God's Minute 3/15

I will extol Thee, my God, O King; and I will bless Thy Name for ever and ever. Every day will I bless Thee; and I will praise Thy Name for ever and ever. Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; and His greatness is unsearchable. One generation shall praise Thy works to another, and shall declare Thy mighty acts.--Psalm 145:1-4

WE thank Thee, our Father in Heaven, for life and health and home. Thou hast brought us this new day, with its new blessings and its new duties. As we go out to our new tasks and pleasures, may we carry hearts full of love to Thee and to everybody. We lay our hands in Thine, and we trust Thee to lead us in the right and safe way. We are glad to know that Thou art with us, and we are going to try to do nothing that would drive Thee away from us. Teach us to walk in the footsteps of Jesus, Who went about doing good. Bless every member of our family, bless our friends, and if we have enemies, bless them. Help our eyes to see and our ears to hear and our hearts to love that which is true and clean and good. We trust Thy care to bring us safely to our Heavenly home when the day of life is ended. We ask all this forJesus' sake.

Amen.

J.C. Armstrong, D.D.,
Kansas City, Missouri

Vizsla in Motion

For those of you who have been introduced to Vizslas through my website, I thought you might like to see a Vizsla in motion. Just look for the three commercials under the heading "Pedigree pouches." Oh, and you'll need Flash Player to watch it online.

In the first one you'll see an example of what we call "counter surfing." At our house, this is when the V (namely Ivy--we do not change the names to protect the innocent--there are no innocent dogs in our house) sneaks a bit of food off the counter lickety-split. This happened today when I was preparing a fried egg sandwich for lunch--the egg was done. . .hmm, where did I put that bread? IVY!!!

Didn't see the V snatch the food off the counter, did you? See, that's the thing; they really are that fast. We almost NEVER see it happen. The absence of food, the guilty look, and licks tell the tale. Oh, and a 50 pound dog trying to hide in plain sight is another clue.

Tuesday Treasures

In keeping with last week's "Tuesday Treasure", this week I am sharing another one of my book treasures.

I received this boxed set of The Lord of the Rings for my high school graduation from my parents. I graduated in 1974, so that makes them over 30 years old. As you can tell from the pictures, this set is virtually worn out, so several years ago I bought the Red Book, single volume edition of The Lord of the Rings. Though it still sits among my other worn out Tolkien books, that one no longer belongs to me.

It has become a treasure of a different kind. . .

UPDATE:

My friend, Dave, shares a picture of his books here.

God's Minute 3/14

Ask and it shall be given you.--Luke 11:9

OUR Heavenly Father, accept our thanks for the re-creation of body and mind Thou hast given us in the hours of wonderful sleep.

Help us to be so attentive to the still small voice of our Teacher and Guide, the Holy Spirit, that whether we eat or drink, or whatever we do this day, all shall be done to Thy glory.

We desire that Thy Kingdom come and Thy will be done in our hearts, oue home, our city, our country, and in all the earth. We so desire this, that here and now we offer Thee our bodies, our minds, our reputations, our characters and our lives, and ask Thee to use each and all as seems best to Thee.

So relate us and all we have to Thy work in the world, that we may count for most in Thy Kingdom. So teach and train us by Thy Word and daily providences that we shall trust Thee daily for our daily neds, and witness for Thee by being as peaceful and joyous in disappointment, adversity, or affliction, as in prosperity.

We ask it in the name of Jesus, our Saviour.

Amen.

William B. Stubbs,
Savannah, Georgia

Dürer: Dream Vision

Dream Vision

From the website:

The watercolour and accompanying text describe an apocalyptic dream which Dürer had on the night of 7-8 June 1525.

Below the watercolour Dürer wrote a description of his dream:

`In 1525, during the night between Wednesday and Thursday after Whitsuntide, I had this vision in my sleep, and saw how many great waters fell from heaven. The first struck the ground about four miles away from me with such a terrible force, enormous noise and splashing that it drowned the entire countryside. I was so greatly shocked at this that I awoke before the cloudburst. And the ensuing downpour was huge. Some of the waters fell some distance away and some close by. And they came from such a height that they seemed to fall at an equally slow pace. But the very first water that hit the ground so suddenly had fallen at such velocity, and was accompanied by wind and roaring so frightening, that when I awoke my whole body trembled and I could not recover for a long time. When I arose in the morning, I painted the above as I had seen it. May the Lord turn all things to the best.'

In the draft of his unpublished `Nourishment for Young Painters', dating from over a decade earlier, Dürer had written:

`How often do I see great art in my sleep, but on waking cannot recall it; as soon as I awake, my memory forgets it.'

But on this occasion, Dürer made great efforts to recall the dream and painstakingly recorded it in an image and words. The result is probably one of the most realistic early depictions of a scene accurately recalled from a dream, as opposed to more composed visions which had previously figured in European paintings and illuminated manuscripts.