Showing posts with label Psalms. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Psalms. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Sound the Retreat


source


Sometimes I need to retreat. To pull back from the hurt and pain that comes with life.

 Retreat from the confusion of my own wants and desires. My weak attempt to make things work out.

 Sometimes I want to hide from everything. To cover up my head with my grandmother's quilt and not surface.

 Usually this is after I have railed aloud at God,  screamed at the top of my lungs for an answer to my needs, my wants, and cried until I am spent.

 Then I take cover.

 Retreat to the quiet of my head.

 Which is never really quiet.

 So I fill it with audio versions of the Book of Psalms because I am too weak to even read. 
I listen. I breathe. I fill myself with the words of David:

Psalm 4

Confident Plea for Deliverance from Enemies

To the leader: with stringed instruments. A Psalm of David.

1 Answer me when I call, O God of my right!
    You gave me room when I was in distress.
    Be gracious to me, and hear my prayer.
2 How long, you people, shall my honor suffer shame?
    How long will you love vain words, and seek after lies? Selah
3 But know that the Lord has set apart the faithful for himself;
    the Lord hears when I call to him.
4 When you are disturbed, do not sin;
    ponder it on your beds, and be silent. Selah
5 Offer right sacrifices,
    and put your trust in the Lord.
6 There are many who say, “O that we might see some good!
    Let the light of your face shine on us, O Lord!”
7 You have put gladness in my heart
    more than when their grain and wine abound.
8 I will both lie down and sleep in peace;
    for you alone, O Lord, make me lie down in safety.


There are times when my enemy is myself. My own thoughts that seek to bring me down. 
To be distraught and saddened beyond outside control is a mournful thing. 

So I sound the retreat.


When crying out appears to be met with deaf ears.
When Hope is a splendored thing that it seems is not meant for me.
When life has brought you to the place of a tauntly stretched guitar string and all you can hear is that high-pitched whinning and vibrating sadness; It Can Feel Like Just Too Much.

 Retreat to God's Word. 

Psalm 6

Prayer for Recovery from Grave Illness

To the leader: with stringed instruments; according to The Sheminith. A Psalm of David.

1 O Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger,
    or discipline me in your wrath.
2 Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing;
    O Lord, heal me, for my bones are shaking with terror.
3 My soul also is struck with terror,
    while you, O Lord—how long?

4 Turn, O Lord, save my life;
    deliver me for the sake of your steadfast love.
5 For in death there is no remembrance of you;
    in Sheol who can give you praise?

6 I am weary with my moaning;
    every night I flood my bed with tears;
    I drench my couch with my weeping.
7 My eyes waste away because of grief;
    they grow weak because of all my foes.

8 Depart from me, all you workers of evil,
    for the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping.
9 The Lord has heard my supplication;
    the Lord accepts my prayer.
10 All my enemies shall be ashamed and struck with terror;
    they shall turn back, and in a moment be put to shame.

 Find Solace in another who has cried for help. Who has been brought low by life and it's circumstances.

It may feel like God doesn't hear you. It may feel like you are alone. It may feel like all hope is lost. It may feel like He isn't helping. It may feel like you are drowning in your tears and that your string is going to break. 

 Find peace in His Word.
 Psalm 17: 6-8, 15
6 I call upon you, for you will answer me, O God;
    incline your ear to me, hear my words.
7 Wondrously show your steadfast love,
    O savior of those who seek refuge
    from their adversaries at your right hand.

8 Guard me as the apple of the eye;
    hide me in the shadow of your wings,

15 As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness;
    when I awake I shall be satisfied, beholding your likeness.

Understand in your retreat, that He is still there. He still loves you. 
When your guitar string breaks, and sometimes it will, that is when He can restring you with newness. He can lift you up and hold you in an embrace of such Father Love you are once again whole. 

 For it is in the Breaking that we are than able to start to heal. It is in our weakness, our sadness, our faulty attempts that He is made greater.
2 Corinthians 12: 8-10
Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, 9 but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. 10 Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.

Sound the retreat. Heal. Thank Him. And Move On. 

I shall be in Retreat for now.....


Always Blessed,
Gretchen :)

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Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Tuesday's Gifts~ My Shepherd

Psalm 23

The Divine Shepherd

A Psalm of David.

1 The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
2     He makes me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside still waters;

verdant
 
3     he restores my soul.
He leads me in right paths
    for his name’s sake.

right of way


4 Even though I walk through the darkest valley,
    I fear no evil;
for you are with me;
    your rod and your staff—
    they comfort me.

shadowed


5 You prepare a table before me
    in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
    my cup overflows.

Overflow
 
6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
    all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
    my whole life long.

I am Thankful for My Shepherd.....

"The metaphor of the king as the shepherd of his people goes back to ancient Egypt. Perhaps the use of this particular convention is due to the fact that, being stupid, affectionate, gregarious, and easily stampeded, the societies formed by sheep are most like human ones."
~Northrop Frye 

.... because I am often a perfectly imperfect sheep.

Always Blessed,
Gretchen :)
 
All pictures are courtesy of my sister, Sara Rose Nissen.  
Check out her artwork over at  as seen through my eyes. :)



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Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Homeschool~ Poetry Study



Poetry.
Does it make you feel a bit apprehensive?
Are you convinced it is all full of thees and thous and incomprehensible language?
Does the idea of reading poetry bring you to a place of eye rolling and high school style anguish?

It doesn't have to be like that!


Hear me out on this. (Well, read me out on this. :)) Poetry is a valid and wonderful addition to your homeschool. Poetry can build listening skills, reading comprehension, and can be used to explain certain grammar techniques and phonics skills. The trick is to find valid age appropriate poetry that will keep the attention of your student and teach some beautiful literary appreciation as well.


To be fair, I am biased. I love words. I love reading words. I love placing words together. I love word games. You get the idea. When I was sixteen I got my first thesaurus. I think it was for English class. We may have used it only once but I loved it. I found words to look up just to make my diary look more linguistic. I wrote all of my reports using that handy thesaurus. I sent notes to my grandma saying the same thing three different ways using creative wording. Words with hidden meanings and beautiful lettering can make a simple sentence become, well.... poetry.






Here's the thing about Poems.
They come in more forms than:
Little boy blue, 
Come blow your horn,
The sheep are in the meadow,
The cows are in the corn.
~Mother Goose


Or the standard:
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
~Elizabeth Barrett Browning 




Poetry can tell a story. 
The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is a beautiful poem broken into twenty-two chapters. It is a story written in poetic form. It is beautiful and also informative. There is much to be learned about this culture and the territory. You can find it free online here.
By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.
Dark behind it rose the forest,
Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees,
Rose the firs with cones upon them;
Bright before it beat the water,
Beat the clear and sunny water,
Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.
 Can you see it? I can almost smell the lake water and the pine sap. Gitche Gumee is the great Lake Superior. The gloomy pine trees are most likely the beautiful tall logging pines found in Northern Minnesota. Lovely descriptions. Here are the next lines:
There the wrinkled old Nokomis
Nursed the little Hiawatha,
Rocked him in his linden cradle,
Bedded soft in moss and rushes,
Safely bound with reindeer sinews;
Stilled his fretful wail by saying,
"Hush! the Naked Bear will hear thee!"
Lulled him into slumber, singing,
"Ewa-yea! my little owlet!
Who is this, that lights the wigwam?
With his great eyes lights the wigwam?
Ewa-yea! my little owlet!"
~Song of Hiawatha, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It tells us a story. 


Poetry can be moving. 
It can set your heart to feel and your mind to think. It does not need to be picked and pulled apart, but instead appreciated as a whole. It can be a catalyst for great conversation and debate. It can be motivating on  a personal level. 

If  ~ Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!
There is some good discussion in there, I think.


Poetry was created by our LORD. 
The Psalms are the original organized poetry. All topics are covered. Lessons of morality are showcased. Commands and love notes are sung to us so sweetly. The Psalms are a favorite for many people for their fluid and graceful quality. The lines roll off the tongue fairly easily and pull on our heart strings.
1 May God be gracious to us and bless us
    and make his face to shine upon us, Selah
2 that your way may be known upon earth,
    your saving power among all nations.
3 Let the peoples praise you, O God;
    let all the peoples praise you.
4 Let the nations be glad and sing for joy,
    for you judge the peoples with equity
    and guide the nations upon earth. Selah
5 Let the peoples praise you, O God;
    let all the peoples praise you.
6 The earth has yielded its increase;
    God, our God, has blessed us.
7 May God continue to bless us;
    let all the ends of the earth revere him.
~Psalm 67


Poetry can be a teaching tool. 
My children have thoroughly enjoyed reading Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses and A.A. Milne's Now We Are Six. These are timeless poems written for children. The poems are fanciful and full of childhood dreams and thoughts. The picture above is Sir Bean reading his favorite poem, Forgiven by A.A. Milne. 
Forgiven by A.A. Milne
I found a little beetle; so that Beetle was his name,
And I called him Alexander and he answered just the same.
I put him in a match-box, and I kept him all the day ...
And Nanny let my beetle out -
Yes, Nanny let my beetle out -
She went and let my beetle out -
And Beetle ran away.

She said she didn't mean it, and I never said she did,
She said she wanted matches and she just took off the lid,
She said that she was sorry, but it's difficult to catch
An excited sort of beetle you've mistaken for a match.

She said that she was sorry, and I really mustn't mind,
As there's lots and lots of beetles which she's certain we could find,
If we looked about the garden for the holes where beetles hid -
And we'd get another match-box and write BEETLE on the lid.

We went to all the places which a beetle might be near,
And we made the sort of noises which a beetle likes to hear,
And I saw a kind of something, and I gave a sort of shout:
"A beetle-house and Alexander Beetle coming out!"

It was Alexander Beetle I'm as certain as can be,
And he had a sort of look as if he thought it must be Me,
And he had a sort of look as if he thought he ought to say:
"I'm very very sorry that I tried to run away."

And Nanny's very sorry too for you-know-what-she-did,
And she's writing ALEXANDER very blackly on the lid,
So Nan and Me are friends, because it's difficult to catch
An excited Alexander you've mistaken for a match. 
There is rhyming, punctuation, phonics practice and comprehension that can take this poem to a whole lesson if you wanted. Or you could just enjoy the wonder of children and read Forgiven for sheer love of the realness of it. 

This is just the tip of the proverbial ice berg. There are numerous types, styles, and kinds of poetry. The idea is to just get reading it. Once there is an appreciation for poetry, a child can be led to write his own. When they are older, the works of Shakespeare or Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales will still be challenging but at least familiarly written. Wonderful works like Beowulf will be more easily read and enjoyed if the groundwork is done now. 

We don't do much other than read and enjoy the poems. There are grand discussions sometimes. Mostly though we sip tea and giggle or shed a tear. We compare to our own lives or compare against what The LORD says in His Word. We appreciate the beauty of the words.



Happy Reading!
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Wednesday, November 28, 2012

The Greed Sideswipe

Petunia last year opening her first present. I can't even remember what it was. :(


Tonight The Hubs and I went Christmas shopping. We were alone without kids! Almost like a date! I was feeling so at peace with our decision to have a much simpler Christmas this year. We have committed to a 4 present rule. (I'll be writing on that later so in a way this is a backwards post. The second part of the story is being told first!)

That being said we are only buying each of the kids 4 presents. There are strict rules involved for my benefit. Simple rules that I need to keep from spending far too much.

 You see, I love to give. 
I love to see faces shine up with that smile that says they love what you gave them. 
I enjoy when people get excited over the gift that says I listened to them. I know what they like. 
I love to give.

 Now here is the problem. As good intentioned as gifting can be that sneaky greed can sideswipe you. I mean hit you like a brick when you realize you have somehow managed to completely forget your Christmas budget. Here we are, armed with our list and good intentions and with the first pretty, pink, princess toy we see I fall apart and lose all my wherewithal. 

I'll just place it in the cart... it is on clearance! I can decide before we checkout if I really want to get it. I make a nice, cozy section for the gift I don't 'intend' to buy because I'm just thinking about it.

Next it is the cool flashlights for their stockings. They are headlamps! Just like we used when we went camping with Auntie Rosie! But do we need those? We aren't camping in December.... but the are awesome. The kidlets would have so much fun.

Then the book section. I think it draws me like a magnet. I don't feel the pull but I end up browsing the books and I am able to justify JustOneMore because they are books. And I love books. Books are educational. Books are timeless. Books are classic.

And that is when it hit me while standing in the store. I had fallen prey to the greed in me. I wanted to give.. this and this and this.... even to the detriment of our well being. An empty checkbook is no one's friend.


The LORD says:
Then he said, “Beware! Guard against every kind of greed. Life is not measured by how much you own.”    Luke 12:15
I know this! That is why I am trying to teach my children the value of simple and well thought out spending! Why do I lose my courage so fast?
But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.   Matthew 6:20-21
 This is a fairly clear command. We don't need the stuff and yet I somehow get stuck on this thought that they are missing something.
  Take delight in the Lord,
    and he will give you the desires of your heart.    Psalm 37:4
They are missing nothing. He gives what we need, what we will need, AND what we desire. In His Time.
 
So now, back to the cart full of stuff we didn't intend to buy. Well some of it is going back. We don't need it. They don't need it. I don't want to pick up those little pieces when that such and such toy breaks 5 hours after it is opened. I don't want to find it lying under a pile of dirty laundry under Prince Ray's bed.... in June. 
I will take seriously every item we buy. Is it good quality? Is it something that shows honor to God? Will this toy or book build up my child and help him grow?
These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts.  Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.  Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.  Deuteronomy 6:6-9
 Every gift I give. Every good work I act upon. Every penny I spend speaks volumes to my kids. I teach in all I DO as much as in all that I say.

How do plan to spend your hard earned funds this Christmas season?
Always Blessed,

 Gretchen :)



New International Version (NIV) Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide

New Living Translation (NLT)
Holy Bible. New Living Translation copyright© 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.



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Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Rest In the Lord~ This Is The Air I Breathe


Tonight we had some worship time while making supper. I was struck again by how powerful music can be. How music can stir the emotions and cause the heart to shiver. Poetry set to a simple melody has the power to bring a busy mom to stop and rest in the LORD for a few moments.
 
I find worship breaks during my everyday life can really rejuvenate this mama. I can have 4 or 5 minutes of concentrated prayer. Singing in my shower voice really loudly in my kitchen may not be attractive to my neighbors but it IS a joyful noise unto the LORD!
  • Woke up on the wrong side of the bed?
  • Homeschool morning is not going as planned?
  • Kids are fighting?
  • Fight with your husband?
  • Bad news from your best friend?
  • Having a 'one of those days' kind of day? Month? Year?
Take a moment and rest in the LORD. Meditate on the words in your favorite worship songs. Use those words to springboard prayer in your life. Start a mini study by looking up the song and finding out if there is a relevant verse that inspired the song. Use the music as a tool to increase your time with the Lord!

In Psalms we are encouraged to rest in the darkest of times.
 
2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside still waters.
Psalm 23:2 

Jesus commands us to take His example and learn from it.
 
 29 Take the yoke[a] I give you. Put it on your shoulders and learn from me. I am gentle and humble, and you will find rest. 
Matthew 11:29
 Footnotes: 
Matthew 11:29 yoke: Yokes were put on the necks of animals, so that they could pull a plow or wagon. A yoke was a symbol of obedience and hard work.

 Jesus also encouraged rest in his disciples. Should we not also take a few minutes to rest in Him?


31 Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.”
Mark 6:31

I pray that today you find a few moments for some quiet (or Shower Singing Loud!) worship time to rest and rejuvenate in your LORD Jesus!


This Is the Air I Breathe



This is the air I breathe
This is the air I breathe
Your holy presence living in me

This is my daily bread
This is my daily bread
Your very word spoken to me

And I, I'm desperate for you
And I, I'm I'm lost without you



This is the air I breathe
This is the air I breathe
Your holy presence living in me

This is my daily bread
This is my daily bread
Your very word spoken to me

And I, I'm desperate for you
And I, I'm I'm lost without you

And I, I'm desperate for you,
And I, I'm lost without you,

I'm lost without you,

I'm so lost without you.

I'm so lost without you.

I'm so lost without you,

This is the air I breathe
This is the air I breathe
Your holy presence living in me

This is my daily bread
This is my daily bread
Your very word spoken to me

And I, I'm desperate for you
And I, I'm lost without you.

Always Blessed,

Gretchen :)
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