#1 The dog and the mountain

Today the sun was shining as it ought to shine in February – bright and sparkling on the snow – and so Daughter # 4  and I took our longsuffering dog on the river walk. We keep a dog to keep us walking in inclement weather…  but it  doesn’t always work in January!

Still, we do walk a lot more. And so I think the dog is a gift. Well, she was really a gift – from our now son-in-law. But I think she is also a gift from the Lord.

And the mountain – that’s a real gift! Austere in its cloak of ice and snow just now, it’s beautiful in all its season.

Our daily morning walk is so very inviting in the spring and early summer but I love it in the fall and winter as well.  It’s so hard sometimes to walk out the door, but then that’s  Why we keep a dog !

And looking at that mountain I remember where my help comes from – God!

He is my Rock…  “when all around gives way He then is all my help and stay.” 

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

So today trailing after my dog, Yae, and drinking in all the beauty of Mount Iwaki, I counted my condition very rich indeed!

YAE – ever hopeful!