Others' thoughts...

I've read some good posts on other blogs in the last few days and months, and I thought I'd share them here. :)

We Need Boring Christians via Relevant Magazine
I'm slowly becoming "unromanticized" about living overseas, and I think it is good.  And yes, I still want to go.

On Thriving While Living/Traveling Elsewhere via Voye'm
Knowing why you're there and learning to react appropriately

Challies.com via Tim Challies
Amos says Tim Challies is one of the most widely-read Christian bloggers, and he reads his site almost every day.  I've started reading his blog, too, and I really like it (maybe because I agree with most of what he says, haha!).  Anyway, Challies is a youngish Christian writer who writes from a conservative perspective; he also links to several other useful and interesting posts.

List of unusual deaths via wikipedia
Because I'm morbid and a friend posted this on facebook in the middle of my writing this post.
Example of an entry:  2002:  Richard Sumner, a British artist suffering from schizophrenia, went into a remote section of Clocaenog Forest in Denbighshire, Wales, handcuffed himself to a tree and threw the keys out of his reach.  His skeleton was discovered three years later.  There were signs that he may have later changed his mind.

For Christian Men: The Lessons of Herman Cain via Al Mohler
Integrity is essential, in both men and women.

Church-Planting among the Unreached: Gritty Wisdom from Brad Buser via Gunner Gunderson (four parts)
Thoughts and tips on living and ministering cross-culturally with other workers.  I need to read this again because when I found these posts, I actually started at part four and didn't get a clear picture at first of what Brad Buser was trying to communicate.

True forgiveness

These are rather rough, semi-formed thoughts, but I wanted to share them anyway.

I was reading parts of Isaiah 53 last night, and the last verse struck me:

...yet He bore the sin of many,
and makes intercession for the transgressors.
-Isaiah 53:12c

We all know that Jesus took our sins upon Himself.  We all know that the Father will forgive us if we accept the work of Jesus in our place.

But do we ever think about the fact that Jesus is talking to the Father for the ones whose sin drove Him to the cross and ultimately the grave?  The ones who were behind such anguish that He pleaded with the Father for another way to pay the price?

Sometimes when we forgive, we hope never to see the person again because of the pain or betrayal.

Yet Jesus not only paid for our forgiveness, He continually brings our needs and requests before the Father.  He talks to God about each of, asking that we would be made more like Himself, that God would orchestrate the events of our lives for His glory and "for our good always."  Jesus talks about each of us, having forgiven us, having overlooked the initial willful rejection of Him, having drawn us to Himself with His love, and now having us in the palm of His nail-scarred hand.

Merry Christmas, from our ever-loving, ever-living, ever-forgiving, ever-interceding Savior.

Joy to the world!!!  You need not be condemned to hell for your sins.

Our neighbor, Soren

Soren is our neighbor.  If you just thought, "Soren Kierkegaard!" yea!  I'm not alone.  I've never met anyone named Soren before.  I've actually only talked to him once, even though I've been married and lived here for almost six months.  We don't see a lot of him, and I frequently think that he must be irritated by hearing my oft-repeated Owl City songs through the thin walls.  Hopefully he has headphones.

Anyway, our little house is rather small and shares a wall with Soren's.  His house is the mirror image of ours, so our two bathrooms have a common wall.

Tonight I was washing my face in our bathroom, I could hear Soren doing something in his bathroom (try not to think about it), and Amos was in the kitchen.  In the process of getting the Crock-Pot down from its perch on top of the fridge, Amos knocked over the cereal container, making a lot of noise that he thought I could hear.  I didn't hear anything, though, until he yelled, "Don't worry, I'm oh-kay!!"

Without thinking of our neighbor, I raised my head, facing the shared wall, and yelled back, "What are you doing in there?!"

I'm guessing that Soren either thought,
"Should I respond?  What is she talking about??"
or
"Weirdo.  I gotta move."

Don't...

I don't have much to say.

Ummmmmm, I finished some little crafty projects.  I think they look nice.

Zeus is still alive.  Sometimes he sleeps under his heater. :)

I had an interview today for a high school right down the street.  I'll find out by Friday if I got it.

I'm reading The Arabs by David Lamb.  I was disappointed to learn that he didn't write any more books about the Middle East, though he did write an updated version of The Arabs.

Amos and I went to our church's Christmas party on Sunday.  One of the best parts was watching a guy in a motorized wheelchair pull kids around the ice rink behind his chair.  It was awesome. :)

Only eleven more days till Christmas!

The little house

And finally, pictures of our little house. :)

The front, complete with clover and a rose bush :)

The front room with bookshelves and a coffee table/bookshelf

The other side of the front room, with more books :)

The small kitchen with announcements and missionary prayer cards

The other half of the kitchen with shelf, bridal bouquet, and Christmas tree

Master bedroom with the quilt I made and curtain I need to finish

The other side of the room

Our backyard.  The hammock takes up a lot of the space in the summer

Finally, our little Christmas tree with Amos' present! :)

Windy

Amos and I have wanted to go to the Huntington Library and Gardens for a few years now, but it is really hard to get tickets for their free day. Our friend Rachel had several free tickets that she was giving away, so we decided to take a trip this morning!

We left a little before 10:00 and headed down multiple freeways to Pasadena.  As we got closer to our destination, we started seeing splintered trees and severed limbs along the edges of the freeway.  Getting off on the surface roads, we saw more downed trees and blacked out traffic lights.  We drove up to the gates of the Huntington only to be told by two cheerful guys that the gardens were closed because of the power outages.  We decided to drive back through some other roads to see more of the cracked and dismantled trees.  Amos commented that I was just like my dad, who loves to check out all disasters.  One day Dad took off work to go check out the broken and flooding Folsom Dam; "you have to see these things while they are happening!"  The terms "ambulance chaser" and "rubbernecker" come to mind.

Anyway, we took some pictures of the carnage.  You can click on them to see a larger version.

This tree is being held up by the powerlines

I don't think this tree hit the house, but it was close

Road block!

More powerlines and road blocks...

If you look on the left, you can see the asphalt that was cracked by the tree roots