Please Do Not Mention My Housekeeping Skills

Look at this, would ya? I went to check through my random extra spices if I have bulk whole cloves or if they need to go on my shopping list for making orange pomanders. I didn't find any but instead found this bottle of yellow food color, with the lid so so corroded:

So. Not sure what you are thinking but my thoughts ran pretty much like this: Look at how corrosive yellow is. What does that mean about hope? I decided to scratch corrosive for something more positive. What do you think about transformative? I like that one. Hope is transformative. It cannot even be bottled up (think of Pandora, ye random thinkers) but escapes the bottle. I like that.

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apologies for the excessively rambly nature of this entry. Mr Music is reading through Histories of Herodotus and believe me, I stuck to the point by comparison. 

End of Winter Musings

Winter. This year it goes on and on. I keep bumping into one big question: What amazing thing is God doing with all this snow and cold?

Thinking about winter this way gives me hope. I am all about hope and watching for the first signs of life being brought forth from winter. I wish I were biologist enough to know how 
so much winter affects life. What is going on down under all this snow? Will the flowers and crops be especially abundant and beautiful? And the animals, how will it affect them? 

I think one way God uses nature is to teach us hope. He has made the ebbing and flowing of seasons a part of human nature; it resonates with us and makes sense. God says in Ecclesiastes 3 that He has "made everything beautiful in its time. Also, He has put eternity into man's heart." What I learn from watching seasons change ~ maybe especially seemingly endless seasons ~ helps build hope into my heart. 

Romans 8:22-25 has been one of my memory passages:

For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.  And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.  For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees?  But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience

It almost feels as if nature is groaning under the pain of winter and waiting for spring, as Lewis showed when Narnia was under the White Witch's rule. What will all that snow give birth to?

But spring is coming. And what application does this have for different types of "winter" ~ what beautiful glory is God working under all the stuff I'd rather not experience? I am waiting with hope to see.

Look What the Mailman Brought!!!

My dear online friend over at The Laundry Pile and I have a longstanding use of yellow as the Color of Hope.


So at lunch I heard a mailtruck rumbling up our gravel driveway. I left my plate of reheated spaghetti and met him and was glad to see a package. I was gladder to see Comfy Denim's (as I first knew her) return address. And when I opened it, Oh, my. What a lot of yellow goodness was crammed in that box. A box full of sunshine and hope. :)  Thank you, thank you, thank you.