Happy B-Day [Party], DJM!

This year, we ended up celebrating on a smaller scale than usual, with only extended family and some of our “adopted” family.

Our Little Man insisted on recycling the soccer and baseball party themes, combining them. (I didn’t mind!)

As I later wrote to each of our “adopted” kids:

We enjoyed getting to spend time “as family” with everyone present. We really appreciate the positive influence you have in the lives of our two Little People.

The busyness of life, with ever-increasing demands, has inspired me to come up with a new application of a favorite psalm (one that JM chose twelve years ago as a testimony during our church’s annual Thanksgiving Service when we were – finally – expecting our first).

The passage has often moved me to tears:

“Who is like the LORD our God?”

Who is like the LORD our God,

Who is enthroned on high,

Who humbles Himself to behold

the things that are in heaven and in the earth?

He makes the barren woman abide in the house

[and now “The Mission House”] 😏

as a joyful mother of children.

Praise the LORD!

(Psalm 113)

Back then, we would never have imagined a life – or especially a house – surrounded by college students. I am especially thankful for these who so beautifully illustrate the truths of today’s article from Desiring God Foundation:

In the new-covenant era — our era — the family emphasis in Scripture is not mom, dad, and three kids. It’s the church family. When the biblical priority gets reversed, it hinders rather than helps the growth of God’s people.

Of course, we must seek to uphold the importance of the nuclear family, but we don’t want to make an idol of it. If we consider what the apostles emphasized, we see that their focus was much more on the Great Commission, personal holiness, and growing the church family. And it is this family from which no single Christian is to be left out.

So thankful to be seeing truth lived out... Especially thankful to be seeing Jesus in our students...