A Very Special Day!

 

Here's some words of Wisdom from God's Word for today:

Psalm 33, NKJV

"The Sovereignty of the Lord in Creation and History"

"1 Rejoice in the Lord, O you righteous!

For praise from the upright is beautiful.

2 Praise the Lord with the harp;

Make melody to Him with an instrument of ten strings.

3 Sing to Him a new song;

Play skillfully with a shout of joy.

4 For the word of the Lord is right,

And all His work is done in truth.

5 He loves righteousness and justice;

The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord.

6 By the word of the Lord the heavens were made,

And all the host of them by the breath of His mouth.

7 He gathers the waters of the sea together as a heap;

He lays up the deep in storehouses.

8 Let all the earth fear the Lord;

Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him.

9 For He spoke, and it was done;

He commanded, and it stood fast.

10 The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing;

He makes the plans of the peoples of no effect.

11 The counsel of the Lord stands forever,

The plans of His heart to all generations.

12 Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord,

The people He has chosen as His own inheritance.

13 The Lord looks from heaven;

He sees all the sons of men.

14 From the place of His dwelling He looks

On all the inhabitants of the earth;

15 He fashions their hearts individually;

He considers all their works.

16 No king is saved by the multitude of an army;

A mighty man is not delivered by great strength.

17 A horse is a vain hope for safety;

Neither shall it deliver any by its great strength.

18 Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him,

On those who hope in His mercy,

19 To deliver their soul from death,

And to keep them alive in famine.

20 Our soul waits for the Lord;

He is our help and our shield.

21 For our heart shall rejoice in Him,

Because we have trusted in His holy name.

22 Let Your mercy, O Lord, be upon us,

Just as we hope in You."

Amen!

Oh Wow! Today is going to be a busy day in our nation!  It's Inauguration Day!!! And it's also a holiday, Martin Luther King Day, so I think it's wonderful that schools are closed and so are many businesses and government offices, so that everyone can watch the Inauguration!  I'm thankful to hear that they have moved it to an indoor space because of the severely cold weather, but also I believe it is for security. Sadly, what should be a great day of celebration could easily turn into something terrible, so I pray for the peaceful transition of power and a day of joyful celebration for everyone. I also pray for our new President and his family and his cabinet and staff, that God will protect them and guide them in every way. Amen.

So, how are you going to spend this day? Will you be able to watch the Inauguration?  I hope to be able to, and if not LIVE, then later on YouTube.  Today is also our Bible Study day, which starts at 1:00, which would probably make it hard for me to watch it live. However, I am most likely not going to go to Bible Study today because I'm not really feeling quite up to par. Yesterday I had a difficult day with some "tummy issues", and had to stay home from church, and today, although that situation is mostly resolved, the aftermath has still left me feeling not too "stable" in that department, without going into details, and so I'm thinking it would probably be best for me to just stay home and let my body recover quietly.  

I wanted to thank everyone again for your prayers for my brother in law Art and my sister Doris. I did talk to them the other day, and although Art is very sore from that crazy and unexpected accident, he is very thankful not to have been injured much worse. He's almost 81 years old and already has back and heart issues, so it could have ended much differently.  So we give thanks to the Lord for His mercy and grace and protection.  And Doris is getting over her bout with pneumonia day by day, praise God!

Also, in my last post I shared with you about getting a new camera. Here's a picture of Lily Grace and me, both decked out with our cameras and ready to go taking pictures of anything and everything!  However, I have decided to return the camera and get my money back.  After trying to take pictures of all things great and small, I've determined it doesn't work the way I want it too and it doesn't have the same quality as my old camera.  And after changing the batteries in the old camera it seems to be working better, so I've decided to just stick with the old one for now, and if it dies on me I will replace it with another refurbished one just like it for about $25.00 bucks on eBay, and save ourselves a bunch of money. That's where I got that particular camera in the first place, which replaced the original refurbished one just like it that was given to my by my brother (who worked for Kodak), because he felt sorry for me for being the only person left on the planet who was still using a camera with real film and not a digital one! LOL.  So anyway, I have 30 days to return the new camera to Walmart, and so I've decided to do that and be thankful that my old one decided to resurrect itself with the new batteries! (It's very particular about the kind of batteries I use, apparently!)

Now, I must apologize for so many pictures of me...I hope you will indulge me for this next part of this post. On Saturday I received another special package! It was a total surprise, totally unexpected...this beautiful sweater was hand knitted by one of our very special blogging friends, who will remain unnamed but she knows who she is.  

When this package arrived in the mail I suddenly realized what it was going to be as this person had casually mentioned in one of her posts that she was knitting a sweater for someone as a surprise...and I never dreamed it could be for me!

In case you can't tell, my eyes were very teary eyed in these photos that I asked hubby to take so I could share them with this dear friend, so she'd know it arrived and how surprised I am to receive it.

I called my friend to tell her how surprised and thankful I was.  I really do not feel worthy of such a special gift. There's nothing that I've done to deserve such a wonderful blessing.  But you know, isn't that just like Jesus?  

Ephesians 2:8-9 tells us:

"8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, 

9 not of works, lest anyone should boast."

Our Pastor has often used this little acronym to explain GRACE to us:

There's nothing we can do to earn God's salvation...it is a FREE gift, the unmerited favor of God. Why? Because He loves us...it's that simple. Christ died for us so that we could have eternal life...we can't earn our way to heaven...there aren't enough good works in the world that will ever make us good enough to cover our sins and make us pure and holy and righteous...Only a Pure and Holy and fully Righteous Savior can do that for us.  All we have to do is accept this gift and believe that Christ died for us, and we will be saved.

I am wearing this beautiful sweater right now, because it is only about 37 degrees here in Florida today, and it's going to be a very cold week!  Somehow my friend, who lives far away in a much colder climate, knew this, and wanted me to have this sweater in time for the cold weather! Wow! Isn't that just like our Lord? He knows what we are going to need even before we know it and He sends it to us with so much love.  I am still trying to get my head around this.  All I can do is say Thank you, to my friend, and Thank YOU, to my Lord.

While I was feeling so punky yesterday I drank a special cup of an herbal tea that was meant to help my situation, and I noticed this little tag line:

That kind of goes along with this verse from Luke 6:43-45~

"For a good tree does not bear bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. 44 For every tree is known by its own fruit. For men do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they gather grapes from a bramble bush. 45 A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks."

And this was another tagline that was on a previous cup of tea, but it got a tea stain on it, so I apologize, but it spoke to my heart as well...

Friendship is like a sheltering tree...something that covers us and gives us shade from the heat of the day, and gives us comfort.

I thank the Lord for this special friend (whom I've never met in person), and for so many others who bless me every day with your posts and your kind words and comments and the love that you show for others as well. Thank you for being such a loving and caring community of friends. I am blown away by the love I've received through this community over the years.  Wow!

Okay, dear ones, it's time to go watch the Inauguration activities...A very special and historic day.  

God bless America!!