kingdom travelin'

my sweet anna and i went for a walk around the pond last night… as you can see it was growing toward darkness… the colors were beautiful…

around this pond is a path on which we walk…

we know the path well… it is clearly marked… it is really a pavement

life’s path is not always so clearly marked… but there is One who we can follow… last Sunday, anna and i went for a hike… i let her lead the way because i wanted to follow…

so she led the way…

all i had to do was follow…

i knew she knew the way through the forest…

i trusted her to lead me in the right direction…

following God is like that, knowing He knows the way and

trusting him to lead in the right direction… all we have to do is follow Him…

why is trusting so hard for us sometimes? when we figure out the answer to THAT question we will be able to follow Him better… so… what IS that answer?

Look at this picture…

this kid, let’s call him Sasha, is looking out of a “window” in the basement of an apartment building in a very COLD Ukrainian city… note the snow… Sasha is a ‘street kid’…

I’ve been there many times when it was so cold that when I took my gloves off to shoot a picture, my hands were tingling from the cold before I got my gloves back on…

I was just visiting… I slept where it was warm…

Sasha (look at the picture again…) lives on the street…

There are soooo many of these kids who need help… I have friends who are making a REAL difference in these kids lives…

This morning in the church I attend, a couple told their story of adopting a kid from an orphanage from Kazakhstan… as they told their story, tears welled in my eyes as I was reminded of Sasha…

A great deal of help is needed… if you would like to help just go to the ministry website to learn more… please, let’s give kids like Sasha a chance to sleep in the warm.

this is my water bottle…

from it i drink water…

but when it is empty, i can’t pour anything out…

we are just like that…

we can’t pour into people when we are dry…

it takes regular filling to have anything to pour into people…

so we must be sure to keep ourselves spiritually hydrated…

with the living water!

do you ever get spring fever?

spring is a really busy time for me…

but I think I have spring fever… here, from my front garden (yard to Americans) is the bursting forth of color from the dead leaves from last fall…

new life bursts forth from the ground…

in some conversations yesterday the topic of does God answer prayers came up… I said yes… I believe that God listens, cares and acts… but sometimes… we have to go through winter to get to spring… we need to pray and wait sometimes… so we need to hang on… spring is coming!

ok, no attempts at interesting thoughts… just a couple of pix from my trip west… near Santa Cruz

are these thoughts too high in the sky to be real???

“Good people know about both good and evil: bad people do not know about either.”

C.S. Lewis: Mere Christianity, page 88, Touchstone book,1996, NY

thanks to Laci for the actual quote

and i just read this…“For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, for each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thornbushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks. – Jesus (Luke 6:43-45)

I need to realize that the goodness that I can do is – – Him working through me…

and that He is the petrol on which I run (again – Lewis) and that I can do that good only as much as I am ‘plugged into Him’ through keeping a continual conversation going with Him…

both speaking to Him and listening to Him… and as it good conversation with all persons, I need to listen as much as speaking (prayer)…

listening through quietness, reading the word, hearing the thoughts of other followers who He may speak through…

its such an important conversation.