Hospitality, Friendship, Encouragement

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Abundance

Becky's post today over at Hospitality Lane was very good and triggered some thoughts. It is easy in these times of high energy costs to feel like we are struggling. There is not as much non-budgeted money, as we used to have. I cook from scratch, (we even make our own ranch salad dressing!) we don't eat out much, we live on a budget. Things could feel gloomy, however we don't. You see we are abundantly blessed with true riches.

We have six healthy children, who love us as we love them. We work together and play together.

We have a lovely home. It was a wreck when we purchased it 7 years ago. We have put a lot of work into it. Project by project as we had money to do it. You see that is another bit of abundance - we have no debt other than our mortgage, and even that we are able to pay extra on it every month, so that we can pay the house off early.


We have an abundance of beauty here. We used a lot of mushroom mulch over the years to fix the soil around our cottage. We planted and an abundance of flowers were produced. We bring these into the house, give them away, sharing the blessing of their beauty.


We have an abundance of true wealth in the blessing of having many, many, many books. This is simply one book case in our cottage. I have Lindsay and Emily cataloging all of our books. They are not nearly done. With books you can learn a foreign language or culture, you can hold God's very thoughts in your own hands, you can capture your child's imagination!


We also have an abundance of family friendly movies, which makes a movie night easy to accomplish. We have wonderful friends, live close to my parents, who share in our family life! It blesses us. We have an abundance of animals as well! That sometimes to me doesn't seem like a blessing, but it does to our children!

So I encourage you, dear friends, to focus on God's abundant blessings in your life. Slow down, simplify, enjoy and share with those God brings your way. You will feel His abundance.

5 comments:

  1. I have thought about your Amish neighbors during this crunch time. How they are more focused on family and the support of each other and living together. That is most important to them. This is what brings them Joy. We can be joyuful during this time of panic and depression. We can because we can choose it! The JOY of the Lord is our strength. I was going to post about this today. So be on the lookout!

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  2. Great great post Auntie Dee! Focusing on what we have and what God has given us is what life is all about. There are so many things to be thankful for, God blesses us abundantly, we just have to sit back and look at life.

    P.S. My mom always made homemade salad dressings and now I do it too!! can't stand the bottled stuff now!! haha

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  3. Wonderfully stated. O how we take for granted so many daily blessings. Thank you so much for sharing!

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  4. oh such a good post and great pictures...everyone of us has no reason to complain, do we?
    Deby

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  5. That is soooo good!

    My Mom used to make her own Thousand Island Dressing. Yum!

    Becky K.

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