In no particular order of importance, mainly just order of happening:

1. Melanie Penn
2. “The Reckoning (How Long)” by Andrew Peterson. Cannot wait for the full album to come out!
3. Catching up on the “Song(s) of the Day” at The Rabbit Room (see above)
4. 5 Free songs from Amazon (see above…)
5. Finding out that Andy Gullahorn still does “Haiku Reviews”
6. Almost finishing The Hobbit (I am so close!)
7. New music from Andy Osenga!
8. Naps at lunchtime
9. Massage (even if she did use too much lotion…seriously…WAY too much)
10. The fact that most of these things were done BEFORE 8am (1-6)

For those of you who don’t know me very well, I love to sing and am on the Worship Team at my church. I also happen to work at the front desk of my church. One of my many tasks is to harass people to turn in their newsletter updates so that they can be published. When I was doing my monthly harassment rounds in May I was asked “Do you want to just write it?” I started thinking about it, wasn’t sure if I wanted to go THAT far just to have something to publish and thankfully I received an update. But I kept thinking. This is what was just published in the June newsletter (available in mailboxes – literal and virtual – today!).

Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God.
How unsearchable His judgments, how unknowable His paths.
Who knows the mind of our God? And who can bring counsel to Him?
Who has given to God that God should repay?
For from Him, Through Him, to Him is everything.
To God be the glory, forever and ever, to God be the glory forever! Amen!*

If you have been at Trinity in the last five months, chances are you have heard the Worship Team sing this song at least a few times (hint: we sing it during the Offering every Sunday). The title of the song is Doxology (Romans 11) and the text is taken from Romans 11:33-36. For those of you wondering, like I was, the word “doxology” comes from two Greek words: doxa, meaning glory and logos, meaning word or speaking. It is generally used to refer to an “expression of praise to God, especially a short hymn.” (Thank you, Wikipedia.) I have been around the church and church music for my entire life, but until a few weeks ago I never really thought about what the word meant. We are to speak glory, and not just glory about some created thing – glory that belongs to the only true God, our Maker and Redeemer. We spend so much time speaking our own glory, that often speaking of His glory is an afterthought. Not to Paul. Paul speaks of His glory and His glory only. More importantly, he doesn’t stop there. I decided to look up the verses in Romans and found that directly after this speaking of His glory are these verses:

¹I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. ²Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

As Tim (our pastor & my one of my bosses) often reminds us, the chapter notations were not originally in the Scriptures. This is a continuation of chapter 11. The “therefore” is referring back to the speaking of His glory. Looking at the holy and incomparable wisdom and knowledge of God, how can we not praise Him? How can we hold back our worship? There really is no separation. When we see His holiness, we are to be transformed to have a mind for Him. Making this connection has only made the words of this song sweeter as I sing them on Sunday and as I call them to mind throughout the week. It is a weekly reminder of just how glorious our Maker is. I pray that you will think about this as we all sing together of His glory.

-Heather Parker, Worship Team Vocalist

*Doxology (Romans 11) By Andrew Peterson ©2004 New Spring Publishing, Inc (a division of Brentwood-Benson Music Publishing, Inc.) used by permission

I’ve been inspired to do a better job keeping up my blog. Thanks, Lindy. That isn’t going to happen at this particular moment, since I don’t have time to stop and write much right now, but stay tuned.

Enter to win until noon today!

I could definitely use one of these bags. Of course, I could also use a free vacation to go with it! We’ll just have to see how our annual Valentine’s Day lottery tickets did after the drawing tonight…

“The great thing with unhappy times is to take them bit by bit, hour by hour, like an illness. It is seldom the present, the exact present, that is unbearable. Remember one is given strength to bear what happens to one, but not the 100 and 1 different things that might happen.”

C.S. Lewis, Letter to An American Lady

From: S.D. Smith (Thanks!)

So, I just realized that we took 0 pictures of our apartment at Christmas, 0 pictures of our cute little Christmas tree with our 1st year ornaments on it and the happy little train going around it, 0 pictures of us at Christmastime (other than the family pictures up in Ohio). How sad is that? We will have to go on our failing memories for everything having to do with our 1st Christmas. The way our memories are going I think we’re going to be in trouble.

Not our Christmas tree.

I have a new love. Don’t worry. Ben isn’t in trouble. My new love is yogurt and granola. You know how you can buy the Yo-Crunch that has it all nicely packaged for you? Yeah. That costs way too much for me. I decided to come up with my own snazzy packaging so that I could take it to work with me. I bought the big container of strawberry yogurt at the grocery. (I usually buy Yoplait, but they were out of it the other day, so I bought the Wal-Mart brand. I actually really like it! It has strawberry pieces in it.) I then went to Publix because it is the only place that I’ve found granola. They have it with the nuts in the produce section. I then took my wonderful “prep bowls” from Pampered Chef (To get some of your own Pampered Chef “Prep Bowls” click HERE to go to my friend, Jenifer’s page.)

I filled the bowl up to the 1/2 cup mark to leave room the granola.

I added the granola.

I ate a tasty treat. (And did it inexpensively!)

Yes, yes. I know. It has been a month since the wedding. I should have posted something by now. I haven’t. I haven’t wanted to touch the computer when I get home from work. I will post something of a little more substance later, but for now, here is a picture from the wedding:

Red Wedding Shoes

& a bonus for good measure:

9 Days Left.

Ok, so here are pictures of the apartment as promised!

Our stairs leading up to our door:

Looking out our picture window into the stairwell:

Looking out our front door from the kitchen:

Our kitchen from one angle:

And another:

And yet another or “Look! There’s a dishwasher!”:

Dining room:

Another view of the dining room:

Dining room into the kitchen:

Living room:

Bathroom:

Guest room/Office:

Guest room/Office again:

Hallway from guest room to master bedroom (bathroom on the right):

Master bedroom:

The fun-sized closets:

More to come once we start adding our own touches!