"They gathered manna every morning."

This is from Charles Haddon Spurgeon.

Labour to maintain a sense of thine entire dependence upon the Lord's good will and pleasure for the continuance of thy richest enjoyments. Never try to live on the old manna, nor seek to find help in Egypt. All must come from Jesus, or thou art undone for ever. Old anointings will not suffice to impart unction to thy spirit; thine head must have fresh oil poured upon it from the golden horn of the sanctuary, or it will cease from its glory.

To-day thou mayest be upon the summit of the mount of God, but He who has put thee there must keep thee there, or thou wilt sink far more speedily than thou dreamest. Thy mountain only stands firm when He settles it in its place; if He hide His face, thou wilt soon be troubled. If the Saviour should see fit, there is not a window through which thou seest the light of heaven which He could not darken in an instant.

Joshua bade the sun stand still, but Jesus can shroud it in total darkness. He can withdraw the joy of thine heart, the light of thine eyes, and the strength of thy life; in His hand thy comforts lie, and at His will they can depart from thee. This hourly dependence our Lord is determined that we shall feel and recognize, for He only permits us to pray for "daily bread," and only promises that "as our days our strength shall be." Is it not best for us that it should be so, that we may often repair to His throne, and constantly be reminded of His love?

Oh! how rich the grace which supplies us so continually, and doth not refrain itself because of our ingratitude! The golden shower never ceases, the cloud of blessing tarries evermore above our habitation. O Lord Jesus, we would bow at Thy feet, conscious of our utter inability to do anything without Thee, and in every favour which we are privileged to receive, we would adore Thy blessed name and acknowledge Thine unexhausted love.

I find myself many days trying to live on the old manna- the wisdom I've gathered in another day. Without the daily gathering of my Lord, His Word, His wisdom. We get married and have children and we place the study of God's Word and the time we spend with Him down the clothesline after the laundry. Instead of leaning on Him we lean on the old manna and soon we discover that life is spoiling. But never fear! He is assured us that if we "Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge HIM, and HE will make your paths straight." And "HE will not let your foot slip— HE who watches over you will not slumber"

Washer Update

Our new Whirlpool 9200 series has been working for several days now and I thought it was a good time to give it a review.

The many web searches we did before purchasing this model warned that front loaders tended to shake the house while in the spin cycle. Even the delivery man warned that he had picked up several for returns because the folk didn't like the shaking. I am very glad to say that ours doesn't shake AT ALL! The old one shook the dishes in the living room on occasion but this one is very well behaved.

The load capacity is much better. It washes several more things than the old one and does a better job of it too. Only problem is the dryer, which is not new, can not hold all the clothes.

My only complaint is not really a complaint, more of a disappointment- all of the web sites said that front loaders spin very fast therefore the clothes come out almost dry cutting dryer time by half. I haven't found this to be the case with ours. Yes, they are dryer but not a great deal so.

Overall I am thrilled with the machine. It runs almost silently- a welcome relief in a house with 4 young children! And it washes a lot of clothes- another relief considering these same children have access to a muddy creek!

Footprints in the Sand

Many years ago when I was about 7 my family went to Oklahoma for the funeral one of my uncles. While there we visited for hours with Mom's family and toured around the town where she was born. One day while at my Aunt Olive's home my Uncle Edgar showed me his "book of poems". This book was a large three ring binder chock full of poems. Whenever Uncle Edgar found a poem he fancied he would recopy it and place it in this binder. One of the poems he read to me was "Footprints in the Sand". I liked it a lot and copied it down to begin my own book of poems. However, being a young child I thought that when he said this was "my book of poems" he meant just that, these were HIS poems.

Imagine my surprise several years later when I saw "Footprints" in a local Christian bookstore. I was shopping in a mall with a friend and ran over to the store. "Look! Look! That's my uncle's poem!" She was dubious and turns out she had a good reason to be, it was signed "anonymous".

Well now I thought I could help those poor folk out, after all I knew who wrote it and could even give them his address! Fortunately my mother was also with us and she explained things a little better. I turned red-faced and we left the mall.

Despite this beginning "Footprints" is still a favorite of mine and I want to share it with you. The picture is of my son's wet footprints as he emerged from the baptismal.

Footprints in the Sand

One night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord. Many scenes from my life flashed across the sky.

In each scene I noticed footprints in the sand. Sometimes there were two sets of footprints, other times there was one only.

This bothered me because I noticed that during the low periods of my life, when I was suffering from anguish, sorrow or defeat, I could see only one set of footprints, so I said to the Lord,

“You promised me Lord,
that if I followed you, you would walk with me always. But I have noticed that during the most trying periods of my life there has only been one set of footprints in the sand. Why, when I needed you most, have you not been there for me?”

The Lord replied, “The years when you have seen only one set of footprints, my child, is when I carried you.”

Washing Away Your Money

Here I go again!

My other blog has decided to have serious log in issues (wrong email account) so I have begun this new one. It's no big deal really because there were only two posts on the other one, however I don't feel like going into introductions all over again so I'll just say "Hi" for now. You can find out about us as the blog progresses.

Now on to the post....

This last weekend was a busy one as all July fourths are. There's the yard, all 3 acres, to mow. There's the food to prepare and then there's the cleaning. Ah, yes, the cleaning. The house, the yard, the pool, the grill... well you get it, our compound is the hub of operations on most holidays.
I call it a compound because we live next door to my in-laws. No, it's not a high security kinda compound, it's a compound in the same sense as the Kennedy family compound. We have several acres separating the houses and it's this land that hosts our 4th of July picnic every year. This year it rained but not so much that we had to cancel the cooking and not so much that the fireworks were delayed.

After the weekend of fun and because I had cleaned so well before it, I had several days of no laundry. For all you folk who don't have children this is called a miracle! Then on Monday night I realized that my miracle was turning into a bathtub full of dirty clothes so on Tuesday I began the chore of washing and hanging laundry.

And that's when it happened... Right there in the middle of a load of whites the washing machine died.

I peered into the thing as it made it's awful grinding noise and knew that 12 years and four children with access to a creek had brought it to it's breaking point. Poor thing. It had worked valiantly for us and now it was gone. I spun the knob to spin and, bless the thing, it drained! I was so thrilled! No messy hoses running out the door! But alas, what was I to do? There was still laundry to be done.

It was at this moment that my husband came home.

I explained our awful plight and he went right to work. He spent the next few hours searching the internet for washers- what did we do before the internet??? After a while I checked on his progress and there they were, front loaders, on the screen.

"No honey, we don't want one of those. I've never used one of those before and they look like they'll leak all over the place."

Over the next few minutes my husband explained the why. We are starting on a new house soon. A house that will be off grid. And off grid means alternative energy and that means energy effeceint appliances. So that means front loaders.

Believe it or not but front loading washing machines use only 16 gallons of water verses the 30-40 gallons used by the traditional top loaders. And they consume less power at the same time! UNFORTUNATELY THEY COST TWICE AS MUCH. No wonder people are slow to switch to using less energy, it takes a lot more cash!

Instead of a nice $400 washing machine I just purchased a $800 one UUUGGGHHH!!!

There are a lot of other things I can think of to spend that money on... like food and gas and doctor bills... double UUUGGGHHH!!!

The man comes tomorrow to install the thing and I will get my first try at front loaders. It doesn't seem fair somehow that doing the laundry should cost so much... where is that wash board??