I have been thinking lately about my faith and my walk with Christ. I have felt that something has been missing, and I didn’t know what to do about it. I finally decided that besides studying the Bible much better and more than I have been, I might try getting to know Jesus better. So I pulled my The Jesus I Never Knew book off my shelf. (P has asked me to read it with her, and I haven’t been ready to until now.)

Right now I was reading about the birth of Jesus and was quite taken aback by the account in Revelation 12:1-6. Yes, there is an account in that book.

" 1 A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. 2 She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. 3 Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads. 4 His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born. 5 She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. 6 The woman fled into the desert to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days."

Now, I have never given a lot of thought to Revelation, for it is quite a different sort of book. I have read it but have never taken the time to understand it very well. That passage depicts Christ’s birth, but I am pretty sure that when I search through the Christmas cards this season, that is one scene I won’t find. Yancey writes “in daily life two parallel histories occur simultaneously, one on earth and one in heaven. Revelation, however, views them together, allowing a quick look behind the scenes.” It was quite amazing to learn that Revelation gave me a parallel look at the two worlds. I have always believed that Satan is at work in this world but never viewed it like that and didn’t realize that Revelation did.

If you go on to read in chapter 12, you come to this passage.

"13 When the dragon saw that he had been hurled to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. 14 The woman was given the two wings of a great eagle, so that she might fly to the place prepared for her in the desert, where she would be taken care of for a time, times and half a time, out of the serpent's reach. 15 Then from his mouth the serpent spewed water like a river, to overtake the woman and sweep her away with the torrent. 16 But the earth helped the woman by opening its mouth and swallowing the river that the dragon had spewed out of his mouth. 17 Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to make war against the rest of her offspring—those who obey God's commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus."

Again, since I haven’t studied this book, I found a passage new to me. I was most taken with verse 17. I am counted among her offspring, which puts me at war with that dragon. I sat and thought on that for about 5 seconds, and decided I needed to share what I just
learned.

Now what have I just learned? And how will it help me to grow? That is something else I recently read. I learn and I grow. Learning is taking in new information, but growing is changing whom I am and becoming something more. Hopefully closer to whom God wants me to be. If we are Christians, we should always be striving to be more like Christ. We should not be stagnant. And I think that has been my problem. I have been stagnant. I haven’t been growing, and it has left me feeling dispassionate about my faith. That is certainly not how God wants me. What good am I than?

Back to what I learned. Revelation may be a strange book, but I still need to study it, for it is relevant to my life and very applicable. Christ entered this world with Satan chasing after Him, and since Satan has no sway over Jesus, he tries his wiles on us, Christ’s followers. And yes, he does find those who can be tempted into sin.

How will I grow? A starting point is to oil my armor and stand alert.

Right now I am sitting in my basement, our future family room, in front of our pellet stove in a recliner typing on my blog. The stove is kicking out some heat ,and my feet are getting toasty.

The "family room" is currently the middle portion of our basement and still looks like a basement. It has miscellaneous items that have no other home. It also presently has clothes hanging in it, which of course are dry and need my attention.

Did I mention that it's getting toasty? Well, I might actually need to back up. I'd say the stove is doing it's job.

I guess I'd better tackle the clothes. But I also can say that I added more clothesline so that I can hang all my clothes at once this winter down here instead of in shifts, like last year. More clothesline also means more space taken up on wash day. Which means less room in our family room, since that is the location of the new line.

E has done it. She has gone too far with ketchup. I had meatloaf for lunch, so I had the ketchup out. J is eating stew. E is having PB&J with apple slices. She claimed she needed ketchup. So, I gave her a blob. Do you want to guess what she dipped in that ketchup? Her apple. Yep, she just dipped it right in there. And then she did it again. And again. Apparently her taste buds don't find that offensive. Mine, however, have a problem with that.

I called my dad, since he puts ketchup on far more foods than most people I know. He said he would have to try that too.

I still say NO, THANK YOU!

An aside: My previous post and this post have been written at the kitchen table with nothing hooked to the computer. My dear friend P took pity on my attachment to electricity and bought me a battery.

Almost every morning I awaken to "The Call of The Elisabeth." It starts slow and quiet. As time progresses, it intensifies until I must ignore it no longer. MOM - MY can be heard for miles around.

My child has held fast to one rule, regardless that this one rule has been dissolved upon her being potty trained. "You must stay in bed when you wake up." It has never been a rule that needed enforcing, and now I can not convince her to give it up. Every morning and every nap time she wakes and sits in her bed and calls for me. If I don't appear, she calls for Daddy. Why she refuses to give up this rule is beyond me. Since she now wears underpants, the staying in bed rule has been done away with. When she wakes up and has to go potty, I want her to get up and go. But she hasn't quite caught on yet.

I will say, however, that although she called for me for probably a half hour this morning, she was dry when I took off her diaper.

Today I scanned in the remaining photos I wanted from my trip to Yellowstone National Park. I am desperately getting ready for my big debut at ETG's Christmas Craft Bazaar. I now have to finish editing my photos, upload them to Winkflash, and order them. Than decide how much I want to sell them for. I do have some other photos that I want to look for that would be good to have on display. I also need to go to a craft store to buy mattes for some of them.

I am also wondering who I may get to help in the threes room for MOPPETS on Tuesday. There still are no permanent workers in there. Is five hours a month too much to ask?

Oh, by the way, I was able to get all that scanning done, because E went to a friend's house to play and eat lunch. That was a fun treat for her and a blessing for me.

I am trying to be thankful for this laptop. Although I am very thankful for it, it hasn't quite lived up to my expectations yet. It can with a little help.

It's main problem is the archaic operating system, Windows Millennium Edition. It doesn't support much anymore. One thing I was hoping to do with it was watch online shows in the living room. FOX is not compatible with ME, and when I tried to watch CBS, the show kept jumping. I am hoping I just need to update the players on the laptop. I haven't tried NBC or ABC. Of course those channels have the dumb shows anyway.

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On a different topic I wholly believe that it should not be this humid on the 19th of October. I am ready for long sleeves, hot cocoa, fires and s'mores. Instead, I am in shorts, a t-shirt, and flip-lops, and all the fan are running! What's going on?

I am writing this post on my new laptop. If you go to P's blog, you will be able to read about some of my trying-to-log-onto-the-Internet-using-my-wireless-router woes.

I will say that I am very thankful for tech support person, Maria, at Verizon, because she saw what none of the other 5 tech people saw. The wrong setting checked on my router. Even the guy from D-Link didn't notice it. And I also have to say, she didn't ask me to configure my adapter one more time, since the last 15 times should have done the trick.

Anyway, I can now browse the Internet, watch online TV shows, or trounce P at scrabble all from the comfy spot on my couch or bed, or anywhere else I desire since I am now wireless, as long as it is near a power source. For although I am wireless in the Internet arena, I am still attached to the electricity source until I buy a battery.

Here's a funny story.

My friend P came a while ago for a visit. She brought along her laptop, which has wireless capability. She lamented that we don't have a wireless router, so she could use the Internet from our living room, instead of crawling in our computer cabinet to hook up to our router with an Ethernet cable. Not only is wireless good for when P visits, I acquired my sister's old laptop with wireless capability.

P offered to buy us a router. She was all set to, but was waiting for me to give her the OK. When I did, the site was idle for too long and closed. Just this morning we were discussing it again and decided I would call Verizon first.

Well, I finally got around to calling Verizon to see if the router she suggested was compatible with our system. The tech asked why I wanted one. I explained that I wanted wireless capability. He said that we probably already had a wireless router and asked when we got our service. he than did some checking and confirmed that indeed we had a wireless router. He than connected me with tech support, who proceeded to set up our wireless environment.

So, now with nothing but a phone call, we are wireless!

Now I just need a power cord and AC adaptor for the laptop.

Sometimes having children is a blessing, but sometimes it feels like a curse.