just because

here's a video of your kiddos from my February trip.

the first song that plays is "Hide Away in the Love of Jesus" by Sovereign Grace Music, and the second one is "Hang On" by Mainstay.

puritan prayer

"He humbled Himself." Philippians 2:8

Jesus is the great teacher of lowliness of heart.
We need daily to learn of Him.
See the Master taking a towel and washing His disciples' feet!
Follower of Christ, will you not humble yourself?
See Him as the Servant of servants, and surely you cannot be proud!
Is not this sentence the compendium of His biography, "He humbled Himself"?
Was He not on earth always stripping off first one robe of honor and then another,
till, naked, he was fastened to the cross,
and there did He not empty out His inmost self,
pouring out His life-blood, giving up for all of us,
till they laid Him penniless in a borrowed grave?
How low was our dear Redeemer brought! How then can we be proud?
Stand at the foot of the cross,
and count the purple drops by which you have been cleansed;
see the thorn-crown; mark His scourged shoulders;
see hands and feet given up to the rough iron,
and His whole self to mockery and scorn;
see the bitterness, and the pangs, and the throes of inward grief,
showing themselves in His outward frame;
hear the thrilling shriek, "My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?"
And if you do not lie prostrate on the ground before that cross,
you have never seen it!
If you are not humbled in the presence of Jesus,
you do not know Him.
You were so lost that nothing could save you but the sacrifice of God's only begotten.
Think of that, and as Jesus stooped for you,
bow yourself in lowliness at His feet.
A sense of Christ's amazing love to us has a greater tendency to humble us
than even a consciousness of our own guilt.
May the Lord bring us in contemplation to Calvary,
then our position will no longer be that of the pompous man of pride,
but we shall take the humble place of one who loves much
because much has been forgiven him.
Pride cannot live beneath the cross.
Let us sit there and learn our lesson,
and then rise and carry it into practice.

undeserving.

one of the best things a parent can do for a child is not give them everything they want. they may not like you for it now, but they will hopefully learn to appreciate it. it seems to get worse with every generation. i see it in the teens/early-twenty-somethings of today. we think we deserve everything. we expect things to be free, we expect things to be handed to us. we think we shouldn't have to work for anything, for whatever reason, we've got this idea in our heads that world owes us. just today i saw a little girl wearing a shirt that said, "saw it. wanted it. threw a tantrum. got it." and that's the world we live in!! i'm not saying we should deny children every good gift, i'm saying we need to realize that these things are GIFTS, not things owed to us.

this is one of my favorite passages, it keeps me in check when i start to whine about things being unfair.

"For the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And going out about the third hour he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and to them he said, 'You go into the vineyard too, and whatever is right I will give to you.' So they went. Going out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour, he did the same. And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing. And he said to them, 'Why do you stand here idle all day?' They said to him, 'Because no one has hired us.' He said to them, 'You go into the vineyard too.' And when evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, 'Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last, up to the first.' And when those hired about the eleventh hour came, each of them received a denarius. Now when those hired first came, they thought they would receive more, but each of them also received a denarius. And on receiving it they grumbled at the master of the house, saying 'These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorning heat.' But he replied to one of them, 'Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?' So the last will be first, and the first last."
Matthew 20:1-16

The master did not give the first workers less than what they deserved, he simply gave to those who came later more.

this prideful attitude of how mistreated we are creeps into our lives more than we realize. at least it does me. we are always looking around, comparing, seeing what others have- thinking we should have the same. and if it seems we have less, well, that's just not fair! but instead, we need to realize what we deserve. nothing. anything above that is a gift.

"If God gives that grace to others, which he denies to us, it is kindness to them, but no injustice to us."...."Instead of repining (i looked it up, it means complaining!) that we have no more, let us take what we have, and be thankful. If God be better in any respect to others than to us, yet we have no reason to complain while he is so much better to us than we deserve, in giving us our penny, though we are unprofitable servants." Matthew Henry

my life's song...

if my life could be summed up in one song, it would be this:



yup. that's it. i'm always late. in fact, Late is my middle name. Megan Late Haug. as late as i am, it should really be my first name, but my parents thought "megan" sounded better.

i'm late for everything. paying bills. these days, you don't even have to mail in your bills, you can pay them online or with a phone call...but that doesn't matter, i'm still going to pay them late. my credit card will never be paid off with this $40 late fee i always get!! i don't think they even have grace days...i need grace days!!

i know the library is suppose to be free, but it's not for me. i just went to the library the other day to check out a movie. i couldn't find anything i wanted, but after already wasting time there, i figured i had to come out with something. so i picked up a couple of CDs. i should have just left. i go to check out, only to find out i have to pay $7.50 in late fees first. and the library even gives you a grace day!! but i need more! i need more grace days!!

it's just a fact- if it has a due date, i'm simply not going to make it.

i'm late for work all the time. i was always late to class. i can be on time to something if it's a one-time or temporary thing, but once it becomes routine, i will routinely be not on time.

i'm pretty sure it's a disease.

video chat fun!

okay, so all you other mac users out there know the fun of photo booth. BUT have you experienced the fun of video chat? Elias and i discovered the fun of moving and lining up the video boxes and taking screen shots! THEN why not mix in photo booth with it??