Time with Christian friends

After a brother encouraged the saints last Sunday, in the SJC Bible class, to find more "excuses" to be together, and using the disciples in Taubaté as a good example, one sister is having folks over tonight at her house. Her son will make pizza.

So we look forward to some enjoyable moments with some of our family in Christ.

Back yard tiles made progress today as the workers laid them on the back veranda and in the back yard. Yup, the yards here are often tiled or concreted, as ours was, with rough cement, until now. Is going to look better and provide better protection. In one corner a spot of grass or plants, however The Missus has decided.

See my blog for pics from a couple of days ago.

Clean feels good

Just back from the dentist for a needed cleaning. He spent an hour scraping and polishing. How good does that make me feel? Not quite like after I was baptized but, if I may risk being sacrilegious, not far behind it. I won't hoist upon you the old saying about cleanliness and godliness. Now I pray I may not see the good dentist for a good while now.

Ten out of twelve

Over on my blog I mentioned, yesterday I think it was, that I had made up a new Daily Dozen list for myself. Today, so far, 10 out of 12. Not a bad number.

Lots of writing today, prayers, articles, reports, both in English and Portuguese. Check my blog, in the lower right column, for most of my English writings, "All He Wrote." That feed is incomplete and sometimes skippy. Has been hard to find a good one, but we make do.

Time for a movie with The Missus.


The first entry

In his book An Exposition of the Whole Bible, G. Campbell Morgan writes on Jesus and the poor widow in Lk 21.1-4:

Of the gifts being cast into the treasury He was the true Appraiser. He saw the widow as she cast in her gift, and said that she had "cast in more than they all." In the realm of superfluity God does not begin to count. The first entry in the heavenly books is that of sacrifice.

Well said.

A writer's prayer

God of words and revelation, may someone be blessed today by what I write or have already written. Above all, may someone be led to you and your Word as I point to you.

May I never underestimate the power of words, nor the potency of holy Scripture, to change a life and redirect a soul toward its eternal destiny. May I speak with a view to how the hearer will understand and if he will perceive in my words the Spirit of Christ.

How to look at death

On FMag today, my editorial with a bit of autobiography for an introduction:

Perhaps I have always thought about death a lot, because in my college days I escaped practically unscathed, without a seat belt, from an auto accident, which should have killed me. Or perhaps it’s because I had chronic abdominal pain as a child and then surgery to remove a kidney at 18. Or perhaps I just have a weird personality. Or an overactive imagination.

Read the article, "When Death Ceases to Be a Morbid Subject."


Great Sunday

Read Saturday's Corollaries segment on TFR: "Yet Another Blog Post." Don't miss yesterday's prayer poem, "Around the Table of the Lord." Also, last night was added a cool outline on 1 Thessalonians 5.12-18, that got enlarged from one in Portuguese being used in the Taubaté Bible study.

Lessee, I'm missing one or two others, but I don't remember them just now.

Great day yesterday with the saints in SJC and Taubaté. Last night, we ate pizza with Ricardo and family and a new family to Taubaté. We pray they will make a great addition to the work here, and that we may be able to encourage them.