Silly Seasonal Synonym Songs

From the excellent book, The ADVENTure of Christmas (p. 39) by Lisa Whelchel, comes this delightful challenge:

Work together and see if your family can guess these common Christmas songs and carols from silly synonym sentences.

1. Move hitherward the entire assembly of those who are loyal in their belief.  ("O Come, All Ye Faithful")
2. Small municipality in Judea southeast of Jerusalem.  ("O Little Town of Bethlehem")
3. Listen, the celestial messengers produce harmonious sounds.  ("Hark, the Herald Angels Sing")
4. Nocturnal time-span of unbroken quietness.  ("Silent Night")
5. An emotion excited by the acquisition or expectation of good given to the terrestrial sphere.  ("Joy to the World")
6. Embellish the interior passageways.  ("Deck the Halls")
7. Diminutive masculine master of skin-covered percussion cylinders.  ("Little Drummer Boy")
8. Obese personification fabricated of compressed mounds of minute crystals.  ("Frosty the Snowman")
9. Expectation of arrival to populated area by mythical masculine perennial gift-giver.  ("Santa Claus is Coming to Town")
10. The first-person nominative plural of a triumvirate of Far Eastern heads of state.  ("We Three Kings")
11. Tintinnabulation of vacillating pendulums in inverted metallic, resonant cups.  ("Jingle Bells")
12. In a distant location the existence of an improvised unit of newborn children's slumber furniture.  ("Away in a Manger")

December issue of The Old Schoolhouse Magazine

If you need a little encouragement today in your homeschool journey, check out the newest issue of The Old Schoolhouse Magazine.  It's inspiring and encouraging, as always!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all! Please enjoy this video of Ronny talking about how blessed we have been through the very special children God has given us to love and raise. It was made by our church for a special series on thankfulness. It touched my heart deeply, and I pray it will bring a smile to your face as well!  May God bless you richly as you reflect on His blessings, especially the grace of His son.

Joy in the midst of challenges

We attended the most wonderful webcast last week, called "The Works of God:  God's Good Design in Disability" with John Piper and several other excellent speakers.  It was so encouraging as we walk down this road of disabilities.  The point I keep thinking about is how we can see God's hand working through disabilities.  While we certainly experience many challenging times, God can give us joy in the midst of those challenges.  Not some, "fake it till you make it," shallow joy.  We don't ignore or deny the grief that we sometimes feel.  But we also have the hope of Christ in the midst of our sadness and struggles.  Two opposite emotions in the same heart at the same time.  We have hope and joy because we know that God is at work in the middle of our struggles and that He is using all things for His glory and our best good (Romans 8:28)!

Musings on Love

Here are some lovely words about love from my very eloquent, and loving, son, Josiah:

Do we ever stop to think what we are doing when we decide to love?  Love (take it in any sense you like, you can have your pick of the Greek) is an act of supreme hazard - some might call it a kind of violence.  There are, of course, differences in degree - the husband loves his wife with stronger ardor than one friend loves another - but the activity of the heart in both instances is of a piece.  In some way, some glorious, terrible way beyond our puny mortal comprehension, one heart is bound to another.  These very bonds which bring so much joy introduce the possibility of pain, as the very capacity to feel brings with it the potential for both pleasure and agony.  The bonds themselves are tainted by the filth of our hearts, as sin corrodes the psyche, clouding both judgment and emotion.  Yet the very fact that we are able to love at all is a miracle, a grace we should have no reason to expect from the Creator we rebelled against.

AND YET HE LOVED US FIRST.

Love itself is a kind of rebellion, an inclination of the soul which openly defies the power of darkness and its clamoring hatred.  The prince of darkness may still corrupt our love into a horror, a mere carnal desire or superficial attachment.  Yet when we love truly, with simple, honest devotion, we spite the enemy, moving - even if only by a fraction - toward the nature which we were intended to have, toward a vision of the Kingdom to come, toward the image of He who made it possible.

Love should not be an insipid, mewling little thing which we dress in the palest, least offensive colors and stoop to pet when it suits us.  This is not love, but an abomination masquerading as virtue in a world where virtue has no meaning.

Love is not harmless.  Love is dangerous.  Yet it is worthwhile, only insofar as it flows from the One who burns white-hot at the center of reality, Love Himself, the One who sacrificed His Son, who hung on the cross in agony, having done no wrong, that we might be truly loved.

Brothers and sisters, let's not proclaim our love - for each other and for the world - with platitudinous whispers and mutterings.  Let's declare our intent to love with one voice, roaring to the heavens.  Love is our battle cry, and our commander, and our prize.  Let us take love as seriously as He did.

Meaningful Existence

It breaks my heart that more than 90% of babies with Down syndrome are aborted when their mom has testing done during pregnancy.  This world is a richer and more wonderful place because of our special children with Down syndrome, and all the other children and adults out there.

John, John, John

We had a very interesting week in our homeschool this week.  First, we studied Johannes (John) Gutenberg, who revolutionized the world with the invention of moveable type for the printing press.  His invention ushered in an age where books could be published cheaply so they could be widely read, especially the Bible!  Then there was John Wycliffe, who fought against the abuses of power and unbiblical practices of the Catholic church of the late Middle Ages.  Among other issues he fought for, he wanted all people to be able to read the Bible so they could understand God's word for themselves.  Then the final John was John Hus who stood up for many of Wycliffe's ideas, including fighting against the sale of indulgences and fighting for the common people to have Bibles in their own language.

I look around my house and see many Bibles of many different translations, some fancy, some simple, including my favorite which is an app on the iPad.  It is almost unfathomable that just a few hundred years ago, most people did not have access to a Bible at all, let alone in a language they could understand.  Maybe I'll set the to do list down for a while tonight and go soak up some of God's wisdom and grace through his magnificent word!