The Lord is my Shepherd;
I have all that I need.
He lets me rest in green meadows;
He leads me beside peaceful streams.
He renews my strength.
He guides me along right paths,
bringing honor to His name.
Even when I walk through the darkest valley,
I will not be afraid,
for you are close beside me.
Your rod and your staff protect and comfort me.
You prepare a feast for me in the presence of my enemies.
You honor me by anointing my head with oil.
My cup overflows with blessings.
Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me all the days of my life,
and I will live in the house of the Lord forever.
~ Psalm 23
This is a psalm that I have read and heard so often that sometimes it just becomes rote, almost over familiar. But it is truly a beautiful description of the way God loves and looks after His own. He protects, comforts, honors, renews, blesses, and guides. He stays close at all times, provides a feast as the enemy looks on, unable to harm us. These are just some of the ways He cares for us.
We've been talking a lot in church recently about the concept of humbling ourselves and how that simply means to take God at His Word regardless of our own feelings and thoughts. I had a new appreciation of the fact that when I am down on myself, when I feel unloveable, when I believe that I am worthless, it is truly a form of pride because God has already said how much He loves me, who I am in Him, and how much He values me. Who am I to argue with Him, to be so full of pride as to declare my thoughts above His. So it was interesting to me to read the following this morning in relation to Psalm 23.
"You can choose to brave this world alone, boasting of your independence and self-sufficiency. History proves that kind of strategy never ends well. But you also have another choice: you can humble yourself under the authority, protection, and sovereignty of the Good Shepherd who always has your best in mind."
~ YouVersion; The Good Shepherd
Here's just a little of piece of our learning time before we went outside this morning - we talked about feelings and traced the letter U with our fingers. We did lots of other things too (as we do each morning) - shapes, numbers, seasons, weather, stories, songs and morning prayer.
After morning lessons we enjoyed a beautiful morning outside.
There was a very cooperative game of kick/pitch and catch going on for awhile.
I spent a little time in the garden thinking radishes and pulling a few weeds. When I took what I had pulled to the chicken coop for the chickens to scratch through, I found these two giving them water.
Amanda woke me at 3:30am a couple days ago to help her catch this snake that had shown up in her room. We weren't sure at first what kind it was so were very careful with it. But after some googling we've decided it likely a baby rat snake. So of course Amanda named it (Charles) and is on the process of making it her new best friend.
It's been a busy day but I've found a little time to read. Here's an excerpt from one of my current books that I found interesting.
Lothar Shafer highlights the mystical convergence between what he calls the "mind-like background of the universe" and the human mind. This "mind-like background" is expressed mathematically and its beauty can only be fully appreciated by intelligent beings who have been endowed with the intellectual capacity to understand the complex mathematical equations that describe the fabric of the cosmos. According to Lothar Shafer:
"That the basis of the material world is non-material is a transcription of the fact that the properties of things are determined by quantum waves - probability amplitudes which carry numerical relations, but are devoid of mass and energy. In the quantum phenomena we have discovered that reality is different than we thought. Mental principles - numerical realtions, mathematical forms, principles of symmetry are the foundations of order in the univers. In the quantum phenomena, mind turns into matter. By every molecule in our body we are tuned to the mind-stuff of the universe."
Quantum physicists are driven by a quest to discover the ultimate nature of physical reality. As they continue to probe the atom and its sub-atomic building blocks they are stumbling upon deeply compelling evidence for divine design even at a quantum level. For millennia, scientists and mathematicians have marveled at the miracle of the Divine Proportion appearing throughout creation on a macro scale. pg 219
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