Mysterious Ways!

(Chloe in the POD while Travis loaded it.)
We finally have some good news to share on the house homefront! God works in mysterious ways. Monday morning we got a call from our realtor, Pat. First he told Travis the usual, that he hadn't heard from anyone about the "buyers" qualifying for this third loan. Then he proceeded to blow Travis's socks off by telling him that he and his wife are going to buy the townhome! Travis needed a repeat of this information to be sure he heard it correctly. Apparently, Pat and his wife were planning on buying an investment property beginning of the year, but decided to make their purchase a little early. We definitely didn't see this coming and are completely blown away with how God is working in this situation. Just the night before recieving this news, Trav and I were praying together and really just asking the Lord to give us peace and contentment whichever way things worked out. We acknowleged together that getting this new house was not going to make or break us. God is good, ALL the time, and working His best in our lives, even when things don't seem to be going our way. Some might call this good news the following morning a fluke, but we choose to give our awesome God more credit, amen! Now, if all things go as they should, we should be in our new house the first of the year. We are so humbled and grateful for this undeserved blessing! Thank you all SOO much for your faithful and powerful prayer for this situation. We have learned and continue to learn so much about God's purposes and character through this time of faith and transition. As a Rick Warren devotional put it, "God cares much more about our character than our comfort". Thank you Father, for asking us to step out in faith and then asking us to wait. We praise you for always bringing us to a place where we can't possibly be prideful and think we are the captains of our ship. It is when we are weak that you are strong, when we are powerless that You show us Your power, when we find contentment in the present that You give us blessings for the future, when we surrender that You conquer! Thank you for asking us to take the focus off ourselves, so that we can be used in the lives of others. Amen.
To close this post, I'd like to share an idea I learned this morning from a dear friend and mentor who spoke at our MOPS meeting. The point of her talk was reclaiming Christmas for Christ by diminishing the materialism and busyness and increasing the ways we celebrate the birth of our precious Savior. One of her ideas was advent ornaments. The idea is, each day of December leading up to Christmas, as a family you hang an ornament on the tree that has an attribute of Jesus painted on it. With each attribute, there is a correlating scripture that you read as a family. I thought this was a great idea because it's a daily thing that brings your focus back to Christ during this season of distractions. I'd love to hear any of your ideas too! Talk to you soon!
Love, Sarah