Friday's Fave Five 5/22/26

 I haven't done this in forever.  It's time to produce a FFF at least from time to time.  Thank you for the opportunity!  Friday's Fave Five host blog

1. Little Miss had a birthday this week.  She is THREE and she proudly holds up three fingers (takes a few minutes to get them in position 😀 but she is successful).  She is doing very well.

2. Last night we went to the local Culver's with Little Miss and her family, and my mother, for a last celebration for her birthday.  And Little Mister, now eight months old, sat up proudly in a restaurant high chair for the first time!  He's waving and clapping, and is a happy boy.  We're so thankful for both of them.

3. I was very busy the first half of this week.  But Thursday, Friday, and Saturday are moving much more quietly.  I'm happy for a few very free days.

4. I am studying Lies Women Believe in order to be the substitute at our church's Wednesday evening ladies' Bible studies this summer.  I've taught the book for three years at a local women's addiction program, but teaching to churched ladies means bringing out different concepts and presenting in a different way.  It's been a challenge and one I've enjoyed.  

5. I've got several new books to read. That's always fun.  I joined a book club at church and have enjoyed that very much also.

Happy Friday and God's blessings!

"School Days" by Maltbie D. Babcock

This simple little poem stood out to me greatly when I was teaching 8th grade English (it was included in their textbook).  The author, Maltbie D. Babcock, is also the author of the well-known hymn "This Is My Father's World."  The last stanza of this poem almost brings me to tears each time I read it - probably because of being a schoolteacher for so many years.

Lord, let me make this rule

To think of life as school.

And try my best to stand each test,

And do my work, and nothing shirk.

If weary with my book

I cast a wistful look

Where posies grow, Oh let me know

That flowers within are best to win.

These lessons Thou dost give

To teach me how to live.

To do, to bear, to get and share,

To work and play, and trust alway.

Some day the bell will sound,

Some day my heart will bound,

As with a shout, that school is out,

And lessons done,

I homeward run.

Striking Quotations from "Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart"

 Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart was recommended to me - I got it off of Hoopla.  It's deep but I've been getting much out of it.  This isn't a review but more a commentary on a couple of quotations.

Author Russ Ramsey writes one chapter on van Gogh, the famous artist who cut off his own ear in a moment of misery, and how a gift shop connected to a van Gogh exhibition carried a number of "kitschy" items about him.  One in particular was a thermal coffee mug with this attached note:  "When you pour in a hot beverage, Vincent's ear magically vanishes before your very eyes.  Easy van come - easy van Gogh."  Ramsey commented, "It broke my heart.  It still does."

And here are the quotations from Ramsey that caused me to think:  

"That gift shop grieved me in the same way as when I read in Scripture about Simon the leper, the woman caught in adultery, or the doubly vexed Zacchaeus, the diminutive tax collector - people identified by the worst things about them."

Next paragraph:  "What if what happened to Vincent's ear isn't really all that funny?  What happened there--undoubtedly one of the lowest points in an already tortured soul's life--helps us see not just his shame but also the hope that surrounds it.  It shows us that, in the end, we are not our worst moments or our biggest failures.  It teaches us the sacred work of stewarding another's pain.  And it bids us, 'Be gentle.  This is a hard world.'"

I've known people who are quick to point out the negative - sometimes failures that are decades old, in other people's lives.  I've been guilty of it myself.  This quotation puts that kind of comment into perfect perspective, and warns why we should not be that way, in a better way than I could ever have stated it.