The Truth About Ourselves; Hebrews 10:15-22

In studying Covenant with the ladies at RBC guided by Kay Arthur's book titled as such, I dove into this passage in Hebrews today and was so blessed by what I learned about myself, about us as the body of Christ, and needed to share.  These are my raw notes taken from observing what the text has to say is true about "us," but to me, they read like an awesome story of grace and mercy and of salvation:

- the Holy Spirit testifies to us
- God makes a covenant with us
- His laws are on our hearts and minds -- he put them there!
- we sin and commit lawless deeds
-we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus
- we have a great priest over the house of God
- we are to draw near to Him
- we have full assurance of our faith
- our hearts have been sprinkled clean
- our bodies have been washed with pure water

How can it be?  We sin and commit lawless deeds, yet we have confidence to enter the holy place. Confidence!

Makes these lyrics come to mind:

There is no guilt here
There is no shame
No pointing fingers
There is no blame
What happened yesterday…has disappeared
The dirt has washed away
And now it's clear

There's only grace
There's only love
There's only mercy and believe me it's enough
Your sins are gone
Without a trace
And there's nothing left now
There's only grace

I don't care what native Tri-Citians say -- this is Spring!

We have had gorgeous weather the last several days and when we couldn't quite get out the door in time for story time at our West Richland Library, we opted to play outside instead.  We planned on riding bikes and getting out the sidewalk chalk for the second day in a row.  Needless to say, I was surprised when my kiddos instead chose to park their bikes . . .

and pull weeds from the RV/boat parking pad next to our driveway.  Seeing as we don't have an RV or boat, for us it functions only as a giant rock pit.  (Funny similarities between this house and Cory Court -- giant children's mural & giant rock pit!)

Zeke preferred using various yard tools to shove rocks and dirt around.  As you can see, despite the relatively warm weather, he has a renewed love for his "Fiderman" boots ever since Mr. George complimented them last Thur :)

The girls worked to the soundtrack of their own "weed smacktalk" that went something like, "Hey weedy -- you've got to get out of here!" "I'm going to pull you out," and "You weeds are going to be doomed!"

Just some unrelated super-cute pictures from the last week or so: