He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
Ecclesiastes 3:11
We are in this world but we are not to be of this world; rather we are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds, setting our minds on the things above.(Romans 12:2). This can be so hard. The demands of life add up, snatch time away from us, and next thing we know a year has come and gone and a new year has begun.
What always amazes me, when reflecting over a past year, are the moments that I remember. They aren’t always the big moments that I remember with the most clarity. The small moments, the minutiae of life, are usually the things I remember. They are the moments I laughed with my husband until I couldn’t breathe. The moments of pure relaxation reading a book on the bank of the river in the summer. The quiet moments sitting by a campfire, sharing a meal with friends. These are the moments in which time stands still; when all else fades away, and for a moment there is no such thing as time. It is in these moments when we get the best glimpse into what eternity will be like. These precious but ordinary moments are what I think eternity will be like.
When I met my friend’s little new born son for the first time, I asked her if she felt like she had always known him and she said yes. God has planted eternity in our hearts—something within us knows this world is not all we were created for, and we do sense this about others. We feel a weight when we truly connect with others; when we hold a newborn, when we engage in a meaningful conversation with someone, when we are helping an older person, we can sense that these people aren’t just creatures like our pets (and I do love my pets!) but these people have something eternal planted within them that our souls recognize.
Society and individuals today try to play down the sanctity of life—of the preborn, of the elderly, or of those who are terminally ill. Hastening the end of the lives of individuals is a big deal. It’s the biggest deal. We aren’t just playing with the things of this world, we are messing with the eternity of others.
Like C. S. Lewis said, “If I find within myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” This can make us uncomfortable. We are very used to this world; but let it make us bold, not uncomfortable. When things are spoken to us in conversation which we know is not in step with what we are told in God’s word, let us always be bold enough to proclaim the truth, gently and lovingly, but firmly. After all, when we stand before the judgment throne in heaven do we really want to confess that we didn’t share our faith, and perhaps plant the seeds that changed eternity for someone else because we were embarrassed? Of what?
Eternity is something we have to deal with in this world. We don’t get another chance to deal with it after this one. This is our one shot to decide where and with whom we want to spend it. We plan our weekend, our years, our careers, our lives, but we must also plan for our eternity. May this truth help us bravely share our faith with others. This is their one shot for eternity also.
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I’d like to start off by saying, I am not here to point fingers! We all have had our less-than-stellar decorating moments. Some decor faux pas you may be aware of, other you may not. There may be a few sections in your house that you have a feeling that something isn’t quite right but you just keep hoping that if you ignore it may fix itself…
Feeling Off
Do you have a spot in your home that just doesn’t feel quite right? You just don’t quite like it. You think you need to repaint, or reupholster an item, or buy something new, but even when you do these things you still don’t like it, then something is definitely off. Here are a few of the top mistakes I’ve observed that can make a room feel off.
A Too Small Area Rug
An area rug should comfortably gather all your furniture together. What does that mean? It means at least the front two legs of all your furniture should rest on the rug—hopefully by at least six inches! Please do not leave a slight gap around the edge of your rug and the front of your furniture. If you think your rug is too small it will be worth the pain to pack it up, return it, and get a larger one. Trust me on this one—your rug is not going to grow! If your rug was very expensive or perhaps a one-of-a-kind vintage rug and is too small, try layering it over a larger rug. This will add depth to your home will allow you to keep your favorite rug.
Furniture placement
Speaking of furniture—don’t push it all back against the wall! This is something common that we do especially if your house isn’t huge. Pushing all your furniture back against the wall can backfire, making your room feel smaller rather than larger. If you can, pull at least a few pieces out from the wall by six inches or a foot. Try it!
Too Much Stuff
Are you a collector? Do you love an eclectic vibe? Collections are great but display them with care. If you don’t have a large collection that can be displayed together to really make a visual impact then display only portions of that collection at a time.
Likewise you may prefer a fuller room rather than a minimalist feel. Again that’s fine. Just make sure that you are:
· Displaying things that have meaning to you and aren’t just taking up space, and
· That you leave a clear walkway to create flow in the room.
White Space
Speaking of too much stuff, remember to leave some white space where your eye can rest. Even if you are a maximalist, there should be some space in each room where your eye can rest without being bombarded with stimulation. As I mentioned above, make sure there is a defined walk way to each area of the room. You want to be able to vacuum or have someone with a cane to be able to easily navigate your space, without having to move things first!
Too Many Cords
Electronic cords are part of modern day life but make sure they aren’t the focus of it! You want to hide as many cords as possible out of the way and out of sight. Try taping cords down the back of a console stand to keep them hidden. If possible, plug end-table lamps into an outlet behind or even under your couch. If you have a bunch of cords laying on the floor beneath your TV stand, try applying a few Command hooks to the back of your TV stand and loop the cords over the hook so the cords are hidden behind the TV stand and not on the floor underneath it.
Keeping Something You Hate
At some point we have probably all been given an item that we do not love; in fact we may hate it. If you never liked a piece don’t try to style around it. You could try painting or reupholstering it but if that doesn’t work then it is time to let it go. It’s okay if it was your great grandma’s—if you hate it, it is better to pass it along to someone who will love and cherish it as much as your great grandma did.
Trends
Maybe you have all the new trendy item displayed in your home; maybe you have a bunch of items that used to be trendy in your home—a long time ago! Either way, having too many trendy pieces in your home can make your home start to feel cheap. Add a few touches and ask yourself if you like the item because you like it, or if it’s because you liked it back when you bought it many years ago.
Curtains
Curtains are not to just cover your window. They are to be a statement! Hang the curtains within 4-6 inches of the top of your ceilings if you live in a standard 8-10 foot ceiling home. If you live in a house with very tall ceilings then I probably wouldn’t go more than 8 inches to possibly 10 inches above the window itself. See how low you can go; you can let them puddle (crease) on the floor with several inches on the floor for a romantic look; you can let them kiss (just grazing the floor) for a modern luxe look, or you can have them just hover about a centimeter above the floor which may be the best option if you have little kids, or rambunctious pets!
Add Character
Hotel rooms done by a designer are nice, but they are just that—a place where you swing by and stay for a day or two before departing. Your home should not feel like that. You want to add character to your home. Add a few pieces of art that you simply adore. Add a few pictures of your family. (Just don’t go overboard with too many everywhere!) Display the weird knickknack that no one other than you knows what it is—this is your home and if you love it, it should be displayed.
Please remember that this post contains affiliate links; that means if you click on the link, I will make a small commission at no extra cost to you. It’s a way to support my blog! I will only ever share an affiliate link if I love the product and think that you just might love it too!
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.
2 Corinthians 5:17
I like the snow. I know, that’s not a popular opinion to hold but it is true. I really do like and enjoy it. We have had a very snowy winter in Pennsylvania thus far and not just a snowy winter, but a rather icy winter too! While I may be a fan of snow, I draw the line at ice. You can more or less drive in the snow but ice—not so much.
We had an ice storm a few weeks ago and it threw everything off. Schools closed, the interstate had restrictions on travel, and I had to cancel a whole day of work because everything was coated in ice and I mean everything! Power lines, trees, cars, our walkways were all coated in a thick layer of glittering ice. Then we got snow—about eight inches on top of the ice.
Getting inches of snow on top of ice does not make for the easiest snow removal but you know what it does make the best for? Pictures! The ice acted as an adhesive for all the snow and the snow and ice clung to the branches of the trees, bushes, and everything else. As the sun came up, everything was glittering, shining, and silver-coated; the trees were so beautiful that you could scarcely take your eyes off of them. The whole landscape looked like it had been kissed by God’s glory.
The snow and ice in the trees hung around for a few days and the winter landscape in Pennsylvania never looked so beautiful, at least not in a while. I was marveling at the beauty of it as I was driving a few days after the storm. The snow really does make everything look better! There is an old building in need of major repair not too far from my house, but when I came around the bend and saw it covered in snow, I couldn’t tell that the building wasn’t in the best of conditions. The snow had covered, at least superficially, the building’s stains and imperfections.
The Pharisees of Jesus’s day were like the snow-covered building. They acted holy but their hearts were not pure. Jesus came to purify our hearts—not to give us a superficial covering. When we act like our good deeds will save us, we are acting like the Pharisees. What did Jesus say about the Pharisees? In Matthew 23:27Jesus says they are like whitewashed tombs—beautiful on the outside but full of decay inside. We are like a crypt—before we learned how to embalm! Would you want to venture into one of those?
That is what we are in God’s sight but for Jesus. When we truly turn our lives over to Him we are no longer like the stinking tomb in the eyes of our Father but a new creation (II Corinthians 5:17). We are covered in the blood of Jesus and as beautiful as the world after a snow and ice storm.
God loved us so much that He sent His Son, not only sent but demoted His Son to this world—to a lowly station—so that we might believe in Him and thereby live with Him eternally. He could have left us to be like the rotting tombs but He didn’t. He cared and loved us too much to leave us to that destiny. Jesus willingly came to earth so that through Him the world could be kissed by God’s glory. When we accept Him and put Him on the throne of our hearts and live according to His commands, we reflect His glory to all.
Real quick! Before I get started with the actual post, I just wanted to drop in and mention that if after reading this post you decided to purchase any of these titles I ask that you consider doing so through the affiliate links provided. Doing so will not increase the cost of the book to you, and it is a tangible way you can support and help me be able to keep bringing you these posts each week! Thanks in advance, and now- on to the good stuff!
The Shape of Mercy
This was the first book I read by Ms. Meissner and it is about one of my favorite time periods—the Salem Witch trials!
Lauren wants to make her own way in the world; she does not want to rely on her family’s wealth and connections to cushion her life. This leads Lauren to take a job from 83-year-old Abigail Boyles transcribing journal entries of one of Abigail’s ancestors—a victim of the Salem Witch—Mercy Hayworth.
As Lauren starts to transcribe the journal entries, she finds herself enraptured with Mercy’s life. Lauren also realizes that the secrets contained in Mercy’s journal are still playing a part in Abigail’s life today. Lauren also realizes that she may, in a subtler way, be doing some of the same things that the accusers did to Mercy, to the people in her own life. How will she respond moving forward?
Secrets of a Charmed Life
Emily has dreams of becoming a wedding dress designer, a dream she is actively pursuing at the age of 15 when she lands a job in a local wedding dress shop. However, such dreams may have to wait as World War II is underway and Britain has come under attack with threats of bombing from Germany. Still being underage, Emily and her seven-year-old little sister, Julia, are sent to live in the country. This means Emily has to leave her job at the wedding dressmakers, which she is loath to do.
One day Emily receives a letter from her old boss inviting her to come to London to meet her boss’s brother who is a well-known costume designer and who may be willing to tutor Emily and enormously enhance her career opportunities. Emily determines to sneak away from this house in the country in the middle of the night to make this meeting—but problems arise when Julia discovers her plans and threatens to give Emily away, unless Emily takes Julia with her.
Having made their way back to England, Emily leaves Julia in their mother’s flat while she goes to her meeting. Part way through her meeting the blitz starts. Emily is frantic to get back to Julia but it is not easy to make way through a city being riddled with bombs. When Emily at last gets back to their flat, Julia is gone. Will they both make it through the blitz and will they ever be reunited again?
In America we remember the shortages and rationing those on the home front were forced to practice but the Brits had it far worse. Imagine sending away your child for their safely in a time of war not knowing if you would ever see them again, not knowing who you would lose in the nightly bombings. This novel brought to my attention more of the destruction of Britain than I ever gave thought to.
As Bright as Heaven
I devoted a whole post to this book, read As Bright As Heaven here, but to give you an overview, this is about a family who moves to Philadelphia right before the Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918. The father has just taken a job working in his uncle’s mortuary. Then the influenza comes to their town. They are overwhelmed with the dead, dying and the ill people. It is hard to walk the line between caring for the ill and keeping themselves safe. The main character, young Maggie, and her mother try to do their part and go out delivering food to some of the people their town. It is on one of these excursions that Maggie finds an abandoned baby boy and falls in love; she wants him to replace the infant brother the family lost just before they moved. But this infant may not be as abandoned as Maggie first thought…. Will the past come back to haunt them?
As well as being a compelling story, I enjoyed the unique look at the 1918 influenza as told from the point of view of the undertaker’s family. It is so easy, when we look at past events such as this, to focus on the horrific loss of life, but we sometimes forget to look at the horrific events that the living had to endure during the same time.
The Nature of Fragile Things
The Nature of Fragile Things centers around the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. As the book opens, the main character, Sophie, is being interrogated by the U.S. Marshall concerning the whereabouts of her husband who has been missing since the day of the earthquake. The Marshall wants to know why Sophie waited so long to go to the police about her missing husband—what kind of wife waits six weeks to report that her husband is missing?
Sophie is an immigrant from Ireland, turned mail order bride. She answers an advertisement that a widower is in need of a wife to help him raise his young daughter. Sophie goes, excited to be a loving mother to young Cat, but things don’t seem quite right with her new husband. Sophie writes off his reticence as he is still grieving the loss of his late wife but as more and more things begin to surface Sophie finds it hard to ignore all of these things… . Moreover, Sophie is afraid that her husband’s secrets could be the undoing of her own secrets that she desperately wants to keep hidden.
I have always enjoyed the books I have read by Susan Meissner but this one pulled me into the story exceptionally quickly and held my interest! Over the years I have read a little about the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 but this book was a good peak into what life really looked like for the people living there in the days immediately following the quake.
As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.
Proverbs 27: 17 NIV
I’m sure you have heard of Milton Hershey and if you have not heard of Hershey himself, then I am sure you have heard of Hershey Chocolates—the company he founded—and you may have even heard of the town of Hershey, Pennsylvania, where his chocolate factories were originally located and all of his chocolate was produced.
Like so many entrepreneurs, things had not gone smoothly for Milton Hershey; he had tried to start companies before and his first two companies had gone bankrupt. By the time he started Hershey Chocolates, most of his friends and family, who at one point were willing to financially back him, had had enough of his business ventures and would no longer help to support him in these ventures.
Milton Hershey had started working in a candy shop at the age of 14. He started a candy business and it flopped; he moved to Denver, Colorado and it was there that he learned how to make caramel with milk. Returning to Pennsylvania, he started making the caramels and selling them from a pushcart. After three years of selling from a pushcart, he started the Lancaster Caramel Company. He continued to work in this business and dabble in chocolate-making for the next 16 years. Finally, he sold that business and started the Hershey Chocolate Company. This business finally took off! After so many years and failed attempts, finally something was working! But then, one of his employees and friend decided to leave—to start his own candy shop. This candy would use Hershey’s same chocolate recipe but would encase a smooth peanut butter filling in the center. Hershey’s friend’s name who started this? You guessed it—H.B. Reese, maker of the Reeses cups. Instead of getting mad at his friend for using the expertise Milton had taught him to start his own candy company, in the same town yet, Milton still extended friendship to Reese. They created a mutually beneficial relationship with Reese buying his chocolate from Hershey to make his Reeses cups.
How would you have responded if you had been in Hershey’s shoes? I think I would have been mad! But Hershey had the wisdom and maturity to not overreact and instead he leaned into the friendship, and believed the best about Reese, that he was not out to topple Hershey’s empire but rather he was chasing his own passions and dreams, and it led to deepening their friendship.
Sometimes God places people in our lives to challenge us. In Proverbs we are told, “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” (Proverbs 27:17 NIV). Sometimes our friends will challenge us in ways that we like, that make us think of things in a new way. Other times being sharpened by another person won’t always make for the most comfortable experience for us, but it will stretch us beyond our comfort zones, teach us patience, and ultimately shape us into the people God has designed for us to be.
The next time a friend or acquaintance does something that you weren’t expecting and that you frankly don’t like, try to remember they are most likely not doing it to hurt you. Most likely they are just living their life. Extend a little grace, perhaps talk to them about your feelings if it is appropriate, and remember to extend Christ’s example of loving others. Look for ways in which God could use this experience to grow and shape you to be who He wants you to be—who knows what could grow from your efforts!
Please remember that this post contains affiliate links; that means if you click on the link, I will make a small commission at no extra cost to you. It’s a way to support my blog! I will only ever share an affiliate link if I love the product and think that you just might love it too!
