I'm not a stranger

I was feeling like a outsider yesterday at work because my team, which is on a special project, didn't have room for me in the team room, and I had to bunk up with a different team. Even though it's a temporary situation, I felt isolated and like an outsider.
But I saw all this from a different perspective today as I reading in Ephesians, "... you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household."

I'm thankful to God that whatever our condition, alone in a nursing home, hospital bed, foreign country,or just feeling lonely in a cubicle at work, we are not strangers to Him, who made us members of his very household.

Snow as Metaphor for Life

I'm thanking the Lord for snow today. As the northeast prepares for a "historic" snowfall of 1-2 feet, and everyone buying bread, milk, gas, and DVDs, it got me thinking. Maybe down deep we're all a little thankful for the storm, because it disrupts the routine, the treadmill parts of life. It gives us the excuse to just stop for a while and stare out the window at the awesomeness of nature. There is something calming about the snow quiet that descinds on a neighborhood when it's blanketed with snow. It's like the world gets a giant "do-over."
Like it says in the Bible, "though your sins be as scarlet, I will make them as white as snow.