God's Been Good To Me!!

I have learned just how addicted to technology that I am in the last few days. Thanks to some stormy weather, we were without power for about 48 hours!! It even took a few hours over that to get our phone/internet/cable back on. (That's what we get for bundling!!)

A tornado hit Grant mountain on Friday. I know that most people reading this have no idea the geography of my town so bear with me. Grant is very close to where I live. When the kids in our area hit high school, they go to a school called Kate D. Smith DAR High School. Which is located in Grant. So, tornado hits a few miles away. It blew right over us. We had some wind, rain and hail. Little, bitty pea-sized hail. There were pictures on the news of softball sized hail in some places. SOFTBALL!!!! The biggest hail I have ever seen has been golf ball size. Can you imagine softball sized hunks of ice falling out of the sky?

After blowing over us, the tornado hit another area on the other side of us. A waterfront area was decimated. Trees snapped like toothpicks. Homes and businesses damaged or destroyed. But, no people killed. Stuff can be replaced, people can't.

I went to bed Sunday thinking everything was just fine and dandy. Which, at the time I went to bed, everything WAS fine and dandy. However, around one or two a big wind came blowing through town. It was called a "gravity wind with a low level jet stream" Ok, whatever. All I know is it was bad. I mean really bad. When I got up Monday there were limbs and pine straw all over the yard, shingles off the roof, trash cans and coolers blown about, and a basketball goal knocked over. A bunch of people from church got together two weeks ago for a work day,. The church and yard had looked so nice. Now the parking lot was full of junk, as well as the yard. I called my sister to look on the Newschannel 19 website to see what was going on. Turns out, we were extremely blessed to have received so little damage. Less than a mile from us the yacht club had been hit hard. Two boat ramps had blown loose from their docking and drifted 200 yards from their original location. These boat ramps had boats attached to them!!!




So, my sister offered to keep the boys since our power was off. We are totally dependent on electricity. I had no way to cook for the boys. Plus, not knowing how long it was going to be off, I really did not want to open the refrigerator. So they go to spend the night. When Mark got up (he is on his night shift schedule this week) he was asking if the power was still off. He said it went off around two that morning. It was getting on up in the day so we headed out for some lunch. Oh my goodness!! Downtown Guntersville was shocking! Trees, powerlines were down, even a port-a potty was turned over. (I would HATE to responsible for cleaning THAT!!) One thing that amazed us was that all these huge old oak trees that were down in people's yards were down in the yards, not on the houses or churches or businesses. They fell in front of the buildings. God protected people. I have not heard of any deaths in Alabama from the storms Friday or Monday. God has really been so good to us. There were a few places that received damage Monday. To my knowledge, there is not anyone who lost everything. We lost a few shingles off the roof and the food in our fridge. Nothing valuable like all of our pictures or a person. So now you know what song I have been singing for the last few days.

The Coolest Advent Calendar EVER (For space-nerds, that is!)

Someone posted a link to the Hubble Space Telescope Advent on the Apologia e-group. This is amazing. I do not know who this guy is who is doing it. I think it pretty obvious by the things that he says he is not a Christian. We need to pray for him. He does call this an Advent calendar, but he refers to winter holiday season instead of Christmas. He also talks about explosions that happened 55 million years ago. (Definitely safe to say he is not a young-earth creationist) We need to pray for this guy, that his heart will be opened by God.

It is amazing to be able to see God's glorious handiwork in photos. These images are not things we can see with naked eyes, binoculars, or even really good earth telescopes. There is so much incredible beauty and wonder out there. We do not know it is there, unless someone tells us about it. Even then we do not get that great of an idea. We get a better idea when we see a picture. Really though, let's face it, even a picture only shows us a small amount. Who knows what we are missing.

God is similar, in a way. We can go through life, not knowing what we are missing. If no one ever tells that we are depraved and sinful, needing a Savior, how are we supposed to know??? This brings to mind something from our youth lesson last night. Proverbs 16:2- All the ways of a man are clean in his own sight, but the LORD weighs the motives.
Most people do not wake up in the morning say, "Hm.... how evil can I be today???" They do things that they think are okay. They do not know unless they are told that they are bad. Even then, if they are only told how bad they are, is that good? They need to be shown how much God was willing to sacrifice to set them free. I think that one of my biggest points of conviction was while watching a special on crucifixion on the Discovery Channel. Instead of a "You are sinful, but God loves you THIS(imagine arms opening wide) much!" I was faced with the thought of how much horror a real crucifixion was. God loved me THIS (beatings, humiliation, scourging oh, not to mention to "get" to do all that he had to leave Heaven, come into a woman's womb (can you imagine leaving your current home for that?, live a life like a human)

Speaking of living like a human, can you imagine something: I personally would not want to live in ancient Israel. Call me a princess. but there are certain things like indoor plumbing that I can not imagine being without. He did not live a life of luxury, even by ancient standards. He lived a hard life, yet still never sinned, still never said "I have had enough!! I am going home!! You can all go to hell!!" No, as the people were nailing Him to the cross and scorning Him, He still said "Father forgive them, they know not what they do". I think that the song Amazing Love sums it up very well: Amazing love, how can it be, the You my King would die for me?