and sometimes the not-so-happy goings on)...right now they are in CJ's room with her, reading books and laughing like crazy...

521 when you get to see that praising Him in a very disappointing circumstance resulted in His changing your heart on the issue!