Retired

Now that Gary & I are both retired, I hope to get back to blogging, which I have neglected for a year & a half. Bear with me until I learn how to post pictures, etc. We have our house on the market & hope to downsize & move to the Newberg area to be closer to our 8 grandchildren.

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It's been a year since I blogged anything, so I'm trying to get back to it.

Thought for today: Our God is a covenant-maker & covenant-keeper.

Margaret

"Each of us chase after God through our own religious constructs, and at times the experience devolves to little more than being a fan of a particular sports team . We wanted our team to win and crush all the opponents. We had it right, everyone else had it wrong, and we found security and peace in this smug belief. In a word, we had God in a box of our own making.

Legalism involves seeking spiritual fulfillment through our behavior only, performing religious acts based on fear or the belief that our lives will work out because we're doing what God wants.

So many times during my Christian life, I have been told that if only I would do this thing or that thing, I would experience fresh intimacy with God and mature as a Christian. There is something undeniably attractive about a system that enables us to do right and avoid wrong. The problem lies in promoting one narrow view of spirituality, especially one focused on the externals rather than on the heart, and at the expense of other legitimate forms of spiritual expression. Such restrictions lead to smugness and self-righteousness, a sense that we have God under our control. They can also lead to despair when we fail to measure up to what we believe is expected of us or when the legalistic system we follow proves inadequate for the tough issues of our lives.
And it will, because religious legalism is essentially a lie. Legalism is at heart idolatry. Sinful, selfish people do not like the idea of a God who is more powerful that they are. Through idolatry we try to pare God down to our size."

Breaking the Idols of Your Heart
Dan B. Allender & Tremper Longman III

"The act of prayer brings together Creator and creature, eternity and time, in all the fathomless mystery implied by that convergence." Phillip Yancy

It's been 5 weeks since I've blogged. I doubt there are any people who still check this, but I'm going to be more disciplined about posting. We will be going up to Sultan this weekend for a few days of vacation & helping out. We were hoping for nice, sunny, spring weather, but what we are going to get is just typical Northwest spring weather. Snow showers are even predicted for Sun., the 20th. Macy will be doing a birthday party for Melaney's local fans. Her actual birthday is 4-27, & she'll be celebrating at our house with her cousins. On the 26th, her Diefenbaugh cousins will be celebrating their collective birthdays (Brennan - Apr. 30, Kyler - May 3, Ella - May 19)

Merrick & Hannah will be down May 3 (Merrick's birthday) & May 4th. They will be running a half marathan. It's good to see them stay in shape.

The following week I'll be back in Sultan to babysit because Macy has some training that will tie her up early in the morning until late at night.

On May 19th, I will have an 8-hour orientation to the new Sacred Heart building. Its width is the length of a football field, & its length is as long as 2 football fields. So, better get out the Heelys.

Our calendar is filled up through August, so boredom is not operating in our lives.
Let us know if any of you have blogs.

Closing thought: Since God is infinite, his attention can be infinitely divided, & he can give 100% of his attention to everyone at all times.

Margaret

Well, it's been a long time since I've posted anything on the blog; I'll try to be more consistent.

Here are some of R.C. Sproul's thoughts on prayer:

"Prayer, like everything else in the Christian life, is for God's glory & for our benefit, in that order. Everything that God does, everything that God allows and ordains, is in the supreme sense for His glory. It is also true that while God seeks His own glory supremely, man benefits when God is glorified. We pray to glorify God, but also to receive the benefits of prayer from His hand. Prayer is for our benefit, even in light of the fact that God knows the end from the beginning. It is our privilege to bring the whole of our finite existence into the glory of His infinite presence."

It's our prayer that God blesses you lavishly with His love.

We have only a few patches of snow left over from last week's snow storm. I'm starting to think "spring", but I know there's a bit of winter left. However, camelias are blooming, & daffodils will be in glorious bloom by the end of this month.

Here's a thought from our church bulletin.:

"People all over the country shop for churches that "work for them." This attitude is terribly wrong. "Church" is not an event. It is people --people whom God calls us to love. What is more, it is in a very important sense an involuntary community of people: we don't choose our brothers and sisters--God does. And sometimes (often times) those people are not terribly compatible with us--not the people we would choose to hang out with. But it is this very incompatibility that is so mportant, for at least two reasons. First, learning to love the people I don't like is by far the best way to learn how to love (it's easy to love people I happen to like). Second, the church is supposed to be a sociological miracle--a demonstration that Jesus has died and risen to create a new humanity composed of all sorts of people.
Charles Drew from A Journey Worth Taking

Worship is to be an act, rather than a receiving of an experience.

We will be moving to our new hospital (Riverbend) in August. No one gets vacation from May through September.) The current site will still be in use, with an emergency room, 4-bed ICU, inpatient care for geriatric patients, among other things. I will be working at Riverbend, as pulmonary function testing will be done there.

All for now.

Margaret