My youngest sister Deena came over tonight. She likes to come over once a week but because of busy schedules and lack of gas money I hadn't seen her for about a month. I'm glad she came tonight. She brought my little neice Adalyn.

Like usual, Danny prepared homemade beans and rice for Deena. We also fixed grape juice to drink because I heard her say she liked it once. Adalyn had never tried the beans and rice before. But when Danny put some on her plate she went ahead and tasted the brand new food.

The main reason Deena comes over is to play her guitar. She plays while I sing and the rest of the family also sings. I'm trying to use this get-together to teach my children hymns. We usually start out with the chorus "Jesus is the Rock and He Rolls my Blues Away". Then we sing some of the more simple hymns. Like tonight we sang, "Glory to His Name", "Love Lifted Me", "In the Garden". Sometimes we'll sing contemporary choruses. We like songs by Keith Green and Rich Mullins such as "Oh, Lord Your Beautiful" and "Step by Step", respectively. We also sing other popular choruses we learned in church. Some of the choruses are directly composed from a Bible verse such as "Seek Ye First". There are three songs Deena and I are practicing to hopefully sing for Mom. They are "For Those Tears I Died", "A Beautiful Life" and "I Wished We'd All Been Ready". Deena has learned a wide variety of songs. Deena is nice to take in my comments and eagerly learn new songs. She also amazes with her ability to be patient with my kids when they get rowdy. Deena's focus in playing the guitar is to honor God.

Deena told me when she went to see Mom. She also went to see Grandma in the nursing home. Grandma is over 90 years old and has had small strokes from time to time. Sometimes her memory gets mixed up. Grandma knows a lot of the old hymns. Deena decided to play them for her. She went through several and Grandma mostly just listened but when she played "In the Garden" Grandma started quietly singing it.

Tonight when Deena played the guitar she revealed a gift of beauty. It wasn't the shallow beauty of outer appearance but it was inner beauty shining outward that comes from hard work, talent and accomplished objectives. I saw in her a passion and enjoyment for creating music that has the endless beauty of glorifying God.