Links Worth a Look...Hope!

(Jonquils, planted by my grandmother when she lived in this house over 20 years ago, poking their heads through the ground again.  They haven't been tended or cared for in years, and have survived storms and abuse of all kinds...and yet they continue to pop up every year!  A beautiful reminder of hope and new life!)


Recent news and discussions of the "health care reform bill" expected to be signed into law today have been enough to breed intense anxiety if I give it even the tiniest bit of opportunity.  It's easy to get bogged down in the mire of the known *and* unknown pitfalls this bill brings.  I feel my blood pressure begin to rise, and realize that this is one of those times I'm glad my dad is *not* still here...I can hear exactly what he would be saying, in a not-so-quiet tone of voice, and see his face getting red as he said it!  (That would be where I inherit the "blood pressure rising" part...:))

While I am convinced that we need to do whatever we can to turn the tide (including sending home each and every Legislator who voted for this bill, and electing people of integrity and wisdom to replace them),  I also keep having to remind myself that no matter *how* disturbing the whole situation is, it *isn't* the end of the world, and there are...hard as it is to remember sometimes...more pressing issues than even our leap off the cliff into socialized healthcare.  Our focus cannot, must not, be on the current events swirling around us...it must stay, at this time as any other, on Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith.

I've been so encouraged by the messages of hope I've been seeing over the last few days...some specifically referencing or directed toward the current political situation, and others far removed from it.  I thought I would share some in today's "Links Worth a Look" post...

1. I love Sally Clarkson!  "Do Not Fear" at I Take Joy  


I especially love this quote, "We will never make a decision to quit when we are in the midst of a rain storm."   Excellent, excellent post. 


2.  Short, but powerful.  Focusing on Christ Amidst Swirling Changes by Barbara Rainey and Susan Yates.


I so related to Barbara's comments in the beginning about living as if  "If I could just do..." then "I could take a deep breath...and everything would be okay."  2x4 between the eyes, anyone??  Eek.


3.  We know the end of the book!  Hope in Discouraging Times by Randy Alcorn.


Alcorn's specific response to questions about the passage of the Health Care Reform Bill...what a great reminder that unlike human leaders, Jesus never gives false hope.  He is always faithful to fulfill His promises!


4.  A little lighter...  The Streak 


A fun father-daughter bonding story and a challenge to this "hit-and-miss-read-alouds" mom!


5.  And even lighter... except on the calories!!  Murphy's Hot Hamburger from the Pioneer Woman.
It certainly won't change the world, but it will make my husband very happy when I add this to the weekend's menu! :)


5.  Talk about Hope!!  This video is incredible!  Thanks to my friend Annette for sharing it!







6.  Not a link, but... this verse just keeps coming to mind this week.  Our trust is not in a president, or Congress, or a healthcare system (thank goodness!), but in the name of the Lord our God.  I so need to memorize this verse and quote it every time I feel my stomach start to knot and my blood pressure start to rise...

Some trust in and boast of chariots and some of horses, but we will trust in and boast of the name of the Lord our God.

Psalm 20:7 (AMP)

What has encouraged you this week?  I'd love to hear about it in the comments!

Btw...I have tried in vain multiple times to fix the spacing on this post.  I'm not sure what the problem is, other than it is apparently one of those "Blogger Hates Me" days.  :)   My apologies for the weirdness...someday maybe Blogger and I will be friends again and I'll figure out how to fix it!

Mega Memory Month...Behind as Usual!

Ack! I feel like the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland: "I'm late, I'm late, for a very important date!"

Mega Memory Month started July 1 at Ann Kroeker's, and here it is July 9 and I am *just now* deciding what we are going to work on this month! Eek.

However, after MUCH thought and prayer, I have rejected, for one reason or another *every* passage I had initially thought about doing, and settled on one I hadn't even considered before this morning. Typical. :) All of those that were "rejected" this time are going on a list for upcoming months, but either I wanted to save them until we are actually doing more formal "school" again, or I felt like we needed to devote an entire month to them (without a late start :)).

So...July's Mega Memory Month passage is...

I Corinthians 13.

I've decided we could all use this right now. Besides, it is just one of those passages everyone should know and *I* have never even memorized the whole thing.

We are memorizing it from the English Standard Version (ESV). The ESV is replacing my beloved NIV as my preferred translation, and earlier this year I got a great deal on a new ESV Study Bible...I love it!! However, we aren't necessarily doing all of our memorizing from it. I usually look up what we are going to memorize in ESV, NASB, NIV, and KJV. I'm trying to memorize mostly from ESV or NASB, but occasionally (especially if it is something I know well in NIV or KJV), we will use one of the others. This time I just felt like the meaning of the ESV was more clear.

This one is going to be a challenge. Not the passage itself, but our memorizing of it! Although we do school year-round (mostly :)), our early summer break ran a bit longer than I anticipated this year, so we are still *on* break this week. The plan is that we will go back to a light school week next week, and then add in a bit more the last two weeks of this month. This will be the first time we've started MMM when we weren't actively schooling, so it should be interesting. :)

By tomorrow I will have new Mega Memory Month folders made for everyone, as well as a new cassette recording. I haven't decided if we will sign this one or not, but I'm leaning toward signing. :) I also hope to add in a few activities from the various scripture memory activity books I have but have trouble pulling out to actually *use*. :) We'll see how that goes...:-)

I Corinthians 13 (ESV)

¹If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ²And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. ³ If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

⁴ Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant ⁵or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; ⁶it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

⁸Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. ¹¹When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. ¹²For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

¹³So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Mega Memory Month, a bit late...:)

My mom started me memorizing Scripture from a very young age...somewhere around 4. I remember learning verses from strips of construction paper backed in felt and stuck to a feltboard. A few years later, through the work of Heber and Steve McKissack, we became involved in the Bible Memory Association program in our church. BMA was the single-most important organizational influence in my life, other than our churches themselves. We were challenged and held accountable to learn books of Scripture verses each year, and then spent time each summer at the BMA camp in Ringgold, LA. Not only were those weeks packed with solid Biblical teaching (plus tons of fun and superb food :)), we built relationships with some incredible Christians who impacted my life in huge ways.
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So...Scripture memory has always been a priority in my mind and heart, even if we haven't been terribly consistent in making it happen lately. It *usually* has a prominent spot in our school day, but I have realized recently that we aren't nearly where I want to be with it.

I had decided a week or so ago that I personally was going to learn Psalm 91. About that same time, I decided that the kids and I were going to begin working on a longer Scripture passage, rather than individual verses, during our Scripture memory time in school. I finally settled on Psalm 1, and the kids and I did some study on it week before last, in preparation to get serious about memorizing it next week, after Billy's vacation.
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Then the other day, I happened across a couple of pertinent articles. One was a post by Ann Voskamp about their participation in Ann Kroeker's Mega Memory Month. I loved the Mega Memory Month idea immediately, so even though we are a bit past the October 1 start date, we are going to jump in and participate anyway!
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The Ann Voskamp post is, as usual, truly excellent and so perfectly expresses the main reason I want to participate in this project. Love, love, love the last line of her post..."We thoroughly intend to blaze with your glory..."
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The other article I ran across brings up a secondary reason I want to participate in this project. Andrew Pudewa, director of the Institute for Excellence in Writing, discusses the importance of poetry memorization in building good writers here. I found his article fascinating and challenging. This is another area in which I have good *intentions*, but we've been pretty hit and miss in reality. My children *love* to memorize poetry, and I need to take advantage of that!

So...here's the plan.
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We are going to start with the Scripture passage we had already planned to memorize in the next few weeks...Psalm 1...




We are also going to memorize a poem. Another thought I had a week or so ago is that my children aren't nearly as familiar with my favorite children's poetry as I would like for them to be, and that I would like to remedy that. Andrew Pudewa gave me the perfect excuse to pull out some of my favorite poetry books from my childhood. We are starting with my all-time favorite, Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses. This copy was a gift from my Granny and Papa Marks on my first birthday. :) It is inscribed by my grandmother, and is one of my most treasured books....

My very favorite poem in the book is "The Land of Counterpane", but for some reason, I didn't feel it was a good choice for our first memory project from the book. So, I chose another favorite, "My Shadow"....

The plan is that I will post on our progress each week, including any memorization tools that we find helpful along the way (Ann Kroeker has some great suggestions at her blog, linked above), and then link to it at Ann Kroeker's blog. Hopefully the accountability will keep us on our toes! (Feel free to comment with questions about our progress if we go too long between MMM posts! :))