This post was written in response to Nancy’s challenge at
http://nadiamerrillphotography.wordpress.com/2014/08/07/a-photo-a-week-challenge-patience/
“The two hardest tests on the spiritual road are the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what we encounter.”
― Paulo Coelho
I am not sure how I got ahead of my friend Nicole at Just Live It, but somehow I am about 20 days up on her!
Maybe I just got going so fast in life I managed to cram a couple of days at a time into 24 hour periods.
Anyway today I am making up for lost time and am showing all my happiness for the last four days.
I am happy for the relaxed contented attitude the Lord has been helping me to maintain this summer.
I am happy for all the good work The Winchendon Enhancement Committee has been able to accomplish this summer from this building.
I am happy to live in a picturesque community.
And I am happy that moving my daughter to Medford MA went off without a hitch giving me some time to sit and take these pictures from her back porch.
Remember happiness and contentment are found on the inside not the outside. All clouds have silver-linings and gold stands out best on a black background
Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Earth or the Harvest Season
I love Cee’s Foto Challenge this week. The harvest season has very special meaning in Christendom. It speaks to revival, gathering in, hope and salvation from coming darkness. Harvest season is a time of great and fruitful labor. Jesus asked,
Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. 36 Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. 37Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. 38 I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.” John 4:35-38 NIV
He also said,
“The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. “Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest.” – MA 9:37,38
Now of course when He spoke those things Jesus was not talking about wheat or pumpkins. He was speaking of a harvest of souls. People are the harvest of the church. People are the harvest of Christ. He didn’t die for riches or for fame. He didn’t rise again to prove a philosophical point. He came to rescue people broken by the world. We are each a part of his harvest if we want to be!
“For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16
Are you a part of the harvest?
The GAR park at sunset
Once again it is time to answer Cee’s questions and to share a little bit of my world. When you are done here take a jaunt over to Cee’s place and see what her other contributors have to say about this great wide world we all live in.
Share Your World – 2014 Week 30
Now on to…
THE QUESTIONS!
List 2 things you have to be happy about.
Oh, I have so many things to be happy about! I am blessed that God found me some thirty years ago when I was lost and on a very dark path, And I am blessed that He placed me in a wonderful church family with whom I get to share life! I could go on about the wonderful family he has put me in or the adventures he has sent me on but since that entails more than two happinesses and since I am trying to keep this post under 1,000 words I will stop there.
List at least 2 things in nature do you find most beautiful.
I will limit myself ,again, to two things for the sake of brevity…
I love the ever-changing sky
And the running of water
Show us a 2 of your favorites photographs. Explain why they are your favorite. If you are not a photographer (serious or otherwise), think of a two favorite scenes in your life and tell us about them.
This is a really hard one. I am tossed between choosing a photo for artistic value or for the memory it inspires. I guess I will choose one of each though I have lots of both.
I am still playing with the incense photos I took at my son’s home on my last trip to PA but I am pretty pleased with this one and might even hang it at our upcoming art show.
These are my three wonderful children. From left to right: Melanie (gets married this fall she and her future husband are children’s ministers soon to be credentialed), Joe (planning to teach English over seas when he is finished with his masters) and Amanda (just graduated from Bible College and plans to become a credentialed minister serving the disabled population of the U.S.)
List 2 of your best personality traits.
I think two of my best personality traits are patience and contentment. I consider neither of these to be personal attainments but gifts from God!
Bonus question: What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?
I am so thankful that my sister’s car is finally registered (in preparation for her return from Holland for her year of intineration) and I am looking forward to our mechanic being able to fix all the car’s little issues so that it will be ready for Brenda when she arrives.
“It is not sin, but grace, that will make me indeed know myself a sinner, and make the sinner’s place of deepest self-abasement the place I never leave.” Andrew Murray, Humility, pg. 52
Each day holds a surprise. But only if we expect it can we see, hear, or feel it when it comes to us. Let’s not be afraid to receive each day’s surprise, whether it comes to us as sorrow or as joy It will open a new place in our hearts, a place where we can welcome new friends and celebrate more fully our shared humanity.
I have been trailing a week behind my happiness for about two weeks now. That isn’t a bad thing. Breathing in happiness fumes is good for the soul! Still I thought I would catch up today by sharing some of the really good news coming out of C.cada (our artist’s collaborative).
“Wonders happen either way. With you or without you.”
― Sergey Vedenyo
Because that is true I have chosen to be part of the wonder that God is creatingthrough this incredible group of people called C.cada
Our artists recently lent their aid to Special Touch REACH New England’s disability awareness day. A number of our prayer shawlers and crafters came together to help our guests create a “paper quilt”
Clayton Phelps lent his guitar to the Special Touch cause as well!
“Happy is what I feel; Joy is what I experience.”
― Todd Stocker, Refined: Turning Pain Into Purpose
This is Lisa Johnson, one of our artists. At our most recent gathering she got a little stuck. It happens.
Joy comes in working through the sticking points however big or small they might be. Some call this suffering for your art. I call it creative discipline.
One of the reasons C.cada exists is so that we can encourage one another in our giftings and spur one another on to love and good works. To that end we all work on projects together throughout the year. Our monthly gatherings are about pushing each other through the dry spots so that we actually get artwork done and then together we get that artwork out into the community.
C.cada in conjunction with Winchendon’s 250th Anniversary Committee recently held its first annual summer art show.
“Joy is a gift given not an emotion earned.”
― Todd Stocker, Refined: Turning Pain Into Purpose
One of God’s gifts to me is having children who use their gifts for the Lord. Here is my daughter Melanie at our recent C,cada gathering.
And here is my other daughter, Amanda, helping Melanie with her current art project.
“Don’t look to others to give you happiness. Grow it within yourself and share it with the world around you. Bets are, if you give a bit of your happiness to the world, it will begin a ripple effect, and who knows how many other people you can help. It’s never too late to decide that your happiness (or whatever it is that you want) is yours to create and not the other way around.”
― Leigh Hershkovich
C.cada is about sharing the joy God has to given us with the world!
To that end we have started a testimonial newsletter of how God is working in people’s lives
One Desire has cut its first album of all original worship music and is preparing to share that in a night of worship at a local auditorium.
Our artists just began their splatter painting which will be used to promote the Cloverton concert coming to our church this fall.
For all these kingdom advances coming through our artist’s collaborative I am extremely grateful and happy!
The prayer shawl ministry has created over forty new shawls to be given as gifts to those in need of healing.
“…let us pray to God that other gifts may not so satisfy us, that we never grasp the fact that the absence of this grace (humility) is the secret cause why the power of God cannot do its mighty work. It is only where we, like the Son, truly know and show that we can do nothing of ourselves, that God will do all.” Andrew Murray, Humility pg. 32
“He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.”
― Socrates
This has been a summer of simple pleasures: good weather and music in the park.
Lillie-Put 