A River Glorious, Is God's Perfect Peace

Much of my love for church music came through from my Grandmother and Mother. I awoke this morning with this hymn rolling through my soul Had to go look up the lyrics. This is the sort of thing I think of when I see sights like the Yellowstone River Canyon, also known as the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. One Ranger spoke of it as almost more glorious than the Grand Canyon of the Southwest because you can see the depth and width more easily than the deep gorge of that other National Park.

 

It was not until I went online to find the lyrics that I realized Frances was a woman!

"Daughter of hymnist William Havergal, Frances was a bright but short lived candle in English hymnody. She was baptized by hymnist John Cawood. She was reading by age four, and began writing verse at age seven. She learned Latin, Greek and Hebrew, and memorized the Psalms, the book of Isaiah, and most of the New Testament. " She wrote at least 80 hymns! So here si Chris Rice playing the hymn. Lyrics are below. Enjoy and enter into "His Perfect Peace and Rest."

 

 

 

Like a river glorious, is God’s perfect peace,
Over all victorious, in its bright increase;
Perfect, yet it floweth, fuller every day,
Perfect, yet it groweth, deeper all the way.

Refrain

Stayed upon Jehovah, hearts are fully blest
Finding, as He promised, perfect peace and rest.

Hidden in the hollow of His blessed hand,
Never foe can follow, never traitor stand;
Not a surge of worry, not a shade of care,
Not a blast of hurry touch the spirit there.

Refrain

Every joy or trial falleth from above,
Traced upon our dial by the Sun of Love;
We may trust Him fully all for us to do.
They who trust Him wholly find Him wholly true.

Refrain

 

 

 

 

Radical acceptance requires Total Surrender to the Holy Spirit.

enter gates tree of life

There was a praise chorus based on Psalm 100:4 that went:

 

" We will enter His gates with thanksgiving in our hearts,

We will enter His courts with praise;

We will say this is the day The Lord has made,

We will rejoice for He has made us glad."

 

In Idaho we went to an area called Thousand Springs.

 

When I saw this I could only think of Revelation!

 

 

 

Revelation 22:1-5 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal,

flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city.

On each side of the river stood the tree of life,

bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month.

And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

No longer will there be any curse.

The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him.

They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.

There will be no more night.

They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun,

for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever.

 

And then we also have a promise of the blessing for those who TRUST in The Lord!

 

Jeremiah 17:7-8 “But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,

whose confidence is in him.

They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream.

It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green.

It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.”

 

 

So enter with thanksgiving, rejoice and be glad in the promises and blessings from our Lord!

Radical acceptance requires Total Surrender to the Holy Spirit.

Eagle and the Fisherwoman

While at Yellowstone we saw several eagles. Usually they were too far away to photograph, but I tried!

We learned the trick while in Alaska to look for that white head!

 

While taking this picture another tourist got out of her car and asked, "What are you looking at?" I told her an eagle. She guffawed and said, "Oh, my Grandma has one in her yard. We fight with it all the time!" I've wondered since then what they fight about? Maybe she had a fish pond or something?

 

I also snapped this fisherwoman. She was undisturbed by the throng of tourists as she cast her line into the same river the eagle was watching.

 

 

Radical acceptance requires Total Surrender to the Holy Spirit.

"Lines Making the Map of our Furrowed Tongue"

Got this through Gratefulness. org. Love it!

 

 

INVOCATION

Let us try what it is to be true to gravity,

to grace, to the given, faithful to our own voices,

to lines making the map of our furrowed tongue.

Turned toward the root of a single word, refusing

solemnity and slogans, let us honor what hides

and does not come easy to speech. The pebbles

we hold in our mouths help us to practice song,

and we sing to the sea. May the things of this world

be preserved to us, their beautiful secret

vocabularies. We are dreaming it over and new,

the language of our tribe, music we hear

we can only acknowledge. May the naming powers

be granted. Our words are feathers that fly

on our breath. Let them go in a holy direction.

-- Jeanne Lohmann

Radical acceptance requires Total Surrender to the Holy Spirit.

Forty Three Years Accomplished!

If someone had asked me on my wedding day what it would be like to be married for forty-three years, I would have had no idea how to answer. Well, as of September 26th we were married forty-three years and it has been quite an adventure! I accidentally left my iPad at home while we were on vacation, so I could not post this sooner.

 

Many years, many joys!

 

 

 

And so, forty three years and fifteen days and still loving this adventure!

 

Radical acceptance requires Total Surrender to the Holy Spirit.

My brain

When I skip meditation prayer for several days on end, this is a good representation of my brain.

Mud pots at Yellowstone.

or maybe

 

 

 

Radical acceptance requires Total Surrender to the Holy Spirit.

Nail's It #5

From Elizabeth Elliot's biography of Amy Carmichael, " Chance to Die." Chapter "Grey Jungle, Crystal Pool."

Ponnammal with Two of the Orphans

 

"It was a solemn meeting around the sickbed, the women dressed as usual in their handloomed saris, but white ones for this occasion. They laid a palm branch across Ponnammal's bed as a sign of victory and accepted whatever answer God might give, certain that whether it was to be physical healing or not, He would give victory and peace. It sounds like a simple formula. It was an act of faith, but certainly accompanied by the anguish of doubt and desire which had to be brought again and again under the authority of the Master.

"The answer that came was that Ponnammal, from the very day of the anointing, grew rapidly worse. She lay for days without speaking, her dull eyes half-open, seeming to see nothing. The pain was violent, kept under only by large doses of morphia. "She has been walking through the valley of the shadow of death. I never knew how dense that shadow could become, for I never before watched anyone dying in this slow, terrible way ... Nothing was visible but the distress and depression of this most fearful disease."

"Once when she seemed to be in unimaginable misery she told Amy how she had longed to be allowed to stay. She thought she could help a little "if the pain did not pass this limit." "It seemed to me the most unselfish word I had ever heard from human lips." Ponnammal touched the limit at least - the limit divinely set to pain- and her "warfare was accomplished" on August 26, 1915. She would never be replaced. She had been among the best. But "we shall have our best again, purified, perfected, assured from change forever." That was the ground of hope."

 

Reading things like this assure me that though I lost my parents when I was under 25, I never had to observe this sort of suffering with them.

 

Radical acceptance requires Total Surrender to the Holy Spirit.