A great Thanksgiving with the guys!

I had a great Thanksgiving with my boys. We played poker and the new rock band video game. Great fun! The turkey came out very well and the gravy was awesome! Peter's new girl friend Tami was there too. Melia and MIcah were off visiting MIcah's grandparents. There is much to be thankful for and God is still good! Later Thanksgiving night I took off for Placerville to see my parents and my brother's family.

I've been having a great time relaxing and catching up on my studies in Orlando at my cousin Dave's beautiful home. There is a tennis court next door. I don't play but it has been fun to watch and you can hear all the grunts and groans and whoops as they hit or miss as the case might be. Reading by the pool and taking walks by the near by lakes has been refreshing. There has been a closeness of God's presence.

A real treat has been a book I discovered in my room called Patches of Godlight by Jan Karon. I was pleasantly surprised by this moving collection of quotes from a wide range of writers and thinkers.

Here are few short ones that I enjoyed:

Be faithful in the little practices of love, which will build in you the life of holiness and make you Christ-like.
Mother Teresa

I am certainly convinced that the greatest heroes are those who do their duty in the daily grind of domestic affairs whilst the world whirls as a maddening dreidel.
Florence Nightingale

The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.
Abraham Lincoln

God is good

I had a wonderfully fun dinner at a friend's home tonight and after I came home rocked Silas for a while and later when spending some time in prayer and meditation, I found this beautiful prayer:

Teach us, O Father, to trust thee with life and death,
And (though this is harder by far)
With the life and death of those that are dearer to us
Than our life.

Teach us stillness and confident peace
In thy perfect will,
Deep calm of soul, and content
In what thou wilt do with these lives thou hast given.

Teach us to wait and be still,
To rest in thyself,
To hush this clamorous anxiety,
To lay in thine arms all this wealth thou hast given.

Thou lovest these souls that we love
With a love far surpassing our own
As the glory of noon surpasses the gleam of a candle

Therefore will we be still,
And trust in thee.
John S. Hoyland, 1887-1957