The Christmas Pageant

Another goodie from the Internet loop, sent to me by a friend and, I think, worth sharing:

My husband and I had been happily married (most of the time) for five years
but hadn't been blessed with a baby. I decided to do some serious praying and promised God that if he would give us a child, I would be a perfect mother, love it with all my heart and raise it with His word as my guide.

God answered my prayers and blessed us with a son. The next year God blessed us
with another son. The following year, He blessed us with yet another son. The year after that we were blessed with a daughter. My husband thought we'd been blessed right into poverty. We now had four children, and the oldest was only four years old.

I learned never to ask God for anything unless I meant it. As a minister once told me, "If you pray for rain, make sure you carry an umbrella." I began reading a few verses of the Bible to the children each day as they lay in their cribs. I was off to a good start. God had entrusted me with four children, and I didn't want to disappoint Him.

I tried to be patient the day the children smashed two dozen eggs on the kitchen floor searching for baby chicks. I tried to be understanding when they started a hotel for homeless frogs in the spare bedroom, although it took me nearly two hours
to catch all twenty-three frogs. When my daughter poured ketchup all over herself and rolled up in a blanket to see how it felt to be a hot dog, I tried to see the humor rather than the mess.

In spite of changing over twenty-five thousand diapers, never eating a hot meal
and never sleeping for more than thirty minutes at a time, I still thank God daily for my children. While I couldn't keep my promise
to be a perfect mother - I didn't even come close - I did keep my promise
to raise them in the Word of God.

I knew I was missing the mark just a little when I told my daughter we were going to church to worship God, and she wanted to bring a bar of soap along to "wash up" Jesus, too. Something was lost in the translation when I explained that God gave us everlasting life, and my son thought it was generous of God to give us his "last wife."

My proudest moment came during the children's Christmas pageant. My daughter was playing Mary, two of my sons were shepherds and my youngest son was a wise man. This was their moment to shine. My five-year-old shepherd had practiced his line, "We found the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes." But he was nervous and said, "The baby was wrapped in wrinkled clothes." My four-year-old "Mary" said, "That's not 'wrinkled clothes,' silly. That's dirty, rotten clothes." A wrestling match broke out between Mary and the shepherd and was stopped by an angel, who bent her halo and lost her left wing.

I slouched a little lower in my seat when Mary dropped the doll representing Baby Jesus, and it bounced down the aisle crying, "Mama-mama." Mary grabbed the doll, wrapped it back up, and held it tightly as the wise men arrived.

My other son stepped forward, wearing a bathrobe and a paper crown, knelt at the manger, and announced, "We are the three wise men, and we are bringing gifts
of gold, common sense and fur." The congregation dissolved into laughter, and the pageant got a standing ovation.

"I've never enjoyed a Christmas program as much as this one," laughed the pastor,
wiping tears from his eyes. "For the rest of my life, I'll never hear the Christmas story without thinking of gold, common sense, and fur."

"My children are my pride and my joy and my greatest blessing," I said as I dug
through my purse for an aspirin.

Jesus had no servants, yet they called Him Master. He had no degree, yet they called Him Teacher. He had no medicines, yet they called Him Healer. He had no army, yet kings feared Him. He won no military battles, yet He conquered the world. He committed no crime, yet they crucified Him. He was buried in a tomb, yet He lives today. Feel honored to serve such a Leader who loves us.

GOD BLESS YOU ALL!

I think all mothers can relate to the story of the pageant and that we all can take a minute to ponder the wonders of that last paragraph. Wishing you all a blessed Advent and Christmas. Let's not hurry the season; let's experience it fully.

7 Quick Takes Friday #11

Time again already to contribute to the 7 Quick Takes Friday meme hosted by Jennifer at Conversion Diary, but first let me report on Ray's condition after thanking all of you for your prayers. The doctors told Noelle this morning that Ray's eyes were moving, and therefore they believe he is dreaming, which is a sign of brain activity even if he is not yet conscious or responsive. One day at a time. We wait and pray for what is best for him.

It had been so quiet a week, relatively speaking (all things being relative), until Ray had his heart attack that I had to consider whether or not I even had seven “takes,” quick or otherwise, to share. I finally decided that yes, possibly, I did. Here they are:

(1) Saturday evening I attended, as is typical when I am in town, the Saturday evening mass at Old Mission. Fr. Terry, of whom I am very fond and who has been my de facto spiritual advisor, was the visiting priest. I had not seen him for some time, so it was a delightful surprise to find him there; we made plans to get together for dinner after I return from Lithuania and he returns from New Zealand (planned trips for the latter part of January). After Mass, I spent some time talking with Sr. M and this other person, whose name I promptly forgot (my memory is simply not under control lately). This other person has a friend, Cecilia Willis, whose very serious problem I also promptly forgot. I just know that I was asked to pray for her, so I have been doing that. Fortunately, my bad memory is of little concern here. God knows what ails her, so it is not all that important that I remember. I would also ask you to pray for her, too.

(2) Sunday I spent some time talking to an elderly friend who has no local relatives. Donnie and I visited her the weekend before Christmas, and Donnie had to go get some lights the weekend after Christmas, so he visited her again. When I called her on Sunday, she bubbled on and on about that surprise. I try to call every day, but I only succeed in talking to her a couple of times a week at best because of my travels. When I blogged about her deteriorating and isolated condition in October (7 Quick Takes #5), Pinksy 82 (Stranger in a Strange Land), who is a social worker, suggested a geriatric assessment. Wow! Thank you! We asked her daughter for permission and were given it. The assessment was done, and now the county sends someone there every day for a couple of hours to check on her, help with the housework, and assist her with daily living needs. In addition, the family has now set up a person to check on her every evening and bring her medicine and groceries. After work, a neighbor couple, who works with me and gives me a periodic report, comes by for socialization. And then, there is my daily (uh, weekly) phone call. The situation is much better now.

3) On Monday evening our prayer group at the Old Mission met. There I learned that Sr. M was planning to travel to Idaho. I asked her about how warm a coat she had, and she said she had no winter coat at all. In fact, she had not given a thought to the fact that Idaho would have winter weather that differed from California's sunshine. I have a very warm goose down coat that I wear in places like Siberia and Lithuania, and I would not need it until the 18th, when I have to leave for Lithuania. So, after the group finished our prayers for the evening, I ran home, then dropped by the convent to give the coat to Sister.

(4) Tuesday at the end of the work day, I had an appointment with a cardiologist. There is a bit of a story behind that visit. When I went to the clinic a few weeks ago to get some medicine re-prescribed, there was a new doctor who heard a heart murmur. It is not big deal. I have had a heart murmur all my life, including the eight years I spent in the military service. I have a strong heart. The murmur is functional, not structural, and therefore innocuous. The doctor would not listen to me, however, and sent me to a cardiologist, who panicked at my EKG, and wanted me to get an echo cardiogram and a blood test to check cholesterol level. The conversation went something like this:

Beth: "My heart murmur is no big deal. It's a functional thing. I've had it all my deal. It is innocuous."

Doctor: "Well, your EKG shows that your heart is not keeping up with you." (Hah! Donnie says that nothing and no one can keep up with me! Silly guy!)

Beth: "I'm really sure it's nothing, but okay, you're the doctor; I'll get the echo cardiogram."

Doctor: "And a blood test to check cholesterol level."

Beth: "Oh, I don't need that. My cholesterol level is fine."

Doctor: "You told me your heart was fine!"

Beth: "Okay, give me the details, and I'll go." (Actually, I knew that my cholesterol level was okay because I had had a test about a year ago, but the doctor was only doing his job, so off I went.)

Tuesday I was back in the doctor's office for the results. It turns out that the cholesterol level was on the high side of normal, but the doctor prescribed a diet change rather than medicine. As for my heart, he told me in surprise, "The echo cardiogram shows that you have a very strong heart." (Yeah, I knew that -- even if it does not keep up with me!)

That experience reminds me of the time that Noelle fell at school many years ago. The story is too long to repeat here, but if you have a bit of a sense of humor about medical matters, you can find it on Clan of Mahlou: The Episode of Noelle's Wrist. Sometimes doctors know best, but sometimes patients know best.

(5) On Wednesday, I found myself on a plane once again and once again with no notice. This time I had to make an urgent trip to Washington. Donnie listened to the weather reports for Washington. Oh, oh! Unseasonably cold temperatures – and I had just given my warmest winter coat to Sister, already enroute to Idaho. Well, I did have a winter-ish jacket that would keep me from freezing, and I could use taxis, rather than the metro and walking although I generally prefer the opportunity for some exercise. Regardless of the changes in my itinerary, Sister did need the coat more than I.

I had more important issues to worry about, anyway. As the plane from San Jose landed in Phoenix, I tried to pull out my Phoenix-Washington ticket, but could not find it. I had only one ticket: San Jose-Phoenix. I involved the man sitting next to me and the people in front and back in looking on the floor to see if I had accidentally dropped my follow-on ticket. Nothing. Then I realized that I should not have the San Jose-Phoenix ticket. That should have been taken at the gate in San Jose. Ah, hah! Powers of deduction told me that the ticket agent took the wrong ticket. (I’m no Sherlock Holmes; Holmes would have realized that the first time he pulled out the San Jose ticket.) That, I was pretty certain, would be an easy fix once I got to the gate for DC. It was.

However, as in most cases where there are problems of some sort (at least, with me), a number of people had become involved in my ticket issue. As we were all standing in the aisle, waiting to debark, everyone started talking about my ticket dilemma and similar things that they had experienced. Of course, there was some concern that I had been able to get on the plane with the wrong ticket!

(6) In Washington, I had two days of meetings. On Thursday, I visited our Washington office and laid to rest some potential animosities and certainly some unbased suspicions coming from the head honcho there. It always feels good to change a potential enemy into a current friend. Then, on Friday, I visited the organization where I worked when I was an employee of the U.S. Department of State. Actually, the call was not personal but work-related. I wanted to introduce one of our new supervisors to people who had greater knowledge of some of the international issues with which she was dealing. Of course, though, I took the opportunity, being an extrovert, to renew old acquaintances. After the formal meeting with that head honcho, it was on to informal meetings, with hugs and kisses all around!

(7) And now Friday is drawing to a close. I have all my business done, and I will be off in about an hour to visit a dear friend, the person who helped me with the spiritual needs of Shura when he was having his surgeries at the University of Virginia Hospital. Oh, and it's not just a Friday evening that we will be enjoying together. My friend is on vacation right now because is Orthodox Christmas. We will have yesterday's Russian-Christmas-specialties leftovers tonight. So, I will have two Christmases this year! Now how could this week end any better even with the worries about Ray! A second chance to celebrate a special birth! How often does that happen?

So, in this case, in closing, I will wish all of you a merry Christmas -- again!

Christmas Solitude

I never thought I would be blogging on Christmas Day. However, like so many of my days, this one has not panned out as planned.

Last night, Noelle and Doah came to the mission church to sing carols and attend the Christmas Eve mass which is always beautiful in our old mission where the structure is a bit more sophisticated than a barn might be, thanks to some primitive frescoes, the paintings of the stations of the cross up and down the aisles, and, behind the altar, the inset statues of nine saints who are locally important to us. At the same time, one has only to look down to see animal footprints pressed into the floor as the earthen tiles were drying 200 years ago.

My view of the mass differed from the usual since normally I sit near the back of the church but with Noelle present needed to sit up front where there is space for wheelchairs. As Fr. Ed stopped partway down the center aisle to place baby Jesus in the creche, we could see that Suli, the feral white cat adopted several years ago by the parish, had curled up beside the sheep and was sleeping, oblivious to what was happening around her. Later, during Fr. Ed's homily, when the unheated church had been warmed up by the tightly packed congregation, she awoke, sauntered down the aisle, and brushed past Fr. Ed, who included her in his homily. Then, tail held high, she danced past the dozens of poinsettias and candles surrounding the altar and out of the church through the sacristy door. Suli is a great reminder of the Franciscan founders of the mission.

After mass, Donnie took Noelle home, her medical needs not permitting her to stay overnight, and I tumbled into bed after a long day that had included eight hours of highly stressful crises at work followed by the beautiful but late evening mass.

When I woke up this morning, a cold of some import clutched me tightly, making it difficult to crawl out from under the warm covers. Unfortunately, having a cold precludes me from participating in Christmas dinner with Shane and Lemony, our new tradition since the kids grew up, because Nikolina's health is still too fragile for exposure to external germs. Home for Christmas took on a new meaning today.

Donnie and Doah (called by some "Me and Mini-me") pranced out the door in their in look-alike Santa hats several hours ago, and I have been left alone with the cats: Murjan, Intrepid, and Simone. Pre-conversion, being alone would not have been a desirable state for this extrovert. The reason I have disliked assignments to megapolises has been because I generally feel alone in a crowd in these places. There is a very special kind of loneliness that comes from being surrounded by people who neither know you nor care about you. Nowadays I find solitude to be a gift for when I am by myself I am rarely alone. At those times, whether it is in a crowded airport or here at home with sleeping cats, God is palpably with me. Solitude at home is even more special because it means I can spend time in contemplative prayer, which I did today. I did not feel alone even for one minute today; I had the best visitor possible. So, I have had a very blessed day, dressed in the infamous pink pajamas that I wore to a business casual party some years ago.

Wishing all of you a blessed Christmas Day and season!

What Is Better Than Money? Merry Christmas!

We cannot put up a Christmas tree (real or artificial) because one of our cats, Intrepid, eats all kinds of plants and nearly died once from ingesting a lot of plastic branches. (Thanks to a concerned vet who rushed to our house, he is a wonderfully fine herbivore today.) We can, though, note Christmas in many other ways with decorations outdoors, Christmas cookery, finding fun gifts for colleagues, and shopping for the kids and the grandkids.

Ah, shopping for the kids! That is a relatively new and wonderfully pleasant experience. When they were growing up, we never had money for shopping for them. Medical expenses for Doah and Noelle always robbed us of that particular pleasure, and visiting them in the hospital -- Noelle was there Christmas day for a number of years in a row -- meant little time for shopping of any kind had we had any money to engage in that popular activity.

Nonetheless, we have many pleasant memories from Christmases past. For example, one year we had moved into a new place with a fireplace. Donnie had built a warm fire on a cold Virginia night, and we sat together, enjoying the evening while the kids were sleeping. Five-year-old Doah, however, woke up and crept downstairs. Seeing the fire, he began crying loudly.

"What's the matter, Doah?" we asked.

"Ho-ho burn butt!" he sobbed.

For the sake of Santa Claus's posterior, we put out the fire. Doah went off to bed quite happily, satisfied that he had finished his task of ensuring a safe entrance for the deliverer of gifts.

Then there was the year that we had no money at all. Christmas celebrations of the traditional variety were seriously out of the question, especially since we were moving at the end of December. The day after Christmas, as we were taking our first load of household goods to our new residence, we happened to drive past a Christmas tree lot and noticed that the lot had been abandoned. In the back of the lot was a lone, sickly-looking, leftover Christmas tree. Lizzie and Shane jumped out of the car and delightedly dragged it over to Donnie, who lashed it to the roof. Off we went, pleased with our acquisition, although we got strange stares from passing cars. We later decorated our puny little tree with our traditional ornaments, turning it into a festively proud fir. Homemade gifts in the form of food items were the theme of that year. We decorated the tree with cookies, fudge, and other favorite items of the kids that they removed and ate New Year's morning, the day we had decided would be "Christmas" that year.

Other examples of special Christmas events abound. I will share some of them:

(1) Our introduction to Christmas with kids came when Lizzie, our oldest and at barely two years old too young to know anything about Christmas yet -- or so we assumed -- stood in her pajamas at the window as dark settled around our apartment on Christmas eve and suddenly announced, "Santa Claus is coming tonight!" Oh, no! There were no plans for Santa to come that night! Donnie dashed to the car. It was nearly 9:00. The only store still open was a Five-and-Dime, and all Donnie could find in it were little socks for Lizzie's doll. It was enough to make her happy, and from that day we began the practice of one present per child for Christmas.

(2) We tried to make the one gift something very special, but we could never predict our children's strange requests. For example, Lizzie at the age of eight, a precocious fourth grader (she had skipped second grade), asked for a college textbook on genetics. Her interest came from attending the university Russian courses I taught on those days when she had no school and spending the hour in my intermediate Russian course solving problems passed along to her by one of my students who was majoring in genetics. (He also proudly dragged her to the honors program director, who invited her to attend some lecture-form university courses, where she promptly fell asleep. Nonetheless, the director offered to "enroll" her in the honors program as an aspiring college student, but doing so became too complicated. She had to wait another four years before taking her first college course for credit.) When Lizzie, who did become a genetics major for about three years before changing her major to cognitive neuroscience, received her Santa-delivered genetics textbook, she ecstatically raced from house to house in our small neighborhood to display her treasure, then returned home, plopped down beside me on the sofa, and mourned, "None of my friends like my gift! They think it's dumb."

"Well," I asked her, "What do you think? Are you happy with the book?"

"Yes. It's exactly what I wanted, and I really like all the problems at the end of the chapters."

"What did your friends get?"

"They got dolls. That's dumb!" I don't remember Lizzie ever playing with dolls other than the one that needed socks when she was little, a soft pink lamb that my grandmother gave her as a toddler and that she has to this day, and a monkey that my grandmother made for her out of a sock that she eventually wore out.

(3) One year, no one had been in the hospital all year, and we had money for Christmas! It was enough to buy bikes for Shane and Lizzie, pre-teen and teen at the time. Donnie and I were as excited as children to be able to get those bikes for our kids. (Noelle, who is paraplegic, and Doah, who is mentally retarded, never were able to ride a bike, but they got gifts that they had asked for.) That year, Shane and Lizzie had made no particular gift request, and we played a very cruel trick on them. We hung only the bike-lock keys on the tree and hid the bikes behind the house. The keys blended into the ornaments, and after the other gifts had been given out, Shane and Lizzie had nothing. In true Shane and Lizzie fashion, they looked around the tree one more time and said nothing.

"Did all the gifts get passed out?" I asked innocently.

"It seems so," said Lizzie. "Shane and I don't have anything, but that's okay. We don't really need anything. We didn't ask for anything this year."

"Really?" I asked. "Are you sure there is nothing else?" Donnie pulled one of the keys off the tree and handed it to them.

"Oh, oh, oh!" Shane exclaimed, "We have a bike!" Clearly, he assumed that Lizzie and he would be sharing.

"Go look out behind the house," Donnie suggested, and they took off running. We regretted not taking a camera with us when we saw the look on their faces when they caught sight of TWO bikes! They were extraordinarily understanding kids. They knew what it had taken for us to gather the money for two bikes, and they were grateful to us every time they rode them. That was a special Christmas. Donnie got a bike the following Christmas, and for years the three of them would ride together on Saturdays while I spent the day with Noelle and Doah.

The most special Christmas, though, was not one when we had money for gifts but one when we did not. It came two years after the bike Christmas. That year, multiple surgeries drained our coffers dry. Fortunately, we had an artificial Christmas tree with which a relative had gifted us a few years earlier, so we put up the tree and decorated it. Christmas eve ultimately came, and we knew we had nothing for the children. Donnie and I contemplated another year of cookies and fudge, but before Donnie got down to cooking (something he had to do alone -- I am such a bad cook, I would have wasted the ingredients in preparing inedible foodstuffs), one of us -- I don't remember which -- had a scathingly brilliant idea, to quote Hayley Mills' character in The Trouble with Angels. Donnie had by then begun working as a computer graphist, and we conceived of making coupons for each of the kids for one-on-one activities with Mom or Dad: a snack at McDonald's, a special lesson in one of our specialties, private walks, an activity that the child would choose, and so on. Each child received a book of twelve coupons that could be redeemed at will during the year. They loved them, and they used every one of those coupons! That year remains our favorite. In spite of our annually increasingly brighter financial status, no year matched that one for that year Christmas lasted not one day but twelve months.

The end: As I was writing this post, nostalgia made me turn to Donnie and start reminiscing about that very special Christmas. We want to repeat it. So, we have just decided to give our children and grandkids coupons for future joint activities this year. As for the money we had set aside for gifts, we are now excitedly planning how to get rid of it and have scads of ideas about where to distribute it. I will add a PS later, once we have decided where it will go.

Oh, this year is going to be such a great Christmas!

Monday Morning Meditation #15: We Want What We Want, and It Is More Than We Have

Last Monday I finished Leviticus, and ironically yesterday a new follower, Dee, wrote about the importance of Leviticus in her life on one of my other blogs, Modern Mysticism. One day, based on her comments, I will go back and look at Leviticus more closely. For now, though, I am buried in Numbers, which, I found out, has nothing to do with math but with such things as counting people (the first census!) for the purpose of drafting males for war. (I had no idea that this practice has existed for centuries and was begun by God! That is wild!) So much else that I thought was modern appears to have roots dozens of centuries ago, actions that are enumerated in Numbers: the beginning of the priesthood (a very literal calling of the Levites, the offspring of Aaron), continuation of rules for living (e.g., the exclusion of lepers that continued well past the time of St. Francis), and the concept of sin-contrition-confession-penance. However, none of these practices, as curiously satisfying as it was to learn their origins, struck me nearly as strongly as did the complaints of the people against God for giving them only manna: "And the mixed multitude that was among them fell a lusting; and the children of Israel also wept on their part, and said: 'Would that we were given flesh to eat! We remember the fish, which we were wont to eat in Egypt for nought; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic; but now our soul is dried away; there is nothing at all; we have nought save this manna to look to.'"

Readings: Numbers 11:4-6.

Meditation: I wonder how often we look God's gift horses in the mouth, so to speak. Manna was a great gift, a wonderful food, but once surfeited with it, the people wanted more. Don't we tend to do the same kind of thing today? We begin, for example, with a starter house, knowing that we are not going to be satisfied with that, knowing that we are going to want more, before we even fully experience what we have. We want upgrades on plane flights. We want to kingsize our meals (which is not even healthy and often results in having to kingsize our clothes). We carefully plan to keep our families small so that all our children can have more, whether or not they truly need more. Somewhere once upon a time I read that my children's toys -- pots and pans and the like -- are better at facilitating the development of creativity than all those fancy toys I could never afford. At any rate, my kids never complained, grew up to be creative adults, and do not overindulge their kids, which makes me think that all those extra things and multiple gifts -- we never gave more than one gift to each child at Christmas -- were not necessary in the long run. One year we had no money at all for Christmas gifts, so Donnie used his graphic arts skills to make a book of coupons for each child. Each coupon was good for a special activity to be done together with Mom or Dad, e.g., a trip to the zoo, a couple hours of playing together in the park, a tete-a-tete dinner at McDonald's, the opportunity to cook dinner together with Donnie (I could not help much with that -- as Doah wrote in his book about me: "Mommy is a very nice Mommy, but she is a very bad cook"), and so on. They had 12 months to redeem their coupons. All were redeemed over time, spreading Christmas over a whole year. The kids remember that incredibly impoverished Christmas as their favorite.

Today our children are grown. We had a lot of them because ones we did not birth kept appearing at our door, growing the Mahlou clan, whether or not we could responsibly afford to do so. We had little money, but we had a lot of love. I would rather have it that way than the other way around. As for affording them, whenever God put another one in front of us, God gave us the wherewithall to help that one, including, in one case, sending us a billionaire to cover a million-dollar medical bill for a child from Siberia. Looking back on it, all we ever had was manna, but manna was enough. I would not trade it for all the rice in China or, for that matter, all the baklava in Greece.

And that is far as I can go with you on this Monday morning. I must retire to prayer to ask God to keep on sending me His manna for it indeed is my favorite food, to repent for times that I may have drooled over an American apple pie that I did not need and that would not really bring me either happiness or health, to give thanks for all the ways in which God takes care of me and mine every day, and to offer praise for the ways in which He manages to orchestrate caring for all the needs of everyone in the world who will go to Him to ask and even often of those who don't know to ask or won't ask, just because He is merciful.

After that, I will spend some time in contemplation, open to any new understanding with which He is willing to bless me and, if nothing else, then welcoming nothing but His presence. The sheer joy of His presence surpasses any other happiness I have ever experienced.

I will now leave you to your prayer and contemplation, but first, I would like to bring to your attention a Monday morning prayer post that you might enjoy:

Fr. Austin Fleming, priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and pastor in Concord, Massachusetts, posts a prayer each Monday morning that he calls "Monday Morning Offering." I enjoy his prayers very much. I hope you also will find them inspirational. He has graciously given me permission to include a link to his blog on my Monday Morning Meditation posts.

For inspiration throughout the week, I would point out two sets of blogs: (1) the list of inspirational blogs that follow the enumeration of Monday Morning Meditations on the right-hand side of this blog and (2) my blogroll, where I am following a number of inspirational priests and writers about spiritual matters. I learn so very much from all these people. I highly recommend them to you.

Have a good day and a week enriched by the eating of God's manna. May you be blessed by the way in which He cares for you.

If you pick this up as a weekly devotional activity, please share with me and others your own thoughts about the message of Exodus 35-57 and Leviticus or any other scripture that you choose for meditation. Feel free to copy the image of the mission church; maybe some time in the near future my Internet-inept self will be able to figure out how to use the Mr. Linky buttons, but to date I remain incompetent at the more sophisticated blog stuff. Yes, I know it has been 14 weeks, but I am exceptionally computer-inept. In the interim, you are welcome to use the image and share the meme of Monday Morning Meditation for starting out the work week closer to God.