Category: Truth

Picturing God

According to my understanding of scripture, seeing God(in the flesh as it were)is impossible. Moses got close and his face shone from its brightness to where the people were afraid of him. For me, I see God in the beauty of the sunset, in the miracle of tiny bugs on the ground, through the smile of a child.

To me, God is all around us and at this time of year it is even more so as we celebrate the birth of Jesus, God’s son. In my beliefs, Jesus is part of the Trinity – God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit and each of those parts of God brings up a different image of what we humans think He looks like. Is it important on what he looks like? Maybe, maybe not. We are very visual oriented creatures and rely on our vision for truth…and our visions can fail us if we don’t rely on the right source of truth..

I am reading a wonderful book called Crazy Love by Frances Chan. I am only in the fourth chapter but in it far enough to think about what Frances is trying to tell us. Two things that are popping out the most so far is, picturing life on this earth as a movie. You are an important member of the cast because God created you for a purpose He had in mind but the movie is not about you, the movie is about God. The other thing, the one that struck me the hardest, is when you pray, who do you pray to. Well obvious the answer is God…but what are you visualizing? Or do you just throw your prayers into the air hoping they get where they need to go. Our prayers are specific and need to go specifically to God. For me it helps visualize that I am talking to God in a specific form.

Revelation 4 describes what John saw when we was taken in spirit into heaven…

Rev 4:2-3 …”there before me was a throne on heaven with someone sitting on it. And the one who sat there had the appearance of jasper and ruby…”

In chapter 19 Jesus is described as the Word of God with blazing eyes, a double edge sword coming from his mouth and a robe dipped in blood. While this is the God I want standing by my side if bullies are after me, it hard for me to visualize praying to the loving comforter, the Lamb of God, if I visualize this form.

Ephesians 5:2…walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. 

Our prayers should reflect this fullness of love for love comes from the heart as our prayers should also come from the heart. Corinthians 13 says it perfectly in how we should treat mankind and prayer for mankind.

Corinthians 13:4 – Love is patient, love is kind…it always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always preservers…Love(God) never fails.

So as you lift your prayers to heaven, visualize that they are being received by a loving, caring, nurturing and kind…warrior who will protect you as much as He loves you. Visualize yourself being God’s child (which we are) that crawls into the loving lap of the loving Father and feel His peace.

And know always His kindness is powerful so share that kindness with others.

Tuesday Writing Prompt, July 28

cursive-writing

Cursive Writing

In an era of today’s technology, evolves neglect of writing by hand

And schools focus on futures of new projects they need to manned

We have no need of stationary, for everything goes by email

No remembrance or need of touch, to share our love through mail.

How very sad to become the robots we now have become

And forgetting the feel of love, in mail it once did come

Those of us who remember the beauty that writing can be

Can now use cursive writing as coded messages for others to see.

Anita Neal

Devereaux Frazier and Beth Amanda are currently hosting the Tuesday Writing Prompt Challenge which was started by our star writer Christine Ray. We hope to offer all of you something that will spark your creativity and willingness to participate.

 

Today’s prompt: Write a piece of prose or poetry around the words cursive, touch, and forget

So come join in on the fun and see what your creative juices can do. And as always…remember to be kind in all you do.

butter

Attitude of Hope and Love

There is so much sadness in this word today. So many broken promises, so many hurts both physically and mentally but I cling desperately to the spiritual truth of God’s love for me and all of mankind and of course for His creation with all its components. He said after creating the world at the beginning that it was good.

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And it was meant for good but alas, it failed due to the weakness of man and the trickery of the evil one. It failed due to the misunderstanding and distrust of man of God. It failed because man forgot the first love. Not our first love that we remember but we have forgotten that HE loved us first.

So many have become so complacent with the world that God is no longer even in their picture.  Then they question those of us who still hang on to God’s hand and His love for us asking “WHY??”. My answer to them is…

I would rather live my life fully believing in a God that loves me, will take care of me, will guide me in all ways but when I go to die, only to realize the belief I encourage myself and others of the joy and peace we felt through our entire lives was only our imagination and none of our beliefs were true and once you are dead its over…..   Than to live my life not thinking anything about a God that loves me, throwing all of my life and cares to the wind and doing everything that pleased only me, never thinking of the harm or discord I brought to anyone or anything else, then to die and realize in horror that I was wrong. There was in fact a loving God who loved me and cared for me and now…it is too late for me and I am lost forever.

That would be the saddest scenario that I can imagine. May we all strive to believe that there is a just, loving and compassionate God who left us an instruction book called the Bible to guide us in any way that we need, to help us face our toughest day, and to show us how to feel the joy of His peace that he offers us through His grace to all of His creation and that He does dearly love us.

And may we remember to reflect His love by showing the kindness He so heavily graces us with so that we in turn we can give it to those who have forgotten His ways and maybe bring them a smile and a hope of His love for them.

kindness 19

 

 

Master of …, #JusJojan

It’s a word than dons power or specialty as in “master of my house” or “jack of all trades and master of none”; then in golf there is the Masters Tournament each spring in Augusta Ga. or in biblical times and even up to current times there is the master/slave relationships of people. For today’s Jot in January we are following Linda and Sadje’s prompt of master and since it is also a Sunday my mind went only in one direction – The Master.

It is my belief that all people follow. Even those that lead, follow. They follow what they believe to be the truth according to their own priorities and these priorities are gain by things they have lived through and assessed to be the truth in their hearts and mind. And  that truth is their master.

Look at all the good and bad leaders of this world we have seen thus far. They lead from their hearts and were able to convince others that his/her priorities were correct and true until someone else came along with a better idea of what they believe to be true. I think in each person’s heart, whether it be for mastering his own life or mastering the hearts of a nation, it starts with being true to what he believes as the truth and that therein is the root of the problem.

In  John 18:37, Jesus explains to Pontius Pilate that he is the witness of the truth where Pilate retorted “What is truth”. Philippians 4:8 reminds us that “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think on such things.”

In my opinion when you take life and boil it down to the stickiness left in the bottom of the pan there are only two defining truths and therefore two defining masters – the Masters of Good and Evil and who those Masters are. You can walk in the gray matter between the two for a while but there will be a day where a choice will need to be made. The first choice you have to make and that choice will decide your direction of choices is do you even believe there really is a Good Master and Evil Master.

My beliefs are there is definitely a Good Master and an Evil being that wants to be a master but has already lost. He is just going to take as many as he can away from the Good Master through his trickery and lying by deceiving those into believing the Good Master is not the truth. The choice is intimately up to each individual as he searches for his own truth and that which makes him happy.

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The choice

 

Everything we do in life is a choice and my hope is that more of us choose the Good Master as he will bring to us the love, tenderness and kindness we are all so hungry for.

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The Dark Side of the Moon

The moon is our satellite and reflects the light of the sun to the earth. I like to refer to the moon as God’s night light for the earth. The light side temperatures from the suns heat reaches around 100c and since the moon having no atmosphere to either protect the surface from sun’s heating, or guard the dark side from freezing, the dark side drops quickly to -173c. A major contrast from side to side.

moon

When the astronauts landed on the moon, they were marveled at the beautiful blue marble that was their home. And knowing what we know today of earth and space, earth has the perfect atmosphere to support life while using the values of the sun yet being protected from it dangerous rays at the same time.

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Its a perfect world for all of us to live on…as long as we as humans don’t destroy it, which we seem to want to do. Not on purpose mind you but in striving to do what each person thinks is the better way and we all have a different opinion on what that is.

Today is World Kindness Day. It’s the opportunity for us to all come together for 1 day to try to make a difference through all cultures across the entire world. We as a single person showed kindness to one person, then  kindness would grow to the next person, then it could grow through the neighborhood, the town, the sate, the country…to the entire world. What an amazing concept that would be to have 1 day of total kindness across the entire world. Then maybe we could stretch it to 2 days….

If we would be more like the light side of the moon, reflecting the warmth and love of life, instead of being cold, closed off, dark or even scary like the dark side of the moon…think of how much better that would be for all of us.

A single act of kindness is NEVER wasted. While you may think you would not do much good, you may be the spark that is needed to warm a cold scared heart. It has been proven that a single smile can reflect an inner love that can change that sad or scared feeling of a person or animal. It can be contagious. Like a yawn, a smile prompts a response so smile today and show kindness. Kindness is one of the fruits of the spirit spoken of in scripture.

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Time is Getting Short. Get ready! #6WS

Time is getting short, I only have 2 weeks left to get ready for Christmas. What? Its not even Halloween yet. True. But I have to have the yard fully ready for winter, the front door cleaned and painted from Mimi’s scratching this summer(it’s how she knocks), get the house fully cleaned inside and everything in its place so that I can decorate for Christmas and be completely ready by end of day November 8th.   November the 9th is RF day. RF day is surgery on the right foot, like the surgery in August on the left foot which means no walking at all for 3 weeks and very limited walking after that for another month. I am not missing out on Christmas so we decorate early. I have no problem with that.

Accomplished so far is the yard is clean. Landscape people are coming on Tuesday to rebuild the back steps and to replace the rotting railroad timbers with large boulders. I have also finished painting the front door. It looks better gray than white and maybe it will hide Mimi’s “knocking” better.

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But I still have the 7′ tree for the living room, the 7′ tree for the front bedroom, the 4′ tree and village(20+ pieces) for the dining room table, the two foot tree for the kitchen and master bath and then there are the 5 different nativity sets that need to go up, one set having candles along with countless “stuff” that sits everywhere. Yes, I have a fanatic love for Christmas, what it means and decorating for it. Oh, and I forgot the 4′ stuffed Santa that I won when  I was 12. Here is a picture of him last year trying to hang lights on the tree. He is so clumsy and gets tangled every year in lights. But he loves to look at the tree.

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Silly Santa

Debbie Smyth’s Six Word Saturday reminded me just how short a time I have left to get it all done.  But when it all gets done I will post pictures….lots and lots of pictures. Oh and I didn’t mention downstairs. My daughter lives down stairs and she is just as bad as I am. We set aside one day a year, the off day for Ga. football, to do ornament shopping. We like to buy 1 new and interesting ornament every year….1…what am I saying? But its our fun tradition each year and we have a blast.

And in closing, I remind myself and others, it’s beginning to be that joyful time of year. We need to make it last longer than just this time of year.  Spread joy and kindness wherever you go.

kind8

 

Colloquialism, A $5 word – #SoCS

Colloquialism is described in Webster’s as a word or phrase that is not formal or literary and is typically used in ordinary or familiar conversations.  That even sounds complicated.

dictionary

I am from the south, the true south of the United States of America. And by true south, as explained only by someone from the true south, that means east of the Mississippi River and below the Mason-Dixon Line. While some people feel that part of the country can  be more gentile, they can also be more scrappy than most.

As I have lived in other parts of the country, my southernisms have been known to turn a head or two. Most people just look at you like a deer in headlights. All southernisms are local terms or phrases we use in the south that we all understand what they mean. Proper name for them is colloquialism, a $5 word. A $5 word is big word, a hard to pronounce word, a dictionary looking up word or a very proper word nobody really uses. One of the most famous southernism  we get teased about is a phrase we use that means we are getting ready to do something. That phrase is “fixin to”  ex. I am fixin to get dressed.  I am fixin to cook up a mess of beans. That means I am going to cook a large pot of beans. There is even a certified dictionary for southernisms but I have read some of those and some of those are ridiculousness that somebody just made of to make us look even more silly.

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It’s the way we speak y’all

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The word sugar ends with an “h” in  the south.

Linda G Hill with Streams of Consciousness gave us the prompt for this week of “bone”.  My first thought was fighting words  – huh? When someone ticked you off but yet they were not present, the next time you saw them you would yell across the room “Hey, I gotta bone to pick with you“. Then they knew they were in trouble with a capital T. That phrase may be used lots of places but I know the south does use it frequently. In doing research on the phrase, they linked it to bone of contention going back as far as the 1500 with the idea of two dogs fighting over the same tasty bone.

I gave Mimi and knuckle bone I got from a local butcher and she turned her nose up at it. Guess she is too sophisticated for the real thing and prefers her “chicken bone”.

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Chicken Flavor? Really?

Who am I to judge? She is happy, I am happy. Its all good.

And in closing, I remind myself and others to always be kind. You never know when that stranger may be an angel in disguise.

 

kind8

 

The Value of Man-Fruit

fruit
What type of fruit do you produce?

Have you ever thought of how you treat others as producing fruit? Think of how you feel when someone is rough with you. It hurts like a barb from a pine cone. If you are not familiar with that analogy I promise its no picnic. Then in the opposite direction you have someone who is over sweet in action but you can tell its not sincere, I smell a rotten orange here.

I find it interesting that there are 27 references in the bible (old testament and new) that compares how you treat others as ‘bearing fruit’. Fruit, back in biblical times, was probably not as abundant as it is today so it made a good reference to help people understand the sweetness of following God. Galatians 5:22 even list the Fruits of the Spirit – “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. Love, I believe is listed first as this is the binding agent of everything we do. All of these fruits overlap at times but consistent use of them only strengthens our trunk. Colossians 1:10 tells us to bear fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God. And Matthew 7:16 reminds us that by their fruit you will recognize them. And Jesus also reminds us in Matthew  12:33 “Make a tree good…for a tree is recognized by its fruit.”

We are God’s tree and must strive to only bare good fruit. Do we slip up and and produce rotten fruit periodically? Yes but God’s grace plucks that bad fruit and tosses it in the nearest trash can, pruning that branch to strengthen it where good fruit will again be produced. It’s a process that we must cultivate and fertilize daily.

Of all of the fruits listed, my favorite is kindness. Even when you are hurt or angry and in a dark place, if you can pull kindness from your tree, the rotten fruit trying to sprout will not be allowed to fester and grow. Sometimes your kindness may be all that is needed to break the ice of a frozen pond of fear and rejection.

ice

Remember…

gentleness
To the tiniest creature be kind

 

 

A Couple of Beliefs? from Old

October is a time when Hollywood throws out all the adrenaline rush garbage of horror movies. Me, I am not a fan but I know plenty who love a good horror movie and Hollywood keeps them coming as they make money. I saw recently on the science channel the stories of mythical beast, like flying dragons and bull/man type animals that walk on two legs.

When we see something we can not understand and try to describe it to others, they may not believe it and mythical tales can begin to take shape.Take for instance the book of Revelation and all the the things John saw that he could not explain easily where the readers would understand what he was seeing. So to some, Revelations is mythical and far fetched in nature. To Christian it is truth and we accept his vision on faith.

I want to touch on two stories that were believed truths of their time that I find almost humorous now due to our knowledge of today. One is biblical and one goes back to the 1400’s  or further.

The biblical story is the Tower of Babel as told in the book of Genesis in chapter 11:4 and it says “Come let us build a city with a tower to the heavens”. Now their purpose of this tower was not to honor God but to honor themselves which then created the story we now believe to be true.

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Babel

Knowing what we learned say 100 years ago, much less what we know about the heavens today, the tower would still be under construction, still not reaching even through the outer atmosphere. The size of the tower would have to cover the entire face of one side of earth and still not be big enough.

Every day we are learning more on how vast space is and just how tiny we are and for someone to think a tower could  be built that could reach the heavens makes me smile. The earth’s atmosphere from ground up is about 300 miles – that would be a tall building. These are currently the tallest buildings worldwide.

Tallest_freestanding_structures_in_the_world

Another ancient story we now scoff at is the theory of the world being flat and if you sailed to the oceans edge you will fall off and be eaten by huge monsters that live there.

Our world is a beautiful roundish ball of amazing complexity created for us to live on. If we were on Venus, we would burn up, if on Mars we would freeze.

What a magnificent blue marble we live on. May we always protect her as I feel she is very angry right now. We have not been good stewards of her beauty and resources.

And in closing I always remind us all the wonderful gift of Kindness. May we spread it like jelly on toast, thick and sweet.

toast