They're Back!

OK, so they've been back since Saturday night. Been busy.

They flew in lat(er than originally planned), and both looked tired, but I got weary smiles from them both. Greater than I can express here to have them back. The house is alive again.

Pentecost on Sunday--this is the fulfillment of the promise, the "completion of hope," the moment when the grace of God makes up for that which is lacking in man and gives us the power to be His witnesses to the ends of the earth.

First birthday party for little Hope E. is coming up in a couple of weeks. A belated shout out to my boy Alan and his girl Aubrey for completing five years of marriage on June 1. Yeah. I'm mad late.

Audra and I completed four years a week after that--she was in KY, however, and we've since not had a good time to make that up. She's finishing her graduate work and is usually on the PC whenever she can be. This definitely is a strain, but she'll be done after this summer, then it's on to actually being a librarian.

The Psalter--the steady flow of the Kathisma echoes, time and again: our sufficiency is not in ourselves, but in the steady, quiet voice of God who will not force Himself on you, who will not impress you with loud, grand words of thunder that shock and awe you into submission. Rather He will simply tell you, in that still, small way of His, that you are His, He made you to live in communion with Him, no other life will suffice in place of said communion, and no other incentive will be given other than the tranquil insistence of the Holy Spirit and the unchanging, secure witness of the Holy Scriptures. Compulsion will not take place here. All necessary grace has been given and is being given. We now must respond if we are to live, period, for refusal to still the raging passions for the sake of the even placidity of the fire of God will end in the eternal torment of one who, in craving novelty and stimulation, is forced to endure the hell of God's never-ending, always-contemplative, ever-worthy holiness.