SoulFull Week Fifty

 Happy Friday, Friends!

What have you been up to this week?  We have had workmen in the house everyday this week.  Finally, our upstairs is done!  I have been working so hard to get everything ready before our daughter and SIL come home for Christmas.

I wanted to tell you a little bit about Jenna's Celebration of Life.  It was so nice!  Tara and Ryan did an amazing job.  They cooked several family favorite recipes.  Each recipe had a sign beside it with a QR code that linked to Jenna's post featuring the dish.  I loved that!  One of the most popular ones was her famous coconut shrimp.

Jenna loved her outdoor patio area off her kitchen.  The party extended outside around the beautiful fireplace.  She loved spending time out there.

Y'all are probably familiar with the round glass table in her foyer.  Ryan had displayed many of her sketch pads and journals opened to her drawings and watercolor paintings.  Jenna was so talented, and she had such a fun, whimsical style.  I spent quite a few minutes leafing through her drawings and remembering how a few were featured on her Fearless Friday posts.

Beyond the table is the grand staircase and large Christmas tree.  Tara had pulled several of her paintings and displayed them around the tree and up the staircase.  Tara asked me to pick out my favorite and take it home with me.  Y'all, I was in tears!  I chose a landscape for two reasons:  One, I never, ever paint them, and Two, Jenna rarely painted them.  It's a rather large canvas, and I love how she painted the edges of it, too.  The dominant color in it is orange.  I still have not decided where to hang it yet. but when I do, I will share it here on the blog.  

The Celebration of Life was *so Jenna*.  Tara was brokenhearted as was Ryan because her death was sudden.  They are a very close-knit family.  This is going to be a sad Christmas for them as they are missing Jenna.  Please keep them in your prayers.

Y'all, this week's lesson is one of my favorites from the year.  Entitled "Recipe for Faith," I love how it talks about cooking, including how to make a good roux.  As many of you know, my sweet husband is from New Orleans.  When he asked me to marry him, his grandmother asked me if I knew how to make a good roux.  Being a country girl from Alabama, I had no idea what she was talking about.  She said, "Now Beauty (she called me Beauty because she thought my name was ridiculous (her words, not mine)) you must learn how to make a good roux in order to be a good cook for Trippy!"  So she hired a cook to teach me.  Not only did I learn how to make a good roux, but I also learned how to make red beans and rice just like a native New Orleanian.  

Farrell does a lovely job in this lesson about how to kick our faith up a notch with action, but also how to be inactive, to "be still and know that I am God."

Here is this week's scripture.  I included verses six and seven, and it's from The Message translation.

Before I move on to our prayer requests, I wanted to share with you a reflection about Advent joy from Kate Bowler.  When I read it in my inbox this week, I was reminded of Jenna and her Celebration of Life.  Jenna tried to find joy EVERYDAY!  Even when she was in the skilled nursing facility, she created art, watched her favorite Hallmark movies, and blogged.

The painter Marc Chagall once said, "In our life there is a single color, as on an artist's palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love." 

Born to a Jewish family in a Russian shtetl, Chagall's life was marked by exile, pogroms, and the Holocaust that destroyed much of his community. Yet his art overflows with riotous colors--- angels suspended in midair, fiddlers on the roof, lovers flying over cities. He painted joy against a backdrop of suffering, not because the darkness wasn't real, but because he insisted that love and joy must break in anyway. 

Advent joy asks something similar of us. We do not pretend the world is fixed. But we light a candle anyway. We sing  anyway. We look at Chagall's saturated blues and fiery reds and remember joy doesn't wait until everything is safe and orderly. Joy is God's gift, arriving in the middle of exile, the middle of grief, the middle of the unfinished world.

So perhaps the practice today is to add one small splash of color back into your life.

Friends, I think Advent joy is an ingredient we can all use to "deepen the recipe of our faith."

Marc Chagall

White Crucifixion

1938 

oil on canvas 

60 7/8in.  x  55 1/8 in. 

We went to the Art Institute of Chicago for this painting's reinstallation in 2016.

Prayer Requests

• Pray for Rita as she mourns the loss of her sister.  First Christmases without loved ones can be especially difficult.
• Please pray for Kitty’s son, Mike, who is excited about working on his own idea. Pray for Kitty that she can be supportive and encouraging to him as he shares his ideas and developments with her.  He is such a good guy and needs something wonderful to happen in his life.
• Praise for Rita's daughter Megan for finishing her semester of the FNP program successfully! Just one more semester after a Christmas break!  Let's keep up the prayers and get her over the finish line next semester.
• Pray for my best friend Barbara who is battling cancer.  
• Carla's prayer request is for all the young people entering the military, the love they feel for the USA to become warriors to fight to keep us free.  Let's especially lift up our National Guard as they are deployed both here at home and abroad. 
• Pray for my mother.  She is declining rapidly.
• Please pray for Kris's MIL because she has been having some heavy health issues, and Kris is currently her full time nurse.  Pray that God will help and bless Kris as she cares for her MIL.  Pray that other family members will step-up and will be discerning about what's best for her care.
• Kitty's younger brother is having health issues.  Please lift him up in prayer.
• Pray for Kris's husband Terry.  He is home from the hospital, but is still having difficulty eating.  Pray that Terry will improve and not need hospitalization until after Christmas when he has his surgery, and that God will settle Kris and Terry's spirits, calm their minds, and guard their hearts.
• Rita's HS Friend Pam needs us to start banking-up prayers now. Her oncology and reconstructive team of two surgeons will perform an estimated 12 hr surgery Jan 5 to remove at least half of her tongue (tongue cancer) and, minimally, lymph nodes on her right side of her neck. She will have skin grafts taken from her forearm and thigh to reconstruct. She's expected to be in the hospital a minimum of 10 days. It's a long road ahead for her.  UPDATE:  She is experiencing excruciating pain and swelling of her tongue.  Read Rita's details about Pam's condition in her comment below.
• Please pray for travel mercies for Shanley Belle and Christopher as they drive from Michigan to Alabama tomorrow.
• Travel mercies for Carla and her family as they travel to rural Wisconsin.  They will be traveling 12/24 through 12/28.  (Internet is sketchy where they're going FYI.)

NOTE:  We will read both Lessons 51 and 52 for St. Stephen's Day, or December 26th.  

Don't forget that we will start our new book Peace With the Psalms on Friday, January 2nd.

Until next time...

Blessings!
Ricki Jill