Be Ye Separate

As you all remember, our duck hatched out a total of 3 chicks. Two of which, lived. Now she's had 2 ducklings! (As a good duck should):P

These ducklings are the cutest things ever. They were born 2 days ago and were so yellow the first day that it looked like someone colored them in with a yellow highlighter:P

These are just hours old. Actually I'm pretty sure that the wet one was not quite an hour. We take them from the mom because we don't want her to abandon her nest before they are all hatched out. Once there is a lull in hatching the duck will abandon the nest and crack all the eggs open to eat what is inside of them. Sometimes this means there are partially formed babies in them which means a lost "harvest" as it were. We do raise these for meat so it's important to have as many appear as possible:)

Along with the two living chicks, it feels good to see our farm expanding on it's own. Isn't that what we strive for? Self sustaining? Well, with the Lords help, of course:P

Now if we could just hug our Nigerian Dwarf enough that she will finish up our breeding year:P

Daily Devotion 206

July 24

True Humility

And be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.

1 Peter 5:5b

Humility may be described as a righteous estimate of ourselves as God sees us. It is not a cast-down, self-despising spirit, but a simple feeling of unworthiness, a sense of our own insignificance. Never does it leave room for pride and self exaltation.

A drunkard came home at midnight with a crowd of his drunken friends. He demanded that his Christian wife make supper for them. She promptly complied. After they were done eating, one, who was more sober than the rest, and knowing of her disapproval of their conduct, asked how she could respond so kindly to their unreasonable request. She said that if her husband had died in this miserable condition, he would be miserable forever. It was through this woman’s act of humility to these unreasonable and corrupt men that her husband was saved.

Jesus in His humility stripped Himself of His rightful dignity when He gave Himself up as a servant and became a man. This was not the end of His humiliation; He stooped still lower, in obedience. He went to the shameful cross where He suffered much abuse by His own people. Because of His humiliation, God was so well pleased that He gave Him a position, “That at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow.”

We may say it was only right for Jesus to give himself like this, but what should our attitude be to humility? “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus” Philippians 2:5). Unless we are converted, we cannot experience true humility. Humility brings with it a childlike spirit that manifests itself in meekness, submission, and

lowliness in heart (Matthew 11:29).

As we make our pilgrimage here, may we also be clothed with humility and take opportunities to serve others for the kingdom of God’s sake.

Lester Stoltzfus, Honey Brook, PA

God hath promised to lift on high, he who sinks himself by true humility.

Bible Reading: Philippians 2:1–11; Matthew 18:1–6

One Year Bible Reading Plan:

Acts 24

Psalms 41—43

Used by Permission of Vision Publishers

PO Box 190, Harrisonburg, VA 22803

Phone: 877-488-0901

E-Mail: [cs@vision-publishers.com]

Daily Devotion 205

July 23

Five Steps to Repentance

Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance.

Matthew 3:8

I have often wondered how we can apologize for something like getting angry at someone, and then turn around and do it again only a short time later. We try ever so hard to conquer a habit, but we seem to find no victory. Maybe it is because we do not really understand repentance. How do we find real victory over sin?

1. Acknowledgment. Psalm 51:3. The first thing we must do is acknowledge that we have sinned. If we do not acknowledge that we have wronged a brother when we became angry at him (or whatever else we have done) then we have missed the first step.

2. Godly sorrow. 2 Corinthians 7:10. Many times we are sorrowful simply because others have discovered our sin. “What will others think if they hear that I’m a bitter person?” Godly sorrow means we are remorseful that our sins have hurt our Lord.

3. Confession. 1 John 1:9. We may reason that we have said we are sorry, so what more is needed? Or, if ours is a private sin, we may have only confessed it to God, thinking that is enough. But it is not. I remember a time when I did something wrong that involved no one else but myself. One day I became convicted of my wrong and repented of it. Yet I did not find peace until I confessed it to a responsible person. “Confess your faults one to another.”

4. Restitution. Matthew 5:24. We must also be willing to make wrongs right at any cost. Some relationships cannot be restored, but we need to be willing to do our part.

5. Forsaking it. Proverbs 28:13. If we truly repent, we will want to quit sinning. These five steps must be complete before we have really repented from sin. This does not mean we can escape the consequences for sin, but we can accept God’s grace as sufficient for us and begin to overcome our sin.

James Miller, Evart, MI

It takes humility to admit we are wrong; none to insist we are right.

Bible Reading: Matthew 3:1–12

One Year Bible Reading Plan:

Acts 23:12–35

Psalms 38—40

Used by Permission of Vision Publishers

PO Box 190, Harrisonburg, VA 22803

Phone: 877-488-0901

E-Mail: [cs@vision-publishers.com]

If it wasn't for me...

Do you ever find yourself saying, "If it wasn't for me________would never get done!" (fill in the blank)? Be honest now:P I don't do it as often as I once used to but I did find myself doing just that the last week:P

It was a couple of days of things just being so busy and sometimes feeling like we were taking two steps forward and one step back:P It began with, "What would you all do if I wasn't here to sweep up your mess on the mudroom floor?" It progressed with things like, "How would you folks survive if I wasn't here to close the cupboard doors?" "What will you do when I'm not here anymore to, pick up the dirty towels off the bathroom floor...rinse the dishes before stacking them, clean out the muddy drop in the bathroom sink, replace the soap in the dish etc!?!" Then the last one that got me thinking harder than anything was..."Am I the only one who knows how to replace the toilet paper and actually put it ON the dispenser?":P

All this to say, I had become a class one nag and self oppointed doitall:P I got to thinking about how much God has done for me because I didn't do it first or do it for myself and blah blah blah. Hearing yourself yet?:P

I wondered how many times God has said to me "Am I the only one that sees you dragging your feet, not praying enough, worrying too much etc?" What would you do if I wasn't here to help you through your trials, pick you up when you are down, hold you when you are shattered etc etc etc?"

My answer? I would be lost. Completely and utterly lost. I would be desparate, desolate, alone and forgotten. How much He does for me and how often I take it for granted.

What would my family do? Perhaps they would be lost, desparate, desolate, alone and forgotten. All or some of each? Who knows. I know one thing for sure. They wouldn't feel my love or know my guidance. Teaching them as I go along, helping them to become not so much independant but reliant on God's provision. They've been given the gift of someone who loves them enough to do these things (even if it comes with a complaint now and then) for and with them.

I will never be complaint free but I do try to let them know that there are lots of things that I couldn't do without THEM either:) My sweet husband and children will often turn my frown upside down by turning my words around. They will jump on it and say "What would we do if you weren't here to________" or they will do something with a lot of fanfare to make sure I know they are doing it and, with a mischevious little grin, say "What would you do if______":P

I love my family and I know they love me. Better yet GOD loves my family and I know He loves me!

Banned Books

I was not tagged for this meme either but it sounded interesting so I decided to do it too:) (Like so many others who found it just as interesting):)

As I understand it you need to mark or bold the books you've read. so here goes:)

#1 The Bible
#2 Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
#3 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
#4 The Koran (interesting and scarey)
#5 Arabian Nights
#6 Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
#7 Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
#8 Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
#9 Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
#10 Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
#11 Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
#12 Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
#13 Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
#14 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
#15 Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
#16 Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
#17 Dracula by Bram Stoker
#18 Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin
#19 Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
#20 Essays by Michel de Montaigne
#21 Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
#22 History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
#23 Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
#24 Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (interesting and misguided)
#25 Ulysses by James Joyce
#26 Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
#27 Animal Farm by George Orwell
#28 Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
#29 Candide by Voltaire
#30 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
#31 Analects by Confucius
#32 Dubliners by James Joyce
#33 Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
#34 Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
#35 Red and the Black by Stendhal
#36 Capital by Karl Marx
#37 Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire
#38 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
#39 Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence
#40 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
#41 Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
#42 Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
#43 Jungle by Upton Sinclair (very political in nature but makes you think)
#44 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
#45 Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
#46 Lord of the Flies by William Golding
#47 Diary by Samuel Pepys
#48 Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
#49 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
#50 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
#51 Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
#52 Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
#53 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
#54 Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus
#55 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
#56 Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
#57 Color Purple by Alice Walker
#58 Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
#59 Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
#60 Bluest Eyes by Toni Morrison
#61 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
#62 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Both in Russian and in English)
#63 East of Eden by John Steinbeck
#64 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
#65 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
#66 Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#67 Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais
#68 Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
#69 The Talmud
#70 Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#71 Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
#72 Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
#73 American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
#74 Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler (both volumes with my grandmother)
#75 A Separate Peace by John Knowles
#76 Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
#77 Red Pony by John Steinbeck
#78 Popol Vuh
#79 Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith
#80 Satyricon by Petronius
#81 James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
#82 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
#83 Black Boy by Richard Wright
#84 Spirit of the Laws by Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu
#85 Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
#86 Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
#87 Metaphysics by Aristotle
#88 Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
#89 Institutes of the Christian Religion by Jean Calvin
#90 Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
#91 Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
#92 Sanctuary by William Faulkner
#93 As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
#94 Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
#95 Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
#96 Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
#97 General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
#98 Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
#99 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Alexander Brown
#100 Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
#101 Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines
#102 Émile by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#103 Nana by Émile Zola
#104 Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
#105 Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
#106 Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#107 Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
#108 Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
#109 Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
#110 Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

I did not correct the incomplete titles but those that read them would know anyway:)

That was a walk in history for me:) Some read in school as required reading, some because of curiosity and some because it touched my family in one way or another. (And I adore Ray Bradbury. I met him at a college lecture and who later allowed me to participate in a local radio production from the Theatre in the Round, of Dandelion Wine. He also signed my copy of the script at the time):)

Be Ye Separate

We bring good things to life:)

Daily Devotion 206

Daily Devotion 205

If it wasn't for me...

Banned Books

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