Snow and ice

For the first time in eleven years, Holland canals are completely frozen over. The government gave its employees the day off to go skating, and a half-million people strapped on skates and hit the ice. "It's a lot faster to skate across the canals to visit family," exulted one skater.

North Dakota and Minnesota have blizzards and the minus forty temperatures I remember from growing up in Winnipeg, home of the frozen chosen. Meanwhile the snow has melted off the slopes and Seattle streets. I even got to cycle in to work last week. Makes me glad we live on the coast.

As the evergreen boughs sway outside my window, the sun goes down behind the forest, and another work day is almost done. During the day, one alum asks about wedding venues at Northwest; someone else wants to find old friends; another lost his diploma and needs a new one. There's a reunion looming in two weeks and alums are starting to confirm their attendance. There's always work to be done.

As college business is wrapped up, I get back to The Paper. I think I can finish formatting it tonight and send it on its way. So what if I have four more Big Papers waiting to be written, comps coming up, and several courses to assemble for a teaching trip overseas in April? All I can think is, "Thanks be to God for all our blessings, whether a warm house, books to read, people to love, or ice-skates."

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*God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging. Psalm 46:1-3 NIV

*O God, You are my God; early will I seek You; my soul thirsts for You; my flesh longs for You in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water. So I have looked for You in the sanctuary, to see Your power and Your glory. Because Your lovingkindness is better than life, my lips shall praise You. Thus I will bless You while I live; I will lift up my hands in Your name. Psalm 63:1-4 NKJV

*I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine making request for you with all joy, for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. Philippians 1:3-6 NKJV