It’s Wednesday, so don’t forget to pray for The Gambia.
Anyone else have something to share?
Psalm 135
1 Praise the Lord.
Praise the name of the Lord;
praise him, you servants of the Lord,
2 you who minister in the house of the Lord,
in the courts of the house of our God.
3 Praise the Lord, for the Lord is good;
sing praise to his name, for that is pleasant.
4 For the Lord has chosen Jacob to be his own,
Israel to be his treasured possession.
5 I know that the Lord is great,
that our Lord is greater than all gods.
6 The Lord does whatever pleases him,
in the heavens and on the earth,
in the seas and all their depths.
7 He makes clouds rise from the ends of the earth;
he sends lightning with the rain
and brings out the wind from his storehouses.
8 He struck down the firstborn of Egypt,
the firstborn of people and animals.
9 He sent his signs and wonders into your midst, Egypt,
against Pharaoh and all his servants.
10 He struck down many nations
and killed mighty kings—
11 Sihon king of the Amorites,
Og king of Bashan,
and all the kings of Canaan—
12 and he gave their land as an inheritance,
an inheritance to his people Israel.
13 Your name, Lord, endures forever,
your renown, Lord, through all generations.
14 For the Lord will vindicate his people
and have compassion on his servants.
15 The idols of the nations are silver and gold,
made by human hands.
16 They have mouths, but cannot speak,
eyes, but cannot see.
17 They have ears, but cannot hear,
nor is there breath in their mouths.
18 Those who make them will be like them,
and so will all who trust in them.
19 All you Israelites, praise the Lord;
house of Aaron, praise the Lord;
20 house of Levi, praise the Lord;
you who fear him, praise the Lord.
21 Praise be to the Lord from Zion,
to him who dwells in Jerusalem.
Praise the Lord.
Wandering Views 
Good morning, Lord,
There are so many things happening with the blog family these days. You know it all before we mention it. You know the issues prominent before each of us . . . some are medical in nature and possibly life-threatening and others seem lesser yet as stress builds from the gnawing of issues and needs unmet, that too can be life-threatening in the unseen health realm.
Lord, I lift up Mr P for an excellent recovery with good reports from the doctor when he goes for his first post-op visit. Thank You for carrying him through that long-awaited surgery. Please bless that other lady (and her husband) with whom Kim waited and waited.
Lord, please give AJ the best possible results from the treatments he suffers through, and may any side effects be nonconsequential to his body. Please give him the gift of forgetfulness of the sufferings between treatments. Thank You for the provision of his loving family.
Lord, thank You for being at home in the Nest where M & M continue to do Your work of caring for needy people who can not function on their own. Please give them all Your rest, take their burdens and lighten their loads. Thank You for making a way for the young to learn new skills in caregiving that will enhance their lives. Thank You for the good example You provide to all of us through M & M in how to give up self and obtain abundant life in You. Please bless the transitioning of each of the Dads with ease and comfort.
Thank You, Lord, for watching over Kathaleena’s family in travel mode and for giving wisdom for this time. Please make future arrangements, better than could be anticipated, for a gathering and enjoyment of being together.
Lord, some of us, like Kizzie and me, have been waiting a long, long time for repairs to our homes to get them in better functional order. You are totally aware of the hassles we put up with on a daily basis with making do. I have long stopped mentioning all my household needs since they seem so extreme. But You know. And Kizzie is having to wait on Nightingale to do her role in getting things moving. Please give Kizxie the right approach to motivate and not escalate any under-lying tensions in her household. I pray Nightingale is already formulating a solution for the New Year and it will all work out for good for all.
Please, Lord, help our furnace to keep working during this single digit cold snap and all during my radiation treatments this winter. The timing of this is out of my hands and I don’t want to worry about that on top of other things. I give that to You, Lord. Thank You for being our burden sharer.
Please bless Abby with a release of her anxieties and a leap into relaxation mode with Dj so that there will be a transfer of safe feelings from the couch to Dj. Thank You for that Christmas miracle♡
You have given us the best Christmas present, the first Christmas present! Thank You for that most of all. And thank You for the gift of teaching us to pray for ourselves and one another. Thank You for how You are working out solutions on each of these requests and for the ones I have neglected in this prayer.
I pray in Jesus’ name, Amen
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Amen.
Thank you, Janice, for putting my thoughts into prayer form.
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Members of our family are driving between Seattle and here the next two days–snow is predicted. Please pray. Thanks.
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Amen, and thank you Janice.
Kathaleena, I was sorry to hear about the decision, wise but painful I’m sure, to forego the gathering this holiday for you and your family, but hoping you’ll find another opportunity soon.
I have the Gas Co. coming out next Tuesday to assess my heater, am praying a new unit will not be needed due to the expense and hassle; but that this one somehow will pass the inspection and/or, if not, that it looks to be fixable at a lesser cost.
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Today’s devotional from Paul Tripp:
I love the pleasures of Christmas. I love how much of God’s glory is edible—the cookies, the chocolate, the cookies, the big dinner … oh, did I mention the cookies?
I want to conclude this series of four Advent devotionals by remembering that the birth of Christ is deeply connected to pleasure in the heart of God. But it’s not the pleasure you and I would typically associate with the joys of Christmas.
It’s the pleasure of grief.
Isaiah writes in Chapter 53, verse 10, “Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him” (KJV). The ESV translates, “Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief.”
How could it be that God the Father would ever find pleasure in the crushing of his Son? If you’re a parent, you know that it pains your heart to see your child experience a minor bruise. Can you imagine, as a parent, watching the grief and torment that Christ faced on the cross?
How could it be? Scripture answers Scripture: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
At any point in 2022, were you tempted to doubt the love of God? If not, you probably will in 2023, or you are certainly near to someone who is questioning.
Maybe it will be during a moment of physical suffering, and you wonder why God has allowed this pain to be your experience. Perhaps it will be amid a very significant, relational disappointment when somebody you love has turned their back on you, and you wonder why God has brought this into your life.
Maybe this economy or inflation produced financial difficulty, and even though you’ve sought to obey God and strived to be a generous steward of the resources he’s given to you, you lost your job or are barely paying your bills. Or as you look around at the world you live in, all you see is evil is prospering, and you wonder, “Where is God? Where is his love?”
Whenever the enemy would whisper doubt into your ear, run to Isaiah 53:10 and John 3:16. God’s love is so magnificent and faithful, so powerful and willing, that he would be pleased to give his Son to cruel suffering and cruel death so that you would know life.
And, if he would do such a thing, would he abandon you in your moment of need? Romans 8:32 says no, he will not! “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?”
If you’re anything like me, it’s easy to find evidence of the love of God when you’re experiencing pleasurable seasons of life. But neither God nor his love change when those physical pleasures are taken away.
During these moments of uncomfortable grace, your inner peace won’t be found in understanding. No, your spiritual rest is secure in the pleasure of the Father and the willingness of his Son.
There is no more clear-pointed, rest-giving demonstration of the love of God for you than the gift of his Son.
Merry Christmas!
God bless,
Paul David Tripp
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Good one, Dj.
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praying for all the above.
Warmth, travel and safety especially in the coming days of loved ones gathering.
We will be having a quiet Christmas Eve then attend church on Christmas Day. Told daughter we would not have the usual obligatory gathering here this year. She was fine with it as I expected.
Next step to be taken which we know not yet concerning husband. Definite will be either surgery or radiation or both…he will be meeting with doctors in the coming days to make decisions.
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Praying, NancyJill. Unsettling, I’m sure.
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Prayers, NancyJIll. Especially for wisdom for the medical personnel and your family.
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Yes, Nancyjill, prayers for Y’all, too. We dfinitely have a number of us going through such unsettling situations of waitings and unknowns.
My PCP told me last week that we now by law get the lab results on our portals as soon as available instead of them being filtered through a doctor. It is a newish law which seems like it can lead patients easily to wrong and worrisome conclusions.
I think, Nancyjill, because your husband is so active that it is easy to forget that he has this going on because it is so unexpected.
Since I am now more active than I have been in some years, it is easy for me to sometimes forget what I have going on. There is a disconnect like, How can this be?
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Janice – I am sorry to hear that your home needs a lot of repairs, too. 😦
Nightingale’s bathroom would be the first thing we have to get to, then the outside wall of my living room, and then maybe the roof or part of the roof may need work. And there are more repairs and updating that need to be done throughout the house.
Sometimes I honestly think that if weren’t for the fact that we would have to rent someplace to live for a while and pay to have a lot of our belongings in storage, it could be cheaper to have the house demolished and rebuilt. I’m serious, too, not being funny. 😦
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You could build 2 houses! One for Nightingale & Boy and a back unit for you on the same property for you.! Everyone has their own bathroom that way. 🙂 They’re own “everything” but you could still hang out together in one of the homes. Or a duplex, those have been popular out here since the early 1900s. My real estate broker suggested I might want to go that route when I was first looking, as it would provide some income (provided you had a good tenant you knew). Kind of wish I’d given that some more thought now.
But building new would probably be more expensive? Still, repairs on these old places are daunting on a single not-high income.
I’ve also heard building materials and construction in general right now is very expensive. There’s a reason for that but I forget what it was now, I’m sure related to the pandemic, supply chain quagmires, demand levels …
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I had a plan to add on and rent out the split level part and live in the added on flat, smaller area, but Art was not interested in doing that. So here we are dealing with steps up to the bathroom. At least we have retired that potty chair in the living room😀 Going up and down stairs daily is good exercise for as long as people are able. Art is doing better with stairs now than before surgery since he rested so much after surgery. Glad for that😀
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Step mom did the stairs until she was one hundred and three months. Probably what kept them going.
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DJ – The funny thing about you mentioning a duplex is that we do live in a two-family house. But it was decided, since Nightingale does the cooking and her stove doesn’t work anyway, that my kitchen would be the one we use. She does still use hers for some things for just her and Boy, like their snacks and making tea or hot cocoa in an electric water heater-upper (whatever it’s called 😀 ).
It is primarily the bathroom issue that is the problem, although sometimes she is using the kitchen to pre-make her lunches (and she’s not a sandwich or plain salad girl, so her lunches often take some cooking – but they are nutritious and healthy) or doing some late baking or whatnot into the evening. But that’s not an everyday thing, because she’ll make her lunches for a few days ahead.
The situation will ease up quite a bit when her bathroom is back up and running, along with her laundry machines. (She has to use mine in the basement, which involves coming and going, but at least not right through the living room as they have to do for the bathroom.) When they no longer have to use my bathroom, I will be able to close my living room door more for more privacy, but keeping it open a bit for the dog and the cat to come and go.
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We joked a while back about Nightingale buying her own house and putting me in a “granny pod” in the backyard. 😀
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