Today he asked her to marry him and she said yes.  We gathered and yelled "surprise" when they walked through the door and raised our glasses in celebration to this exciting step my friends have taken. I'm grateful for the promise of the "yes". It's a yes to commitment, a yes to the thick and thin, a yes to growing as an individual and a couple, a yes to the possibilities of family, a yes to being a covenant relationship, a yes that is bursting with the easy and the hard and the in between of life, a yes to living that life together.  I'm grateful for the promise of yes and the example it can and does set for others.

I am grateful for promises made and kept.  And the only one I have found that can make and keep promises 100% of the time is...well not me.  (*You* thought I was going to say me didn't you, ha fooled you!)  The only one who can make and keep promises 100% of the time is the One who created promises and is faithful to carry them out.  One that I was thinking about today, although I think about it often, is this one: " I am confident that the Creator, who has begun such a great work among you, will  not stop in mid-design but will  keep perfecting you until the day Jesus the Anointed,  our Liberating King, returns to redeem the world ."  The human speaker is the Apostle Paul but the author of that promise is God himself.  He planted those words in Paul's mouth to speak out.  Paul was just the messenger.  I have been so grateful for that particular promise over the years.  I'm not going to be left undone, incomplete, unfinished. ...