We dusted the house yesterday; enough grime has accumulated to write in it today.  We mopped the floor Saturday; today we have the Oregon trail down the hall.  We wiped the fingerprints off the windows and appliances after lunch; by bedtime it looks like a fog has descended.  It never ends, does it?  We can work and work to keep things clean at home.

Proverbs 23:5 says,  Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not?  We try to grasp hold of things that are not lasting.  The verse goes on to say, that  riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven. Riches fly away.  A clean house is fleeting also.  Beautiful clothes wear out.  A thin body wastes away eventually.  A gorgeous home can be swept away in a moment.  All these things can be gone in a moment.  We need to labor for that which is eternal instead.

Matthew Henry said, “Those that aim at great things fill their hands with business more than they can grasp, so that their life is both a perfect drudgery and a perpetual hurry.  What you have, be a master of it, and not a slave to it.”  It’s okay to have a clean house, but if we are a slave to it, we will be miserable. 

I can drive myself to distraction sometimes with trying to keep everything at home in perfect order.  It won’t happen with people living here!  We must live here.  We should all strive to be masters of our home and good stewards of it, but it can’t be our master.  I’m preaching to myself, here.  It’s more important that I am driven by the things that are eternal.  For, as Solomon said, this cleaning job will take wings and fly away.  Wow.  Instead of being filled with hurry and dread, I can work, then not get flustered when things get dirtied again.  With God’s help, I will strive to master my home, but not a slave to it.  How about you?

With love,

Oh, sweet and blessed Summertime!  How I love it!  We eat as many meals as possible out on our deck before it gets too hot.  Sunday dinner was outside yesterday, thanks to the warming of the temperatures.  There was a lovely breeze that felt great when the sun got a bit hot. 

I invited my mother-in-law to join us for dinner.  My husband closed his eyes for this pic, so I sweetly cropped him.  =)

Eating outside is just so relaxing.  It was nice for a Sunday dinner.  My menu was:

I made another new dish from my new cookbook.  This one was called Honey Pineapple Chicken.  It was a dish for the crock pot – a terrific choice for Sunday meals.  I think the meat was a little overcooked, so I’ll adjust the cooking and temperature time a bit.  My crock pot cooks a bit fast, so I’ll probably only do 3 hours on low next time.  It was still good, thanks to the liquid added.  The pineapple mixture that’s poured over the chicken is pineapple sweetened with brown sugar and honey, also a little lemon juice and soy sauce.  It’s delicious over the rice that I served as a side dish!

To prepare the chicken for Sunday, I browned the chicken Saturday night and place it in a dish in the fridge.  I also mixed the pineapple mixture together Saturday night and refrigerated it, so all I had to do Sunday morning was put it all in the crock pot.

The dessert was also from the new cookbook.  They are wonderful and hard to believe that they only have 136 calories and 3g of fat!  It’s a little apple pie in a yeast dough.  The recipe makes 16, so I had plenty to store in the freezer.  Love that!  I figure if you’re saving fat and calories on the pie you can splurge a little and have a scoop of ice cream or frozen yogurt on it!  I served these warmed in the oven.  Yum!

To make French peas, place desired amount of peas in boiling water and boil briefly – a minute or two.  Drain liquid.  Salt and pepper the peas.  Add a couple tbl. onion, chopped fine, lettuce (about 1/2 cup), chopped fine and a tbl of butter.  These are very good and a nice change from ordinary peas!

Have you been eating outdoors?  What’s been cooking in your kitchen this week?

With love,

In the middle of June last year I listened to Revive Our Hearts radio broadcast and I heard a woman, Janet Pope, the author of His Word in My Heart, being interviewed.  What I heard that day has changed me forever.  Here is part of the transcript I listened to that day:

Nancy:  Describe for us kind of what your life was like at that point. What was the setting, the backdrop, for how you got into this matter of Scripture memorization?



Janet: I’d love to tell you about it. It began in 1991. We moved from living in Dallas, Texas. We’d been there for eight years, and we were moving to Hattiesburg, Mississippi.


Nancy: Quite a difference there!


Janet: Yes. My husband grew up in Mississippi, so for him, we were moving home. But for me, I was going to a totally foreign place where I didn’t have any friends, and the first few months were very, very lonely for me. I just cried out to God, hoping that He would bring about a change in my life.


Well, at about that time, some of my new friends invited me to go to a Christian conference in Chattanooga. It’s about a six-hour drive, and I thought, “If nothing else, I need a break from the ‘mom routine.’”


Nancy: How old were your children at that time?


Janet: They were four and seven.


Nancy: You had your hands full.


Janet: One was in school and one was still at home. So anyway, one morning of the conference, a woman from the audience was called up to the front spontaneously and asked if she would share some Scripture with the group. She then quoted the entire book of Colossians for all of us.


I just sat there dumbfounded. I was mesmerized by what I’d heard, and I thought in my own heart, “I wonder what it would be like to really know God’s Word, to have it so embedded in my heart and mind that I would carry it with me wherever I would go.”


I had been a Christian for 14 years. I was 35 years old. I had not grown up in church, but I considered myself a very sincere and dedicated Christian.


I read my Bible every day, but I saw at that moment how shallow I really was. I really didn’t know God’s Word. I wasn’t a serious student of the Word, so on the six-hour drive home, I cried out to God and asked Him to make a change in my life.


I thought, “Okay, two small kids, I have no extra time slots in my day.” But I reasoned in my mind that if God wanted me to get to know His Word, then He would make a way—that He wouldn’t ask something of me and then make it impossible to achieve.


Because this woman had recited the whole book of Colossians, I thought, okay, maybe I could memorize Scripture. So I thought, “With God’s help, I’m going to start on Ephesians.”


It took me months and months—probably about six months—but I worked on it every single minute of every day and night. I found that even though I had no extra time slots in my day, I could memorize while I was doing other things. So I included Scripture memory in my morning routine—getting in the shower, blow-drying my hair, putting on makeup and clothes.


Those were times when my hands were busy but my mind was free. So I was able to memorize Scripture while I was doing the household chores—vacuuming, folding laundry, emptying the dishwasher, making school lunches, making coffee, things like that—I could memorize at the same time.


Not only was I getting to know God’s Word, but I was redeeming the time, just a minute here and a minute there. That’s really where I began.

Before the broadcast was over Nancy asked Janet to quote Ephesians One.  She did.  I listened with a heart of conviction.  I did not know the Word of God in that way, and hearing Janet quote Scripture, and hear the testimony of what memorizing chapters and books of the Bible had done in her life stirred my heart to do the same.  Just as Janet was challenged as she listened to the woman at the conference to come to know God’s Word, I was convicted to begin memorizing.  I began working on my favorite book in the Bible – Philippians. 

Last Sunday my husband asked me, as part of his series on the importance of memorizing the Word of God, to recite the book of Philippians.  By God’s grace, and for His glory, I was able to do so.  I’ve had many come to me with the same response that Janet and I had as we listened to Scripture being quoted – saying that they’ve been challenged to do the same.  Praise the Lord.  What a joy to see this trickle-down effect.  It has nothing to do with me, Friends.  It is only by God’s grace that we can do anything.  Even as  Philippians 3:13 says, I must forget that which is behind and reach unto that which is before.  I don’t sit and dwell on the fact that I memorized Philippians; Monday morning I began working on Titus…pressing forward.

There’s no quick method to memorizing – it comes after much diligence, but I took some of Janet’s tips on memorization and have added couple of my own that I would like to share with you if you are inclined to work on a passage of Scripture.  Many times we just need a little help about the how to’s to help get us started.

• Write the verse (or chapter) down on 3×5 cards.  Use the little notebook with a spiral or a ring that holds the cards together.  Writing them out is one aid in memorization.  Having those cards with you will allow you to review them whether you’re sitting at a traffic light, in the doctor’s office, vacuuming, folding clothes or hulling strawberries.  Look carefully at the picture of my berries.  Just above the sink, on the windowsill are my verse cards.
• I read the whole verse out loud a couple of times until I have an understanding of it.  Then I begin memorizing a phrase at a time until I have the whole verse down.  Then all day long go over it out loud.  Repeat it again and again.
• As you learn a new verse, connect it to those that preceeded it – out loud.
• Another tool you can use is your phone – if you have a video recorder or a voice note tool.  I used the voice notes and will read a passage.  Then to review, I play it and recite the passage along with my recorded voice.  You can do the same thing with a Bible site like Bible Gateway.  Pull up the audio version of a chapter and recite it with the reader.
• It might also help to have someone who will hold you accountable – a partner who will listen to your verses and encourage you.

Isn’t it startling to go grocery shopping and watch the amount add up as you move from aisle to aisle?  I’m leaning heavily on my coupon book to help reduce the amount I have to pay at the checkout. 

Sometimes, however, I have to move to other tactics, like buying generic items instead of popular name brands.  It doesn’t make that much difference, does it?  A can of diced tomatoes is a can of diced tomatoes, no matter how it’s wrapped.  The generic will do just as well.  It will serve the purpose in the recipe.

There are some things, however, where I just have to buy the name brand because the quality is so much better – paper products is one thing.   I can’t stand using a paper product that disintegrates when it’s used! 

We’ve all probably seen the advertisements for products like Brawny that claim to be tough – or Bounty – “The quicker picker-upper!”  These name brands make claims that make their product different.  They stand head and shoulders above the generic!  They are really worth the extra cost.

What type of Christianity do you and I have?  Is it generic because there’s really nothing special about it?  It serves its purpose – I mean we’re on our way to heaven after all.  The way we live our lives doesn’t set our Christianity apart from anyone else.  We look like they look, talk like they talk, worry like they worry, live for the present like they live for the present.  Is our prayer life is generic too?  We pray when it’s necessary – at mealtime we bow our head and say the same little ditty we’ve been saying since who knows when.  If there’s a tragedy going on, we pray about that,but for the most part, we handle the day-to-day struggles ourselves.  What “brand” is our church membership?  Is it generic too?  We go when it’s convenient, when nothing else conflicts with the service times.  We aren’t serving in any way – that would take too much commitment.  No, being a member is enough. 

The generic products are less expensive and accomplish nearly the same thing.  I find it tempting to pull the generic off the shelf of my Christian life because it doesn’t cost as much either.  But, oh, the blessings that come from getting the name brand product that does what it claims!  Even more so, there are many blessings that come from having more than just generic brand in my walk with the Lord, in prayer with Him, and in church membership and service!  It’s rich, sweet and full of blessings!

Don’t skimp when it comes to your walk with God; generic Christianity disintegrates faster than a wimpy paper towel!

With love,

I’m lightening things up a bit for summertime.  I love the light, fresh look of a cottage.  So I figured it was time to remove the heavy drapery in my bedroom and just have up the sheers.  It really brightened up the room!  It gives it a breezy look.    It’s amazing what one simple change can do to a room. 





Wash and stem the berries



Cut berries and crush with potato masher 1 cup at a time