"Murphy's Lesser Known Laws"

This one's not my writing and is just for silliness (a high school classmate shared it on FB.) :D
  
1-Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak. 
2-He who laughs last, thinks slowest. 
3-Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine. 
4-Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don't. 
5-Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool. 
6-The 50-50-90 rule: Anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there's a 90% probability you'll get it wrong. 
7-If you lined up all the cars in the world end to end, someone would be stupid enough to try to pass them, five or six at a time, on a hill, in the fog 
8-The things that come to those who wait will be the things left by those who got there first. 
9-Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will sit in a boat all day drinking beer. 
10-Flashlight: A case for holding dead batteries. 
11-The shin bone is a device for finding furniture in a dark room. 
12-A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well. 
13-When you go into court, you are putting yourself in the hands of 12 people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty. 

OK... so we know that's not all true... it just SEEMS like it!

Coping w/stresses of life

My friend, raramom06, described herself as OVERWHELMED in one of her recent blogs... That may well be the best description of the way many of us find ourselves at this point in time. I know it fits me, too.

The question this raises is how to adequately deal with this condition in which we find ourselves.  And as I ponder it, I think about Sundays... especially Sunday mornings (but also Wednesday evenings)... which seem to be the only time all the other, overwhelming STUFF is set aside... nay PUSHED aside! and aside to the point where it has virtually no influence !!!  Yes, it attempts, every so often, to push back... to re-enter the consciousness... to put itself back in the center of things.  But for those precious hours each week, all is realigned with First Things at the very Front of the Stage... all the responsibilities and cares of this world are  set aside and the focus of all that I am  settles in on the One who Loved me first.


When I leave the sanctuary of my church family/home, and get to 'feeling' as though I'm out here all alone, I've tried to allow my heart and mind to be surrounded with that same sense of Presence.  ...no question, it's not always a success... it hasn't proved the easiest thing to do under attack... although I must admit, the attacks seem less ... something.  less potent?  less powerful?  less frequent is even a possibility... 


Now if only I could keep from getting distracted :)

Lost & Found

I'm fully aware that my previous few blogs have been - shall we say - conflicting? That would be because I've been somewhat conflicted on the subject of Christmas. BUT there are things about which I have absolutely NO inner conflict ...the PRIMARY one being the concept of mankind's lost condition. 


When we humans became separated from God, several thousand years [and more generations than I can imagine ago], looking at it from GOD'S PERSPECTIVE, we became lost to Him. ... you don't 'FEEL' lost??  You think you know where you are and where you are going...   so what?  TO GOD, you are LOST. 


Oh, you need a better picture...


 ... hmm... 


Okay, try this. Have you ever had a pet that left home only to finally return after days, weeks or months had passed? To YOU the pet was lost, even though it thought it knew where it was all the time.  Bingo! ...lost and found.


Humanity left God way back when... Until we return we are 'lost'.... When individual humans return to God... they're 'found' (that wasn't hard to understand at all, was it?!) 


The God's Word, the Bible, uses "saved"... wonder why that is... what does a lost person have to be saved from? ever wonder about that? Now there's something to ponder! No, it's not saved from lions, and tigers and bears! oh, my! 


Let's return to the lost pet...YOU DON'T KNOW what happens to it if it never comes home!!!! It may have lived out its life with another family; it may have passed into eternity in an unknown place, with no one to love or bury it. 


But, there's a serious difference between the human and the pet. The pet is a soul that never had the Spirit given to it.... the human, on the other hand, when they went 'lost' HAD THE SPIRIT OF GOD REMOVED FROM THEM because God could not live in the same body with rebellion. So, what happens to a human if he or she never comes 'home' to God? They may live separated from Him, but when they enter eternity, they REMAIN separated from Him. We need to be saved from that separation! and from the rebellion that is not only built into each of us as a result of that separation, but was the CAUSE of it, as well. 


Don't any of you go thinkin' that it doesn't matter where you spend eternity... the description of the end of those who refuse to return to God ... taking the only way He made available... is NOT a pretty picture. The pain felt living here won't even come close! 


Don't take the chance.... God sent His only Son... to reconcile humanity to Himself... one heart at a time .... each of us has to accept the sacrifice of the Son of Man on his/her behalf, to avoid the only alternative. Come home! I beg you. 


Come home! 




Tags: salvation, reconciliation 


Tuesday 25 December 2007 - 07:50PM (EST)  | 2 Comments 

12 down & 12 to go...but who's counting?

I think you have to feel a little sorry for people for whom this upcoming event is merely another day to have a family get together... to do the 'traditional' things, but without any reason or meaning to it to make it special. All it is, is a specific traditional day to do certain things... Visit family, exchange gifts, hang out and talk, tell stories, watch the traditional movies, and have a fantastic dinner. They'll do all the pretty stuff, the colored lights, the tree, trimmings and all, but there's no Christ Child's birth... No angels visiting shepherds in the fields.... No travelers from afar bearing gifts. 


But it's Christmas! Those things that are WHY it was given the name Christmas in the first place (Christ Mass), even if the timing IS a bit off. We Believers are recognizing the FACT that He CAME -- what is the rest of the world 'celebrating' anyway?


Wednesday 12 December 2007 - 11:01PM (EST) 

Truth or Tradition?

I know ... most of you think I'm making a big deal out of nothing when I even remotely reference the fact of the matter regarding December 25th. But, somewhere along the line in my life, I was taught that truth was important. ...that lying is deception. ...that honesty was not just the best policy, but it was EXPECTED of me.  To be honest meant knowing what the truth was; which brings me to the need to know the truth about this date on our calendars that we celebrate as the birth of our Savior.


As Providence would have it, back in the early '80s I heard a radio teaching (which I recorded as much of as I could) by a Messianic Jewish woman who told us about things they (Messianic Jews) had brought down in their historical telling and re-telling of the birth of Christ, and all that surrounded it.  With that in mind, I went to the Scriptures to see if I could find the TIME of Jesus' birth.


My jumping off place was Luke’s 1st chapter, where Luke tells of Mary's cousin, Elisabeth, and her husband, Zechariah, both descendants of Aaron. Zechariah, we are told, was 'a priest of the course of Abijah,' and it says in verse 8, that Zechariah was on duty when the angel Gabriel appeared and spoke to him, so we need to know when that would fall during the year.  That’s where the trail takes us temporarily back to 1 Chronicles 24:4-19, where the courses (by lot) are identified, and their times explained, with Abijah being assigned the 8th course, in verse 10.


In this setting, (understand we're talking about the priesthood), so the calendar being used [there are two] would likely be the sacred calendar, not the civil one. With that in mind, note that each 'course' is 2 weeks in length, beginning in Nisan, which corresponds to March-April, and that Abijah is the 8th course. So all we need do is to count through the months, 2 weeks at a time, to get an idea of when it was he was in the temple. (calendars make this much easier, but)... counting... 
last 2 weeks of March, 
1st 2 weeks of April, 
last 2 weeks of Apr, 
1st 2 weeks of May (that's 4 courses)... 
last 2 weeks of May, 
1st 2 weeks of Jun, 
last 2 weeks of Jun, 
1st 2 weeks of Jul... 
so we get it that Zechariah's on duty in the temple during the 1st half of July... OK? You still with me?  We know the narrative here... Gabriel tells Zechariah that he and Elisabeth are going to have a son, what to name him ... Zechariah responds in unbelief, is rendered speechless, etc, and in verse 23, "...as soon as the days of his ministration were accomplished, he departed to his own house." (KJV)


Verse 24 "And after those days his wife Elisabeth conceived, and hid herself 5 months..." Zechariah would have gone home in mid July, Elisabeth conceived (from the way it reads, almost immediately!!!) so counting... mid Jul-Aug=1 month, mid Aug-Sept=2, mid Sept-Oct=3, mid Oct-Nov=4, mid Nov-mid Dec=5.


Now the telling turns to Mary verse 26. "And in the 6th month [after that], the angel Gabriel was sent..." So sometime during Elisabeth's 6th month (mid Dec to mid Jan) we have Gabriel's visit to Mary, at which time she's told she'll conceive by the Holy Spirit.  So it's entirely possible that this visit took place sometime during last two weeks of December. (I like to think so, anyway! ...why hold off till late in the month???)


As soon as the Angel Gabriel leaves Mary, it says she arose and went (in haste!) to see Elisabeth (who, upon hearing her greeting, referenced the 'fruit of her womb' in blessing her, indicating to me that her pregnancy was already in progress).  So Mary's baby would be born like about ... late September. But I jumped ahead of the chronology there... sorry... 


Mary stayed with her cousin Elisabeth 3 months (verse 56) till like mid February and returned home.  You know, I always found it interesting that she left just before the birth of John... amazing.  Anyway, Joseph sees her back home and notes the obvious 3 month 'baby bump', and plans to ditch the girl, till he's told not to, in a dream (for that you have to go to Matthew 1:18-25).


Oh, there was one other thing the Messianic woman added during the teaching: the Shepherds out by Bethlehem... those sheep they were watching over were raised for supplying a Passover sacrifice for out of town visitors who didn't have one, and they would NOT have been out in the field by night during the rainy season ... December!  She said the latest they'd have stayed out there with the sheep was late October.


Here we have the whole storyline is laid out clear as day, so what's with December 25th? ...just tradition... thanks to a whole host of folks down through the ages.


Does that explain it clearly enough? So... what are we celebrating? 
THAT HE CAME!


Tags: truth, tradition, Christmas 


Thursday 6 December 2007 - 04:49PM (EST) 

Contrasts

A broken and contrite heart is one thing... 


this leads us to apologize when we do the wrong thing, when we hurt someone, when we are all full of ourselves and finally realize that we're being self-centered and acknowledged that this has to change before things will get better. This, the Lord will honor. 


a broken spirit another entirely different thing... 


when all seems hopeless, without a solution in sight or even on the horizon - that we recognize, a depression that centers on one's own life and all the faultiness that comes with living on this planet, in a condition perhaps not even recognized as fallen-ness, or away from God, or simply out of place, the condition translated 'lost' in KJV. 


what then is the remedy? 


in my life, it has always been to move back to the first position... that of a recognition that I am not the center of even my own universe. that position belongs to the One who crafted the whole thing; spoke it into existence. at which point, it becomes clear, i've been being my own deity ... perhaps again. 
Lord, God, forgive me. 
Thursday 13 September 2007 - 08:55PM (EDT) 





The Art of Giving 
by Kent Nerburn.... Letters to My Son ...from a Celestial Seasonings Tea box
"Remember to be gentle with yourself and others. We are all children of chance, and none can say why some fields will blossom and others lay brown beneath the August sun. Care for those around you. Look past your differences. Their dreams are no less than yours, their choices in life no more easily made. And give. Give in any way you can, of whatever you possess. To give is to love. To withhold is to wither. Care less for your harvest than how it is shared, and your life will have meaning and your heart will have peace."
Sunday 11 November 2007 - 10:23PM (EST) 

To Your Health

For me, it started coming to my attention when I turned 35 that I simply had let life slide on by and that being conscientious about taking care of daily things might make a HUGE difference.


My first discovery was that the dreaded "acid reflux" (now so-called), could be eased by simply taking a digestive enzyme! It actually got rid of it for me. WOW! That seriously changed my outlook. There WERE things in my life I could control, and not allow them to become so bad I would need a Doctor's attentions. It was revolutionary. From that point, I began looking at other things I might take care of on my own. 


Have you ever wandered the RealAge.com website, and taken their little test(s) to determine your REAL age? It's quite revealing... especially if you answer honestly. That site showed me a number of things I could manage on my own, and others that would be better handled by "the professionals". But to be honest, it seems the more things I handle for myself, the fewer things are left to someone else to be responsible for. 


So my thought tonight is this... any time feeling good is important... wouldn't feeling better be a good thing? I like feeling better than I did when I was younger... this is fun!

Wednesday 21 March 2007 - 02:06PM (EDT)