Here lately I've been looking for beauty in the everyday stuff of life. Like in tomatoes and cabbage. Bell peppers and apples. That kind of stuff. It's pretty neat when you slow down just long enough to really look at something. In fact, it's astounding what you might find. So just recently a friend encouraged me to cut open an apple half-ways instead of the usual long-ways. (Sometimes in order to find beauty, you just have to go about things a little differently than the way you would normally go-along.) So I did just that. And I found this--a star right in the center. I didn't know there was a star right in the center of an apple. And then another friend told me about this book she had read about how you can look at an apple and it represents the Trinity. I actually read that boo[...]

I know that winter has only just begun, and I really have been enjoying it, really, but it does help me to remember that spring is coming. Warmth is coming.I planted over a hundred daffodil and tulip bulbs in our yard this fall. I put them down in a dark hole. I covered them up with dirt. And now they're resting...and waiting.I planted them because I needed hope. I need to know that the cold, dark months won't last forever. I need to know that something beautiful is just around the corner. I needed something lovely to look forward to when the wintry winds come and the sun hides his face and all is gray and bleak...for a season.And isn't life that way, too?I've been reading in the book of Hebrews and I long to express to you the hope I've found. Life is hard sometimes. Things look bleak now[...]