It’s snowing furiously right now and the prediction is ten inches in our area. My husband is flying home from Chicago late this afternoon and I’m watching the snow with that in mind. I don’t think Denver is getting as much as as we are, so hopefully his flight won’t be canceled or delayed. Good grief, I’m weary of snow.

and get out your recipe file! Dorothy from Field Stone Cottage is hosting the April Recipe Roundup on April 17. She says,

“This month’s recipe category will be sandwiches. We all fix ‘em, we all eat ‘em, so let’s broaden our repertoire and share our secret recipes. Now, my definition of sandwich is not limited to something enclosed in two slices of bread. Those sandwiches are very welcome, of course, but so are the ones served on a bun, a roll, a wrap…any filling enclosed by some sort of dough.”

Sounds good, doesn’t it—any filling enclosed by some sort of dough? Sandwiches are great year-round, and if you’re like me, you’re ready for some inspiration. Let’s post our sandwich recipes and meet at Dorothy’s cottage on the 17th!

Desiring God has made available John Piper’s new message, Treasuring Christ and the Call to Suffer, presented at the New World Alive Conference in Wales. It’s a most compelling and important message for the Church today, one that put my head down on the table and my heart in my throat. Please listen.

Exhortation to Prayer ~William Cowper

What various hindrances we meet
In coming to a mercy-seat!
Yet who that knows the worth of pray’r,
But wishes to be often there?

Pray’r makes the dark’ned cloud withdraw,
Pray’r climbs the ladder Jacob saw;
Gives exercise to faith and love,
Brings ev’ry blessing from above.

Restraining pray’r, we cease to fight;
Pray’r makes the Christian’s armour bright;
And Satan trembles, when he sees
The weakest saint upon his knees.

While Moses stood with arms spread wide,
Success was found on Israel’s side;
But when thro’ weariness they fail’d,
That moment Amalek prevail’d.

Have you no words! Ah, think again,
Words flow apace when you complain;
And fill your fellow-creature’s ear
With the sad tale of all your care.

Were half the breath thus vainly spent,
To heav’n in supplication sent;
Your cheerful song would oft’ner be,
“Hear what the LORD has done for me!”

Each Tuesday and Friday in April, Rebecca from Rebecca Writes is posting Petitionary Prayers and invites us to join her in posting our prayer concerns and supporting each other in prayer. I think that’s not only a fine idea, but the gives us the privilege of bearing another’s burden.

Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. Eph. 6:2

These guys are senior members of the Buck family that we’re seeing a lot of these days around our home. It looks like one is whispering to the other, something like “There they go again with the camera. Just look right at ‘em and don’t even smile…I wish they’d just leave us alone…” Deer can be a nuisance, but I love watching them. We have a herd of 15-20 that keeps moving around our property, eating anything available. This picture was taken one morning as I was leaving our house. They stayed put and stared at me as I drove away. I hope we can find their amazing antlers when they drop them, and add them to our collection.

There is nothing in us or done by us, at any stage of our earthly development, because of which we are acceptable to God. We must always be accepted for Christ’s sake, or we cannot be accepted at all. This is not true of us only when we believe. It is just as true after we have believed. It will continue to be true as long as we live. Our need of Christ does not cease with our believing, nor does the nature of our relation to Him or to God through Him ever alter, no matter what our attainments in Christian graces or our achievements in behavior may be. It is always His blood and righteousness alone that we can rest. ~B.B. Warfield

God is God. Because He is God, He is worthy of my trust and obedience. I will find rest nowhere but in His holy will, a will that is unspeakably beyond my largest notions of what He is up to.

And this:

The will of God is never exactly what you expect it to be. It may seem to be much worse, but in the end it’s going to be a lot better and a lot bigger. –Elisabeth Elliot

Jesus, the very thought of Thee
With sweetness fills the breast;
But sweeter far Thy face to see,
And in Thy presence rest.

Nor voice can sing, nor heart can frame,
Nor can the memory find
A sweeter sound than Thy blest Name,
O Savior of mankind!

O hope of every contrite heart,
O joy of all the meek,
To those who fall, how kind Thou art!
How good to those who seek!

But what to those who find? Ah, this
Nor tongue nor pen can show;
The love of Jesus, what it is,
None but His loved ones know.

Jesus, our only joy be Thou,
As Thou our prize will be;
Jesus be Thou our glory now,
And through eternity.

~Bernard of Clairvaux, 12th century
~translated from Latin to English by Edward Caswall, 1849

I glean so much from the Desiring God blog that I have to hold back from linking to it almost on a daily basis. Today John Piper’s topic was “Christ is the Staff of Old Age.” I particularly loved this part of his quote from Samuel Rutherford:

Therefore I commend Christ to you as the staff of your old age: let him have now the rest of your days; and think not much of a storm upon the ship that Christ saileth in; there shall no passenger fall overboard; but the crazed ship and the sea-sick passenger shall come to land safe.

Those of us who are in what I affectionately call our “declining years” are not meant to sit in Adirondack chairs on the shore waiting for the surf to come in, or as in my case, in a rocking chair on my front porch watching the pine trees sway in the breeze. Tempting as it may be at times to tell ourselves that we’ve just about put in our time and deserve a rest, God calls us to do otherwise. Children used to sing, “With Christ in the vessel we can smile at the storm as we go sailing Home.” Out of the mouths of babes and Samuel Rutherford, we hear the same truth. In our sea-sick, crazed-ship voyage, He does not forsake us, but is the strong, sure staff that we can lean upon as we declare His truth to the next generation.