Spring-break?... more like Winter Snow-shoeing! @ beautiful Manning Park; got away for few days of fun with my upstairs family + another new friend who just materialized -must have thought he was posing for a worldwide magazine - maybe he was!?

Everly's 1st birthday yesterday: 1 year old already! and Grandpa didn't want to just give her money, but something special for this special girl on her special day: I wanted to buy her a dress, a pretty dress, one she'd remember as just for her! So I asked where I might buy such a dress... + Sophie reminded me of what we'd found while going through storage bins a while ago: this white dress with colourful embroideries from Guatemala! Erica had personally picked it out over 8 years ago... don't know if she knew she was buying it for her future granddaughter so many years later... but it fits her perfectly, right at this tiime! Erica Grace always had a gift for picking out the right gift for the right person + this time she definitely had supernatural help! Happy Birthday Everly Grace!

#24: Thank you for joining me on this Pilgrim’s Progress! but there’s more… Pt II! Christian’s overcoming story reached his wife + family, still back in the City of Destruction. Christiana now regretted her former refusal to accompany him: ‘I have sinned away your father; I have also hindered you of life. I am now as he was then; nothing will serve me but going on pilgrimage.’ And so she + their 4 boys, joined by Mercy, retrace Christian’s steps, encountering many of his same trials, but also new difficulties + victories of their own. Great-heart guides them through, slaying Giants Grim +Maul +Slay-good +Despair+Diffidence, destroying Doubting Castle once for all. A host of memorable characters join them along their journey: Mr. Humble-mind, Honest + Fearing + Feeble-mind + Ready-to-halt+ Valiant- for-truth + Stand-fast. Each grows in their resolve: ‘to run when I can, to go when I cannot run, and to creep when I cannot go.’ Each fights the good fight + finishes his course, finds his identity + fulfills his destiny in Word + Spirit. The sons even find wives at inns along the way and a new generation takes hold of the promises. Finally the pilgrims cross the River one by one + reach their destination. Each is personally summoned with a word + a token, escorted by Shining Ones + welcomed to the glorious Celestial City, their true + eternal home. Stand-fast’s record rings true: ‘Thy wheel broken at the cistern… please send my 5 children here also to come after me!... The river has been a terror, but now I stand easy, my foot is fixed; the waters are to the palate bitter + to the stomach cold, yet what awaits me on the other side is as a glowing coal in my heart. I have formerly lived by hearsay, and faith, but now I go where I shall live by sight, and shall be with Him in whose company I delight myself.’ … and so all pilgrims progress … and so, good readers, I pray will you find it also.

#23: Christian + Hopeful finally enter Beulah -sweetness, pleasure, light, safety, covenant grace, abundance + saw their glorious goal + destination before them: the Celestial City! 2 golden Shining Ones advised: only 2 more difficulties + they had to obtain them by their own faith: 1st: a deep river with no bridge over it = death. ‘You shall find it deeper or shallower, as you believe in the King of the place;’ Christian entered + began to sink, but Hopeful felt bottom + encouraged him. 2nd: apparitions of hobgoblins/evil spirits so frightened Christian he felt he’d never obtain entrance, but Hopeful kept his head above water + comforted him: Remember the Scripture: ‘wicked are not troubled,’ so if he was troubled, then he must be righteous! The enemy was stilled and both came through to the other side. They left their mortal garments in the river + went up the hill with ease to Mt Zion. Comfort + joy + heavenly host trumpeters welcomed them at the Gate. Enoch+Moses+Elijah looked down from the wall; the pilgrims handed over their certificates, the King called them in, the Gate opened, their bodies were transfigured… bells rang out! The dreamer looked in + ‘wished myself among them’. But he also looked back + saw Ignorance ferrying over the river by Vain-hope by boat. He'd come alone, knocked, supposing… without a certificate + was refused entry. 2 Shining Ones conducted him to the door in the side of the hill. Then I saw that there was a way to hell even from the gates of heaven, as well as from the City of Destruction. So I awoke + behold, it was a dream. Take heed + don’t be of either extreme: In playing with the outside of my Dream: What of my dross.. be bold to throw away, but yet preserve the gold; What if my gold be wrapped up in ore? None throws away the apple for the core: But if you shall cast all away as vain, I know not but ‘twill make me dream again. … that is, if you miss his central message, Bunyan lovingly threatens he will write another book … + he does!

#22: As foretold, they reached Enchanted Ground. Hopeful thought it good to nap + be refreshed, but Christian reminded him of the warning; so they continued talking/walking to keep one another awake. Christian asked how he’d come to faith + Hopeful recounted how Faithful had challenged him in Vanity Fair. He’d felt badly about his sin + needed perfection + ‘righteousness of a man like he’d never sinned.’ Faithful: there was only one like that = Jesus! + preached the whole gospel + prayed the Father reveal the Son to him = revelation-salvation for Hopeful … + all Bunyan’s readers! Ignorance then reappeared + their conversation cuts to the heart with gospel truth + power. Christian asked: ‘How is it with your soul + God?’ ‘I hope well. I think often of God + heaven and so I am well. My heart tells me so.’ ‘But the Bible says that he who trusts his own heart is a fool!’ ‘That is spoken of an evil heart; but mine is a good one!’ ‘Except the Word of God bears witness, other testimony = no value. It is 1 thing to have a good heart/life + another only to think so.’ ‘I think I must believe in Christ for justification.’ ‘But yours is a fantastical-false faith, making Jesus Christ justifier of your actions, but not of your person. And so it is deceitful, because salvation is not by obedience to law, but personally in Jesus Christ.’ Ignorance was offended + not only ignored this truth, but reacted in conceit + departed again! ‘Ignorance is thy name and as thy name is, so art thou!’ And such is the state of those who read, but will not heed… the gospel, Bunyan’s words… and these?!

#21: Christian + Hopeful met Ignorance, from Conceit, + asked, ‘Why did you not enter through the Gate? ‘Too far to go; I’ll follow my own religion.’ His reply exposed himself =‘Wise in his own conceit’+ they parted. But ignorance remained with them, for they soon ignored the very map + warnings they’d been given. 1st: they saw Turn-Away, from Apostasy, bound + carried by 7 devils back to the door to hell they’d seen. 2nd: they remembered Little-faith, from Sincere, who’d been attacked, robbed, and beaten there by 3 rogues: Faintheart +Mistrust +Guilt, but rescued by Great-grace, the King’s Champion. 3rd: they ‘came at a place that seemed to lie as straight as the way which they should go; + here they knew not which of the 2 to take, for both seemed straight before them.’ They forgot to heed truth, but followed Flatterer’s directions along a twisting route, turned from their destination, caught + entangled in a net of confusion. Mercifully,a Shining One freed + set them back on the right path. + 4th: they ‘perceived afar off, one all alone with his back to Zion’ coming to meet them. Now more wary, they recognized Atheist, who ‘fell into a great laughter’ when they told him they were going to the Celestial City. ‘There is no such place as you dream of in all this world. I once believed so, but I’ve been seeking this city for 20 years, longer than you, and find no more of it than I did the 1st day I set out. I’m going back again + will seek to refresh myself with the things I then cast away. I can no longer believe in what I cannot see.’ Christian looked to Hopeful: ‘Is that true?’ but Hopeful admonished his brother: ‘Didn’t we see the city gates from the Delectable Mountains? We’re to walk by faith. Stop listening to his lies! + Christian rejoiced: ‘I asked only because I wanted to hear the truth from you! Let’s go on together.’ And so once again in this journey – this revelation: 2 together are better than 1 alone!

#20: Christian + Hopeful arrive at the Delectable Mountains. I like Bunyan’s name-choice here: 1 of those onomatopoeic words that sounds like what it is: stirs appetite, good enough to eat, eh? maybe describing BC here? After all their trials, here they have time to rest, reflect + re-focus. We need to do this at intervals; otherwise we lose our perspective. Their host Shepherds: Knowledge+Experience+Watchful+Sincere, welcomed them to Immanuel’s Land + showed them wonders: 1 Hill Error: corpses dashed to pieces by a fall from the top, lying unburied at bottom = they believed enemy’s lies. Don’t go there! 2 Mountain Caution: blind men stumbling aimlessly among tombs? = they’d gone astray +Giant Despair put out their eyes in Doubting Castle + now they wandered without purpose or destiny. Our pilgrims wept as they saw what fate they'd been saved from! 3 a door open in the hillside with dark, smoky, tormented cries rising? = byway to hell for hypocrites; so close to their destination; how could this be? ‘Few of them that begin to come hither do show their face on these mountains.’ ie many begin their journey, but not many make it this far, let alone finish! eg Esau +Judas +Alexander +Ananaias +Sapphira, put on a show of pilgrimage, but end up selling their birthright for temporal lusts - unsettling? 4 Hill Clear: telescope to see beyond to their ultimate destination: the gates of the Celestial City! We all need BIG picture revelation to put trials in right perspective + not let them become towering mountains to block our way… but these are Delectable Mountains, towering sentinels of hope + our pilgrims receive gifts: a map; warnings to beware the Flatterer + not sleep on the Enchanted Ground + prayer for God-Speed … and so must we!