49 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 6-10-16”

  6. School is over for this year. I don’t feel that I got to say a goodbye. I ran out of time at the end of the day. I had the kids read their cards they had made to the young gal who has been helping and to our aide. Made for a great goodbye for them, but no time for me. That’s okay, we have had lots of hugs this year. And earlier we had to wait for a video to work and sweetly sang some praise choruses together. That was my goodbye.
    I have never seen this class so quiet as when they watched the Hairy Maclary video.

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  9. I know we are all from different denominations here, but since I am reading in Romans, I am interested to know, from any who desire or have time to answer, what does it mean to you to live in the Spirit?

    “…Now we can serve God, not in the old way of obeying the letter of the law, but in the new way of living in the Spirit.” Romans 7:6 (NLT)

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  10. Re the header photos: the pelicans in flight was taken on our stop in Nashville on our way home from the Smokies. I saw a V-shaped flying formation and they didn’t look like geese (they were a distance away, and I really couldn’t see individual birds), so I zoomed in and took several shots. This was the last one I got and the only one that didn’t come out fuzzy. When I looked at the screen to see what I had, I was shocked–I never saw pelicans in Nashville. I read since then that white pelicans are much larger than brown, about 50% larger than the largest Canada geese, and the second largest (I believe in terms of weight) flying bird in the U.S. So I wish the sky had been blue in the shot, but it isn’t a bad capture for a picture from a hotel parking lot in Nashville TN.

    The flowers were growing near the visitors center (Sugarlands) in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. They are sundrops, and they’re wildlflowers, but apparently they grow well in gardens and are good at attracting pollinators. Reading about them made me want some! About the brightest flowers I’ve ever seen. The red among them is the bud.

    The third photo was also taken in Nashville. The young mockingbird (to the right) was squawking for food, and I think its parent was feeding it. I quickly turned that way and zoomed the lens, but the parent moved quickly away from its chick. Then the baby squawked some more, and in this photo I think I captured a look intended to say “Shut up, Junior. A person is watching us.” Mockingbirds are easily one of my favorites, a childhood favorite, and here we rarely see them. I love visiting the South and seeing them everywhere.

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  12. Good Morning…so glad I stopped in and saw that amazing shot of pelicans…upon first glance I thought it to be jets…then I put my glasses on! 😛
    Got to rush into work today..and tomorrow…boss is out of town…it’s predicted to be 94 in the Springs today….it will be 10 degrees cooler here in the forest…tomorrow will be the third anniversary of the devastating fire here in the Black Forest…lives forever changed…some just now attempting to rebuild…others have moved ahead with much less pain…my two dearest friends continue to feel the grief and pain of it all…it just doesn’t seem they can move past it all….
    Have a blessed day ya’ll…looking forward to hearing Kim’s tales of the CA trip!! ❤

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  14. And I’m waiting for you . . .

    Daughter surprised me at 6:30 this morning–she had driven all night from LA and was still wearing her ambulance uniform!

    She’s now asleep and I can rest knowing she’s not driving all day. 🙂

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  16. Today was supposed to be Forrest’s last day of school for the year, but he is missing it because his father picked him up this morning to take him for the weekend. R is back only temporarily, for a funeral. Forrest was excited about seeing his dad again, after two months of his being gone.

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  18. You know my daughter drove all night. She said I-5 was all trucks most of the way. She only stopped once for gas and not to make any rest stops–a single woman traveling alone.

    She also wore her uniform which has a big metal badge.

    All things considered, that was wise. At first glance you’d see the badge, but not the patch that said “ambulance.” She isn’t foolish, but people see the badge and they treat her with more respect.

    Still, I’m glad she’s driving back with friends Sunday afternoon! 🙂

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  19. Janice – To me, living in the Spirit (also often referring to as walking in the Spirit) is a way of life that means total dependence on God, & on the leading of the Holy Spirit, rather than in our own ways & with our own reasoning. (Not to say we shouldn’t use the brains that God gave us, but that we should submit our thoughts, ideas, & desires to Him, seeking His guidance.)

    Proverbs 3:5 & 6 encapsulates this, I think:

    “Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
    and do not lean on your own understanding.
    In all your ways acknowledge him,
    and he will make straight your paths.”

    That’s in the ESV. Another version ends with “he will direct your paths”, which I like.

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  20. Flying into Friday!

    I picture Peter wearing something like a park rangers uniform in the cave.

    Great interview last night (she called just as I was getting ready to leave work & we must have talked for an hour at least) with a scientist from Ireland studying urban coyotes. She started out studying rats — and still studies other wildlife, she’s off today to San Diego on a mountain lion study. But she said there’s so much really that needs to be done on the urban coyote phenomenon that it’s where she’s focusing right now.

    It’s research, she said, that should have been being done all along — which is why everyone’s now scrambling, trying to figure out how to deal with this.

    Both LA & one of our other coverage cities are expected to come out this week with their ‘coyote management plans’ so I’m doing a story in advance.

    I will also need to call the animal rights folks (who are stalwart opponents of trapping for any reason in a coyote management plan — and they don’t have to worry about LA, it will never approve of any sort of trapping option, in my opinion).

    I trust the scientists and researchers more on this topic as I don’t feel they have an added political ‘agenda’ driving their positions. As a result, they have a much more reasonable and open minded approach, yet one that respects wildlife and tries to avoid lethal management as much as is humanly possible. But there comes a time when lethal management should be used.

    (The scientist I interviewed yesterday dared to suggest — GASP — that there is, after all, a hierarchy of life forms on the planet, something I doubt the animal rights groups could even bring themselves to acknowledge.)

    I also have some data from the county health dept — there were 15 attacks on humans last year, 9 of them in one of LA’s city parks, yet only one of those incidents ever was publicized so city officials keep saying it was just one attack, not nine.

    Happy Birthday Michelle — and happy homecoming to Kim & BG, can’t wait to hear, either, about the big ranch adventure! 🙂 We missed you.

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  21. Whenever I see pelicans, a certain limerick flickers through my mind, though the version I remember was sanitized, from an old school reader.

    Janice, I wish I could send you our former pastor’s Sunday School series on the work of the Holy Spirit. It was what helped me to survive the spiritual crisis I faced in my teens. Sadly, it was never recorded. He focused mainly on John chapters 14 through 17, but many other passages were also brought in, including the ones in Romans. He showed how every believer is indwelt by the Holy Spirit (I Corinthians 3:16); sealed by the Spirit (Ephesians 1:13); and taught by the Spirit (John 14:26 and 16:13). In having access to the Spirit of God, we have access to all of the members of the Trinity, as Christ said:

    And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.

    I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.

    Since every believer has the Spirit, we can all walk in the victory of Christ over sin and death. Paul says in Galatians 5:16, “Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh.” The practical ways we can practice walking in the Spirit include learning and meditating on the word of God, both individually and in a church; praying, perhaps the most often neglected (talking to myself as much as anyone else); having fellowship with other believers; and obeying God in baptism (whether pedobaptists or credobaptists, we can agree it is an act of obedience) and participation in the Lord’s supper after prayerful self-examination. For me, walking in the Spirit is difficult to describe. Learning to distinguish between the Spirit’s conviction and leading, and the conviction and leading of one’s own conscience and instincts only comes with continual practice of those things I listed above. And it isn’t as if you ever come to a point where you can stop practicing. Finally, even in those times when we don’t actually feel or understand the Spirit’s leading, He is still working in us:

    Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. (Romans 8:26-27)

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  22. I missed Chas and Elvera’s Anniversary, so a belated congratulations to them for so many years of marriage.

    I’ve been busy these past couple of weeks, for numerous little reasons. We are gearing up to receive two new members of the family at any point in the next couple of weeks. One of the mothers is going through this for the third time, in almost as many (4) years; for the other, this is the first time. We’ve been taking care of the third time mom’s little ones while she visits the midwives for the weekly check-ups. I was feeling tired, due to the cold I had having settled in my lungs, so I was laying down briefly. Little Niece, who is not quite three, got up beside me, and I ended up reading her the first chapter of Little House in the Big Woods with her snuggled up beside me (it was chilly that day) – later on in the day, she wanted to read more!

    Despite a lingering cold (it was a pretty miserable one), I was well enough to attend First Aid/CPR course which I had to renew for upcoming school (and it is also necessary for work too). That took a couple of days. I’ve been setting up the new computer eldest sibling and spouse got for me to take to school. It is a Windows 10, so I’ve been figuring out how to work my way around the quirks – it would have been nice to avoid having to use it, but the march of change (I can’t really call it progress) is inexorable. I’ve been trying to accomplish all those little tasks which one tells oneself they will do in the summer. I want to do as much as possible before I go away to school. And, I’ve been trying to advise a budding author who is preparing a book (meaning I have to do research too) and to help a friend struggling in her marriage. I think I’ll put up a prayer request about that.

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  23. Oh, not that I have much to do with this one, but we have acquired some pets. Second sibling and spouse have no room for them, so they asked us to board them. The pets are small and fairly easily accommodated, only required a small space in our large backyard, and requiring sugar water when the weather. It is hard to say how many of them there are, but the average number is between 20,000 to 60,000 bees in one hive.

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  26. Mumsee, among the random facts I have learned so far are:
    – Store clothing used to tend the bees in an outbuilding – the bee venom and excrement on the clothing can become aerosolized in the house and trigger severe allergies (it is actually safer to be stung occasionally by a bee than to inhale traces of venom on clothing).
    – Use white sugar to make the sugar water. Sugar should be added to the water until it reaches saturation. Bees can’t go out in the rain, so they use the sugar water on rainy days.
    – You might not think there are many flowers around, but the bees think otherwise. We saw them collecting nectar from those teeny, tiny asparagus flowers.

    Michelle, I will be returning to the city where I was when I first started blogging on World. It is about a three hour drive away. I would request prayer that I will find an affordable, safe, and convenient place to live. The last time, I co-rented an apartment in the worst part of the city and it was long bus ride to the school. Since I don’t have a car again, I will have to take the bus.

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  27. When I took the shots of the pelicans, I mentally estimated about 20 birds. Later I counted. As far as I know, I got all the birds in all the photos. But the shot above, I count 19 (including the second bird in the set where one is mostly hidden behind another bird). In one of the other photos, I counted 20, and in one 21. This one was cropped a little, since they were about to fly behind a light post and I had to crop it out, but I kept all the birds. But either two were in front or behind the flock, or they’re hidden behind other birds.

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  29. Happy Birthday, Michelle!

    And Happy Birthday to Chrissy! 🙂

    It’s supposed to reach 90° today, so I’m mostly hanging out inside with fans running, though it was nice sitting on our porch this morning around 8:00, reading my Bible.

    Big project today (though I doubt I’ll finish it in one day) is majorly cleaning out the master bedroom. We just have too much stuff in there that doesn’t belong in a bedroom, and other items that do, but need to be organized better. (Or tossed — I’m not sure how necessary a lot of it is, and I know I don’t love every single thing in there, either.)

    It’s not exactly a restful place when I haven’t been able to get the closet doors closed for many months! 😛

    And, seriously, when my husband and I come back from our anniversary trip next week, I don’t really want to come home to the same old bedroom/storeroom. Getting it done (or at least respectable looking) before we leave Tuesday will be a pleasure.

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  30. Amen on that Six. For years I have just tossed things in to our bedroom that did not need to be in the hands of various children. We could barely walk through. But as we downsized a bunch of eighteens, I was able to downsize a lot of the clutter. It is a lot more hospitable in there now. I can go and sit on the couch and relax for a few minutes away from the mommy mommy mommys. Nice. Enjoy! It will be worth it.

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  31. Happy birthdays to Michelle and Chrissy. Happy Anniversary to Chas and Elvera. For some reason I could not post yesterday. I seem to have issues with this computer after it upgraded to Windows 10. I didn’t want to do that and missed that they were going to do it automatically. It cost me a lot, since my gig allowance was way over. 😦 Plus the aggravation!

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  32. We returned to the apartment of the relative we helped moved. Helped empty and sort out a few more boxes. Also, took a couple to be donated. I organized the living room and bedroom better. This relative has no idea about the simplest of concepts, although he is older than I am.
    He was simply amazed at how much room he gained. This job is not nearly finished, but there is light at the end of the tunnel.

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  33. Plugging away so no one has to take care of my messes… 😉

    Four torn fitted sheets (and one pillowcase) in the wastebasket. Complete sets of queen-size bedding in the master bedroom — and only queen size — double and twin-size bedding in the appropriate rooms.

    Crib sheets — crib sheets? when the youngest child is 8 1/2? — and baby blankets to be washed and donated.

    Incomplete bedding sets (see reference to torn items above), parts of which are still good, to be stored together for use as paint drop cloths.

    Slowly, but surely… Yep, Mumsee, I will enjoy…when I get there. 🙂

    Back to work.

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  35. When son was young we had a few rules like he could not go downstairs in husband’s home office where tax clients met and records were stored, and he could not leave any toys in our bedroom. Once he left a toy in our bedroom and it got thrown away. That was almost traumatic and when he begged me to spank him instead. The toy got tossed, and we never had toys in our bedroom again. Sometimes you just have to show children you will do what you said even though you would prefer not to. I was also the preschool teacher who would put the kitchen center out in the hallway if the children climbed on it or hid behind it, etc., or misused it in some manner. It got their attention, and was a good life lesson that you lose things that you don’t take care of.

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  36. ☆☆☆HAPPY☆☆☆
    ♡♡BIRTHDAY♡♡♡
    ☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆
    ♡M•I•C•H•E•L•L•E♡
    ◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    M&M’s With Peanuts
    ○●○●○●○●○●○●○●○●

    Enjoy a sugarfree birthday cake!!!

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  37. Thanks all. It’s been lovely.

    Got Kim and BG to the airport express bus in time with no problems. They got to town earlier than I expected, so we could visit and I could take them to see some of the beautiful views here. They should be at the airport in an hour and make their 7 o’clock flight okay.

    Assuming TSA isn’t a problem on a Friday afternoon.

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  38. Your cakes just keep getting better and better all the time, Janice. 🙂

    Oops, did I just take the first piece before Michelle arrived here for the party?

    😉

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  40. Art and I watched the movie The Young Victoria last night, and I think if anyone is having trouble with daughters thinking their parents are too strict, they need to see that movie. It will help put things in perspective! ♡

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  41. Happy Birthday Michelle!
    I was hot in town….then came along a nice old fashion rain storm with huge raindrops! We even got rain our here in the forest….thankful! ❤

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  42. TSA was a problem but we are at the gate waiting
    I am so oooohhh sorry. I got confused and thought June 112th was your birthday. I should have told you today. I slept on the shuttle.
    I will sing for you tomorrow.

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  48. I will be flying in for some cake soon!
    Just found out that grandsons team won the championship so there will be more games for me to cheer, he is even on the all stars

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