See you not, then, that God may take away your comforts and your privileges, to make you the better Christians? Why, the Lord always trains His soldiers, not by letting them lie on feather-beds, but by turning them out, and using them to forced marches and hard service. He makes them ford through streams, and swim through rivers, and climb mountains, and walk many a long march with heavy knapsacks of sorrow on their backs. This is the way in which He makes them soldiers–not by dressing them up in fine uniforms, to swagger at the barrack gates, and to be fine gentlemen in the eyes of the loungers in the park. God knows that soldiers are only to be made in battle; they are not to be grown in peaceful times. We may grow the stuff of which soldiers are made; but warriors are really educated by the smell of powder, in the midst of whizzing bullets and roaring cannonades, not in soft and peaceful times. Well, Christian, may not this account for it all? Is not thy Lord bringing out thy graces and making them grow? Is He not developing in you the qualities of the soldier by throwing you into the heat of battle, and should you not use every appliance to come off conqueror? –Spurgeon

I feel like blogging.  However there seems to be nothing to blog about. Therefore this will turn into a random babbling by me.  It is a dreary Monday morning.  I couldn’t get out of bed and find myself counting down the hours til I can be back in bed.  I wish I was poetic like Alex (LOL), because I could write a good poem about today.  I also wish I was more artistic because I saw a “picture” sunday morning in church.  There was a mother on her knees with both her hands raised in prayer while her little 5 year old son knelt beside her just looking up at her as she prayed.  I love those moments.  There was one this morning, as I look across the cafeteria and see this young man from Korea drop his head in sincere prayer and I think to mysef how amazing it is the Lord brought him from across the world to our little school!

How could I be anything but quite happy if I believed always that all the past is forgiven, and all the present furnished with power, and all the future bright with hope because of the same abiding facts which do not change with my mood, do not stumble because I totter and stagger at the promise through unbelief, but stand firm and clear with their peaks of pearl cleaving the air of Eternity, and the bases of their hills rooted unfathomably in the Rock of God.  (taken from a Streams in the Dessert Devotional)

Comments?

There is nothing that pleases the Lord so much as praise. There is no test of faith so true as the grace of thanksgiving. Are you praising God enough? Are you thanking Him for your actual blessings that are more than can be numbered, and are you daring to praise Him even for those trials which are but blessings in disguise? Have you learned to praise Him in advance for the things that have not yet come? –Selected

I think this picture this picture represents the Emily and Ryan that I know …

A little while ago Jess Reals got me this pad of paper (its from a company called Knock Knock that Sil and I discovered a few years ago.)  Recently people like Hannah and Sarah Ariola have been in my classroom and filled in their “To Don’t List”

The 4 sections are To Avoid-To Delay-To Pawn Off-To Sabotage and at the very bottom a little a check box that says NOT DONE.  Either email me or “comment” on your To Don’t list …. Look below for samples from Hannah, Sarah, Lily and Laura:

Lily: