Beauty in the Hard

You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. Genesis 50:20

Hi Friends,

As a nation, as a world, we have been experiencing some hard. Individually, we may be experiencing hard. Joseph knew hard. He knew a lot of it. But through it all, he trusted God. He knew God was using the hard for His purpose- and that purpose was good. That didn't necessarily make the hard easier, but it did give it purpose, God's purpose. The same is true for us. Our hard has a purpose. God is working in it. Nothing surprises Him. Covid didn't surprise Him. The unrest doesn't surprise Him. Our individual circumstances don't surprise Him. He knew. He knows. And He is working His purpose through it all.

My friend and owner of Sweet 'n Sassy Stamps, Korin Sutherland, shared a post on FB originally written by Kimberly Henderson of Proverbs 31 Ministries. It really resonated with me and is what inspired this page. Here is what Kimberly wrote:

I would have pulled Joseph out. Out of that pit. Out of that prison. Out of that pain. And I would have cheated nations out of the one God would use to deliver them from famine.

I would have pulled David out. Out of Saul’s spear-throwing presence. Out of the caves he hid away in. Out of the pain of rejection. And I would have cheated Israel out of a God-hearted king.

I would have pulled Esther out. Out of being snatched from her only family. Out of being placed in a position she never asked for. Out of the path of a vicious, power hungry foe. And I would have cheated a people out of the woman God would use to save their very lives.

And I would have pulled Jesus off. Off of the cross. Off of the road that led to suffering and pain. Off of the path that would mean nakedness and beatings, nails and thorns. And I would have cheated the entire world out of a Savior. Out of salvation. Out of an eternity filled with no more suffering and no more pain.

And oh friend. I want to pull you out. I want to change your path. I want to stop your pain. But right now I know I would be wrong. I would be out of line. I would be cheating you and cheating the world out of so much good. Because God knows. He knows the good this pain will produce. He knows the beauty this hard will grow. He’s watching over you and keeping you even in the midst of this. And He’s promising you that you can trust Him. Even when it all feels like more than you can bear.

So instead of trying to pull you out, I’m lifting you up. I’m kneeling before the Father and I’m asking Him to give you strength. To give you hope. I’m asking Him to protect you and to move you when the time is right. I'm asking Him to help you stay prayerful and discerning. And I’m believing He’s going to use your life in powerful and beautiful ways. Ways that will leave your heart grateful and humbly thankful for this road you’ve been on.

He knows the beauty the hard will grow. He knows, friend. Let's lift our nation, our world, each other up to Him. He is our hope. He is working in this mess. And He is good.

Page Details: Do you ever work on a page and things just keep messing up? Well, I do! LOL I decided to do a background using acrylic paint and baby wipes. I just put some paint on the baby wipe, and spread it out on the page, blending when I started a new color. But, I dropped some paint on the Scripture. So, I tried to clean it off, and ended up rubbing the words a little too much so that they started to come up. OOOPS!

Then, when I went to stamp the words on the page, I started stamping the wrong word!

The great thing about acrylics is that if you mess up, you can just paint over it and start over! You can see that even after I painted over it, you can still see a little of the "HA", but once I stamped "WILL" over it, you can't see the mess up.

If I hadn't been using acrylics, I probably would have covered the "HA" with something- a word sticker, a torn hymnal page, scrapbook paper, something that would have camouflaged the mistake.

I used the following Sweet 'n Sassy Stamps sets: Playful Alpha, Bold & Outline Caps, True Beauty, and Made New. I also used a white pen to highlight the words.

Trust Him, Friends. He knows the hard you are in and He's right there with you. Have a blessed week! Andrea

The Spirit of True Beauty...

Hi friends,

Have you ever read a passage of Scripture, maybe a verse in particular, and really felt challenged by how you could ever live up to that instruction or ideal? I know I have... many times! One of those passages is 1 Peter 3:3-4 where Peter writes to wives of unbelieving husbands in some first century churches, 'Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewellery or fine clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is great worth in God's sight.'

The reason I have found these verses challenging is that quiet and gentle are two words that definitely do NOT describe me! I am chatty, loud and opinionated and can be stubborn and sometimes harsh in my tone towards others. God has taken me on a journey over the last couple of decades in learning how to temper these personality traits and he has chipped off and smoothed down some of the rough edges through gentle teaching and not-so-gentle experiences. But the fact remains that I am still not a quiet or gentle person. Does anyone else relate to this struggle?

When I was creating this page I started reflecting on this 'quiet and gentle spirit' and was reminded that this is a description that could be attributed to the Holy Spirit. One of the images used for the Holy Spirit is a dove, which is both gentle and quiet, and one of the fruits of the spirit is gentleness. That does not mean that the Holy Spirit is not also fire or that he does not challenge injustice or sin. But the Spirit does work in quiet and gentle ways to lead us to Christ and in his ways. That was encouraging to me because I know that the Holy Spirit dwells in me and therefore the Spirit who is gentle and quiet leads and guides me. Even though my personality is not gentle or quiet, I can rely on the Spirit in me to help me to quiet my spirit (and my mouth!) and to respond to others with gentleness.

I used the beautiful new True Beauty set on this page, stamping the roses with Sage Versamagic ink then colouring with watercolours and coloured pencils. The text is a combination of True Beauty, His Name and Bitty Minnie Alpha and I added a couple of little accent images from Let's Do This. I added a butterfly stamped and die-cut with Made New and the coordinating dies.

Let's be grateful for the quiet and gentle ministry of the Holy Spirit at work within us.

Be blessed...

x Amy x

Faith, Hope, & Love

And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. 

But the greatest of these is love. 

1 Corinthians 13:13

Hi Friends,
Today, I'm focusing on 1 Corinthians 13:13. This chapter is familiar to many of us. Many people refer to it as the love chapter. In chapter 12, Paul spoke of spiritual gifts. And he followed that chapter with a chapter on love to point out that if these gifts are practiced without godly love, they are worthless. The Corinthians were proud of their spiritual gifts. Paul wanted to remind them that the way of love is more important. 

The point of 1 Cor 13:1-3 is that what we do is not eternally meaningful if it is not done in love. If we are just going through the motions, or just doing what we’re “supposed” to do, we need to stop and re-evaluate. Our hearts need to be in the right place. God knows our hearts. And He wants us not just serving others, but lovingly serving others.

When I read 1 Cor 13:4-8, I see Christ’s love through and through. It is an amazing love that we can all strive for, but again, cannot achieve without the Holy Spirit. I pray often that God would help me see others through His eyes and help me to love them as He does. Prayer is so important- not only praying for the people we are trying to love, but praying for ourselves that God will help us love them. So don’t forget to pray!

Verse 13 says that faith, hope, and love remain. What that's speaking to is that the spiritual gifts the Corinthians were priding themselves in were temporary. But faith, hope, and love are eternal. Faith is an essential part of Christianity. Hope is a conviction that God will keep His promises. And all things need to be done in love. God is love, so that is central to following Jesus. 1 Cor 13:13 says the greatest is love. Why? The following came from the notes section in my Jeremiah Study Bible, "Why is love the greatest of these? When Christ makes all things new and His followers are ushered into the eternal state, faith will no longer be necessary because the redeemed will see face to face. Hope will no longer be necessary because their hope will have been perfectly realized. But love will remain, and it will finally be known without the taint of sin." Love without the taint of sin. That’s Jesus love.

Page Details: I used the following Sweet 'n Sassy Stamps sets: County Fair Alpha, The Good News, Made New, Filigree Hearts, Psalm 23 Background, Texture Tiles 1.



 Have a blessed week! Andrea

With ALL your heart...

Hi friends,

I think one of the most well-known verses in the Bible must be 'Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.' (Proverbs 3:5). I find that with overfamiliarity comes a risk of not hearing these verses afresh in a way that speaks our lives in the present.

When I was creating this page I was meditating on this verse and began to see it in a new way. I have always thought of this verse as an exhortation to trust in the Lord with our whole being and rely totally on him - and I do think this is a key meaning of this text. But I began to see something in the phrase 'with all your heart'...

I was struck by the complexity of the human heart. It contains desires, brokenness, sin, beliefs, experiences and in the Bible it represents the very core of a person. I began to think about what it would mean to trust God with ALL our heart - the broken parts, the sinful parts, the desires (whatever they may be), the passions - ALL of it.

I think we can know in our heads and our belief systems that God is trustworthy, and we say that we trust in him. But do we trust him with everything? I know for me, this has been tested many times, including recently. Do I trust him with the pieces of my broken heart? Do I trust him with my wayward heart's desires? Do I trust him with the sin-stained parts of my heart? If I do, then I need to give my heart to him over and over in each moment and trust that he will heal, cleanse and restore where it is desperately needed.

I used a combination of images from Mason Jar Bouquet and Made New on this page, stamping them with Versamagic Black ink and colouring with Inktense pencils and an aquabrush. The verse was stamped with the new Trust in the Lord set, which I'm loving!

I hope you'll join me in meditating on the truth of this passage and commit ALL of the parts of your heart to the Lord, because he is so very trustworthy.

Be blessed...

x Amy x

Mature thinking...

Hi friends,

I came across this verse in 1 Corinthians 14:20 a while ago and it really struck me:

"Do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature."

There are some things we are supposed to be childlike in: this verse tells us clearly that one of those things is evil. We are also supposed to be childlike as we come to Jesus (Matthew 18:3-4) and we are to find our identity as children of God (Ephesians 5:1, 8). But there are also important aspects of life in which we need to be mature. One of those is in our thinking.

When I was meditating on this concept of maturity in thinking, two images came to mind that could illustrate this. One is solid and strong trees that have grown and been established over many years, which cannot be blown down in the storms of life and continue to provide shade to others. The way we think needs to develop in like manner. Mature thinking takes time to learn and develop, but when it has flourished and been established, it guards us from being blown around by every wind of doctrine (Ephesians 4:14) and it provides wisdom and protection for others.

The other image was that of a butterfly. The process of transformation a caterpillar goes through to become a butterfly includes a lot of hiddenness and shedding of old skin. The result is a creature that is no longer bound to the earth, but can fly through the air with beauty and grace. In reflecting on becoming mature in our thinking, I realised that this process involves being hidden in Christ, and often times hidden away from the spotlight of prestige and the world's accolades. It also includes shedding old ideas and ways of thinking that belong to childhood (oh how I've been learning this painful lesson over the past two years as I have studied theology!). The result though, after the hiddenness and loss of old identity, is a wondrous new ability to fly like never before, and to demonstrate the exquisite beauty of God's wisdom when lived out on a daily basis.

I used both the butterfly and tree images on my page (from Made New and Thrill of Hope) and created the text from the new Sweet & Simple Alpha as well as His Love. The background was created using gelatos and blended them with a baby wipe. I added some subtle background texture using a couple of stamps from Texture Tiles 1. Here are the sets I used:

Can I encourage us all to embrace God's work in our life in bringing us to maturity in our thinking? We can be intentional about this call in the way we occupy our minds and what we feed them daily. Food for thought? I think so!

x Amy x

In The Garden

You may not know it by the condition of my houseplants, but I’m a flower child at heart. I even got my degree in horticulture and worked as a florist for many years.

My love for flowers and nature started when I was young and would spend time with my grandmother. Her house was surrounded by gorgeous flower beds and her front porch was adorned with hanging baskets. That love of flowers and plants rubbed off on me. 

As I grew up, I always helped Daddy in the garden and with the flower beds around the house. He wanted the flowers to be nice, so Momma could look out the front windows and see all the blooms. We had a rose garden and a large gladiolus bed. Because I loved my Mam-ma’s hanging baskets, our front porch was lined with hanging baskets of every sort as well.

Living in the south, it would be too hot to work in the flowers mid day, so I often would get up early and work in the flowers. Something about getting up early and spending time in God’s glorious creation, always made my heart sing His praises.

Looking at the delicate petals of the flowers and seeing all the intricate, colorful parts, and watching the bees buzz from bloom to bloom....ahhh...it was just heavenly. Not to mention, the roses had sweetest of fragrances.

Just as those flower gardens beckoned me each and every morning, the Lord beckons now. Every day, if my heart is listening, I can hear Him say “Gayle, come walk and talk with me. Come and abide with me.”

“I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love.”
‭‭John‬ ‭15:5, 9‬ ‭NKJV‬‬

On many occasions in the New Testament, we are told that Jesus went off to pray. (Mark 1:35, Luke 5:16, Luke 6:12) If Jesus needed time to abide with His Father, how much more so for me!

These last few months, as I have shared before with you, I have sensed the Lord drawing me back very close to His side. Calling me to truly abide with Him. He is whispering ever so sweetly to be “in the garden” with Him. To meet Him while the “dew is still on the roses.”

When I choose to meet Him there “the sound of His voice is so sweet the birds hush their singing.”

Are you listening for His whisper? Are you longing to abide with Him?

If not, you can ask Him to help you hunger for Him. You can call out to Him and He will meet you “in the garden.”

The joy you “share as you tarry there, none other has ever known.”

Art behind the art:

Spring is springing here in Mississippi and the daffodils are popping everywhere.  The page was started with a light watercolor wash.  Using the Sweet 'n Sassy Stamps daffodil stamp from Spring Blossoms was perfect on the In the Garden page in my hymnal.  The butterfly from Made New  was stamped on vellum, colored, fussy cut and then adhered on foam tape.  I added the word "abide" with the Typewriter Alpha stamps.  Lastly, I added some visual interest with Texture Tiles 1 and Texture Tiles 2.

I encourage you to take some time and walk in the garden with Him.


Until next time,

Gayle
Patio Ponderings

Editor's Note:

In The Garden Lyrics by Charles Austin Miles (1912)
Source:  HymnLyrics.org

I come to the garden alone
While the dew is still on the roses
And the voice I hear falling on my ear
The Son of God discloses.
Refrain

And He walks with me, and He talks with me,
And He tells me I am His own;
And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.

He speaks, and the sound of His voice,
Is so sweet the birds hush their singing,
And the melody that He gave to me
Within my heart is ringing.

Refrain

I’d stay in the garden with Him
Though the night around me be falling,
But He bids me go; through the voice of woe
His voice to me is calling.

Refrain


Words: Charles Austin Miles (1912)