1st week of 4 leading up to Christmas. i'm thinking alot about the word HOPE.
What got me started was the book VELVET ELVIS, Rob Bell. Great book by the way. Well the final chapter is DIFFICULTY, SUFFERING, AND HOPE. I just can't seem to shake these thoughts on hope. Hope is a word used loosly at christmas time,..faith hope and love... I tried to think of times when i've really experienced hope... not the moment when your thinking oh man i really hope "fill in blank" is the outcome. Hope is the feeling i get after i've been unexpectedly encouraged, loved, or delighted. not once i'm looking back on it, but right there in the moment.
Rob Bell talks of it as, "the kind of hope that comes from staring pain and suffering right in the eyes and refusing to believe that this is all there is." so at christmas time how do we give this gift of hope?
mom and dad made it home to Maine, late at night they arrived, but who greeted them with a late night visit? Their grandkids! Dan didn't wait to come see them the next day, after school.. but right then! I wonder what feelings they felt? and how they might discribe them? Dan did the same thing to me when i was moving to alaska, he drove to our house unexpectedly at 3:30am to drive with us to the airport, it was just what i needed to know he supported me in moving a million miles away and I knew his love for me was deep enough to stay just the same, no matter what. Hope. that things will work out, you can see things in a different light, change is possible, one of our favorite sayings...stranger things have happened...
how i feel when i here from friends and family dispite really tough situations, God is Good, there for life is good. Could it be Hope was brought to them in order for them to be able to share this? and for it to be possible? Rob Bell said "It is in the flow of real life, in the places we live and ove with the people we're on the journey with, that we are reminded it is God's world and we're goingto be okay.
PSALMS 131:3 O people of God, hope in the Lord. Hope now. Hope always.
Alaska for real.
Ralphie under the tree, my 2 new ornaments added
my light from germany, marks the birth of christ and the start of 12 days of christmas... http://www.crivoice.org/cy12days.html read this whole thing given the findings or lack of i love it.
most precious alaskan gifts. Craftsman Paul and master beader, Lynn!
phoning home....
shane left alone with the camera, this is just one of his photos
here it is amy... christmas morning delivering gifts and hot apple bread!
shane opening gifts
Goodies from Maine! get real get Maine!
candellight service, was so wonderful it is so nice to have someone in town to play the piano!! and this is my candle...notice where the candel plate is made! love syracuse!
my chrismas tree base, nativity one of them, my christmas candle i will burn all day tomarrow, the candel light service candel, and my christmas present from last nights community party!! can you guess what it is?
so if you make it to cold bay for a visit, as with all of our guest you can see everything there is to see here in one afternoon GIVEN ITS A CLEAR DAY so we did just that with our guest, at the begining of the month. out to outermarker, about 8 miles to the north
out to grant point about 10 miles to the north west
and out past baldy to first bridge the the west about the same distance. this is looking towards lenords harbor and mt dutton
and a little fruther south some carribouin the forground.
isaac posted this photo on his face book, this is when he was here last year, and i was just thinking about him... it was a friday night and he and i were just sitting down to pizza, and we could see the smoke from isanoski (thats spelled wrong but i don't have time to look it up sorry) anyway the smoke was illuminated by the setting sun it looked like a neon light really cool, these are the times i wish i had my camera and big lens.. and issac back... miss you couz
about a year and a month later, believe it or not i've missed several much better sunsets but there is the good old volcano steaming just at the horizone to the right of the post office bulilding.
so the south winds i was talking about blow up all sorts of piles of treasures onto the cold bay beach, check out this deformed (healed) starfish, oyster shells, seaglass, a mug..and several pieces of it over a couple of football fileds away, ( i thought that was neat) and always lots of black fine sand...
Pam sent me a wreath from maine, i really didn't think it would survive..... it is on the south side of the house so it is protected from the north winds...
But meraculously it survived, 2 weeks of steady south winds, in the 30mh with gust up to 50mph, not a single item has flown off!!! wow now thats Maine Tuff, thank you Pam. i miss working at the green house so much this time of year, my fingers are thanking me, but my heart misses the smells and the festive feeling. 
