January -- daily feeding and a new year...

  

January finds us with daily feeding chores.  Thankfully there is still plenty of grazing out in the pastures that the cows and sheep can find on their own, but we still must bring them the majority of their daily food.  Winter months are generally lean, cold, bitter, lacking sunshine.  The livestock need us, day in and day out.  It makes me think of how we especially need our Master to feed us in the particularly cold, bitter times of life when we have a hard time gathering for ourselves.

 

It's a new year.  2012.  Wow!  When I was a girl, the year 2012 would have made me think of the Jetsons or Star Trek where people would be driving hovercrafts to work and be jettisoned through tubes to later materialize on another planet or to school and back home again just like Elroy and Spock did.   But 2012 isn't quite like what I had imagined.  I am, however, amazed at our tech-y ability to communicate.  It wasn't that many years ago when I used a rotary phone.  Touch tone was a fabulous improvement!

                                 Rotary phone in our mud room                                           Touch tone phone

A cell phone was non-existent and only a figment of the imagination.  I remember a friend of mine telling me that she was sure one day her husband would have a telephone glued to his ear.  And now here we are, with Bluetooth and other in-the-ear devices for telephone communication.  I marvel at the ability a cell phone has, not only to communicate but to compute (as in mini-computer) and do things I can't do on a cell phone (like send a picture).  It is incredible!  I wonder what ten more years might bring?


This January I'm not thinking about new year resolutions.  At.  All.  I was telling Hubs the other day that last January I was going to do yoga diligently -- at least a few times a week -- and never once did I put the DVD in and do a single session.  Not one time.  At least you could say I was consistent.  Actually, today I'm thinking about contentment.  Doing whatever God has for me in This Day.  It doesn't mean that I won't plan ahead or try hard to accomplish certain things or to be a better person, but I want to be in this day and rejoice in it (as best I can).  The things that God might have for li'l ol' me will probably never be printed in the NY Times, and I probably won't get an invitation to The Today Show to tell about my fabulous life and doings, but I know He has put me here for a purpose, and I want to be able to give myself to my friends and family and anyone else who may cross my path.  I want to be content in whatever situation I may find myself  and honor God with this body He has given me -- today!  That makes me think of a hymn that says, "grace for today and bright hope for tomorrow..."  That's how I want to live.  Contentedly.   ...for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.  ~Philippians 4:11-13

I have a book that I call "My Book of Favorites" and within it I have lots of quotes, excerpts from books, snippets from friends, scripture, and things that I have found interesting or meaningful.  One quote that I love is from Jim Elliot, a missionary to the Auca Indians of Ecuador where he was killed by the very people he went to help.  He said, "Wherever you are, be all there.  Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God."  I probably won't be a missionary to a far away land, but no matter where I am I want to "be all there" and "living to the hilt."  Do you want to join me?  Happy 2012!