Can you believe it?! A new post two days in a row!!! Has this ever happened here before??? Pretty freaky. I don't know what came over me. I think it's because of the flood of comments that came in after last night's post. Makes you feel like "it's time" for a new one somehow. Nevermind that half of those comments were from my own self. ;-)

I just finished putting my WMB service together for tomorrow night. I hope it will be a blessing to everybody else and not just me! I'm going to be talking about hope and faith -- not the kind of faith that the children of Israel had, or that Thomas had. When they SAW God work, they believed. But Jesus said, "Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed" (Jn. 20:29). It's really a glorious thing when all looks dark and dreary, when the future looks grim and hopeless and it seems that there is no way things are going to turn out okay. That's when we have the honor of hoping in the Lord! "For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?" (Rom. 8:24). That comes just a few verses before that "all things work together for good" verse. :-) God is good and it's a blessing to be able to trust Him and believe He's got everything in His hands, even when the circumstances all around us are screaming, "It's out of control and there's no hope for things to turn out okay--things are doomed to be tragic and devastating!" Phooey. Not with our God! I want to sing "Let God arise, and his enemies be scattered," even with I'm all alone, surrounded by millions of reasons to believe things are hopeless! God is soooooooooo much bigger than whatever crises we may face. I feel so much JOY just knowing that He is God and He loves me and He loves my family and He loves His Church. He's going to take care of us all. (Remind me of this if I slip and have a surge of panic sometime, okay?! Ha!)

Nothing much has been going on around here today. After much persuasion in the form of a pastic spoon that I wear on my hip most of the time (!), Joe finally choked down his lunch. (No, I didn't give him another ham sandwhich...yet.) Life with Josiah nowadays gives a whole new meaning to the term "gag order." That kid. He's the easy going one. I never would've thought it possible for him to be soooooooo stubborn. He'll find out soon enough though--I'm more determined than he is. ;-)

I took the kids to the library for story time today. First time in months, it seems. We used to go faithfully every week, no matter what. Since April, we've probably been 3 or 4 times total. We can't seem to stay home long enough! So it was nice to do something that reminded us, "Ah yes, we did have some form of a routine once upon a time, didn't we?"

I was looking through that crazy "Every Day a Holiday" book of mine today and guess what! The first full week in August is National Clown Week!!! What do you think of that, Jason?! Somebody was weird enough to set aside a whole week in celebration of clowns. Have fun!

Looks like I've run out of things to talk about. I'll spare you all any more.

Until next time!

~Rebekah~