My Goofy Family

These are a series of pictures we took recently for my mother-in-law's birthday card. Love the goofy glasses on Judah best. LOL, the Binky reminds me a little of Maggie from "The Simpsons".

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Just wanted to give a shout out to my friends from "Gist's house of Gab", who gave me the nudge I needed to begin blogging. Ya'll are an encouragement and blessing...besides being a blast to chat with about books! After seeing mentions on Deeanne's site of other people's blogs, I finally took the plunge myself. Thanks also to Jenster, for motivating me to get a Blog or MySpace going for our youth group at church, too, which I'm going to get to work on first thing tomorrow. I think the youth will love that, and they'll get to see all the pictures we take a whole lot quicker than when I make collages for the Youth Bulletin Board in the back of our sanctuary!

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Today I was deeply convicted during the sermon at church. Our Pastor was speaking on the passage from Matthew 6:19-21, "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

Little did we know how this would be 'illustrated' by something that happened on our way out the door to church! Long story short, we have been keeping both cars parked on the driveway due to oil leakage, and when my husband stepped out on our front porch this morning, he found our garage door wide open...and it had apparently been that way all night long.

Now my husband had double-checked to see that the garage door was down and the doors between the garage and house were locked last night before bed, because he and the boys had been on a bike ride. Amazingly, nothing was stolen from the garage...which would have been a would-be thief's dream, as we had power tools in their original boxes on a chrome rack right beside the open door, basically shouting as to the contents, which would have made it very easy for someone to walk off with a lot in a short time! I'm so thankful to the Lord and how He watches over us!

Our older son was the unwitting culprit in all this. After the bike ride, he still had the remote for the garage door in the pocket of his shorts, which he'd shed on his floor last night before hopping into bed, and (we think) it somehow got pressed when he got up to get a drink of water a little later that night. (Note to self: make sure remote gets put back where it belongs after every bike ride!) We didn't find this out until after church when our son put on the same shorts from his bike ride and found it. (At least he was honest about his part in it!)

But the story doesn't end there. My husband had been up early in the morning finishing up his lesson for the Youth Group Bible study this morning, and had used that exact same verse in his lesson! In fact, when Pastor announced that passage, my husband flipped through his notebook and showed me.

Yet another one of those "Surround Sound" or "Aha!" moments where the Lord is teaching us something, and it comes at us from all angles when we're listening. It's amazing what He can do with pliable clay, isn't it? (And it sure beats being so 'set' in our ways that He has to chisel the rough edges away after the fact!) .

I believe there were a number of reasons for that reminder this morning, the obvious being that we shouldn't be putting all our energy into accumulating material gain or 'stuff' here on earth, but instead focusing our energies on diligent work for the Lord while we have the opportunity. There was a notation in my Bible when I turned to that passage this morning that said, "The only thing we take with us when we go to heaven are those souls who get saved when we share the Glorious Gospel message with them". That is what I need to occupy myself with doing in the here and now, not letting temporal things become too overly important.

Striving for fab, striving for fab.

Another point made in the sermon was that many Christian people in our Country don't want to go to heaven...yet. And it's not for noble reasons like wanting to share the Gospel with as many people as possible before we die...but because we're too busy living off the fat of the land. Too busy enjoying all the fruits of our labors (instead of bearing fruit!) In other words, we've become horribly complacent. But it was a "to be continued" sermon, so I'll have to wait until next Sunday for the next installment.

Ahh, the conviction. For a stay-at-home-mom (SAHM), it's pretty easy to shirk the responsibility we have to "go" and "tell" others, in favor of the interests of my family. Not that what I'm doing as a SAHM isn't extremely important in the lives of our children, but I do still need to get involved in those things that will open doors of oppurtunity to minister to others, be it another soccer mom or a lady in line at the grocery store, and hopefully in so doing they might come to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.

Am I too caught up with life in the here and now? Too concerned about success and prosperity here? How concerned am I really about sharing the Gospel with others? About being the Lord's hands and feet here on this earth, doing whatever I can to further His kingdom? To work for those imperishable rewards and crowns I'll receive in heaven one day and can then lay at my Saviors feet? Where does my treasure really lie?

Food for thought.