Thankful for serving hands...

These last few days have been filled with generosity and service... an outpouring of love from our community of faith.  On April 21, our church family went out into the community to share the love of Christ and the work of their hands.  On April 28, the women of our church home invited women from the community to come in and be refreshed with 'new' outfits, health information, good books, and tasty treats.

I am awed by the timing, by the power, by the sufficiency of our mighty God for these works.

Thanking God today for...

- good friends sharing the work

- volunteers of all ages, working with good humor and lots of smiles

- strong arms helping those in need

- spots of beauty for ones in need of joy

- tools for the hands

- boundless generosity from our church members and from the community

- willing nurturers, caring for the health of our invited ones

- a husband of great faith and love, giving up a Saturday to help our women reach out to those in need

- my Lord and Savior, calling me always to follow Him

Mattawoman Creek Farms

This morning dawned sunny and beautiful!  Feeling just 'not quite right' after church today, husband and I decided that I probably needed a farm visit.  Sounded like the perfect prescription!

Mattawoman Creek Farms on the Eastern Shore of Virginia was having an Open Farm Event with a Plant and Vegetable Sale today.  We've been buying from Mattawoman Creek Farms for a couple of years at our local markets.  Their plants and produce are always great quality and lovely to look at... and all certified organic.  Why not visit the farm?

We got Scarlett in the Jeep and headed out. 

The farm is about an hour from our house and the trip involved a bridge/tunnel, a toll, and a stretch of dirt road.  Just as we arrived, folks were gathering for a farm tour.  We were treated to a very informative and thorough tour of the fields, greenhouses, and kitchen garden. 

Tidbits of wisdom were offered on:  practices for organic pest control, controlling weeds in just a few minutes each week for the average home gardener, cover crops, stages of plant development, timing of planting, and more.

We ended our tour with a stop at the plant and vegetable table, which had been selling all afternoon.  I purchased a happy-looking chamomile plant, an herb I've never grown.  Again, a little nugget of information was offered about the sweet flowers that would appear if the plant were allowed to blossom and about making tea. 

*sigh of contentment*

More information about Mattawoman Creek Farms can be found on their website and on their Facebook page.

Then God said, 

“I now give to you all the plants on the earth that yield seeds 

and all the trees whose fruit produces its seeds within it. 

These will be your food."

Genesis 1:29

doors closing... doors opening

After the dark sadness of Friday, after the waiting of Saturday, Sunday broke open bright and fresh and new... alive!  This our hope, our joy:  He IS alive!

Recently I had been searching for the living among the dead, looking into tombs of old things for new life.  And it left me empty and sad and angry.  Doors closing on the life I knew.  Doors I wanted to remain open.   I wanted to be the person I was, healthier, more vibrant, stronger.

But other doors were opened to me, to the me I now am.  Perhaps weaker, but relying more on power beyond my own.  Perhaps dimmer, but quieted to His presence.  Doors flinging open into the new life He has for me.  To the bright light of who He is and what I can be if I but follow.

I am ever thankful for the gifts He brings, the joy of His presence and power in all my moments...  for doors closing and for doors opening and for stones rolled away and for empty tombs and for life, precious life...

- light dawning

- Easter people gathering to praise in the early moments

- joyful song

- an unexpected visitor that dropped into the Courtyard for sunrise service

- the Word

- eggs painted with such care and such love by hands made gentle with wisdom and age (these eggs are hand-painted each year for servants in our church music program by the father of our choir director... a man of many years and of great faith, a shepherd of the flock, Grandpa Bill)

- doors closing

- doors opening

- Jesus... prophet, priest, king... risen and alive

Come back...

Come back to the things you did at first...  

Revelation 2:4-5

I served the women of a sweet church recently at their retreat.  We talked about the cure for spiritual apathy: repenting and returning to your first love, to the things you did at first.

I have wandered far in the last three years.  I've travelled long, with a promise to visit my heart's 'home' every few days.  But time slips through my fingers like so much dry sand, each day ending before I have shared enough moments with my Lord.

It is time to come home.  Time to come back to the things I did at first.  Long moments in silent joy and expectation.  Afternoons of weed-pulling in the garden, the outward example of the simultaneous sin-pulling whispered low.  Days of retreated bliss from the cares of this world.  Sabbath restoration filled with prayer and journaling and art and singing (badly but deeply!) to my King.

Lists of gifts, hard and soft, colorful and muted, joyful and tearful...
Thanking Him today...

- that surgery is not the answer for the pain

- that tomatoes are planted every year on April 1st

- that my children are creative and fill their lives with art

- that Spring brings blossoms every year, no matter the troubles around them

- that husband is so sure, so loving, so grounded

- that Jesus gave

- that children laugh over eggs of so many colors

- that Jesus is alive

- that fountains flow and water soothes

- that Jesus is Lord