The weather has been so lovely the last week that we are thinking longingly of spring. Clear skies, sun and warm days - a welcome change from the rain, grey clouds and chill of a normal BC winter. Lady Spring is just itching to take the stage. You can see her in the beds of snowdrops already in bloom at the end of January. They are still nodding their snowy heads - their flowers last along time. I actually have a Daffodil blooming today. With the sunny warmth it just burst into bloom yesterday. The Irises are poking their spikes through the ground and the pink buds on the bush beside our patio are slowly revealing their tiny pale pink flowers. The grass will need mowing soon if the sun stays warm. Please not yet!! I'm just not ready for all the yard work that Spring brings. I need a few more weeks of guilt free, inside, "cozy up to the fire" time.
February 14-19 I was up at Stillwood Conference Centre above Cultus Lake for our bi-annual Scrapbook Weekend. What fun! There were 25 of us this year and we had a huge room to spread out in. Believe me - we need all the room we can get. Everyone arrives with all their scrapbook stuff, from albums, pages, and brads to huge boxes of paper, stamps and even our office chairs. Pam always brings her whole craft room - that's alot of stuff! Jan has to bring all her stuff as well as anything else we might need from her "store" and the result is a whole roomful.
We cropped and made cards to our hearts' delight; we laughed, ate chocolate and caught up on each others lives. We stayed up late, had great meals, went for refreshing walks and spent lots of time just enjoying ourselves. What more could one ask?
How thankful I am to have close friends to share fun times with. Each friend is precious in her own way and it is wonderful to have their encouragement and support. God has made each of us so different - given us each such different life experiences, set different challenges before us and yet we have Christ as the unifying bond holding us together. I don't ever want to take their friendship for granted.
We've had some hard things touch people we know in the past week - cancer, tumours, physical deterioation and that old question rears its head: " Why does God allow suffering?" As my daughter said in her blog post entitled " In Fairness" (Feb. 21) "God is God for a reason."
(You can read what she wrote: http://myworldofboys.blogspot.com/ )
I came across a quotation in my Bible Study yesterday which added to that thought.
An 11th century English monk named Anselm said:
"I do not seek, O Lord, to penetrate Thy depth. I by no means think my intellect equal to Thine; but I long to understand in some degree Thy truth, which my heart believes and loves. For I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe that I might understand."
