If we could see...

If we could see beyond today
As God can see;
If all the clouds should roll away,
The shadows flee;
O'er present griefs we would not fret.
Each sorrow we would soon forget,
For many joys are waiting yet
For you and me.

If we could know beyond today
As God doth know,
Why dearest treasures pass away
And tears must flow;
And why the darkness leads to light,
Why dreary paths will soon grow bright;
Some day life's wrongs will be made right,
Faith tells us so.

"If we could see, if we could know,"
We often say,
But God in love a veil doth throw
Across our way;
We cannot see what lies before,
And so we cling to Him the more,
He leads us till this life is o'er
Trust and obey.
Author unknown
Trust Him in the dark, honor Him with unwavering confidence even in the midst of mysterious dispensations, and the recopense of such faith will be like the molting of the eagle's plumes, which was said to give them a new lease of youth and strength. J.R. Macduff

Order in Nature

What an awesome and orderly GOD!!


God's order may be observed in the hatching of eggs.

For example:
-the eggs of the potato bug hatch in 7 days;
-those of the canary in 14 days;
-those of the barnyard hen in 21 days;
-The eggs of ducks and geese hatch in 28 days;
-those of the mallard in 35 days;
-The eggs of the parrot and the ostrich hatch in 42 days.
(Notice, they are all divisible by seven, the number of days in a week!)

God's wisdom is seen in the making of an elephant.. The four legs of this great beast all bend forward in the same direction. No other quadruped is so made. God ordered that this animal would have a huge body, and for this reason He gave it four fulcrums so that it can rise from the ground easily.

The horse rises from the ground on its two front legs first. A cow rises from the ground with its two hind legs first. How wise the Lord is in all His works of creation!

God's wisdom is revealed in His arrangement of fruit, vegetable, and grain seed sections and segments, as well as in the number of seeds/grains.
-Each watermelon has an even number of stripes on the rind.
-Each orange has an even number of segments.
-Each ear of corn has an even number of rows.
-Each stalk of wheat has an even number of grains.
-Every bunch of bananas has on its lowest row an even number of bananas, and each row decreases by one, so that one row has an even number and the next row an odd number.

-The waves of the sea roll in on shore twenty-six to the minute in all kinds of weather.

All grains are found in even numbers on the stalks, and the Lord specified thirty fold, sixty fold, and a hundredfold - all even
numbers.

God has caused the flowers to blossom at certain specified times during the day, so that Linnaeus, the great botanist, once said that if he had a conservatory containing the right kind of soil, moisture and temperature, he could tell the time of day or night by the flowers that were open and those that were closed!


Thus the Lord in His wonderful grace can arrange the life that is entrusted to His care in such a way that it will carry out His purposes and plans, and will be fragrant with His presence. Only the God-planned safe life is successful. Only the life given over to the care of the Lord is fulfilled.

The lives of each of us are ordered by the Lord in a beautiful way for His glory, if we will only trust Him with our lives. If we try to regulate our own life, it will only be a mess and a failure. Only the One Who made the brain and the heart can successfully guide us to a profitable end.

Laughing tooo hard to type!!!!! Soooo funny....

OK! Summer heat has arrived! Today at 6PM it was a mere 102 or so. Yesterday it was hotter. Auggghh! The heat always comes just in time for our California Mid-State Fair. Lots of crazy people enduring blistering heat and paying way too much for sodas, food, games and rides. Yep, I will be one of those crazy people :)
Anyway, it is Friday evening and we are wrapping up another week. It has been a busy week. Wyatt went to camp Monday morning, then I had to retrive him from camp to take him to basketball games that he could not miss Monday and Thursday afternoon, then go to the end-of-camp program Thursday night. Wednesday, I took Brooke to dinner, then we went to Youth group. This morning we were up early for another basketball game, then Brooke has 3 friends over to spend the night tonight. I went in to show some of my photography today and tomorrow, I'm taking all the visiting kids back to town and Brooke is going with them to camp at the lake. Along with everything that comes standard with my day here at my house, it has been very busy!
Have a restful weekend.
Blessings!

I have noticed some Red-tailed Hawks in the area of my house lately. They are very beautiful to see soaring about the sky. I have always wanted to locate a nest but no such luck. I hear them all the time calling back and forth. I have included here a photo that I took of a Red-tailed Hawk flying above my house. I was hoping to get a short video to include the sound of their dries but I haven't been able to yet.

The Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) is the most common and widespread American member of the genus Buteo, which also includes the Red-shouldered, Swainson's and Gray hawks, among others. Like other hawks of this group, it soars over open country in search of its prey but just as often perches in a tree at the edge of a meadow, watching for the slightest movement in the grass below. The Red-tail rarely takes poultry, feeding mainly on small rodents. Certain western birds with grayish faintly streaked or mottled tails were formerly considered a separate species called "Harlan's Hawk". Info taken from National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds.

Red-tailed hawks are known for their brick-colored tails, but there are 14 subspecies of various colorations, and not all of them have this characteristic.
The hawk in my photo does not have a red tail. What distinguishes it as a Red-tail, oddly enough,is not it's tail but the markings on the undersides of it's wings and across it's belly.

Red-tails breeding season is late winter to early spring. They are monogamous and may mate for life.

Beautiful birds aren't they?
Blessings!

Ahhh, Summer! How nice it is to sleep in. The kids are really taking sleeping in seriously. They get up around 11AM! Fine by me, I get a quiet morning! Besides sleeping in we are doing other things. We have gone to the beach, a couple of movies and went to friends' houses. Wyatt is in a summer basketball leauge. His team is called the Suns. They have won 2 games and lost 1 game. Wyatt has done well and scored a lot of points. What is Brooke doing? Well, she is really into Farmville on Facebook. It's harmless enough! There are certainly worse things out there! Oh, she is reading for an Honors English class she was accepted into. She has a book report due the first day of school.
Happy 4th of July!