The Lord will do amazing things

"Joshua told the people, 'Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do amazing things among you.'" ~Joshua 3:5

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We are VERY thankful for those who have helped us
fix up this house and who are planning to help us move
into it

This house purchase was impossible for us.
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To begin with, we weren't looking for a new house yet and the house wasn't for sale yet. But we were praying "for new neighbors with kids" (that intention was on my daughters' prayer lists to petition the Lord for it every day) and our friends across the street from our new house were praying that a family with kids would purchase that particular house. We didn't know that the answer to our prayer was that we would be the "new neighbors with kids" and our friends didn't know that we would be the answer to their prayer. They didn't know we were starting to seriously plan to move nor that we wanted to move to their neighborhood. Besides, the house wasn't for sale. It was a fairly recent foreclosure and some foreclosures take years before they're finally put on the market.
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This house needed some upgrades and repairs. Nothing too serious, at least for someone accustomed to doing their own remodeling work, but we're not that type of person. I don't own my own tools and my husband doesn't hang drywall for a hobby. He has done a lot of work on our first home, but because the work needed to be done, not because he needed some busywork. He usually asked a handyman friend to help him out, to finish the project when it moved out of his league, or hired someone from the get-go.
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Our realtor told us at closing that he had expected our particular type of loan to take an additional 2-3 months. He said our mortgage loan officer had done a great job getting the mortgage closed so quickly, which was true. If you need a mortgage, we can provide a recommendation. But also we credit the Lord for making the impossible come true in a very timely manner.
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Friends and family have helped. It is often a real
asset to have a large family and a tremendous
blessing to have a large church family.

Although there is a lot of work for us in this house, the structure, the location, and the details of it are absolutely catered to our family. It is the layout designed for the type of hospitality we want to offer, is not too big for our current family size yet has plenty of space for our family to grow if the Lord decides to bless us with more children. It is in the ideal location for our family dreams for the next 20 years. All these dreams which the doors are opening up for us are good dreams submitted to the Lord's will and the reality of this house comes about in His timing. I am writing this story here because we want as many people as possible to know that God really does work miracles still, and this is one example of His loving power to do more for us than we could ever ask for or imagine.
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The story isn't finished yet. We don't know fully what His plans are for our old house. We owe too much on it (thank you, Housing Crash of 2008) to sell it right now and we certainly don't want to see it empty or walk away from it. We continue to pray and seek the Lord's will so that He can continue to use it for His glory even while we live in another house. Our contractor is nearly finished with his part in remodeling our Joshua house and we'll be moving into it in a couple more weeks. Then, we'll see what is to happen to the house we are moving out of.
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Thankful Thursday: This isn't my blog
Happy Heritage: Prayer of Faith
Buying a Home the Joshua Way Pt 1
Buying a Home the Joshua Way Pt 2
Buying a Home the Joshua Way Pt 3
The Lord will do amazing things
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Linked with Modest Monday

Buying a Home the Joshua Way Pt 3

Our choice

We first saw the house in mid-July and put in our initial bid in late July. The bank owning the house countered and we put in our second bid in August. They rejected it. We let it sit on the market.
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Just as September turned into October my husband and I talked over our plan for this house. We agreed to leave it be until spring, realizing that we weren't willing to up our bid until we had saved up more money and the bank was more eager to sell the house. Just one day later the bank dropped their asking price by 30k bringing their price that much closer to ours (but still 20-30k more than we wanted to pay). Their price cut told us they were not eager to hold onto the house over winter and might be ready to accept a lower bid. So we put in the same second bid we had offered in August. Five days later they accepted that bid. We would be buying the house within budget, especially considering the repairs that needed to be done before we could move in and the stuff that we wanted to make the house our home.
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The Lord brought the story of Joshua entering the Promised Land and conquering Jericho to my mind and reminded me of it multiple times between our initial spotting of the house in July and our final purchasing of the house in November. Now, Joshua and the Israelites were without a homeland because they and their ancestors had obeyed the Lord's commands. Abram left Ur to follow the Lord and to live out His will for himself and his descendants. Now, so many hundreds of years later, Joshua was leading God's chosen people into the land the Lord had promised to Abram. God clearly told him that this was the next step, Joshua needed to trust the Lord's impossible instructions for the conquering of the first city of the Promised Land, and then Joshua and the Israelites needed to work a bit to obey.

We have had lots of help transforming this house

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This was a Joshua-type miracle for us on each one of those points. We were in need of a larger house because we welcomed into our life all the children the Lord has sent us, choosing not to turn away from His plan for us. We were in the Lord's timing. It was His plan that we were seeking and His timing in bringing that plan another step further. Time after time I asked the Lord to remove from me the desire for this house if in fact this was not His plan for us and time after time He simply strengthened that desire. We prayed in faith because we felt the Lord was telling us that this was the next step for us, so we wanted to trust Him to make the impossible happen. Though we needed to work a bit on our end as well.
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Many, many projects being done now
and many more waiting for us in the future

The bank owning the house accepted our offer the first week of October. We needed a mortgage loan that was working with the house as a foreclosure and giving us enough to complete the repairs and remodeling that needed to take place before we could actually live in the house. Our realtor told us at the closing that he fully expected our particular type of loan to take at least 2-3 months to complete, based on his experience as a realtor and an owner of multiple homes. He praised our loan officer for pushing it through quickly, allowing us to close only 6 weeks after our offer was accepted. While our loan officer worked so well with us and did an excellent job (let us know if you need a referral...), the success of his work was not entirely in his hands: it was very much also in His hands. (Also let us know if you need a referral to a realtor. Though he should have been less surprised at the outcome: he also knows the God of Joshua.) We closed on the house just before the mortgage credit report expired and just before the legal window for closing expired, so we didn't have to wait for another credit approval nor file any expensive extensions for our bid on the house.
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A week from today this won't look like a
construction zone. It will be a home for us to live in.

Our building contractor began work on the house the day we closed on it and expects to finish this coming week. Honestly, this home is far more blessing and far more work than I ever expected to own. We know lots of people who buy fixer-uppers, either to live in themselves after purchasing for far less than the house is worth when their done with it or to flip, selling the finished product to people like me. People like me who don't buy unfinished houses because we don't know how to do the work ourselves, we don't spend our free time on remodeling projects, and we don't frequent the building contractor resale stores. People like me who don't spend time on redecorating pinterest boards because we don't expect to ever take a home down to its bones and rebuild it. Paint colors...appliance choices...flooring options...room rearrangements... Actually, we didn't take this house to its bones, but we did replace 2/3rds of the floors, all the appliances, 1/2 the walls, the majority of the bathroom fixtures, several doors, and most of the light fixtures. That's enough redecorating to overwhelm me. There are projects in this house to keep us busy for the next decade or more, as our finances allow, in the windows, walls, and so much more.
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The location is just right for us. The size is just right for us. The structure is just right for us. God made the price and the timing right for us. We honor Him for breaking down the walls that "should have" prevented us from moving forward in the path laid out for us.
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Thankful Thursday: This isn't my blog
Happy Heritage: Prayer of Faith
Buying a Home the Joshua Way Pt 1
Buying a Home the Joshua Way Pt 2
Buying a Home the Joshua Way Pt 3
The Lord will do amazing things
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Linked with Fellowship Friday

Buying a Home the Joshua Way Pt 2

needing some repairs

The bank owning the house we wanted to buy counter-offered, dropping nearly a fifth off the original price! Still too much for us, but our realtor was shocked, never having experienced a counter offer in such a situation, and never having expected this particular house to sell for as little as the bank was now offering. Excited, hopeful, but realizing it was still an impossibility to us, we followed up a week later with a second offer. Meanwhile we continued talking over our situation with each other, with our mortgage loan officer, and with our realtor. We continued to pray and we half-heartedly looked at the descriptions of other houses in the neighborhood which our realtor sent to us. I had seen that the house next door had an open house on a day which was convenient for us, so I felt we should visit. It was a nice house. It had some of the criteria we were looking for and was in FAR better shape than the one we wanted, but it wasn't the one we wanted. I still felt like God was setting the stage for our miracle and looking at the next door home was somehow part of it. I kept packing all the things we weren't regularly using and tossing the items which weren't worth the trouble of moving.
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We had shared everything with our daughters, telling them to pray. They always referred to the house as "ours" and when I reminded them that we hadn't purchased it yet--that it would take a miracle for it to become ours--they corrected themselves and referred to it as "the house we're going to buy". I feared for their first real crisis of faith, if God in fact had other plans. Yet I still had the conviction in my heart that this was the home for us. I dutifully looked at the descriptions of other houses, but didn't really give any of them a chance to win me. I prayed that the Lord would remove the certainty I had if I had misunderstood Him, but the feeling only grew stronger. I prayed that the Lord would bring about the miracle.
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Over and over the story of Joshua defeating the town of Jericho impressed itself upon my mind. If God was leading us to buy this house, then it would require a miracle of that size, yet the Lord who brought down the walls of Jericho was certainly capable of making this home our own. I began reading the book of Joshua.
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Thankful Thursday: This isn't my blog
Happy Heritage: Prayer of Faith
Buying a Home the Joshua Way Pt 1
Buying a Home the Joshua Way Pt 2
Buying a Home the Joshua Way Pt 3
The Lord will do amazing things
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Linked with Works for Me Wednesday

Buying a Home the Joshua Way Pt 1

My husband and I tend to talk over big decisions for a long time without any set plans or deadlines, defining gradually what we are looking for but making no effort to actually find it. Then, suddenly, it's time: we move forward immediately without delay.

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We went about buying our second house in the same way: the process maybe began when we married and bought our first house, planning on it being a starter home we would live in for a couple kids, learning how to be home owners before eventually buying a larger house more suited to our long-term needs. Over the past 9 years we've had conversations here and there about the size, location, amenities, and so forth but never with definite plans to make it happen and never making any effort to look at actual houses. Over time we formed a list: A particular neighborhood near ~20 friends and close enough to siblings (who don't drive) that they could walk/bike to our house. 4-5 bedrooms for ourselves, our children, guests. 2 or more bathrooms (2.5 would suit us nicely). A spot for an edible garden. Room in driveway to hang a basketball hoop. 2 car garage. A kitchen double the size of our current apartment-size area. A home big enough to host 2-3 other families at a time for a meal. A back yard suitable for children to play in. With our list in mind, we did....nothing. The housing market dropped out while we still owed practically all of our mortgage. Our little starter home was now worth about half of what we had purchased it for and would certainly sit on the market for months or years without selling. But with our fourth child born this spring, we had to increase our home space. The space was really designed for 2 people and we were now 6. I was getting desperate so we began saving and decided to start actually looking next year.
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About a week after we made the decision to start looking the following year, we were out on a date without any real plans. My husband drove us over to the neighborhood we wanted to move into and we leisurely drove around to see which homes were currently on the market. Almost at the end of the neighborhood we spied an empty house not on the market. Would we have even noticed it if it were not next door to another home obviously for sale? We drove around a second time, actually marking down the addresses with signs in front which we could look into more online later (neither of us owned a smart phone). Stopping at the empty house we jumped out to verify that it was a foreclosure...then walked around into the back yard. I got a funny feeling as we opened the gate. Everything on our list was in this house and so much more. We had asked for 4 bedrooms: this one had 4 with potential for a 5th in the basement. 2.5 baths...this had 3.5. The kitchen was as large as my current living room. The basketball hoop my husband wanted? This house had a full court in the backyard, with three hoops. The garden I had wanted was clearly planned for, even fenced off from the play area of the fenced in backyard. We had wanted enough room to host get-togethers: with a kitchen eating area, a dining room, and 2 living rooms on the main floor, and a finished basement, we would most definitely be able to host all the people we had hoped for and more. All our little hopes were present also: dishwasher, smallish front yard (less grass to mow), driveway for a third vehicle, easy access to a park, great size deck. Our daughters had their own list of a tree in the backyard, 3 season room, purple bedroom with southern facing window, bedroom closet just like Grandpa and Grandma's, kitchen peninsula. All were present in this house. I no longer wanted to look at other homes. I felt that this house was the right one for us.
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But it wasn't for sale. When it went on the market it would surely sell for more than we could afford. And it was a fixer-upper. We are not fixer-upper people.
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The house did go on the market a few days later, we arranged to walk though with our realtor, and we prayed. If God wanted us to buy this house, He would have to work a miracle as large as that of Joshua defeating Jericho. Our realtor estimated it would sell for 40k more than we wanted to spend on it, considering the condition it was in, and being a foreclosure he didn't expect the seller to consider counter-offering. But since we know the God who brought down the walls of Jericho for Joshua, we continued praying, we arranged for a mortgage pre-approval, and I began packing our stuff. We knew it was impossible for us to own this home, but we acted as if it would be ours within a couple months.
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Thankful Thursday: This isn't my blog
Happy Heritage: Prayer of Faith
Buying a Home the Joshua Way Pt 1
Buying a Home the Joshua Way Pt 2
Buying a Home the Joshua Way Pt 3
The Lord will do amazing things
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Linked with Modest Monday, Works for Me Wednesday, Fellowship Friday

Happy Heritage: Prayer of faith

Sometimes I just want to capture a particular expression on my child's face, but of course it's gone before I could even think of grabbing the camera. I loved the intensity of the surprise on their faces when we first told them that we had decided to move and had even found the house we planned to move into. I loved the way my daughters' eyes widened, their jaws dropped, and their speech failed them (even the incessant talker!) when we dropped on them the news that we planned to buy a house that wasn't actually for sale and might not be for another year or more...yet we were going to act on faith and start packing our boxes as if the house would be ours within a few months.
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My husband and I had no plans for our date night last July, so we ended up driving around a neighborhood we were hoping to move into, scoping out the current for sale signs. We ended up in front of a foreclosure directly across from our daughter's godparents. Now, we had a list of what we were looking for in our new home, both required and hoped-for attributes: location, # of bedrooms, # of bathrooms (more than 1!!), space for a garden, space to play, garage we could park inside, place to hang a basketball hoop. This foreclosure, although in rough shape, had everything and a few surprises: fenced in backyard, full basketball court, screened in back porch, back deck. We announced our find the next morning to our daughters, letting them know that they should pray for all the pieces to fall into place if this was the home God had for us. Reese looked at us wide-eyed, not certain she wanted to move, and asked the only thing that came into her mind. "Is it for sale?" Um...Uh...Well.............. No. That is one of the things you need to pray for, child. Because this house includes so much that we hadn't thought to ask for, which would fit our family vision so well, that we're just acting on faith that maybe the Lord has a plan for us bigger than the one we had in mind. That's when she and Maria gave me their priceless expression of shock. We're buying a house that isn't on the market? Wait...what?? My children, let's just watch to see what the Lord brings about.
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As I write this in July, it seems premature to publicly announce anything. The Lord hasn't promised us this house, and He has a lot of work to complete before we can buy it. But I'm writing it in July as a testament to His ability to move mountains, ready to see what He actually does over the next few months.
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Thankful Thursday: This isn't my blog
Happy Heritage: Prayer of Faith
Buying a Home the Joshua Way Pt 1
Buying a Home the Joshua Way Pt 2
Buying a Home the Joshua Way Pt 3
The Lord will do amazing things
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Linked with Modest Monday, Works for Me Wednesday

Bible Study: Placing our futures in God's hands

Romans 15:28-29
Joshua 2:1-7

image credit

Paul didn't plan, when he was writing his letter to the Romans, to arrive a few years later in chains. What he did plan, though, was to keep his future in God's hands and to arrive in God's timing with Christ's blessing.
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My life today doesn't look much like what I had hoped it would back when I was an ignorant teenage girl. I overhear my daughters scheme about their futures and I laugh at their plans, knowing that most of them will never take place and that they will be the happier for it. Their plans include wealthy husbands, farmer husbands, world travels, wildly successful careers, business opportunities, charitable works, children of their own, and many luxuries they read about in fairy tales. They would be excellent authors for the plots they come up with to pretend they are wealthy widows or destitute widows, successful entrepreneurs, famous artists, or nuns whose holiness rivals that of Mother Teresa. They are too young to move in a definite direction and too inexperienced to realize how impractical their role-playing is. I let them dream, knowing that one or more of their dreams may actually come true, and that if they don't then the action of acting out their fairy tales may lead to another type of opportunity, be it in authoring books or in more easily accepting the failure the precedes success.
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God knows that sometimes what we think we want is not what will truly bring us the most joy. Because of his years in chains, Paul has been a comfort to Christian prisoners throughout the centuries. Would he have chosen the life given to him if offered the opportunity? Perhaps he would have preferred to avoid the beatings and shipwrecks and confinement in prison. Yet perhaps he rejoiced in the suffering, agreeing with his fellow apostle (James 1:2) that it would bring him greater treasures in heaven.
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I'm certain Rahab never expected to become the great-great-(...)grandmother of the Israelite Messiah. She was a prostitute among the Israelites' enemies. Yet she placed her future in God's hands and received blessings for it which extended far beyond her own lifespan.

2013 Jesse Tree: Joshua

Scripture: Joshua 6:8-16, 20
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Event/Theme: Joshua
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Symbol we use: An ornament of a trumpet or horn or otherwise symbolizing music
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Meditation: Joshua was asked by God to lead the Israelites in doing the ridiculous. Who conquers a strong fortress city by marching around it and blowing some horns?? Throughout his leadership God asked Joshua to do strange things, like walk into a deep river (Jsh 3), march around a walled city, and command the sun to stand still (Jsh 10). By courageously obeying the Lord in each situation (Jsh 1:9), Joshua saw the impossible take place and the native people conquered by the children of slaves.
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Has the Lord asked you to move outside of your comfort zone, possibly evening acting in a way that felt strange or ridiculous? Perhaps it was simply paying for someone else's bill at the store, giving a ride to someone you knew although it meant driving out of your way, inviting an acquaintance over for a meal, or giving someone a cut in line so they can check out that much sooner. You might see the reason why He asked you to perform that strange deed, or you might never see the consequences of your obedience this side of Heaven. Yet courageously obeying the Lord in the small impulses can bring about miracles, including the growing willingness in yourself to do even more ridiculous things, even marching around an obstacle too big in your spiritual life for you to ever conquer on your own.
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Jesse Tree Week 1: The Patriarchs
Sunday: Root of Jesse
Monday: Creation
Tuesday: Fall of Mankind
Wednesday: Noah
Thursday: Abraham
Friday: Isaac
Saturday: Jacob
Jesse Tree Week 2: The Formation of a People Set Apart
Sunday: Joseph
Monday: Moses
Tuesday: Israelites at Mt. Sinai
Wednesday: Joshua
Thursday: Gideon
Friday: Ruth
Saturday: Samuel

Jesse Tree: Joshua

Scripture: Joshua 6:8-16, 20
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Event/Theme: Joshua and the Fall of Jericho
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Symbol we use: This is a tricky theme to find a nicer ornament for. I found this on Amazon, but I don't yet have anything permanent myself to hang on our tree. Foil and cardboard or stiff paper can make some amazingly simple ornaments that still look pretty decent. It wouldn't take much time to make a cone-shaped trumpet to remind the family of the rams' horn trumpets used by the Israelites on the seventh day; I might make one this year. If you like to hang strings of cranberries or popcorn around the tree you could hang them today and connect it as marching around the tree like the Israelites marched around Jericho. We hang strings of white beads but I save them for next week's "tears" of Jeremiah.
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Meditation: God frequently does things in a way we don't expect Him to. Certainly no one expected Him to send His own Son to rescue us from our sin. Just as the Israelites could never have defeated Jericho without God's help, we can't win against sin in our lives without Him. The Israelites didn't know how marching quietly around the city once a day would bring them victory over their enemy but they had to obey God and trust Him to bring about the victory. Sometimes the same sin causes us trouble again and again. We wonder why God doesn't help us out more and bring us victory over the sin. Yet even when we can't see the victory, our job is to be faithful in prayer and in fighting sin with whatever tools God offers us--even when they seem as useless as a silent march around a well-defended city--and as we obey and trust Him, He will bring us victory.

Romans 6:20, The Authority That Inspires Martyrdom

Romans 6:20
Joshua 24:15-24

Authority enforced by physical strength;
ends when the body dies.

Laws are worthless unless the person who orders the law to be obeyed has the authority to enforce that obedience. If the people don't recognize the authority of that person or doubt the ability to enforce the law, then they usually choose to ignore the law. Martyrs throughout the ages have chosen disobedience of a law given by a human authority because they trust in the far greater authority of God. They look at eternity and see the comparatively short length of a person's life over which the human authority may have the ability to enforce obedience. They look at the incredibly long span of time over which the human authority cannot touch and choose to disobey that authority in favor of the One whose authority continues far beyond this life. Their disobedience may seem incomprehensible to those who see only the body's death. Yet the authority they recognize as greater can enforce His laws far beyond this body's death.

Jesse Tree: Joshua and the Fall of Jericho

Scripture: Joshua 6:8-16, 20
Event/Theme: Joshua and the Fall of Jericho
Symbol we use: Foil and cardboard or stiff paper can make some amazingly simple ornaments that still look pretty decent. It wouldn't take much time to make a cone-shaped trumpet to remind the family of the rams' horn trumpets used by the Israelites on the seventh day. If you like to hang strings of cranberries or popcorn around the tree you could hang them today and connect it as marching around the tree like the Israelites marched around Jericho. We hang strings of beads but I save them for next week's "tears" of Jeremiah.
Meditation: Sometimes God does things in a way we don't expect Him to. Certainly no one expected Him to send His own Son to rescue us from our sin. Just as the Israelites could never have defeated Jericho without God's help, we can't win against sin in our lives without Him. The Israelites didn't know how marching quietly around the city once a day would bring them victory over their enemy but they had to obey God and trust Him to bring about the victory. Sometimes the same sin causes us trouble again and again. We wonder why God doesn't help us out more and bring us victory over the sin. Yet even when we can't see the victory, our job is to be faithful in prayer and in fighting sin with whatever tools God offers us--even when they seem as useless as a silent march around a well-defended city--and as we obey and trust Him, He will bring us victory.