A bluebird house stands empty
The power is on. We have not heard what brought the lines down, but it is possible that it was a result of the ice. On the scanner this morning we have heard many car accidents reported. The schools in the area are running late.
I’ve been trying to get my mind to wrap around next year’s school plans, and I must say it has been a lot like shaking hands with an octopus. After much consideration I have decided to give my youngest a year of government and economics in 7th grade. This is an area of interest to him, and at this time in his life, he is considering pursuing this in college. In 8th grade we will return to history. I have not really started getting our literature selections ready—I suppose I will be reading and contemplating that all summer long. When the children were young, I did less preparation and more 1-on-1. Now that the children are older, I do more preparation and spend less time in class with them. It balances out.
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May I offer you a taste of A Sand County Almanac by quoting from it again? This made me smile!
“Getting up too early is a vice habitual in horned owls, stars, geese, and freight trains. Some hunters acquire it from geese, and some coffee pots from hunters. It is strange that of all the multitude of creatures who must rise in the morning at some time, only these few should have discovered the most pleasant and least useful time for doing it.
Orion must have been the original mentor of the too-early company, for it is he who signals for too-early rising. It is time when Orion has passed west of the zenith about as far as one should lead a teal.
Early risers feel at ease with each other, perhaps because, unlike those who sleep late, they are given to understatement of their own achievements. Orion, the most widely traveled, says literally nothing. The coffee pot, from its first soft gurgle, underclaims the virtues of what simmers within. The owl, in his trisyllabic commentary, plays down the story of the night’s murders. The goose on the bar, rising briefly to a point of order in some inaudible anserine debate lets fall no hint that he speaks with the authority of all the far hills and the sea.
The freight, I admit, is hardly reticent about his own importance, yet even he has a kind of modesty: his eye is single to his own noisy business, and he never comes roaring into somebody else’s camp. I feel a deep security in this single-mindedness of freight trains.”
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Thoughts from my Big Green Chair
During our family devotions, we have been reading Isaiah. This is a book full of warnings and threats, promises and hopes. Many of the Old Testament passages that we read during Advent come from this book. Today we were reading a chapter that included the depiction of the wrath of God on those people who rise up against him contrasted by the blessings that the people of God who have chosen to do what is good will receive. The blessings of God’s people come in more ways than one—some are those that we receive here, today; others are blessings that we will have in eternity. At times they are for a specific people and time in history. Other gifts are given freely to all who will receive them. I believe, however, that all the gifts and the blessings in the scriptures are meant to comfort us, to show us who this God who we follow really is, to give us the strength to carry on.
Isaiah 33:20-22 “Instead you will see Jerusalem at peace. It will be a place where God is worshiped. It will be a city quiet and unmoved. The glorious Lord will be to us as a wide river of protection. He will be a river no enemy can cross. For the Lord is our Judge. He is our Lawgiver and our King. He will care for us and save us.” From The Bible for Children
This is my God.
Blessings.
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