Sunday Dinner: Psalm 23:3--"Dearly Loved" and "How He Loves"

It’s Sunday again, way past dinner time but I’ve been feasting on the details from Brad’s time with Danilo. It’s neat how his stories parallel the verse for this week:

He restores my soul; he leads me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

Psalm 23:3

I already wrote last week about how God restores our soul, so this week I want to focus on how He loves us. When I think of how He leads us in the paths of righteousness, I picture our children grabbing Brad’s hand or mine whenever we are walking by a busy street, or somewhere unfamiliar, or perhaps just to show the world that they belongs to us.

There’s something so sweet about those little hands reaching up for ours--even my 12 year old on occasion will forget that she’s too old or too cool for such a display of dependence or affection. I hope my kiddos never outgrow holding my hand.

The flip side is that I grab hold of their hands so they won’t get lost, or be scared, or run ahead of me into harm’s way, or just so they know I love being with them. How beautiful to imagine that’s how our Heavenly Father wants to walk with us. But I guess it's the times that He picks us up and carries us on His shoulders that are the sweetest. Like the Shepherd with the lamb draped around His shoulders. Safe. Loved. His.

We are still rejoicing in the fact that Danilo is forever our son (if you missed Friday’s news, you’ll need to read it next). He is officially a Williams--announcing to the world that we have chosen him and he has chosen us. It’s funny because he’s not yet even home, but because he has so many characteristics that are like us and our other kids, we already hear comments like, “He’s definitely a Williams!”

Then I think about how God leads us on the right path to bring glory to His name. Oh how I hope when I’m walking with the Lord others look at me a think, “She’s definitely a child of God.”

Now regarding dessert, this was a tough one for this Christian music junkie. There are so many amazing songs about God’s love for us that it was hard to choose. My current favorite is “How He Loves” by the David Crowder Band, but Jimmy Needham has a song called “Dearly Loved” that I just couldn’t leave off my playlist.

So I’m going to do something completely unprecedented. (Okay, maybe that’s an overstatement since I’ve only been blogging a few weeks.) I’m posting two songs today. First, I’m serving a favorite Southern dessert--cobbler. (And in Georgia, that would be peach cobbler.)

“How He Loves” is hot, exchanging bites of smooth violin and piano instrumentals with big chunks of profound lyrics, sprinkled with some crunch with the drums. Boy is it good. Makes you want to go back for seconds. But . . . cobbler must be topped with ice cream. “Dearly Loved” is cool and sweet, simple yet soothing, familiar without being predictable. Although these two songs couldn’t be more different, melting together they complement each other.

The only You Tube videos I found for “Dearly Loved” seemed to distract from the lyrics, so just enjoy it as it’s played in the background of the blog. But below I posted the web address to the David Crowder Band’s official video for “How He Loves” (embedding wasn't available for this one). Now, it’s very different from the past two videos of sunsets and rainbows, but I love it anyway. (Although I couldn’t keep from thinking about how my metaphoric cobbler would be a disaster in David Crowder’s facial hair.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJyW55AXJAk

This week, walk hand in hand with the One who guides, protects, and truly loves us.

Gratefully His,
Kathie