A Great Friday

It's another birthday today!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MATTIE KATE! My little sister turned twelve at 5:59 this morning, before any of us were up to wish her birthday wishes. But that's Kate...always ahead and on top of it :) She's getting more beautiful every day. Today she gets her ears pierced-- a long anticipated treat. It wasn't too hard to think of a birthday gift this year :)

Mattie and Mom are out shopping and getting, um, punctured...and Dad and I have been grocery shopping and adorning the the vicinity with balloons and light blue streamers. I went shopping with Dad since we needed strawberries for the birthday cake, and a lot of other things. It was only fitting that I make the birthday cake, since she made one for me last month. Only this year SHE gets the heart shaped strawberry cake! It was her request. At the moment, the cake is cooling its pinkness on racks in the kitchen, and heavenly strawberry wafts are invading my nostrils. The cake fell, as usual, but at least it smells delicious!

It's also Good Friday...a great Friday, in fact. I'm thankful to my Lord for life and breath and His consuming love. Easter came so early this year, and right with Mattie's birthday, that I haven't really prepared for Easter or thought about it much. But it's like Mom says, I've been loving Him every day.

I've been reading Paradise Lost aloud to myself (slowly but surely!), and these words seem to be apt Easter preperation. They are words like what Christ might have said to the Father in heaven when He put Himself forward to save mankind:

"Behold me then, me for him, life for life
I offer, let thine anger fall;
Accout me man; I for his sake will leave
Thy bosom, and this glorie next to thee
Freely put off, for him lastly die
Well pleas'd, on me let Death wreck all his rage;
Under his gloomie power I shall not long
Lie vanquisht; thou hast given me to possess
Life in myself forever, by thee I live...
Thou wilt not leave me in the loathsom grave...
But I shall rise Victorious, and subdue
My Vanquisher, spoild of his vanted spoile..."

Yes!

"His words here ended, but his meek aspect
Silent yet spake, and breath'd immortal love
To mortal men..."

-John Milton