We need a real gully washer down here

Remember that old hymn "Showers of Blessings"  I can still hear the words in my head, "Showers of Blessings we need.  Mercy drops round us are falling but for the showers we plead."  Yes! Lord bring us the Showers NOW.

Lord, we need your help as a church, as a nation and as a world.  We're in trouble down here and we need your Holy Spirit to rain down on us with giant cleansing, reviving MERCY drops.  The kind that can soften hardened hearts and heal our land.

I've always heard heavy rains referred to as "Raining Cats and Dogs" and I wondered if there were more idioms that were used to describe a huge down pouring and I found a few I thought I would share.

Let me know if you have heard of any of these sayings:

1. raining monkeys
2. raining bullfrogs
3. raining pitchforks
4. toad strangler
5. goose drownder
6. fish drownder
7. gully washer
8. mud-sender
9. palmetto pounder
10. Sizzly Sod Soaker  (https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/80169/11-imaginative-regional-idioms-describe-heavy-rain)

I love that last one because it is so much fun to say.  That is the kind of showers I'm talking about.  Not that gentle summer rain that just is enough to mess up your car.  No, we need a Sizzly Sod Soaker kind of drenching down here.  That's my prayer today.

If You’re Happy and You Know It - Jump

Have you ever watched a video of little baby goats jumping around?  It is just as if they have springs for feet and are the funniest little creatures ever.  So you can understand when I read Act 3:8, my mind just automatically "JUMPS" to images of goats.

Enjoy and be blessed today.

A Very Special Studio Guest

I was so blessed to have a studio visitor last week and we had so much fun doing this collaborative work on my newest piece while it was still in the "Work in Progress" stage.  My adorable grandson was so proud that he got to help me paint the grass in on the bottom of the canvas.  This was the best blurry picture that I could manage to get of him because he was so excited about getting to use real paint on grandma's painting.  Of course I watched pretty closely to make sure none of that green got up into my blue sky or on my cute little calf's nose.

When I look at this sweet boy that is smart as a whip, his head full of curly golden hair and his impish smile, I can't help but feel blessed.   It also makes me mindful of my own great memories of time spent with my grandmother.  She and I might not have created art together but we did spend a lot of time playing games like Yahtzee and Chinese Checkers.  She loved to go fishing and I was also her little fishing buddy.

I grew taller and she began to shrink and become frail and weak.  Blindness and loss of hearing plagued her final years and then one day I sit there beside her bed, holding her as she took her last breaths here on this earth.  I sang the old hymn "What a Day that Will Be" at her funeral.  It's been 16 years since she left but I miss her terribly.  I think she was a believer, though most of her life you couldn't see it outwardly.  She had met Christ in a real personal way as a teenager and I'm certain that she never denied that belief.  She didn't go to church, I never saw her reading her Bible, but I do remember her teaching me to sing"Jesus Loves Me".

Art is a great connection to children because they have such creative hearts and fresh minds but I need to take it further.   I need to use these little studio times to share my faith, establish a legacy by finding ways to spend more time with all of them.  Praying more diligently for them and their parents, claiming God's promises over their lives and pointing their hearts towards our Heavenly Father.

But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children's children, (Psalms 103:17)