I am a Christian, a retired teacher, a mother and a grandmother. I love to read and I love the Lord Jesus Christ! Unless otherwise specified ,all visual illustrations are from the YOU VERSION APP of the Bible.
From Max Lucado’s He Chose the Nails Christian Book
“Why is the cross the symbol of our faith? To find the answer, look no farther than the cross itself. Its design couldn’t be simpler: One beam horizontal—the other vertical. One reaches out—like God’s love. The other reaches up—as does God’s holiness. One represents the width of His love; the other reflects the height of His holiness. The cross is the intersection. The cross is where God forgave His children without lowering His standards.”
I have learned since I had my stroke that I really like silence more than noisy environments. The cacophony of chaotic noise, whether it is a crowd of people, loud music or a loud television or radio, tend to annoy me. It hurts my brain and causes me to withdraw and look for a quiet place. I think that we all need to learn to enjoy silence. We fill our days with noise. Some of us wake up in the morning and immediately turn on the television or pick up our phones and watch a video. We go out to work in traffic, with honking horns all around us and music or a talk show blaring on the radio. If we are still working, we spend our days with people demanding our attention, some of them all at one time. There is no lack of noise all around us. Thus, I think that enjoying the silence is a good thing, so I practice it when I am doing my devotional and when I am reading. I used to read with the TV on, dividing my attention between the two. Now I can only focus if I read a book and that is all that I am doing at that time. It’s important to focus on God when you are spending time with Him, too.
We can better enjoy God’s presence in our lives if we are quiet before Him and wait for Him to speak to our hearts. He won’t talk over top of all of the distractions around us, or at least He doesn’t in my experience. I have to be quiet to hear Him.
One of the best ways for me to appreciate God is to look around me at the beauty of the creation He gave us to enjoy. And the best part of it is that He didn’t have to make everything so pleasing to our eyes, ears, nose and mouth. It was His love for us that had Him gift us with such delights. So, take a walk alone, look around you and listen for God’s voice talk to you. He created what you see just for you to enjoy. Enjoy the silence!
These sayings are from Max Lucado and were originally in his book, In the Eye of the Storm.
I always ask my husband for a target. For example, what is my target time to be ready to leave to go to an appointment? What is the target for the dinner, i.e. what are we supposed to bring? I need a focus, a target to keep me centered.
This shows my desired target every day, all the time.
There are a lot of things in our lives that plead for our attention. There is entertainment on little devices and large televisions, just waiting for us to click. There are phones that ring and mail to be answered, especially that annoyingly cumbersome e-mail. Regardless of how many other things want our time, our time belongs to the Lord first. Then the other things fall in line behind Him. Think about what you spend your time doing and ask yourself if you are giving God enough of your time or only the leftovers. The One who created you and who also made a way for you to have a relationship with Him deserves the head seat at your table, the bullseye for your target every day.
Unless you follow me on Facebook, you don’t see the scriptures or the quotations that I post there. I try to post things that are encouraging or humorous. Here is a sampling of what I have posted recently.
I love this quotation from C.S. Lewis, one of my favorite men to quote since he was definitely wise and worth listening to. I was feeling my age this morning, so when this quotation was in my daily devotional from Nicky Gumbel on the YouVersion, I created this graphic on Canva to illustrate it.
This is a scripture quotation that I found online. I need to add this one to my memory verses because it seems that I am always in a waiting room. But I have hope there. I am pleased to say that I was discharged from the orthopedist yesterday. He told me that 18-20 year-olds do not heal as well as I am healing. So, I repeated to him that the Great Physician was working on me, and the doctor told me he believes for sure that He did this healing because it is miraculous given my bone condition and other health problems. So, while I wait, God is already answering. It just takes me a while to figure it out.
Some of my favorite quotations are from Corrie ten Boom. She is a giant among faith-filled women in my book and she is one of the saints that I look forward to seeing in heaven.
I hope that you enjoyed today’s quotes and notes. Do you have a favorite quotation to share, one that has spoken to your heart and reverberated in your spirit? Please take a moment and share with me. Thank you and have a blessed day and a better week than you can imagine!
Our freedom comes from the Lord, so we need to make sure that we appreciate it instead of abusing it. Lately, there have been a lot of news stories about people who are maligning Charlie Kirk and ridiculing his death. Some have been fired from their jobs over what they have said publicly or posted online. I am not sure how I feel about that.
First, I think that they are heartless and unfeeling, with a conscience seared that does not tell them right from wrong. Second, I think that they are not aware of how harsh their words sound to the family and loved ones of Charlie, nor do I think that they are concerned about it. Most importantly, I think that they need to be saved and find the same freedom I have, a freedom that reins me in when I am about to hurt someone else. After all, life is made up of relationships, vertically with God and horizontally with mankind. These people who are saying Charlie got what he deserved don’t want to get what they deserve. None of us does. But still, they set themselves up as judge and jury and condemn Charlie for his words, words that spread hope and truth, that spoke light into a dark world.
When you are offended by the light, it is because you prefer the darkness. But should you lose your job for your narrow-mindedness or ignorance? I want to say, “Yes, definitely! They should never say such things!” But where does it stop? This is a slippery slope that perhaps we don’t want to start down. Suppose the liberals are in charge (which realistically they will be again), then do they get to make sure people of faith lose their jobs because they post “offensive” scriptures online or say something that condemns sin?
I am not saying that these people were right in what they said. I am saying that they have the right to say it and then can suffer the consequences, if any, of those who are in their community. No consequences doesn’t mean it was right. It is just a sign loudly proclaiming how far from human decency and love for our fellow humans we have fallen as a society.
I think that I believe what this quotation says. You can say what you want but know that words have consequences that may lead to being ostracized by civil society.
All of that being said, I am not a fan of such hard-hearted people teaching impressionable children. If they can keep their opinions to themselves, that is one thing, but to spew vitriol in front of a captive audience of children, that is where I would draw the line. Posting online…harmful, but someone has to read it to be affected by it. However, standing in front of a classroom and saying that Charlie Kirk deserved to die…I would take a hard line on that and suspend the offender at the very least.
I am in favor of free speech, but as I used to tell my students (the ones who insisted that they could talk when I was trying to teach), their freedom ended where mine began. There was a definite line there called courtesy and respect, and I explained it to my students. If they wanted me to listen to them when they didn’t understand, then they needed to listen to me as I tried to explain the new material to them. Did these people cross the line of respect, courtesy and dignity owed to a fellow human? Yes, but they are willfully ignorant of the Judge who will one day hold them accountable for all of their posts, tweets and other online rants.
We all have choices every day about what to say and what to keep silent about. Jesus didn’t go around condemning all that he saw. Instead, He offered an alternative of peace, love and joy in following Him. We need pray for these offensive hate-mongers, that God will deal with their hearts. Then they will truly have freedom and we won’t have to be worried about the next foolish thing they will say.
Finally, I would not fire the offenders unless they are spreading their propaganda in front of a classroom. Those with sway over our children and grandchildren should be held to the highest standard. Hollywood doesn’t like Charlie and they’re glad he died? Dont’ buy tickets to their films or pay to stream their shows. The wallet is what talks to such insensitive people. Censoring them gives them a platform to spew more hatred into a very sad situation.
Deep condolences to Erika Kirk, her children and other family members. I pray that she will listen to God’ voice and not to the voices of the haters and deniers.
Closing with scriptures and praying that you understood my point today, whether you agree with me or not.
Just a little food for thought today. In the world, people generally judge others by their homes, their cars and their bank accounts. Jesus doesn’t look at our possessions; He cares about our hearts.
We all carry life’s burdens every day. My big burden lately has been family health issues and car problems. Daily, I take those burdens to God and receive the reassurance that He is handling things. But there are some things, I confess, that are difficult to hand over to God, even though I know that is exactly what I need to do. The big one that comes to mind is my own mortality and the fact that my aging is not something I can deny. I face it in the mirror daily, every morning as I get up and struggle to get to the bathroom because of mobility issues. God has given me a verse that I recite frequently to remind myself of His care for me.
I love this promise and the fact that He is carrying me, all the way until I get into His arms. I have to admit that some days, I feel that need more than others, but I can rest in His love and His promise.
We often get so wrapped up in our own world and our own problems that we don’t look around us at what others may be facing.
We are a very self-centered people and God knew that about us. It’s part of our sin nature and we have to work at focusing outward towards others instead of only inward towards ourselves.
We are told to carry each other’s burdens. Rather, we are instructed repeatedly to give our burdens to the Lord. I think that one way of doing that is to focus on others, so that we are not so aware of our own burdens. Oftentimes, in fact, our burdens dim when we get a glimpse of the burdens others are lifting. The recent example that immediately comes to my mind is the flooding in Texas that resulted in numerous deaths, including children from a Christian camp. My first instinct was to ask “Why, God?” But I quickly shut that down and instead started praying for the missing children, the parents of those whose bodies were already discovered, the camp counselors and the rescuers. My mind was so occupied praying for strangers that I was not totally absorbed in my own world and its problems. I think that is the way we should be daily, not just during a crisis. Look out…not in because in so doing, that is how we can do the most good for the Kingdom of God.
The real secret to our being free of our burdens in that we help others and God helps us. The promise is that He daily bears our burdens. So, if we know, really know, that Jesus is bearing our burdens, that gives us the freedom and opportunity to look for others that need our help. The neighbor who needs a ride to the doctor. The friend who needs groceries but who won’t ask for help. The young mom who needs a break just to refresh her soul. You get the idea. Helping others isn’t so much time consuming as it is forcing us to look at others instead of ourselves and our own needs so much.
I got this prayer from the YouVersion Daily Refresh today. I prayed it several times before the words became truly meaningful to me. My prayer is that this post today will inspire you to help someone today, in a small way or big way. Just be a helper. Mr. Rogers (TV show from my children’s youth) would like that, and more importantly, I think that so would God!
We can trust God to always provide even when we don’t know how it can possibly happen. God is always there, always desiring the best for His children.
Times can get hard because life is hard. But no matter what, before the hard times come, we need to purpose in our hearts that we will trust God’s provision and continue to rejoice. He has given us a Savior, the gift of eternal life and a relationship with our Creator. Everything else is just extra, as they say, the cherry on top.
Do we look at all we have and have confidence that we will continue to have it tomorrow and all of the tomorrows to come? Do we recognize that all we have comes from the God who is blessing us. Thus we learn to depend on God and not on things. The things we have may vanish, but God remains steadfastly beside us.
