Marsha's Blog

 Hello Friends I wanted to “spice” things up a bit today, and you may be thinking I’m going to a lot of work to find the spiritual reference, but trust me: it’ll be worth it. You may have to look at today's blog as more of a travel log of our recent trip through Europe.  The subject I'm talking about first came to mind a couple of months ago, while traveling through Amsterdam’s canals. It was pointed out that many of the buildings on either side of these beautiful narrow waterways are very old, dating back to the 16th and 17th centuries. It seems pretty obvious when you notice that quite a few of them don't stand straight up, due to the constant moving and sinking into the soft soil. In fact, some buildings have begun to depend on the building next door for support, which then requires laws about what a person can and cannot do to his property if it might cause the adjacent building to fall down. Just about every three to four-story building has a familiar prominent hook ou...

I had to chuckle as I was reading in Job this week.  Not that Job is what I'd call a particularly “funny'' book,  but it’s just that God has a way with words that can speak to so many people and situations at the same time.  I was reading Job 38: 39, "Will you hunt the prey for the lioness, or satisfy the hunger of the lions, when they crouch in their dens?" I had to laugh, because the verse called up an old memory for me, from back in 1996. It was a younger and more naïve “me” back then, at least in terms of the realities around an Ethiopian refugee camp where we were working. For some reason, another missionary kid and I were hiking, hoping to climb a small mountain behind the camp.  We had the village dog with us.  I can't remember why the rest of the family wasn't along, but I think Tony was teaching the Old Testament and Nathan was teaching every boy in the village how to play basketball.  Who knows what 6-year-old Nicki was doing, but I'm sure it...

 Most of you are familiar, I think, with “My Utmost for His Highest” by Oswald Chambers. Tony and I have made it a tradition to include it with breakfast every morning, for the simple fact that it’s so often “spot on” with whatever we happen to be dealing with that day. On August 10th, for example, Oswald wrote, “To choose to suffer means that there is something wrong; to choose God’s will even if it means suffering is a very different thing. No healthy saint ever chooses suffering; he chooses God’s will, as Jesus did, whether it means suffering or not.” I had to chuckle when I thought of things over the years I’d cooked up on my own, ostensibly to ‘please God’ (read in: to suffer for His sake).  I remember a several week ‘fast’ that Tony and I decided to do.  It was involving a church plant, which sounded like the best of reasons; but now when I think back, I believe there may have been a bit of prideful motivation involved. Anyway, we accomplished the challenge, and tha...

Well, we’re starting our third week of being home, and I think I can say by now that we are finally unpacked! That doesn’t necessarily mean that everything is put away, but it does mean that we can stop for that second cup of coffee, catch up on our Bible reading and bills, (hopefully in that order),  and be reminded again why we’re so happy to be home. Sadly, but with some excitement, we’ll be leaving again in just a few weeks, but only for month this time!  Hopefully we’ll see a lot of you. Yesterday we even made the radical decision to go see a movie, something we haven’t done in about, oh, six months. The movie has just hit Australia after making the rounds in America, so you may have seen it. The name of the film is “The Forge”, and it’s a faith-based story with several Christian actors we’ve seen in other classics. If you have any emerging adults in your family, it’s worth seeing. The main character is a teenager by the name of Isaiah (played by Aspen Kennedy), strugglin...

 Good morning! As most of you are reading this, it’s Labor Day Weekend.  For me growing up, it meant that come Monday, summer was over, and I’d be off to a new school year.  I never understood what the “labor” bit was about, but nowadays I hear that it was established to recognize and honor America’s workers at the height of the Industrial Revolution.  For most of us, though, it just meant it was time to go back to school, and THAT probably meant a sigh of relief for the nation’s parents. Well, Tony & I have been home a whole week, and while I thought I’d be feeling ‘down’ because the trip of a lifetime was over, actually it’s been unexpectedly refreshing. I’m reminded of a time a couple of years ago when we took our kids and grandkids to a little resort just out of town, deeper back in the mountains from our house.  We’d been snookered into a ‘free’ stay there a year or so earlier after listening to a time share spiel, but it ended up being so nice (no, we ...