smiling

It's been awhile since I smiled here on my blog, so there you go. Johnny took that photo yesterday before we left for my high school reunion, and before the Houston heat melted makeup off my face. Sigh. Beauty is fleeting....

And, my apologies, but it's another hyphen-point list today ~ some of my Sabbath thoughts and doings:

-The Bible verses on my sidebar, to your right (Psalm 139:13-14).

-Deuteronomy 10:12-11:1.

-Psalm 81.

-Romans 8:12-17.

-Matthew 7:15-21.

-"God the Source of All Good", from The Valley of Vision:

O Lord God, Who inhabitest eternity,
The heavens declare Thy glory,
The earth Thy riches,
The universe is Thy temple;
Thy presence fills immensity,
Yet Thou hast of Thy pleasure created life,
and communicated happiness;
Thou hast made me what I am, and given me
what I have;
In Thee I live and move and have my being;
Thy providence has set the bounds of my habitation,
and wisely administers my affairs.
I thank Thee for Thy riches to me in Jesus,
for the unclouded revelation of Him in Thy Word,
where I behold His Person, character, grace, glory,
humiliation, sufferings, death, and resurrection;
and cry with Job, 'I am vile',
with Peter, 'I perish',
with the publican, 'Be merciful to me, a sinner'.
Subdue in me the love of sin,
Let me know the need of renovation as well as
of forgiveness,
in order to serve and enjoy Thee for ever.
I come to Thee in the all-prevailing name of Jesus,
with nothing of my own to plead,
no works, no worthiness, no promises.
I am often straying,
often knowingly opposing Thy authority,
often abusing Thy goodness;
Much of my guilt arises from my religious privileges,
my low estimation of them,
my failure to use them to my advantage,
But I am not careless of Thy favour or regardless of
Thy glory;
Impress me deeply with a sense of Thine
omnipresence, that Thou art about my path,
my ways, my lying down, my end."

-This architecture in China, especially the new CCTV headquarters.

-Good interviews on the Fresh Air podcast: Zooey Deschanel (July 11th) and Pixar's Andrew Stanton (July 10th). I want to see Wall-E!

-Another must-read poem over on books for calvin ~ really, go read it. Very moving.