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Samson Beaver and his Family

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I first posted this in 2009, a little show and tell about one of my favourite photographs. Back then it hung on a wall, but now it's in my bathroom where I see it every morning! I'd forgotten the history behind the story, researched when I first posted this and thought that current readers might enjoy it--a story from a time when this land was still being discovered, not so very long ago. This photograph was taken by Mary Schaffer; artist, photographer, writer and naturalist, in 1907. It is of a Stoney Indian named Samson Beaver, with his wife Leah and daughter, Frances Louise. I bought the photo on a postcard, on a trip to British Columbia and it hangs framed, on the wall I face when sitting at my laptop. I love it. Don't you just feel as if you could gather Frances Louise up in your arms and cuddle her? I get a deep sense of peace and happiness when I look at this family, sitting in the grass of a long ago fall. They are dressed in their best, beautiful c...
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Justification by Faith, or Faith and Works

Dave, Asker of Good Questions, left this question in a comment a couple of days ago. It came as a result of reading a book about the reformation: "... one of the main points of contention was justification by faith alone or justification by faith and works (faith without works is dead). I've always loved the book of James in the NT but never hear it preached. So I admit to being a faith and works guy ... what say you oh wise women of Whatever He Says?" I'd love to hear what others have to say on this too, but it made me think about what I've been reading in The Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee. I love the way Pastor Nee sets things out systematically. He establishes a foundational point through scripture and then reinforces it several times over so that you really start to "get it," and when you have really "got it," he builds on the point as if he is building a great cathedral. The Normal Christian Life is a book about the two problems ma...
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Voyage

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Note from Belinda: I read this prayer yesterday and again today--and then I read it to Susan after cell group, when we were having our "second cup" of decaff coffee together. I knew that she'd love it. She has a framed picture on her office wall of a little blond haired girl in a sail boat on a stormy sea. A fatherly sailor,with a weather beaten face; in a gray sou'wester, holds her close, as he capably mans the tiller. This prayer reminds me of that picture and influenced what I wrote earlier today, when I used the metaphor of ebbing waves to describe a lack of consistency and my desire to crash over the sandbar into the peaceful pool on the other side.  ( Susan sent me a link to the painting, which was done by American impressionist Robert Reid in 1888.  It hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in NYC.) Be bless ed by the beauty of this prayer. OH LORD OF THE OCEANS, My little bark sails on a restless sea, Grant that Jesus may sit at the ...
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