snow prints.

Alyosha and his momma walked side by side one early snowy morn at 6am... all was calm, all was quiet... and we were the first to disturb the blanket of snow. Peaceful winter...

flash snow fall.

We had a furious flash snow fall yesterday. I was caught outside in it, without a hat or a hood on my coat, and of course without an umbrella. I found refuge under a tree to take some pictures. (I’ve been carrying my camera around with me everywhere… I just get too self-conscious sometimes to pull it out.)
Today, snow is melted, sun is shining across clear, blue skies. (Such a rarity for Belarus!)

I recently finished reading a book called Freedom of Simplicity by Richard Foster. This book was wonderful to read for this season leading up to Easter. The first half deals with the theology of simplicity, while the second half of the book deals with application. In the second half, he looks at three areas for living in simplicity’s freedom: inward, outward, and corporate simplicity. I found myself dog-earring a plethora of passages. I’ve decided to do a short series of blog posts on a variety of quotes from this book with my own personal commentary and reflections. So check back this week and please, join in the conversation in the comments!

always snowing, always melting, always snowing.

the past week we've had this pattern of snow covering the ground overnight, covering the earth, and then by mid morning the next day, it has already melted.... it repeats this process, and has repeated it, for at least the past 3 days.

I thought about how this is a picture at times of life. When we're sleeping, at peace, resting, trusting our Dad above, we receive His grace, His love, His mercies, which are new every morning. Then something happens and we "muck it up" and it starts melting. It melts because we can't hold onto the ingraspable, and we're imperfect and don't always dwell all the time in His goodness and grace and love. What's amazing is that we're promised He'll keep pouring out His mercy on us, keep making us as new creations, keep covering our scarlet sins with white snow...

This is just one of many promises we have from the One who came to be Incarnate, to demonstrate His love to us, and who we can joyously celebrate, especially this Advent season. I've wanted to be more intentional to celebrate Advent in a special way, as this special time of year... I'd love to hear in the comments how you celebrate Advent.