on the topic of procrastination

(disclaimer: these may be the only words of real wisdom this man said in his life. His other utterances tend on the refuse side.)

 

Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and, however early a man's training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly. (Thomas Huxley)

day off

We had pancakes and poached eggs for breakfast. Priya and Sam didn't fight much when they fried the pancakes. Priya ate her poached egg even though she normally fusses about the yolks and these yolks were a little runny. But maybe they all ate them well because we read about poached eggs in the book Bread and Jam for Francis we got at the library a few weeks back.

In a snowstorm, we met Mark at Hardees for shakes and french fries. We finished the second episode of Sugar Creek Gang's Killer Bear and started a third one. The Sugar Creek Gang got in two fights.The big bad boys got licked by the smaller Sugar Creek Gang boys and the younger brother of one of the bad boys started coming to Sunday School. The bad boys were bad because "they hadn't been to Sunday School at all". That's a pretty good explanation for bad kids I guess. I think life was less complicated for children in the 1930s.

Tonight we read how Ralph Moody gathered up some fellow kids from school to drag refuse bridge timbers to sell for firewood in Mary Emma and Company.
The house has a wake of destruction, but it can never be said that nearly every inch of it isn't used.

in regards to worship and church

The gospel remains the power of God unto salvation until we are glorified because we're all "partly unbelievers until we die," as Calvin put it. We need God's rescue every day and in every way...Feasting on God's gospel together through prayer and preaching, sacrament and singing, provides us with the faith, hope, and love we need to be good-news people in a bad-news world. (Tullian Tchividjian in Worship: It's a Big Deal, chapter 17 of Don't Call It a Comeback)

to post visibly somewhere to look at often

 You will treat the weaknesses and failures of others with grace when you humbly admit that you’re more like them than unlike them. (Paul Tripp)

Sovereignty, Suffering, and the Work of Missions

Steve Saint, son of Nate and  Marj Saint, talks from real life experience...incredible, powerful, convicting, amazing:
Sovereignty, Suffering, and the Work of Missions

Here are other amazing things on the same topic: here

little El

She is modeling her skirt that Becca made for her to match Anneka's and Miriam's. Her mother hopes that  modeling is not in her future because modeling is on the short list of "unsavory" occupations. Professional sports is also on the list.

Plumbing however, may be on her career choices. She has been experimenting with what results from an entire roll of Cottonelle Clean Care with soft ripples being deposited in the toilet. She, then, came in the kitchen where I was making supper and thus was too preoccupied to  notice her experiments in the bathroom earlier. I could not keep a straight face after I told her she should "go tell Daddy she was sorry" for the resulting bathroom flood. She stood for at least a half minute looking at me trying to process what she was to do. She did apologize. Will our explanations that in the future, she needs to let Mom or Dad help her after she goes to the bathroom, make sense? She was trying to be self-sufficient after all.

profound words

Our business is to present the Christian faith clothed in modern terms, not to propagate modern thought clothed in Christian terms. —J.I. Packer