Sunday's Events on Monday Morning

 Click HERE to see the latest Adventures with Lily Grace, which included things like making Hobo Stew and cornbread, watching the "Little Duck" on Still Waters Pond,  A Sunday afternoon Tea Party, and dodging the bees on the wild plum blossoms.  There is even a celebration at the end when our team won the Super Bowl!  It was a long and fun day for us all.

These are just a few of the pictures you will find over on The Adventures of Lily Grace today, so I hope you will come and join in the fun.

Also, as yesterday was Sunday, I didn't get to post our usual church service until very late due to some technical difficulties.  So here is the link to the online message and song by the choir:

I think you will appreciate the message from James 2:1-13, and also the choir's anthem at the very beginning:

"Communion Calypso"

Let us talents and tongues employ, reaching out with a shout of joy.

Bread is broken, the wine is poured, Christ is spoken and seen and heard.

Jesus lives again, earth can breathe again, pass the Word around: loaves abound!

Jesus lives again, earth can breathe again, pass the Word around: loaves abound!

Christ is able to make us one, at His table He sets the tone.

Teaching people to live to bless, love in word and in deed express.

Jesus lives again, earth can breathe again, pass the Word around: loaves abound!

Jesus lives again, earth can breathe again, pass the Word around: loaves abound!

Jesus calls us in, sends us out bearing fruit in a world of doubt.

Gives us love to tell, bread to share; God Immanuel everywhere!

Jesus lives again, earth can breathe again, pass the Word around: loaves abound!

Jesus lives again, earth can breathe again, pass the Word around: loaves abound!

Jesus lives again, earth can breathe again, pass the Word around: loaves abound!

This is a different kind of Communion song with a Jamaican melody. It was written by Fred Kaan,  His hymns include both original work and translations. He sought to address issues of peace and justice. He was born in Haarlem in the Netherlands in July 1929. He was baptised in St Bavo Cathedral but his family did not attend church regularly. He lived through the Nazi occupation, saw three of his grandparents die of starvation, and witnessed his parents deep involvement in the resistance movement. They took in a number of refugees. He became a pacifist and began attending church in his teens. Having become interested in British Congregationalism (later to become the United Reformed Church) through a friendship, he was attended Western College in Bristol. He was ordained in 1955 at the Windsor Road Congregation.  

I hope you enjoyed the song as much as we enjoyed singing it!

Have a blessed day!  

Thankful Thursday and Friday Fotos All At Once!

Today is Thankful Thursday... and yes I am thankful.
Thankful for the rain that has been falling for the past few days. Still Waters Pond is starting to look like a pond again instead of a mud-pit. The water birds are starting to come back again.

 Can you see the Wood Duck couple above?  And the White Egret below?

This Red Bellied Woodpecker is enjoying a feast in the top of this dead pine tree:

Yes, he's really way up there!! But he doesn't seem to mind.

He can see all over town from way up there.

It is also time for Friday Fotos again, so I may as well add a few pictures from this week's walks:
I am thankful that my hubby and I can get out and walk every day, even in between the rain showers. (sometimes during, but not on purpose!)
Found some new species of flowers while walking this week:  (Do you see that little green grasshopper again? I wonder if he is the same one that was on my rose blossom last week? He sure gets around town! LOL)

Penstemon-Multifloris  found in the woods  https://www.fnps.org/plants/plant/penstemon-multiflorus

Fernleaf yellow False Foxglove

Wild Purple Pea Vine

 Fungi growing on old dead logs. Kind of like the age spots that grow on our "old bodies". LOL.

One day this week our friend Sylvia, who used to write her blog A Grandma's Blessings, invited me to have tea with her on Facebook. (Sylvia hasn't been able to write her blog since her sweet hubby passed away last year and she has moved and hasn't unpacked her computer. We've missed her here!) She sent me a picture of her teacup and delicious looking cranberry orange muffins. So I responded with this picture of my teacup and an apple bran muffin. Soon a few other friends joined us...I think there was Mary from "Visits with Mary" and a banana muffin, and then Linda joined us from "Simply Linda", along with her lemonade because she said it was too hot for tea up in New York!

We had a great time visiting on Facebook, and you are welcome to join in here if you'd like. I think we are all ready for some kind of tea parties and friendly visits with one another.

I just picked up a little book off my bookshelf here beside my desk.

I think someone else mentioned this book or another by Emilie Barnes recently. I love her books and have several of them.

I turned to the chapter that says: "Fill my cup, Lord...I offer you my cup of loneliness and selfishness, that You may give me Your cup of communion."

I think many of us are suffering from various forms of loneliness during this time of isolation. Even if we have family all around us, we can still be lonely. We are missing our friends and our times of fellowship and friendly visits.  I don't think it is selfish to miss that. I wrote yesterday about missing our times of worship at church and my concerns that even when we go back to church it just won't be quite the same as before.  I've been really thinking about that praying about my attitude toward that today.  You know, "the cup of communion" with Christ is not only talking about "The Lord's Supper" that we share with other believers at church on a regular basis. It is a daily communion with Christ...reading His Word, praying, and communicating with Him throughout the day as we walk or sit and watch the birds, or whatever we enjoy doing that is relaxing and peaceful.  And even though our "communion" with others may be somewhat limited right now, we can still have a kind of communion here, through our blogs as we encourage one another and lift up each other in prayer. As we share stories of hope and faith from our own life's experiences...these are all ways of filling our lives with the "cup of the Lord's communion".  

I am thankful for this group of people here who gather sometimes daily to share their lives with us. This gives us each a feeling of friendship and fellowship that we sorely need.

Jesus said in Matthew 18:19-20

"I say to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them."

So in my combined thankful Thursday and Friday Foto post, I want to thank you for being here! Thank you for listening when I share my concerns and frustrations as well as my joys and blessings. I look forward to hearing from each of you and seeing what things are happening in your lives each week. We are a kind of family here, and you are each very special to me. My cup is full because of you!

"I thank my God upon every remembrance of you."

Philippians 1:3