the dream home of your nightmares

Dear Ladies,

My sister and I have entered to win the 2010 HGTV dream home, but we’re not best pleased with the decor they’re offering us this year. You can see the full panoply of pictures on their website, linked above, but I would like to register some specific grievances. First of all, the food choices seem a little odd.

I am not at all sure that we can eat our way through that many institutional jars of hominy.

Then there is this sort of stick figure in the yard, caught apparently, like a deer in the headlights — a stick deer, as it were — doing, apparently, what two dimensional figures do when they think no one is looking. (Something that involves a giant rock.)

Then we have this interesting choice of osseus matter — I would say the jawbones of several asses, arranged in a sort of ‘skeletal view of emergent bison doing interlocking deep knee bends’ impression.

Tear your eyes away from it ladies, for we have another piece of art below which shall challenge us further to do some real soul searching for some sort of answer — and then, flee to another room.

(I always find it so impossible to browse the internet when being eerily ogled by the giant head of a painted warrior.)

But I think the most anomalous thing in the 2010 dreamhome is depicted below: set among lamps, in a sort of breviary of houseplants. (I looked up the word ‘breviary’ and it didn’t mean what I thought it didn’t: but I’m so frightened out of my wits at the moment that nothing more suitable is coming to mind). It looks like a sacred cakeplate: a sort of teleportation device for outer cake:

I enter to win the dream home annually, and always count on being surprised by winning (though I actually avoid this website now because I find it so addictive — my sister alerted me that the dream home was going soon.) They will be ambushing (ha. ha. not so funny, considering that painting in the computer room) the winner mid March: Enter for your chance to win a stick figure squatting mysteriously over a rock, a truly awe inspiring engorged head of man, some bones of animals preserved in various forms of prehistoric yoga, an hagiographical dessert display, and forty odd cans of hominy.

good days

It is probably natural to assume that a fairy godmother has visited me and waved her magic wand and made all my struggles regarding keeping up with the housework disappear — at least, it is natural for me to expect that any day now she will show up, tapping on my window with her magic wand to get my attention, freezing her poor fairy wings to a crisp and having to cling to the iron railing of the second story window so that she won’t fall down with frozen wings. (But perhaps the rest of you do not actually keep an eye on the windows for such things?)

In any case, there has been no occasion of opening the window and letting such a fantastic visitor tumble in; so all assumptions that there has — I say this gently: it is so kind of anyone to entertain high hopes for me — would be misplaced.

I generally have a day where I can scarcely even sustain the effort to concentrate after a day where I have been *very good*.  I was *very good* yesterday: I read for several hours, washed dishes for at least another several, and did laundry, and this on top of making myself presentable for the duration.  In consequence of which I could hardly drag myself out of bed this morning, have only the concrete reading of a Psalm to show for the past hours, and a pathetically small little mountain of crumpled kleenex as a byproduct of going about to establish my own housewifely righteousness.

The Bible tells us to redeem the time because the days are evil.  Wasted days are one of the biggest evils that I feel can never be redeemed; and so today seemed like a very evil day indeed.  But as I was altering the landscape with my kleenex mountain, poring over the woes of the world, and especially of my loved ones, and some of my own woes, and calling this ‘prayer’, I remembered some things I read yesterday, and knew what they meant better today than I did then.  Indeed, it seemed like the meaning of the words I read then, was really only a meaning that you understand not with your head when you hear it, but with your heart when you remember it.  And the meaning was simply my Saviour Himself, coming into those words and making them mean, in the middle of all the wasted hours, Him.

So it strikes me that all days really are, anyway, are lengths of time for Him to come into: and that all time is redeemed where He is.

And that I would rather look up and find that He has come in and redeemed my time any day, than to look up and find a frozen fairy knocking on the window with her magic wand, clinging perilously to the iron rail with her shimmery cold toes, promising to turn me into Super-Redeeming-the-Time-Woman, begging to be let in.

(Not that I wouldn’t make her a cup of tea, of course, and discuss the weather: but I do prefer more human company.)

At the Door

I read this poem last week and thought it was good food for thought and reflection.  Especially since we are in the middle of the school year and all cooped up together in the house during the winter cold.  It can be tempting to try and steal a precious moment alone.  I never thought of this in the context of our relationship with our Heavenly Father before.  It quickly changed my perspective.

At the Door

by Eugene Field

 

I thought myself indeed secure,

So fast the door, so firm the lock;

But, lo! he toddling comes to lure

My parent ear with timorous knock.

 

My heart were stone could it withstand

The sweetness of my baby’s plea,—-

That timorous baby knocking and

“Please let me in,–it’s only me.”

 

I threw aside the unfinished book,

Regardless of its’ tempting charms,

And opening wide the door, I took

My laughing darling in my arms.

 

Who knows but in Eternity,

I, like a truant child, shall wait,

The glories of a life to be,

Beyond the Heavenly Father’s gate.

 

And will that Heavenly Father heed

The truant’s supplicating cry,

As at the outer door I plead,

” ‘Tis I, O Father! only I?”

Of course, I don’t think for a moment that God would linger to admit His own children into His presence.  But, it does put into perspective how loving and kind our Heavenly Father is always to us.  How can we then ignore the pleads of a child who wishes to be in the presence of his earthly parents?

For Laura!

 Happy Birthday Laura!

 

(Just read this at the Puritan Board)

Sugar substitutes?

I need help and thought I would come to the field of experts. You all seem to know so much more than I and are health-conscious. I am looking for alternatives to using processed white sugar in everyday cooking and baking. I am also doing research about growing Stevia. Can anyone help me?

Hind’s Feet in High Places!

Habbakuk 3:17 Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: 3:18 Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation. 3:19 The LORD God is my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds’ feet, and he will make me to walk upon mine high places.

 

If you are weary, lonely or  heavy laden , perhaps in pain physically or emotionally, then you will take comfort from these beautiful words written by the prophet Habbakuk, inspired by the Holy Spirit. How often do we doubt. We think things look hopeless. We feel that our lives are shrivelled up and fruitless. We cannot see a way of escape. But God….

  

Thinking especially of Heidi today and those who suffer in one way or another. May we all take strength in the God of our Salvation and look to him with joy even in adversity.

Happiness is a Warm Kitten

OK, I know it’s supposed to be a warm puppy, but I have a new kitten! I wish I had a digital camera to show her off. Actually she’s a very common looking black tabby kitty. We got her a couple of weeks before Christmas and I named her Matilda. She has a big M marking between her ears right on her forehead so she needed a name that started with an M. Rosy, our dog has shown that she has amazingly patient nature since this feisty little kitten came into our home. Matilada comes charging out of another room towards poor Rosy who will suddenly jump up, trying her best to avoid her. Rosy will even give up her warm place by the stove when Matilda moves in.

Matilda’s pregnant mother was dumped at my friend Becky’s house last summer. Becky has a big heart and didn’t want to take her to the pound so she started feeding her and all the kittens that followed. Matilda was the runt of the litter. She’s only half grown but Becky thinks that she may be full grown and said she’s older than she looks. She’s a slow eater so didn’t do very well competing for her food. While all the other kittens were eating food Becky poured out for them, Matilda stayed with us and rubbed against our ankles. I picked her up and she never stopped purring. I wondered what Bill would say about me bringing home a new kitten.

Thankfully, he didn’t say anything about taking her back to Becky’s. My idea was that she would be a barn cat. Becky told me that her mother taught them all to be good mousers. We kept her in our heated basement because it was so cold that night even though she’d been kept outdoors all her life. But then she didn’t have her other kittens to curl up with and she was all alone. We fixed her a bed in a box near the fire. We’ve been invaded by flying squirrels that have been running around the outside of our house at night. Bill was closing up all the places he could find where they might get in. Two even got in the house one night and we had to chase them out an open window with a broom. The kitty impressed us one night by killing one that got into the basement. It was half as big as she is. Now she’s moved in as part of the family. I think that she and Rosy might just end up being good friends.

Trophies of His Grace

Happy New Year everyone!  I thought this topic was a fitting one to start off the new year. May it never get old! This quote is from a recent Grace Gems.

By C. H. Spurgeon

“You yourselves, as living stones, are being built into a spiritual house for a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” 1 Peter 2:5

God builds a palace for Himself in heaven, made of ‘living stones’. Where did He get them? Has He brought forth the richest and the purest marble from the fine quarries of Paris? No! Christians, look to “the hole of the pit where you were dug out of, and to the rock where you were cut from!” You were full of sin. Far from being stones that were white with purity–you were black with defilement, seemingly utterly unfit to be stones in the spiritual temple, which would be the dwelling-place of the Most High God. And yet, He chose you to be trophies of His grace!

Goldsmiths make exquisite jewelry from precious materials; they fashion the bracelet and the ring from gold. But God makes His jewels out of base materials. From the black pebbles of the defiling brooks–He has taken up stones, which He has set in the golden ring of His immutable love, to make them gems to sparkle on His finger forever. He has not selected the best–but apparently the worst of men–to be the monuments of His grace!

That quote made me think of this hymn.

How Sweet and Awful is the Place

Tune Here

How sweet and awful is the place
With Christ within the doors,
While everlasting love displays
The choicest of her stores.

While all our hearts and all our songs
Join to admire the feast,
Each of us cry, with thankful tongues,
“Lord, why was I a guest?

“Why was I made to hear thy voice,
And enter while there’s room,
When thousands make a wretched choice,
And rather starve than come?”

‘Twas the same love that spread the feast
That sweetly drew us in;
Else we had still refused to taste,
And perished in our sin.

Pity the nations, O our God,
Constrain the earth to come;
Send thy victorious Word abroad,
And bring the strangers home.

We long to see thy churches full,
That all the chosen race
May, with one voice and heart and soul,
Sing thy redeeming grace.