An Overview of Your New Health Insurance!

Here's the link:

http://www.liberty.edu/media/9980/attachments/healthcare_overview_obama_072909.pdf.

Please read this. It may surprise you, or it may not. It may start you thinking. It may scare you. It may make no impression on you at all. It may do any number of things. But whatever it does, just know that unless God intervenes, this is what our government plans to implement very soon.

Sacred Claim

I just recently finished reading a book by one of my long-time favorite authors: Leslie Ludy. The book was Set-Apart Femininity, and it was anything but a disappointment. One of the points that convicted me most was the one called sacred claim.

My life belongs to God. I belong to God. I am His to do with as He pleases. He has a sacred claim on my life and wants to use me in some way in the world for His own glory.

So what right have I to waste my time and money and affections on trivial pursuits? God's kingdom needs servants. God's field needs workers. There are hurting people everywhere, and God would have me burdened to help them.

It helped that my devotions have been in Exodus lately. The children of Israel were slaves, strangers in a strange land. Then God heard their cries and delivered Him, leading them on a pilgrimage to a far-away country; so they rose and cooked their unleavened bread and got their packs ready and went out from Egypt, trusting in the God of their fathers Who had delivered them with His mighty hand.

What would have happened, I wonder, if they - like me - had so many possessions that they couldn't fit them in a room, let alone a pack; and they were dull to the Spirit of God because they were neglecting their relationships with Him for the sake of worthless "pleasures"?

God's call on us is to be pilgrims. Ready to stop and help the needy, but otherwise faithfully and steadfastly walking forward on the road to the Promised Land.

The Simple Life: Laundry

It seems like every time we turn on the radio, someone is talking about the economy, or problems with this administration, or some other negative detail about this period in His Story.

Don't get me wrong. I think it's good to alert people so we can take action and I'm very glad that they're doing that. I don't want that to stop. And I agree with them. It's bad. But it is also important to remember that this is God's Story. He is writing it. He is sovereign, and He knows what He's doing.

There are also things we can do in the meantime. Like cultivating our relationships with God. Like being politically active. And like living the simple life. As Amy Scott of humblemusings.com says, things we should already be doing.

http://humblemusings.com/archives/2008/12/06/things-we-should-be-doing/

But if you're like me and my family, you may not have already been doing some or all of them. Here's one thing we've been trying recently: air-drying laundry. I figured that would be impossible since we currently live in the city. But Mom knew better.

She hung some stiff yellow rope three different ways in our garage and we've been hanging our clothes there for a little under a week. Of course, when my brother is home this weekend we'll have to use the dryer for the sake of time, but we'll still be saving money during the week.

One thing we're still thinking about is how to deal with the bad smell a few of the pieces of laundry have been picking up . . . . More for another post. :)