Geez! Four months?! What a slacker...

Daily Manna from the 'Net for Friday, February 15, 2008:
The LORD is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation. Shouts of joy and victory resound in the tents of the righteous: 'The LORD's right hand has done mighty things! The LORD's right hand is lifted high; the LORD's right hand has done mighty things!' I will not die but live, and will proclaim what the LORD has done. The LORD has chastened me severely, but he has not given me over to death. Open for me the gates of righteousness; I will enter and give thanks to the LORD. This is the gate of the LORD through which the righteous may enter. I will give you thanks, for you answered me; you have become my salvation. Psalm 118:14-21 NIV

Passage from today’s devotions:
25"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life…33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. Matthew 6:25, 33-34.

So…the above verses are incredibly pertinent to some thoughts I was having last night. I was praying, telling God I wanted to love him more, and I felt like I was told to read my Bible more. I have the freedom, really, to spend all day reading my bible, which is something I’ve told myself I’d do…someday. So I was told to spend today reading my Bible. Specifically, I felt, the Psalms. And I told him, well, if I remember first thing in the morning that I am to do this, then I’ll do it. And I remembered. And the passage from psalm 118 was today’s daily manna. The only reason I even read that passage is because I was going to use that site to read the chapters for todays installment in the "read your Bible in a year" series. This stirs in me some fear, to be sure. And a little annoyance, but that’s just my flesh wanting to not read my Bible, and I will do my best to ignore it. That passage is pretty celebratory, though, and it’s hard to not get excited and feel like I really WAS talking with God last night! He heard my prayer! Let this be a testimony to me for the rest of my life, when I feel like poor me, I’m too wretched for God to hear my prayers, he doesn’t love me... So today I am going to try to be faithful and pursue God a little bit, hopefully grow in love for him, learn more about his ways and how he works, and maybe hear a little bit more from him about my current situation. Maybe not that last part, and I have to keep reminding myself that I’m not just doing this to look good; God and I don’t have some sort of agreement- if I do this, he’ll do something cool for me.

The second passage is just good because I have been worrying a bit about my situation- no job, no income, mounting expenses…and no matter how hard I try, I can’t make people buy things from my etsy shop, so that’s discouraging…but it’s not fun or productive to feel all depressed and sad and anxious about that stuff. I am going to spend today doing some things like emails, job searches, walking, and drawing, but I hope mainly to read through all of the psalms. I don’t think I’ve ever really done that before…or if so, it’s been quite a while.

Oh, another thing I am dying to do is get back into blogging. For many reasons! I have a lot to talk/write about, and I like the idea of talking about God’s work in my life in a format that’s like talking, but allows me to choose my words and communicate through written language. There’s also a layer of safety, which may or may not be a good thing. It’s a lot less awkward blogging about spiritual matters (for me) than talking face to face. This has the benefit of making me bolder in my testimony, but there’s also definitely an element of being able to “hide” behind the computer screen. Also, I think blogging, and being involved in commenting on others’ blogs is a really good way to let people know I exist. I’d love to drop a note to feanne, cake+pie, cupcakes by chockylit, that one girl who took Prof Maryatt’s book art’s class..um…Becca Durnin, foodbeam, and others. I’ve been reading those blogs for a very long time, all of them. So I’d like to tell them that, tell them how much I enjoy their blogs, and then also have a convenient link to my etsy shop on my blog, that they’ll hopefully visit when they try to figure out who this freak-girl Kristin is :) So my motives aren’t completely pure. Meh! By the way, here's that link: http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5184544. I'll probably post it three or four time a day, just in case you forget what it is :)

Also, it is important that I tell you about those children who are wearing the finger puppets!! Right before last summer, I gave four finger puppets (made by artists in Chile, brought the the farmer's market by an awesome elderly gent, and bought by me as I unsuccessfully tried to restrain myself) to my friend Molly who was going to spend the summer in Uganda working at an orphanage. First, I have to say that when I gave Molly those four finger puppets, I didn’t know that the orphanage where she was going to work would house exactly four children, so they all got one! I thought there’d be more like 15-20, but it would have been sad if there’d been 5…God provides! So anyway, that’s not even close to being the good news! This is the good news!!: ALL FOUR CHILDREN HAVE BEEN ADOPTED! YAY! So now they’re all in the States, and two of them are even living in the same city. That is cool. (Left to right, the puppets are penguin, owl, alpaca, and monkey with baby monkey.)

I will be back later to blog. If not today, then in the NEAR future. I may also start posting images of my daily drawings and/or other stuff. I kind of like showing off what I'm working on, because I often really like what I'm working on. :) Oh, and apparently I've finally grown up and started using proper capitalization. Yay me?

PS - http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5184544 :-D