For the next three weeks, Sandi and I will be on vacation celebrating our 60th birthdays visiting London, cruising around the British Isles and Ireland after which we’ll slip into Paris for a couple of days before flying home. Please pray for our safe travels.

After thirty years of continuous ministry including 20 years of pastoring 18 of which involved pastoring a local congregation almost every Shabbat, raising and homeschooling four children (our youngest is 20 and is still living at home), and me spending 40 to 60 hours per week operating my tree care company, and both of us still managing our internet ministry, we’ve decided to slow down a bit and do a little traveling. We try to take a couple of trips a year, if possible.

We realize that the time is coming due to health or financial considerations that we may not be able to travel much, so we’re doing it now. When I get older, I sense YHVH will have a new ministry assignment for us in the new season of our lives. Some of this will probably involve writing books, of which I have probably more than a dozen ready to publish.

In the mean time, while we’re away, I have scheduled blog articles to publish automatically, but the comments section will be shut down, since I’ll not be able to manage it while away. Most of the comments that come in are excellent, but now and again we get some vulgar, racist, ungodly, heretical, mean-spirited comments or comments that violate our blog rules, which I have to edit or delete. I’m sure you can understand why I need to put the comments on hold while away.

So this will be be my last post before leaving early tomorrow morning (after which the pre-programmed blog posts will start appearing automatically). So I bid you all Shabbat shalom and leave you with these photos I took with my new camera of the heavenly iris from my garden plus a few other flower pictures. Please enjoy them and give Elohim the glory for the love that he shows us by blessing us with such beauty!

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. (Matt 6:28–29)

Praise ye YHVH. Praise ye YHVH from the heavens: praise him in the heights. 
Praise ye him, all his angels: praise ye him, all his hosts. 
Praise ye him, sun and moon: praise him, all ye stars of light.  
Praise him, ye heavens of heavens, and ye waters that be above the heavens.
Let them praise the name of YHVH: for he commanded, and they were created.  He hath also stablished them for ever and ever: he hath made a decree which shall not pass.
Praise YHVH from the earth, ye dragons, and all deeps:
Fire, and hail; snow, and vapour; stormy wind fulfilling his word:
Mountains, and all hills; fruitful trees, and all cedars:
Beasts, and all cattle; creeping things, and flying fowl:
Kings of the earth, and all people; princes, and all judges of the earth:
Both young men, and maidens; old men, and children:
Let them praise the name of YHVH: for his name alone is excellent; his glory is above the earth and heaven.
He also exalteth the horn of his people, the praise of all his saints; even of the children of Israel, a people near unto him. Praise ye YHVH. (Ps 148)