Stephanie’s Blog- a snippet of my thoughts

This past week, I flew to Idaho to visit my sister and her family. They won’t be able to spend Christmas with our family this year due to distance, so we were able to celebrate early and enjoy one another’s company. On Friday, my sister threw her 2nd annual Christmas ornament exchange party, where she invites many local women. We ate, visited, laughed, exchanged, stole one another’s ornaments (part of the game, not a klepto party) and had a good time. Prior to the party, my sister looked to my mother and I to write a poem about an ornament she recently had to buy at a store because she dropped and broke it. She blames it on many factors, including the fact that the store offers lotion samples. My mother tried to write the poem, but I took over. Here’s what I wrote and read at the party:
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In recent months, my visits to Starbucks have included reading my cup for the “Way I See It” quote. Starbucks has gathered quotes from well-known and lesser known people and shared their ideas on the cups. Some quotes are average while others have caught my eye. One quote that stood out was The Way I See It #230. Joel Stein, a columnist for the LA Times and contributor to Time Magazine, made the following statement:

Heaven is totally overrated. It seems boring. Clouds, listening to people play the harp. It should be somewhere you can’t wait to go, like a luxury hotel. Maybe blue skies and soft music were enough to keep people in line in the 17th century, but Heaven has to step it up a bit. They’re basically getting by because they only have to be better than Hell.

I’m not sure what Bible Joel is reading (or if he’s reading one at all), but his description of Heaven is off base from what the Bible says.
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After over a month of stress and strain (and 6 months of non-existant blog entries), I have branched out into the world of webpage ownership. I now officially own my name on the world wide web and have figured out, with the help of Bluehost.com, how to move this Wordpress blog over to the new site. It wasn’t fun, but it’s done and I’m happy with the outcome. I have discovered that I am not as savvy with html, .sql, and other web stuff as I would like, but perhaps more than other people I know. In any case, here I am. I hope you continue to enjoy my thoughts.

I attended a Catholic Ash Wednesday Mass last week. I’m not Catholic and I’ve never celebrated Lent before, so this was a new experience for me. The ways of the traditional Catholic church are very regimented. Every time someone passes the alter, they turn toward it and make the sign of the cross. One man, who was in charge of seating everyone, was so quick with it that he sped by, stopped for a millisecond, did the sign and went on his way. Some even made the sign before entering their pew. Others did nothing. (more…)

The season is upon us where we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. Not only do I remember the day that my Savior was born, but I am also reminded of what my relationship with Him stands for. I was reading a passage from My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers today. There was something that stood out for me in his words. It said

Waiting for God is incarnate unbelief, it means that I have no faith in Him; I wait for Him to do something in me that I may trust in that. God will not do it, because that is not the basis of the God-and-man relationship. Man has to go out of himself in his covenant with God as God goes out of Himself in His covenant with man.

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