The bonnie lad and lassies. Merisha and I happened to be in our family tartin skirts when Cole came in with his family tartin kilt that he got for Christmas. Fun times...

The Christmas music group. After a bit of persuasion, Pastor Bart joined in our ensamble for Christmas carols. It was wonderful...it'd been waaaay too long since we'd played with a guitar :-)

Christmas dinner:
Possum...mmm!

Me and my mommy on Christmas

Yay for Christmas Pictures!

My favorite Christmas 2006 picture. The three of us under the Christmas tree :-)













Christmas Crew 2006. Us, the Walkers and Cole. Not family, but have become pretty close.

Isaiah 9 has been fulfilled!

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light. For those living in the land of the shadow of death, a light has dawned... For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and this government shall be on his shoulder. And his name shall be called: Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this.
Isaiah 9:2,6,7

Hallelujah, Christ is born! What wonderous love that caused Christ to leave His throne in heaven to come as a humble babe in a manger, wrapping himself in humanity for this for a disctinct purpose: to satisfy the wrath, righteousness, justice and love of His Father. To be crushed for our iniquities, to save His people from their sins. Praise be to God for this incredible gift!

A Great Moral Teacher or Lord and God?

"One part of the claim [of Jesus to be God] tends to slip past us unnoticed because we have heard it so often that we no longer see what it amounts to. I mean the claim to forgive sins: any sins. Now unless the speaker is God, this is really so preposterous as to be comic. We can all understand how a man forgives offences against himself. You tread on my toes and I forgive you, you steal my money and I forgive you. But what should we make of a man, himself unrobbed and untrodden on, who announced that he forgave you for treading on other men's toes and stealing other men's money? Asinine fatuity is the kindest description we should give of his conduct. Yet this is what Jesus did. He told people that their sins were forgiven, and never waited to consult all the other people whom their sins, and never waited to consult all the other people whom their sins had undoubtedly injured. He unhesitatingly behaved as if He was the party chiefly concerned, the person chiefly offended in all offences. This makes sense only if He really was the God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in ever sin. In the mouth of any speaker who is not God, these words would imply what I can only regard as silliness and conceit unrivalled by any other character in history.

Yet (and this is the strange, significant thing) even His enemies, when they read the Gospels, do not usually get the impression of silliness and conceit. Still less do unprejudiced readers. Christ says that He is 'humble and meek' and we believe Him; not noticing that, if He were merely a man, humility and meekness are the very last characteristics we could attribute to some of His sayings.

I am trying here to prevent anyone from saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not have been a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would have been the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God."

C.S. Lewis
Mere Christianity, Chapter 3

:-D

Today is a wonderful day. It all started with a long (for me!) bike ride of about 6 miles on the Natchez Trace with a new friend. In fact, I realized that this is the first "one-on-one" time I've had with any of my new acquaintances in Natchez since I moved here. I guess I mostly do stuff with groups and always with Merisha. Anyway, it made me feel energized and happy :-)
Soo, then I picked up my little charge and spent the morning babbling to him in baby-talk. For lunch, Merisha and I played for the Rotary Club (a meeting of lots of important and influential people) and they all LOVED the music. We even got a standing ovation, which surprised me to no end. After we were finished, we had lots of people ask for our business cards and even booked events to play this very week! Yay!
And tonight I'm eating dinner with another new friend and then will see some church people, which I always look forward to. Maybe we'll even play some music tonight!

So anyway, God is (of course) good even when things are going badly, being Sovereign as He is. But today I'm grateful to Him for blessing me with a happy day :-)
I'm glad not every day is this good...I probably wouldn't appreciate them nearly as much if they were.

Merisha's Birthday

Today is the day that my sister turns twenty.
As I try to grasp the fact that she is now two decades old, I think back over our lives together and wonder Where have the years gone? Wasn't it yesterday that we were playing dress up and dreaming of what it would be like to be "big girls"?

I have to say that my sister is one of the most incredible people on the planet, and I'm not just being bias. For one thing, anyone who can put up with me 24/7 for the past almost 19 years deserves to be canonized :)
Though we are very different in many ways, we are completely unified in everything foundational. It's rather uncanny how one of us will go to the other and say "You know, God has really brought this truth or scripture to my mind a lot" and the response is often "Wow, I've been thinking the EXACT same thing."
We finish each other's sentences and when a question is asked, our response is more often than not in unison. I really love my sister :)

But most importantly, Her passion for God and knowing Him to a greater degree is infectious...oh that there were more women like my sister!
Her convictions and beliefs are unshakable, but her humility and kindness balance her out very well. She never ceases to amaze me when she fluently and with confidence defends even the most controversial and attacked parts of our faith with graciousness.

Happy Birthday, Merisha! I am blessed beyond measure in having you for a sister. If I could have asked God for everything I wanted in a sister, I still wouldn't have been capable of thinking up anyone as great as you are. I love you.
"The Lord bless you and keep you; The Lord make His face shine upon you, And be gracious to you; The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, And give you peace." '

You're my sister...and you're the favorite ;)
~Robin <><