Encouragment

The missions pastor from the Rivermont church stopped to see us on his visit to Europe. I took him with me to Salzburg where I had a meeting with the Director of the Austrian Evangelical Alliance along with several other mission leaders. We are planning a forum for churches and others who are reaching out to immigrants and refugees. From there we went on to visit someone interested in working with us among refugees. I praise God for the the encouragement both from our supporting church as well as among the work here in Austria.

homeschool perks

I took Tessa to visit the Alte Pinakothek in Munich (highlighted above). This is a Museum that has over 700 paintings of the old masters. Going to a gallery like this is a great way to learn about History, Criticism and themes in Western civilisation, Biblical studies and Christian History. Everytime I am able to do something like this, I wish I could do more of it.

Tessa and I definitely seem to like the gruesome and tragic. My favorite is this one by Holbein - "The Martydom of St. Sebastian". The artist doesn't matter to me as much as the subject of the painting. It's a scene that many artists have tried to capture, and I think in all of them the focus is on the expression of Sebastian. It raises in me the question of how well does he endure his suffering? He suffers but he does not despair.

Tessa's favorite was "The Last Judgment" by Paul Rubens. It's over 18 feet tall. When they built the museum around 1830, they designed this room specifically for this painting. Tessa's comment about the painting. "It's big and real." Of course at that time the judgement was for all those outside of the catholic church, and we still feel the results of that today.

joy in the Lord

I just got back from picking up Noah and Tessa from the Jr. High group. The group discussed "The Joy of the Lord". Tessa said that the discussion was mostly about what IS this joy. Finally, in the group Tessa asked, "How we get the joy of the Lord?" Noone could really answer.

We talked about it in the car on the way home. Noah said, "it's like when we do well in school -we know all the answers, we pass our tests -then we have joy." Tessa said, "we have joy when we rejoice."

I think they are onto something really important. Our joy as Christians is active and alive. It is not a description but it is an action -specifically God's action in our life. Like Psalm 35:9 says, "I rejoice in the Lord, I exult in his salvation." So if we want to "get" more joy, then we need to get a bigger view of what God is doing in our life.