Ethel Waters is a big part of what drew me to Jesus as a young messed up teenager on a one-way road to self destruction. I fell in love with her the first time I saw her and I used to tune into those televised Billy Graham crusades just to get a glimpse of her. When I read her autobiography a few years later (which is sitting on your bookshelf, B'a), that cemented our relationship forever. She'll be one of the dear faces I'll be looking for in heaven. I can't wait to say, "Thank you". She'll be lookin' for me!
Wow....Haven't heard her in years!...but love her to bits because she just radiates the love of Jesus. You know this is my all time favourite song, don't you? B'a....you posted it one night in July of 2008....sung by Lauren Hill. It struck a chord in me then and lifted me out of deep waters. A few months later I found a painting of six sparrows perched on the branches of a tree with the words of the title of this song written on it.....a gift from God. It hangs in our spare room. I cherish it and think of you and that day in July...that black day in July....when the Spirit of God prompted you to post this song on your blog.
By Belinda Susan emailed me yesterday afternoon with a photograph and mysterious message: If you know what this attached picture is, you'll know what I've spent a very happy hour or so researching and reading about this afternoon. Not sure why I happened upon this course of study but I did... and I've enjoyed every minute of it. I emailed her back, Wheels falling off wagons??? :) It turned out to be: The bells of Alvechurch Susan whiled away a few hours on Sunday afternoon doing research on bell ringing! She wrote again later: I kept reading about "change ringing in the English pattern" and decided I needed to know more about what that is like. I found this video from the Washington Cathedral. I love the description: "Change Ringing is a team sport, a highly coordinated musical performance, an antique art, and a demanding exercise that involves a group of people ringing rhythmically a set of tuned bells through a series of changing ...
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...
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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