Fairest Lord Jesus

I've been studying God's sovereignty during my time with Jesus the past few mornings. This morning as I was reading about his sovereignty over Job during his suffering, I came across this verse "We cannot imagine the power of the Almighty, but even though he is just and righteous, he does not destroy us." (Job 37:23) This means that the Lord of the universe, no matter what we do or how we act still loves us. This just blows my mind! I am so not perfect, and no matter how hard I try...I'll never be perfect. BUT he is and he loves us, he wants to bless us. How can we not want to bless him back?

While I was thinking through and praying through this verse the hymn "Fairest Lord Jesus," came on Pandora. What a perfect song to go along with my time this morning...

Fairest Lord Jesus, ruler of all nature,
O thou of God and man the Son,
Thee will I cherish, Thee will I honor,
thou, my soul's glory, joy, and crown.

Fair are the meadows, fairer still the woodlands,
robed in the blooming garb of spring:
Jesus is fairer, Jesus is purer
who makes the woeful heart to sing.

Fair is the sunshine, fairer still the moonlight,
and all the twinkling starry host:
Jesus shines brighter, Jesus shines purer
than all the angels heaven can boast.

Beautiful Savior!  Lord of all the nations!
Son of God and Son of Man!
Glory and honor, praise, adoration,
now and forevermore be thine.


I just love old hymns, what a wonderful Creator we have!

Mom's 50th

I've been putting off blogging about my mom's 50th birthday because we gave her a surprise birthday party last night. Her birthday was last Saturday and we celebrated with a weekend at the beach, but my sister and I also planned a surprise party for her. Here's a little recap of both events...

Our weekend at the beach was wonderful. This is the 2nd year in a row we've been down to the beach for mom's birthday, thanks to my Aunt Kim and Uncle Chuck, who have a beach house in North Myrtle. Since mom's birthday is July 3rd, we get to spend the 4th of July at the beach as well. Matt & I did a shrimp boil (which I will have to share the recipe for later, it was sooo good!) for my family and the Nicholsons to celebrate. Mom thought this was her party, we did gifts and cake and had a lot of laughs like always. We did some family pictures as well, mom always wants new ones for her house.

Anna and I have been talking about surprising mom on her 50th for a while. Growing up she always did surprise parties for us. We invited people from different walks of life to celebrate with us. It was so wonderful to see so many great people, some I've known my whole life. Anna was in charge of getting mom to the party and she was very tough to get there. She through a good fight when Anna insisted she stopped by their church on the way to dinner. Then she was really upset when Anna wanted her to come inside to see some "wedding decorations" that were in the family life center. She finally got her to come inside and she was totally surprised.

Mom would have killed us if we would have done an "over the hill" theme, so we stuck with a luau theme. Mom's best friend Donna loves to decorate, so we let her do her thing and we took care of the other details. We kept things simple with the food. We did BBQ and, of course, cake from the Party House in Kannapolis. If you live in the Charlotte area and ever need a cake, they have the best! We've had Party House cake for every occasion since I was a little girl and yes, they did my wedding cake!

Matt and I are leaving tomorrow after church for the beach for a week. We haven't been on a vacation for a week since our honeymoon. We are looking forward to relaxing, soaking up the sun, seeing some friends at Caswell, and enjoying our favorite place...the beach! I may or not post while we're gone...if not, have a great week and I'll be back after a wonderful and relaxing vacation. :)

Honduras

This blog post is long overdue...and I will tell you now, words will never express this trip. They will never do it justice, but I will do my best.Honduras...wow! I don't even know where to begin because this is the 3rd mission trip I've been on out of the country. But I can't even begin to tell you how eye opening this mission was for me. The other out of country trips I've been on were Moldova and the Bahamas. The people we worked with in those countries were poor and we were able to share the word of God with them. Both trips included lots of opportunities to do bible teaching and work. Going to Honduras was different for me in that we were there to love on the people of Honduras, to show them God's love. Yes we did do bible stories through puppet shows but mostly we just loved on the people. We handed out clothes and toys to the adults and children in the villages we went to. I could share story after story with you, but to keep you from reading for days I'll just tell you this. If you were able to put a value on the beauty of Honduras, the people are richly blessed. Monetarily they have nothing, literally nothing. Some people had the clothes on their backs and huts for houses. It is so sad to see the villages and what very little the people in Honduras have. It is a slap in the face, however, to see how the Christians view their lives. They don't mope around about how they don't have anything, they are so happy and joyful for the blessings the Lord have given us. As an American, I feel like such a brat. The trip made me so thankful for what I have and it made me want to figure out how to live on less so that we can help people who have nothing.


We also loved on the missionaries that we were partnering with. Roger and Marilyn Reeck are good friends of our pastor and have been working in Honduras for many years. We were able to work on their house. We did some painting inside and put a roof on their terrace. Their family is such a wonderful group to be around. It is so obvious that the Lord is using them and working in them.I would love to post more, but I just can't put it into words. If you EVER get a chance to go on an overseas mission trip, you just HAVE to do it. The Lord will teach you things far beyond your belief and the people you come in contact with touch your heart more than you could ever imagine.

To see more of what we did....visit the website Matt did for people from Journey to follow while we were there. (www.takeajourney.org/honduras)