Just after the astounding miracle of the loaves & fishes Jesus sent His diciples across the water to the other side, sent the poeple away & went to to a mountain to pray. From His vantage point He could observe the disciples rowing for hours against "contrary wind" to cross with slow success. Jesus could walk faster than they were rowing it was so slow! He walked out onto the water to meet them. The words in todays Streams in the Desert devotion minstered to me greatly this morning:

"And he saw them toiling in rowing" (Mark 6:48).

Straining, driving effort does not accomplish the work God gives man to do. Only God Himself, who always works without strain, and who never overworks, can do the work that He assigns to His children. When they restfully trust Him to do it, it will be well done and completely done. The way to let Him do His work through us is to partake of Christ so fully, by faith, that He more than fills our life.

A man who had learned this secret once said: "I came to Jesus and I drank, and I do not think that I shall ever be thirsty again. I have taken for my motto, 'Not overwork, but overflow'; and already it has made all the difference in my life."

There is no effort in overflow. It is quietly irresistible. It is the normal life of omnipotent and ceaseless accomplishment into which Christ invites us today and always.

--Sunday School Times

"In resurrection stillness there is resurrection power."  

Working only to be still & overflow,
Martha

Christmas was such a blessed season for our family.  We continue to celebrate the holy season with our Jesse Tree devotions & decorations as one part.  It becomes more meaningful each year.  We made a ton of fudge, toffee, peppermint patties, snack mix, & you name it.  We celebrated our Christmas Eve for the second year with friends over their fire pit grilling venison steaks & much more.  It is such a wonderful evening.  Our Christmas Day we feast for breaksfast & then worship & sing to our Living God!  Our afternoon & evening we play games & laugh ourselves silly.  We celebrate a family Wise Man's Day where we exchange handmade gifts to one another.  We do this on New Year's Day to keep material gifts apart from our focus of the Word born to us.  This allows us to enjoy after Christmas sales, too. 

The new year brought us 75 degree days!  Very strange but not unwelcome.  There will be plenty of snow before Spring.  This past Thursday we had 6 inches in just a few hours & it was beautiful!  We get stuck atop our ridge until Mark jumps on the tractor & plows us out.  The hill out can be a bobsled run straight into the river otherwise! 

Our rabbitry is thriving.  Two more weeks until butchering time for two large litters.  I have not tried a barbeque recipe with the meat thus far so I will be working to create a recipe for a red sauce based Barbequed FletchBunny!  Of course, I will be trying my now perfected NC Pulled Pork Barbeque recipe with the rabbit meat!  We will be breeding a first time doe to a borrowed buck this week to improve the line of our Californians.  Our plans are to be building new cages in the Spring to double our herd.  We have become experienced with the home treatment of ear mites & weepy eye recently.  Testing different mixtures for natural remedies has been very satisfying.

The Lord has been teaching us much, drawing us ever closer to Himself.  We see more clearly each day how the Father desires us to love the brethren with His unconditional love.  We can embrace trials more than ever knowing that, like diamonds, the process of reduction & threatened destruction causes the value to be multiplied ten-fold, enabling a matchless shine of a thousand flashes of reflected light...His light!  We are cut to shine! 

Blessed be the name of the Lord, for He is our Rock.

Free & all for Him,

Martha for all

Waking during the night often brings anxious thoughts that can hound me for what seems like hours before falling back to sleep.  With a propensity towards anxiety, a good night’s sleep is imperative for me.  These interruptions have the potential to wear on my body & mind for days.  There is truly only one successful combatant against these, & any anxious thoughts: the Word of God.  When I have hidden the Word of God in my heart I am enabled to use the best “weapon of warfare” in the dark of the night. 

• "For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.”   2 Corinthians 10:3-5
• "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee: because he trusteth in Thee".  Isaiah 26:3
  

Meredith & I were peeling, cutting & coring apples together & we were singing along to some rich hymns recorded by Fernando Ortega.  One hymn (written by Ortega himself, a modern-day hymn writer) brought to my mind all of what the Lord does to pour out His peace to me.  I am enabled through the power of the Living Word of God to cast down imaginations & bring them into captivity to the obedience of Christ by keeping my mind stayed on Him…His Word given to me.
Here is the song that brought all this to my mind this morning:
Jesus King of Angels by Fernando Ortega

Jesus King of angels heaven's light
Shine Your face upon this house tonight
Let no evil come into my dreams
Light of heaven keep me in Your peace
Remind me how You made dark spirits flee
And spoke Your power to the raging sea
And spoke Your mercy to a sinful man
Remind me Jesus this is what I am

The universe is vast beyond the stars
But You are mindful when the sparrow falls
And mindful of the anxious thoughts
That find me, surround me and bind me

With all my heart I love You Sovereign Lord
Tomorrow let me love You even more
And rise to speak the goodness of Your name 
Until I close my eyes and sleep again

• "Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus".  Philippians 4:6-7

May the peace of Christ keep our hearts & minds.
Martha for all

Here goes…our first blog entry.  Please bear with us as we attempt to record our family thoughts, ideas & happenings.  We hope this helps us remain better connected to extended family & friends as well.

Fall is such a splendid season.  It is a breathtaking swirl of color & crispness that seems to capture the thrill of discovery of both Heaven & earth.  The bustle of activity all around us is invigorating even just to observe. 

We have been participating in some autumn activities as a family with great enjoyment.  Particularly, we gathered with several other families recently to make apple butter in an enormous copper kettle over an open fire.  We had great conversation as we diligently stirred the apples for more than seven hours.  An assembly line made the canning quick & brought about much laughter.  An annual family tradition begun!

The Lord has been showing us tremendous grace & mercy each day to wait on Him for the sale of our house.  He may desire for us to stay on our property & this time be a refining process.   We are often reminded of His words through Isaiah: “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts "(Isaiah 55:9).  We pray for His will to be truly worked out in us & through us, not without us.

We are praying to adopt & hoping to have our home study complete by the end of January.   We are excited to see how the Lord continues to lead & guide us.

Our homeschool has been such a joy.  We are thoroughly enjoying using Christian Light’s Language Arts & Reading curriculum this year, especially the readers.  We are moving along in Mystery of History 1, with plans to finish it in conjunction with our Easter/Passover celebration in the Spring.  It is a wonderful curriculum from which the Lord has revealed much to us of His story.  We continue to all learn from Math-U-See.  Can you believe math has become great fun to me?  Our science has been fun learning about the “heavens”.  Extraordinary.  We are frequently detoured by all the exciting animal happenings on & around our property.

Our rabbitry is in full swing.  With one Californian breeding pair & one New Zealand breeding pair we are learning much.  We reserved one male & one female offspring of the Californians for future cross breeding with the New Zealand’s.  I have been experimenting with recipes & have come to the conclusion that I can use any chicken recipe & substitute rabbit.  It really is better than chicken: sweeter with a finer grain & chewier texture.  Even better, rabbit meat has more protein & fewer calories than any of the popular meats.  It has a low cholesterol content and is easy to digest, too.  We have two litters expected mid-November that should be ready for butchering mid-February.

I hope to blog regularly to keep all things current.  Again, please bear with us. To you we pray...

"The Lord bless thee, and keep thee: the Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: the Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace".              Numbers 6:22-24

Much love to you in Christ Jesus, the Author & Finisher of our faith.

Martha for all