A Word to Busy Mothers

This is a poem from a book entitled "Garden of Grace" by Mrs. Silas Bowman. One of my good friends sent it to me (Thanks Christal :-) and since it both convicted and encouraged me I thought I'd share it here.

A Word to Busy Mothers

Since you are a busy mother, you have much to do.

Things are often in a rush and you are often in a stew.

Meals to fix, clothes to wash, and dirty floor to sweep,

Little tots and babies, too, to care for and to keep.

Garden must be tended; there is sewing to be done;

Certain deadlines must be met; you are always on the run.

Though this work is all important, keep it in it’s place.

Never let it shut out God or stop His flow of grace.

While you are hanging out the wash or ironing with care,

Still your thoughts to meditate and breathe a silent prayer.

Read a portion of God’s Word while rocking babies to sleep;

Count your blessings while you work although you feel to weep.

Sing about His goodness as you pick, prepare, and can;

Speak about His praises and His mercies to mere man.

Tell the children of His love while tucking them in bed;

Thank Him daily that His hand has clothed them, warmed and fed.

In the evening leave your work and worry in God’s care;

‘Ere you start another day prepare yourself in prayer,

And God will surely bless your day and give you grace to do

All those things that must be done and always fall on you.

Mrs Silas Bowman

Not a Mood, But Reality

The passage below is of much comfort to me because it is a confirmation that regardless of what feeling or lack of feeling for God or repentance I can or cannot muster on any given day, no matter how "anguish of soul" takes shape in my inmost being, the Body and Blood of Christ that I take during Communion every Sunday morning WORKS!  It is an act of God taking place here and now.  Period.

"What is it that gave to Luther's conception of Providence an immediacy, 

the freshness and vitality which had not been there since the days of the prophets and Jesus? 

Nought else but the experience of this which he calls the forgiveness of sins. 

We easily miss this connection, because in the main, 

forgiveness of sins is for us a much less fruitful word than it was for Luther. 

For us it tends to become either a doctrine which we in faith "apprehend to ourselves," 

or else a purely subjective "experience"; for Luther it meant something far beyond: 

a real act of God, the living God, through Christ, the living Christ. 

As I lie there in deepest anguish of soul, he himself comes, and this not as a 

pictorial description of a shift in my subjective mood, but as an altogether actual reality,

 to accomplish that blessed exchange with which Luther speaks about in his book on Christian liberty:  
He, all my sin, I, all his fullness."

from "Our Calling", by Einar Billing, page 7 

I am clean.  I am forgiven. That is reality. 
What I "feel" at the time of receiving the Sacrament or at any other time is irrelevant. Thank God.