Thanksgiving Every Day

Edward Sandford Martin (whoever he is) said:

“Thanksgiving Day comes, by statute, once a year; to the honest man it comes as frequently as the heart of gratitude will allow.”

Speaking of Love....

I sure love this lady...it was so much fun to learn to make rosettes with her.  It was precious time spent together.

Love

“What the heart loves, the will chooses and the mind justifies.”

Don't know who said it but that sure is a true quote.   Lord, help me to love you above all.

Sober assessment

I like this quote by David Brooks, "Humility is having an accurate assessment of your own nature. It’s having an accurate assessment of your own place in the cosmos. It’s an awareness that you’re an underdog in the struggle against your own sins. It’s an awareness that individual talents are inadequate to the tasks that have been assigned to you. It’s understanding yourself in the context of a greater divine order. Knowing you’re not the center of the universe and you need redemptive assistance to complete your tasks."

Is that person really a Christian????

Bottom line, only God knows...but this  article by Ed Underwood is good  for if you are wondering where a person really is at in their journey....
http://us6.campaign-archive1.com/?u=14ef0b5c9a2b19b53f26c3e60&id=72694827db&e=d2c4cc85c9

What To Tell Your Kids About Growing Up

Great thoughts


http://www.aholyexperience.com/2014/08/what-to-tell-your-kids-about-growing-up-in-a-world-with-current-headlines/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aholyexperience.com%2F2014%2F08%2Fwhat-to-tell-your-kids-about-growing-up-in-a-world-with-current-headlines%2F&utm_content&utm_campaign=A+Holy+Experience+Blog+Posts

Love

“Do you know what hurts so very much? It's love. Love is the strongest force in the world, and when it is blocked that means pain. There are two things we can do when this happens. We can kill that love so that it stops hurting. But then of course part of us dies, too. Or we can ask God to open up another route for that love to travel.” Corrie ten Boom

Education

“Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist; it should furnish you with an original spirit with which to tackle the big challenges; it should allow you to find values which will be your road map through life; it should make you spiritually rich, a person who loves whatever you are doing, wherever you are, whomever you are with; it should teach you what is important, how to live and how to die.”
– John Taylor Gatto

Welcome to my table...

“Hospitality means primarily the creation of free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place. It is not to bring men and women over to our side, but to offer freedom not disturbed by dividing lines.”   Henri Nouwen

My Guy....Riley

I already dread that day since my guy just had his 8th birthday....but when the time comes this will bring me comfort.  In the meantime, I will focus my energies on being grateful and enjoy each day as it comes.

Treasured Friend
I lost a treasured friend today

The little dog who used to lay

His gentle head upon my knee

And shared his silent thoughts with me.

He’ll come no longer to my call

Retrieve no more his favorite ball

A voice far greater than my own

Has called him to his golden throne.

Although my eyes are filled with tears

I thank him for the happy years

He let him spend down here with me

And for his love and loyalty.

When it is time for me to go

And join him there, this much I know

I shall not fear the transient dark

For he will greet me with a bark.

                          Author Unknown

 



I love Ann Voskamp....she has such a great way of wording things....

http://www.aholyexperience.com/2014/08/how-to-really-send-the-kids-back-to-school-out-into-the-world

 Life is about one thing: Coming to His table and inviting as many as you can to come with you and feast on the only Living Food.

 And don’t live safe. How many times have I thought safe mattered when Jesus died to save us not to make us safe. No one ever got saved unless someone else was unsafe.

  "There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice."     John Calvin

This quote goes along with my morning devotion Scriptures today about praising God.
There is always a reason to REJOICE despite our circumstances.

Psalm 103:1-5  New Life Version (NLV)

 Praise the Lord, O my soul. And all that is within me, praise His holy name. ² Praise the Lord, O my soul. And forget none of His acts of kindness. ³ He forgives all my sins. He heals all my diseases. ⁴ He saves my life from the grave. He crowns me with loving-kindness and pity. ⁵ He fills my years with good things and I am made young again like the eagle.

 

 Psalm 34:1  New Life Version (NLV)

 I will honor the Lord at all times. His praise will always be in my mouth.

 

 

 

What Really Matters

"When all the stages of life have passed us by, these things alone remain: the spiritual treasure that stretches our souls to see what our eyes cannot, the remembrance of how beautiful life really is under all its ugliness, and the love of those around us who make the journey gentle as we go."
Joan Chittister: Essential Writings

Medicine for the Fretter

 

The Peace of Wild Things

By Wendell Berry b. 1934 Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Is It Arrogant To Tell Other Christians To Imitate Your Example?

Aug 04, 2014 | Trevin Wax    http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevinwax/

 

WOW, that's a pretty tall order, not sure I'm up for people imitating me...but according to Scripture Paul encouraged others to do that many times.  What do I need to change in my life before I could say that?  Would I need to be perfect?  Paul wasn't!    Would I need to add a caveat...follow me only in as much as I follow Christ?---I sure hope so!

 

This article gave much food for thought...

"The call to imitation is predicated on the fact that Paul’s life was “in Christ (1 Cor. 11:1).” He was worthy of imitation to the extent that Paul’s life reflected the work of Christ in his heart. Imitation is a gift of God’s grace and not another task on a person’s religious to-do list.

 

He also makes a great point that you can't impact others lives by imitation unless you are willing to spend time with them.

 

Lord, help me to live life in a way that I can say, follow me as I follow Christ.

Intolerance

 D.A. Carson’s book The Intolerance of Tolerance:
This shift from “accepting the existence of different views” to “acceptance of different views,” from recognizing other people’s right to have different beliefs or practices to accepting the differing views of other people, is subtle in form, but massive in substance. To accept that a different or opposing position exists and deserves the right to exist is one thing; to accept the position itself means that one is no longer opposing it. The new tolerance suggests that actually accepting another’s position means believing that position to be true, or at least as true as your own.

Choosing What to Read

"While you may be devoting your time to be “well read” among the gigantic list of dead people there is, in addition, at least one book coming out every week that you really should read. I occasionally have a desire to give up. Throw my arms up in the air and simply transfer all my hard fought reading time over to Netflix. To stop reading and start binging on endless seasons of Netflix offerings. My disease, however, prevents me from giving up. I find I’m a better father, husband, friend and leader when I keep my nose consistently in good books.
Harry S. Truman is known for saying, “Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.” Why all this focus on reading? Well, in an age of non-stop book releases it is more challenging than ever to know what books to read. You can devote 8 hours a day to reading worthless books and you will never run out."
Tim Kimberely (http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/blog/2014/04/the-intolerance-of-tolerance/)

I read another quote this week, something like, for every book you choose to read....10,000 other go unread.

To Love Is To Be Vulnerable

C. S. Lewis on love:

To love at all is to be vulnerable.
Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.
But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is hell.

- The Four Loves, 169.

I think I've blogged the first sentence of this quote before but the 2nd part is really thought provoking.  Hell is the absence of love....

I'm not Religious

I hope that people don't remember me as a "religious person."  I almost consider that as an insult.  Rather, I want them to say, she was kind, joyful, patient, loving, good, faithful, full of peace, gentle, and self-controlled....well, she was like Jesus!  That would be the highest compliment.

http://www.faithgateway.com/why-i-think-jesus-hates-religion-and-you-should-too-part1/?fb_action_ids=10201816242948665&fb_action_types=og.comments#.U1p3dKL-qmA

The Extraordinary Is Found in the Ordinary

"Running hard after an extraordinary life turns out to be chasing a lie.
The realest extraordinary is always found in the ordinary.
The extra everyone’s looking for —- it’s found in ordinary."  Ann Voskamp
http://www.aholyexperience.com/2014/03/what-weve-got-to-tell-kids-about-living-extraordinary/

Hospitality

"Hospitality means primarily the creation of free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place." -- Henri Nouwen

 There is a price to hospitality:

"But for those extending the gift of welcome, there is always a cost. To practice hospitality in all of its generous glory, there will always be sacrifice.
The sacrifice of resources - the actual cost of more people gathered around the table or snuggled under your roof or invited to go along on the long trip.
The sacrifice of pride - the opening the door when you really wished you had just fifteen more minutes to tidy up; the offer to stay the night when there isn't a proper guest room, just an air mattress on the floor covered with heirloom quilts; the invitation to dinner when the menu is more ground beef than prime rib.
The sacrifice of time - and this is the costliest of all, isn't it? The rearranging of schedule, the disruption of familiar routine, the priority of planning for someone else instead of yourself.
But it is this choosing of Other over Self that makes the offer of hospitality incredibly meaningful to those to whom it is offered. We all know that no matter how effortless the giver of the gift of welcome makes it appear, true hospitality always involves effort, and it is that thoughtful intention toward us that makes the experience so incredibly dear.
To offer hospitality, you don't have to be fancy. You don't have to go big or go all out. You simply have to be willing to make yourself available to greet someone at the door, to help them shrug off their heavy burdens if only for a little while so that they can sit down, fully free to be themselves, fully free to be fully seen, while you make just a little bit of a fuss over them.
In doing so, you offer to the fellow battle-scarred weary traveler a safe place to rest, if only for a little while. "Come in! Sit down! I've been waiting   just for you."     Megan Tietz
(http://www.sortacrunchy.net/sortacrunchy/2014/03/waiting-tables-day-twelve-the-sacrifice-of-hospitality-and-why-it-matters-so-much.html)

Change

“How strange that the nature of life is change, yet the nature of human beings is to resist change. And how ironic that the difficult times we fear might ruin us are the very ones that can break us open and help us blossom into who we were meant to be.” ~Elizabeth Lesser

Hospitality

"When we have become completely free from the need to judge we will also become completely free from the fear of being judged" Henri Nouwen

Hospitality is not about how clean my house is or how good the meal tastes.  Hospitality isn’t about me. It’s about you who come into my home. It’s about listening and connecting and encouraging. It’s about rest and peace and fun. And I can do that with a layer of dust covering everything and fur balls and cob webs in the corners.  If I wait until I am perfect or my house is...it will never happen.

Poem from the IF Gathering 2014

Esther Generation (From IF:Gathering)

 

They say you should travel light

But most of our lives we carry it all on our backs

These days it isn’t our arms that stay weighed down

It’s our minds

We wake up in a panic

Its our thoughts that hyperventilate for fear

Of making mistakes.

 

For fear of failing or succeeding

Or fear that we’ll never move past our past

That we’ll be exactly who they said we’d be

That we’ll never be more than what was done to us

That we will continue to be taken advantage of

That we should accept shame as a companion to carry with us

That we should let the lies befriend us

 

The lies

started in a garden

Spoken slyly by a slithering serpent with his syrupy sweet: “Did God really say?”

 

And we’ve be doubting ever since

 

Allowing an unwelcome guest to make himself at home in our lives, minds, gardens

Keep us bound with slithering fear

that we are damaged goods

 

Never going to be good enough

Not enough brains, not enough brawn

Not enough guts to take anything on.

 

But there is no time for being soft or weak

That at all times we have to be tough

That We’ll never be perfect that

We’ll never be worth it

That we’ll never be enough

And sometimes we feel God calling us, nudging us

Trying to show us

 

but somehow we stay trapped

Behind walls of unbelief and unforgiveness

Our arm’s a weary rope caught in a vicious tension

Tug of war between our fear and our calling

Between worry and peace

Comfort and inconvenience

Comparing ourselves to each other

While battling low self esteem

 

Do we do what’s practical?

Or follow our dreams?

Do we take care of ourselves?

Or meet others people’s needs?

Should we fight?

Should we please?

 

Should we hide from who we are to put other people at ease?

 

And then the lies begin to echo and amplify

Loser

Time abuser

Mess producer

Who needs you?

She’s so much better

Just look at her

You actually thought that was a good idea?

 

Open your mouth and they’ll laugh long enough that you’ll shut your mouth

You aren’t smart enough

You aren’t good enough

You aren’t sharp enough

 

Who do you think you are?

 

Fear is our chain and it’s rattling us hard

It’s the poison that deadens our hearts

 

Fear of failing

Fear of flailing

Fear of the arrows

Fear of the way named narrow

Fear of the shear rock in front of you that begs you sweat and climb

Climb out of that drug dead comforting pit they call status quo

And break right up through the earth and into the life you were born for

 

In the now of your life while there is still time and hunger in your veins

Turn around and shake off that snake

Because it’s head’s been crushed, no pulverized

So let go of the lie.

 

Sometimes we imagine that God’s voice is a disappointed hard lined teacher

Who is waiting to whack our knuckles with a ruler for any imperfections

 

But that isn’t God’s voice at all

 

That isn’t Gods heart at all

 

He speaks tenderly

He doesn’t need to raise his voice

He speaks as if He’s right next to us

 

Because He’s right next to us

 

Because He goes before us

 

Because His spirit lives inside us

 

He starts with love

And not because He is a hopeless romantic

But mostly because

 

He is ALL LOVE and HOPE and SECOND CHANCES

 

Let go of the fanged lie and bind the wound with dressings of Truth that will heal your bloodied soul

Take that sharp edge of His Word and hack that snake creeping up the back your neck

The words

The only life hack that will hack off the lie of the snake and make your life whole

 

We fear that the place we think God’s love will run out or dry up

 

We fear that place where we think God’s love will run out, dry up, fall of the edge

 

And we’ll be left dangling beyond its reach

 

We fear that somewhere God’s love ends

 

But His love never runs out

 

His steadfast love surpasses suburbia

Canvases from skyscrapers to street corners from porch to stoop

 

His love is looking for you.

 

Who would you be?

What would you do?

 

If you weren’t afraid

 

Could be that you’ve always wanted to come up through the ground

in some desolate place that needed a tree

To bear some fruit for someone with their tongue stuck to the dry roof  

of their parched mouth

To be a limb that held some baby abandoned

To be a limb that someone could used to swing over the fence and free

 

We were made from dust

A bit of earth kissed by heaven

made to be groundbreakers

And peacemakers

And freedom shakers

 

So you can take your glossy Vogue covers and use them for washing windows

Because we’ve always thought the most beautiful women have dirt under their fingernails

And could shake a bit of the very earth out of their warn and pioneering shoes

 

And lets redefine comfort zone because wherever He takes you

You are with the comforter

Wherever He calls you

You are always in his comfort zone

 

So live all your present moments in His presence

To keep company with Christ

To get in on the best

 

There’s a whole Esther generation right here and now and it is us.

 

Who come broken

Who are done being defeated by fear and worry and stress

Because it advertises the unreliability of God

 

Who want hard and Holy things because we want more than hallow lives

A life more than self focus and cell phones

More than iPhones, iTunes and iLove

Who want a life of loving the least, the lonely, and the lost

There is a whole Esther generation rising right here and now and it is us

 

Who are done with easy

Who know that being like Christ and caring for the poor in body and soul

 

There’s a whole Esther generation right here and now and it is us.

 

Who come broken

Who are done being defeated by fear and worry and stress

Because it advertises the unreliability of God

 

Who want hard and Holy things because we want more than hallow lives

A life more than self focus and cell phones

More than iPhones, iTunes and iLove

Who want a life of loving the least, the lonely, and the lost

There is a whole Esther generation rising right here and now and it is us

 

Who are done with easy

Who know that being like Christ and caring for the poor in body and soul

Means more than just caring about easing our consciences

It means living real sacrifice

 

There is a whole Esther generation rising right here and now and it is us

 

Who say now is the time for the faith brave

To sky dive and fly

To remember that we don’t have to strive to be anyone

To stop taking issue with what God made

To accept that our perfect God makes no mistakes

 

There’s a whole Esther generation rising right here and now and it is us

 

To take the weight we carry on our backs

And offer it back to the savior who already carried the weight of the world on his shoulders

Who surrender

Who lay out alabaster hopes and dreams at the feet of our Savior

 

There is a whole Esther generation rising right here and now and it is us

 

Who will no longer look for peace in opinions

But to find our solid ground in the truth

 

There are many tomorrows to face

But today, lets open our hearts and our wounds and our stories

To the great story teller

That our lives may be chiseled by His pen

 

That we may

BELIEVE

and LOVE

and PRAY

and FIGHT

and REST

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.theoverwhelmedwoman.com/2014/02/esther-generation-poem-from-ifgathering/

Discernment Goes Beyond Decision Making

Henri emphasized that Christian discernment is not the same as decision making. Reaching a decision can be straightforward: we consider our goals and options; maybe we list the pros and cons of each possible choice; and then we choose the action that meets our goal most effectively. Discernment, on the other hand, is about listening and responding to that place within us where our deepest desires align with God’s desire. As discerning people, we sift through our impulses, motives, and options to discover which ones lead us closer to divine love and compassion for ourselves and other people and which ones lead us further away.

The situations I face in my life (and you in yours) will, of course, require decision making. That’s all well and fine. However, the older I get, the more I see the difference Nouwen urges us to recognize. As described, making a decision involves choosing a course of action; answering the question, “What shall I do?” Discernment may include that, but goes deeper than making a determination about what I should do to ask, “Who shall I be?”

Before God, for myself, and for others — “Who shall I be?”

(taken from blog:  http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/pausing-to-consider-the-journey)

Ordinary People

 I have seen this post twice in the past couple of days and dismissed it the first time, thinking that I didn't quite understand or agree with it.  But now that I've had more time to think about it and read this blog, I think I now know what he meant by it:

Harry Emerson Fosdick said, “The world has two ways of getting rid of Jesus. The first is by crucifying him; the second is by worshiping him.”

 Aren't we supposed to worship Jesus?  Well, I guess that depends on what you mean by worship?

Clarence Jordan, founder of Koininia Farms and co-instigator in the founding of Habitat For Humanity, said that the scandalous thing about Jesus wasn’t that he was God – it was that he was human.
Because the minute we make him God, we can put him on a pedestal and worship him. We can bow down to him, we can celebrate him, and we can honor him. But we don’t have to change ourselves, because, after all, he was God, and we aren’t. But if he was human, then we are pretty much without excuse. Then our only choice is to ignore him, or to follow him.
On that day when we are asked by God to give an account of our lives, God will not ask me, “Hugh, why were you not Martin Luther King?” Instead, God will ask me, “Why were you not Hugh Hollowell?”
Jesus called ordinary people – James and John, Peter and Andrew – to follow him. And Jesus still calls ordinary people to follow him today. Jesus calls ordinary people, from their ordinary lives, to do extraordinary things.
Which is good, because the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. And there is work to be done.

 (http://hughlh.com/ordinary-people/)

So, Lord help me to be the ME you want me to be.  Help me to remain in You:
John 15: ⁴ Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. ⁵ “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. ⁶ If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. ⁷ If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. ⁸ This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

"A man prayed, and at first he thought that prayer was talking. But he became more and more quiet until in the end, he realized that prayer is listening." — Søren Kierkegaard

Yesterday was a rough, draining day.  Thank you, God, for your constance presence.

Psalm 119:131-136

Easy-to-Read Version (ERV)

¹³¹ My desire to hear your commands is so strong
    that I wait with open mouth, gasping for breath.
¹³² Look at me, and be kind to me,
    just as you always are to those who love your name.
¹³³ Guide me, as you promised.
    Don’t let evil rule over me.
¹³⁴ Save me from those who want to hurt me,
    and I will obey your instructions.
¹³⁵ Accept your servant,
    and teach me your laws.
¹³⁶ I have cried a river of tears
    because people don’t obey your teachings.