Give and You Shall Receive

And His mercies are new every morning. Yes, His strength is new this morning, too. I'm thinking mainly of my daughter Lauri who has gotten the brunt of the responsibility this week with our family home. I have ten in my household but she has more and many of them are little kids. Her home is more conducive for kids because there are kids that live there. Beside that, she has a lovely big home and a big yard. I feel badly, though, when I see her strength wear thin. I know what its like........I did it for years and years. However, she would be the first to say that we are having the time of our lives. She commented yesterday after we took the kids to a movie just to have an hour and a half of quiet, that though we complain about the noise they make, it is a delightful experience to watch those little cousins interact.

I don't recall laughing so much recently as I have the last few days. The way the adult kids banter between them and poke fun at each other (all in love of course) is entertaining. My dad and his wife have been with us several hours this week. Last night my dad just sat and grinned from ear to ear as he watched the adult kids mess around. There happened to be on the table a magnet in plastic with many magnetic screws. One could fashion a creation on the plastic base. A contest developed over the course of the day and by the time our eldest son, John, arrived, the heat was on. Pictures had been taken of earlier creations and he took on the challenge of trying to create something bigger and better. He completed his statue and then something occurred that threw all the magnetism off and the thing collapsed. The entertainment was priceless. I'm not sure the contest is over. I think new mercy will be had in that area, too, this morning. I should think of some neat prize to award the winner.

Having Jay around, our computer gurue, is a big help in the tech department. He put all the pictures from our Bear's camp trip on a slide show with music in the background. Too cute. I asked him if he would put that link on my blog so maybe we will get lucky today. One has to stand in line as Jay grants tech wishes to family members. Poor guy.......

Yesterday, a couple of my daughters presented me with a Joyce Meyer study Bible, a gift for my birthday. I opened it this morning and thought I would begin at the very beginning, a very good place to start. Genesis 1 is such an interesting commentary of the beginning of the world. It struck me how God tells us that with each living thing He created, He put within that thing the ability to recreate. He talks of making flowers and trees with fruit, all having their own seed within them. It made me think of how we have within us the seed of Jesus Christ. As humans, we not only can recreate another human, but we can use the seed of the presence of Jesus within us to create good in all our activity. Jesus tells the story in the gospels of the sower, one who plants his seed in good soil and reaps a good harvest and those that plant their seed in bad soil and reap no harvest or worse. When I look at my family, I am grateful that in God's grace I was born into a family that had taken this seed planting and harvesting principal very seriously. This principal was taught to us very early in life. What one sows, one will reap. Now we all know that life isn't always predictible but we also now that on the law of averages, that principal is strong.
When we give love, we get love. When we give time, we get time. When we give money, we get money. When we give effort, we receive results. It is a principal of life. I trust Ken and I have taught that to our children and I pray our grandchildren are learning the ways of life taught from that vantage point. All of this hangs on God's grace to us all. After all, it is His prinicpal.