The Frozen Tea Party

A little bubble-burst of joy popped into my life this past week unexpectedly.  One of my granddaughters from Pennsylvania came for a surprise visit with her precious little three-year-old in tow.  Kaydence is quite the little bundle of questions and giggles and hugs.  It was just what I needed to bring me back to the small, every-day blessings that matter.

I asked her if she would like to have a tea party and her eyes grew wide as she answered, "Yes! Let's have a Frozen tea party!"  For those who aren't up on the latest Disney movies, "Frozen" is sort of a modern-day Cinderella - and Kaydence watches it at least once a day!  It has been a long time since my grandchildren here in my hometown have come over for a tea party with Nana.  My aunt's beautiful china demitasse cups are on a high shelf now, where they can't be broken.  What joy it gave my heart to pull them back down off the shelf and let my tiny little great-granddaughter choose her favorite cup and saucer!
We brewed the tea and got some shortbread cookies on a plate.  Kaydence couldn't quite figure out how to pick up the delicate little cup, so I taught her how to put her finger through the handle and then stick her pinky-finger out like proper ladies do.  She practiced this skill over and over, finding such delight in her "Frozen tea party," and it blessed me abundantly to think that one day she would be telling her own children about the day her great-grandmother taught her how to properly hold a tea cup!

This little story is meant to underscore what the Lord showed me this past week.  A loved and trusted sister wrote to give me a small rebuke about my last post regarding Pope Francis' Treaty with the Palestinian Authority.  What she wrote was this: "I cannot do anything about the Pope, or Islam or ISIS or the downfall of America.  But I CAN do something to help the twenty-something who has a sick baby, and the fifteen-year old who has questions about his faith."  I felt the Lord spoke to me through this sister and I am grateful.

The main thing Jesus warned us about in Matthew 24 was to "keep watch," so that in these evil days we would not be deceived.  I have taken His warning seriously, and have tried, on this blog, to keep my readers aware of what is happening in the world that fulfills the prophecies of the Bible, so that we WOULD be a people who watch and pray, as He exhorted us to do.  But I was grateful to be reminded that a "Frozen tea party" with a three-year-old was an important moment in my life and in hers, because those are the moments we can celebrate!  There is enough turmoil in the world; what we need is to get into the Shadow of the Almighty, drawing closer to Him, and closer to those whose lives we can bless and grace with His Love.

Wake Up Call

Something monumental occurred last week and it was mostly bypassed in the mainstream news of the U.S.  However, as soon as I heard it all the hair stood up on the back of my neck and my heart felt like it was skipping a couple of beats as I took in the enormous implications of what Pope Francis and the Vatican just did.  If you heard about it and yawned, I hope you will wake up.  If you heard about it and felt like it just might matter, then I hope you will read what is written below and begin to pray. The following was part of a blog I received from "The Jerusalem Connection."  I believe the writer is right on target with his words and his warnings.  The dire result of the recognition of a Palestinian State and the division of Jerusalem and the Land will be no less than the horrific judgments of the Righteous God and Judge of Israel, as outlined by the prophets. (Please read Joel 3:2 at the bottom of this blog).  There are serious consequences for those who divide God's Land! Yet, these things have been written in God's Word, and it gives us an alarming wake-up call to the Day we are in.

Michael Freund wrote: “Pope Francis is aligning himself against Israel. In a treaty that was finalized in Rome last week, the Catholic Church fired the latest salvo in its 2,000-year-old struggle to disenfranchise the Jewish people. Meeting with Palestinian officials at the Vatican, church officials agreed to formally recognize the “State of Palestine” as part of a deal concerning Catholic activities in the Palestinian-controlled areas… And just in case anyone failed to get the memo, Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi went to the trouble of going on record as saying, “Yes, it’s a recognition that the state exists.”

 

 “In biblical terms, by recognizing a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria, the Vatican is effectively seeking to deny the eternal covenant between God and the Jewish people, to whom this land was promised long ago. This is not only offensive and disrespectful, but disingenuous too. Indeed, one cannot help but wonder: what Bible is the Vatican reading? Whichever one it is, it must be missing some pages, as even a cursory glance at the Scriptures makes clear that God promised to give the Land of Israel to the Jewish people and nobody else. In fact, there are over 150 biblical verses ranging from Genesis to Joshua to Chronicles which state this and reaffirm that Israel would return from Exile to this holy soil.”…      

 

“So would the Catholic Church now deem Jesus to have been a “settler” or “occupier” of Palestinian land? For an institution that bills itself as “the Holy See” and which claims to uphold sacred values, the Vatican’s profane involvement in Middle Eastern politics is simply unbecoming. 

 

God says: “I will bring my people Israel back from exile. They will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them. They will plant vineyards and drink their wine; they will make gardens and eat their fruit. I will plant Israel in their own land, never again to be uprooted from the land I have given them,” says Yahweh your God.”…“For the Israelites will live many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred stones, without ephod or household gods. Afterward the Israelites will return and seek Yahweh their God and David their king. They will come trembling to Yahweh and to his blessings in the last days.”  (Amos 9:14-15; Hosea 3:4-5)

 

Joel 3:2 "For behold in those days and at that time, when I bring back the captives of Judah and Jerusalem, I will also gather all nations and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat; and I will enter into judgment with them there on account of My people, My heritage, Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations; they have also divided up My land. 

 

Woe to you, Pope Francis and your Vatican State; woe to you, France, U.K. and New Zealand, for your resolution to establish a Palestinian State, being presented to the U.N. Security Council; and woe to you, America, for being the driving force behind all these proposals that come against God Almighty and Israel, His Heritage!