About a year ago I resurrected a newsletter for wives of ministers, and the catchy title for this little missive is The Minister’s Wife. I send this out monthly via email, and I have just under two hundred women who receive it. Most are married to ministers, and some are wives of elders. They are from several different denominations and hail not only from the States, but also from England, Scotland, Australia, South Africa, the Netherlands, Ireland, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, and even Montenegro (former Yugoslavia). As I look over the names on my list of contacts, I am struck by the fact that the world is full of pulpits with faithful men thundering out the Word week after week. But my point in bringing all this up is to say that if you are a minister’s wife who would like to receive my newsletter for wives, drop me a comment and I will contact you.
Monthly Archive for September, 2009
Page 3 of 3
My son points out quite nicely in Tilt-a-Whirl that God wastes all kinds of glory and beauty on us all the time. We miss the stunning artistry He displays in each and every little snowflake. We glance at the rainbow and move on. We pass by the flowers and clouds and icicles nonchalantly when we ought to be thunderstruck in amazement all the time. And many of the outrageous views He has made are not even seen or appreciated by anyone at all. Take all the sunsets that only the birds and insects see. Why does God waste so much of His artwork on us? He must love us very much, and He must enjoy bestowing His good gifts even on a deaf and blind and bored audience.
And yet we imitate Him in this in very small ways. Think of parents moving the new baby into his room. Does the newborn appreciate the new crib with the matching quilt and bumper pads? Or the freshly painted walls in the nursery? Is the baby impressed with the handmade blanket from Aunt Susie or the quilt that has been lovingly passed down for generations? Of course not. But the giver is blessed. This is one of the ways Mom expresses her love for her new baby, though baby knows nothing of it. This is a concrete way of giving, loving, bestowing, welcoming. We obviously get this impulse from our wise Creator who made heaven and earth and then lavished loving kindness into every nook and cranny, ladling it out and sloshing it all over the place.
We ought to rouse ourselves from our stupor from time to time and take in some of the glories we find ourselves knee-deep in. Then with thankfulness, we can turn to our own homes and bestow some of this reflected glory in expected and unexpected places. Tiny ladles to be sure, but sloshing over nonetheless.
Doug and I spent three days this past week in the Oregon forest at Trout Creek Camp, and this fine fellow joined us in the lodge for meals. It was a delightful change of pace for us being out in the woods. Our sister church in Oregon City hosted two separate camps at the same time (a boys’ camp and a girls’ camp), and you guessed it, we were the speakers. What a fun loving group! When they weren’t listening to talks, the girls (and counselors) were participating in organized activities like swimming, softball, volleyball, playing the chimes (and they even sounded good!) and tie-dying t-shirts. We were refreshed by their enthusiasm and kindness to us.
Here’s your friendly update that the winner of the last Amoretti purse has been awarded . . . and there’s a new one up. So zip on over and enter!
Well this blog post is wickedly out of date. It’s something I meant to put up weeks and weeks ago, but what with one thing and another I’ve just not gotten around to it. And then, rummaging through my clogged up camera, I happened across these photos and figured that I might as well shove it up.
Several weeks ago we made the drive down to Boise. For those of you not familiar with our dear old state, the road from Moscow to Boise is 300 miles long, and it’s the only north / south highway that there is. In the course of that 300 miles, you go through two actual towns and a handful of seriously small little units. If we had a classification system like England this might be simpler. In England you are a village unless and until you have a cattle market . . . at which point you obtain to the official status of town. And you’re stuck indefinitely as a town until you get yourself a cathedral. Quite basic, and easy to keep a hang of really. Everyone knows if they live in a village or a town – and cities are easy enough to spot since they get their own bishop. Anyway, going by that unit of measurement there would be no cities whatsoever on Highway 95 from Moscow to Boise, and there would really be only two (maybe three) towns. The villages would rack up to about five I think.
Anyway – that is neither here nor there. I merely bring it up as a means of illustrating the fact that when you drive to Boise, you’re zooming along through the wilderness. There’s no cell phone coverage to speak of for the entire way, saving the brief moments in those two towns.
Here is a picture of a spot along the road. It looks much like every other spot along the road, but I bring it to your attention here for a particular reason.
Are you with me here? Pasture . . . barbed wire fence . . . mountains. Pretty much par for the course on this road. This shot is looking directly out of the east side of the car. And directly out of the west window, we see this amazing sight:
Yes. The Buffalo Gal. So far that would seem to be relatively un-astonishing. A buffalo gal truck stop near one of the villages is just what one would take right in stride. The thing that jumped out at me about it this time was first of all the question of whether or not the Buffalo Gal knew how to spell “Diner” or whether she actually meant dinner. “Dinner” of course would be an appropriate thing to put on the sign – it would save people the hassle of stopping for lunch, only to find out that the restaurant was closed. Maybe she meant Dinner in the truest sense of the word. But I can’t help wondering if perhaps she was endeavoring to communicate that this was in fact a Diner. But either way, this dinner-serving-diner offers not only World Cuisine, but also Sushi. What more could you ask? A lovely view . . . and some sushi . . . with World Cuisine thrown in! Served up by a Buffalo Gal.
One of these times we’ll have to stop in and find out what it’s like in there. I’m awfully curious. And there’s another one on the edge of the Hoo-Doo mountains which is called (applicably) “The Hoo Doo Cafe” and I’ve always wanted to check that one out as well. And of course there’s “Eddie’s Chinese” in Colfax. Now that I think about it, there’s a whole host of restaurants in our vicinity that are just begging to be tried!
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