The Power of Forgiveness

Yesterday I was driving and listening to The Story with Dick Gordon on NPR. It was the second half of the program that airs here from 11-12. The Story ( click on the link to listen to it )was about Eva Kor, a woman who survived Auschwitz. She described her experiences. I missed that part, but the part I heard was her "gift" to the Nazi doctor, Mengele, who had used her and her twin sister for experiments. Her gift was forgiveness. She established a center for others that have endured similar experiences. Here's a link to her website. She tells her story and how she could forgive.
I don't know whether she is a Christian or not, but what she says about forgiveness has some truth to it.

 I call it [forgiveness] a miracle medicine. It is free, it works and has no side effects..

She also calls it "chemotherapy". It works for yourself. You can't take it for someone else. Corrie ten Boom has a similar story of forgiveness when she met up with a guard from the camp where she was imprisoned.

These stories also go along with my Bible reading today in Matthew 18:23-35, the story of the servant who owed an astromical amount to his master, but was forgiven when he begged for mercy. Yet he went out and imprisoned one who owed him pennies. Forgiveness. We've been forgiven so much!

In Remembrance

Because I have all these scanned photos, I have to post this one. Today would have been my Gramma's 99th birthday.  I was the first grandchild, and she was MY Gramma! I think she made us all feel we were special. She raised her seven children mostly alone, with the help of the "village". No electricity. No running water. Seven children in nine years. Lots of diapers. Cows to milk. Water to pump. Fires to keep. Not only that but after she came to know Christ in her life, she taught her children faithfully. And they also are His followers.  "Her children shall rise up and call her blessed." What a  blessing she was to me. 

Scanning away the day

Yesterday I spent a good portion scanning the old family album. There are only a few very old ones, that is from the 40's. Most of them are immediate family photos from the 50's and 60's. I've posted some on Facebook. It's been fun to have a virtual family reunion looking at the old family album and commenting. My siblings, of course, have seen them many times, but it's still fun to comment about them. What's made it even more fun is sharing the photos with family friends (who also are part of them) and with cousins that we've either haven't seen for years or never met.

The top photo is my dad's family taken about 1941? I'm guessing. He is standing next to his baby brother.

The bottom photo is my my (on the left) with her sister and uncle. I didn't enhance this photo at all because I thought the faded (brownish in the original) color lent to the mood of the photo. Looks like something from Grapes of Wrath. It's also probably around the early 40's. Man, that uncle is one handsome guy!

Besides that, I'm not doing much else besides tidying up and regular maintenance around the house. I'm crocheting another afghan during my winter evenings. We've hardly had any sun this month, but this morning is brilliant. I would rather it be clear and cold than mid-30's and foggy. ugh.  Winter is long.

Hey, if any of you around here are free for coffee, call me up! I'm almost ALWAYS ready for that!

Random thoughts

Lately I feel like I can't focus on anything for very long. My mind is functioning in bullets. So it's not working to think about blogging on a topic. Some of the bullets:

• our microwave beeps when it gets to a certain temperature in the house. Not exactly sure what temperature, though. Somewhere in the 60's. Why does it do that?


• my class this week is going to review the kings of Israel and Judah up to Asa and Omri. We talk about their hearts. How's my heart?


• finished reading Counterfeit Gods by Tim Keller. Now there's something about hearts. Our idols are good things turned in to Most Important things. Some good thoughts on where our political hopes lie, for both sides.


• thinking about myself, as part of the Church, the Bride of Christ. In the "old days" the father chose the bride for the son. Some spiritual significance there. Humbled to be chosen and then drawn to this awesome Bridegroom.


• In reading bits of Foundations of the Christian Faith by James Montgomery Boice, I ran across this comment from Boice on what C.S.Lewis thought particularly on liturgy: "..Lewis did not plead for liturgy. He asked merely for what he called uniformity on the grounds that 'novelty' in the worship service at best turns our attention to the novelty and at worst turns it to the one who is enacting the liturgy." The point is our worship should help us focus totally on God alone.

Winter wonderland Or "earth stood hard as iron..."

Graduation Weekend slide show

Graduation weekend

Graduation weekend was a gift from God. What an experience it was for Dennis and me for the whole weekend from beginning to end. There were so many details that we were unsure about from picking Laura up at Midway on Tuesday evening to finally arriving at my mom's on Saturday afternoon.

SO thankful, first of all, for dry roads the whole time! That's really amazing given the kind of winter that we've had so far and where we had to go.

Second thing we're thankful for is the heater in the car! The temperature hovered in the single digits (F) for the majority of the weekend. The car was lovely and warm, and the heated front seats, priceless!

Third thing we're thankful for is cell phones! That made picking Laura up a snap. We arrived at the airport in Chicago within minutes of her getting off the plane! And we drove from Omaha.

Last, but not least we're thankful for the Garmin, the GPS system that got us to the hotel, to the base, to eating places, to our friends' house and also told us the approximate arrival times. What fun!