Crazy, Hazy Election 2016

This election year has been like no other in my memory. I'm not here to offend, or argue, or even to tell you who to vote for. That is between you and God. I am here to say something that has been on my mind regarding Christians' views of the issues and candidates.


I have heard of so many people who say they cannot vote for Donald Trump because he is "evil", "racist", "immoral", and the list goes on. There are many, many things in Trump's past that I think are horrible. He has done and said some truly terrible things.


However, recently in an article on yahoo.com, Ben Carson said that Trump prayed and they talked about it - that Trump had asked for forgiveness and was coming, "ever closer to the Lord". https://www.yahoo.com/news/ben-carson-says-donald-trump-prayed-for-forgiveness-before-the-presidential-debate-043443555.html Now, I know what he has done is wrong. So does God. But his sin was against God - not me. And if God can forgive him, who am I to hold his past against him?


There was a woman in the Bible caught in the very act of adultery. Not adultery she had committed 10 years ago- in the very ACT. They brought her to Jesus to see how he would react. Jesus' response was, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." (John 8:7) And to the woman he said, "Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more." (John 8:11).


Jesus didn't tell her that she had been so wicked that He didn't think she would be good for anything in the future. He didn't tell her she was so offensive He had no use for her. Just to "go, and sin no more."


I don't know Donald Trump's heart. I do know that while he has been on the campaign trail as a politician, and not a Hollywood reality star, he has said he will appoint conservative justices to the Supreme Court, he has said he will abolish the Johnson Amendment so religious leaders can speak their mind and have a voice in society without fear of having their tax-free status taken away, that he wants to retain Christian Liberty for Americans and have us go back to saying, "Merry Christmas", that he wants to stand with Israel as our ally. These things are important to me this election.


I am not Donald Trump's judge. I pray he is or becomes a Christian. His past is tainted. All our pasts are. I'm sure we'd all agree we've done and said things we regret, and are mighty glad some of those things haven't been leaked out for all of the world to hear.


If you feel Donald Trump has bad policies, or is too inexperienced or ignorant of politics to become President, that is your right.  But I ask you to please consider voting based on policy and how he has spoken to and about Americans since deciding to try to become their champion instead of what he has done and said in his past.


God is, after all, a God of second chances.

I've had something on my mind for the past few days that I want to share. All of us have hard times. Bad days. Times when we feel down or depressed. Sometimes we don't know any reason for it...we just feel that way. Other times there are circumstances in our lives that are bringing us down. They may be in our control, or out of our control, but they bring us down just the same. I just want us to remember that God has reminded us time after time after time that we may have to go through something unpleasant to get to something wonderful.

There are examples of this all through nature. Rain brings a rainbow. After a cold winter, comes a beautiful spring. There are examples of this in our daily lives...unpleasant work brings a paycheck. A long ride brings us to our destination.

Most importantly, there are examples of this all through the Word of God. Joseph was sold into slavery by his own brothers. He was put in prison for a crime he didn't commit. He was forsaken and forgotten by everyone...except the One that mattered. In Genesis 39, we read "The Lord was with Joseph", time after time. God didn't forget him. Joseph didn't know what was going on...but God did.

Jesus even reminded us before he ascended to his Father that he had to go away or the Comforter couldn't come. His going away was unpleasant, but what a wonderful blessing is the Comforter!

Are you going through something unpleasant? Don't lose hope. God is with you. He knows how to turn something unpleasant into something wonderful. One of my favorite verses right now is Micah 7:7 "Therefore I will look unto the LORD; I will wait for the God of my salvation: my God will hear me."

Just a few thoughts from my heart...to yours. May your day be blessed and your heart be happy.

Summer break is finally here! Whew! What a year. As the kids get older, being a homeschooling mom gets harder. This year we had Algebra II. Math is NOT my best subject, so it was a challenge. But I enjoyed spending time wtih my son every day, and I actually enjoyed learning some things. Who knew you can teach an old dog new tricks? :)

I've had some things on my mind I wanted to share today:  there are some things you just can't get back.

No matter how much you wish to, you can't turn back the hands of time. Once you have your 30th birthday, you'll never be 29 again. That's just the way it is. It's the same way with moments. I try to cherish moments with my kids, because I will never have things exactly this way again. Time marches on whether we like it or not.

Have you ever gotten wild and crazy and gotten a haircut? Not a trim, but a real haircut? Then you get home and look in the mirror and cry and say, "I want my long hair back!" Guess what. You can't get it back. You can try to grow it again, and it may or may not look the same as it did before, but you can't get it back. Nope. Impossible.

You can't unbreak something once it's broken. This goes for glasses, vases, promises, and hearts. If something is broken, you can try to piece it back together, but it will never be the same. Never.

This last thing...and it's a biggie.. is your reputation. When I say the names of some famous people, be honest...what's the first thing that comes to your mind? Bill Clinton. PeeWee Herman. James Baker. Lindsay Lohan. It doesn't matter how many good things someone has done in his or her life, people will remember the bad things you do. Trust me, it's just human nature. That's why it's so very important to think through decisions that you make. Ask yourself, "Is it worth it?" Odds are, many times, it's not. A moment of pleasure is never worth a lifetime of pain.

I'm sure you can think of other things that can never be gotten back once they're gone. Just a few thoughts from my heart...to yours. May your day be blessed and your heart be happy!

It's NOT all about me???


This verse, Matthew 16:24, has been on my mind a lot lately. "Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me."

Woah. Deny himself. It seems that is a pretty unpopular opinion these days. We live in a very self-centered "Me" generation. Almost every immoral thing in society can be traced back to not denying oneself.

I, too, struggle with this from time to time. However, I find when I put my selfish wants aside and do something for someone else...take a little time to focus on others...it brings me joy.

I am a very routine person. I have a certain way of doing things, and I don't like to have that changed. I find when something comes up that makes me step out of my "comfort zone", I get upset about it. I don't want to deny myself the comfort of my routine. A little boy at our church used to sing a very simple song..

J-O-Y
J-O-Y
This is what it means...
Jesus first
Yourself last
And Others in between.

I'm sure that is a very simple formula for JOY, if we can only make ourselves adhere to it. Deny ourselves...a little time, a little comfort, a little money. There are many ways to put others first. Jesus didn't call us to be leaders...he called us to be servants. So simple to say...so hard to do.

Just a few thoughts from my heart...to yours. May your day be blessed and your heart be happy.

 

 

SPRING!!

 

Spring has finally arrived here in Virginia. We went out last Saturday and ate at one of our favorite local "hamburger joints" and watched these baby ducks with their momma. They were so cute! The day was just so beautiful! While the air can still be a little chilly, the colors are just so bright and beautiful. I think springtime must be alot like Heaven will look like. So many colors and so bright, so full of life and love. We had a little bird that kept visiting our back deck today, singing its little song. It boggles my mind to think that the great God that created every kind of bird and animal, every kind of tree and flower, would still take the time to listen to me when I pray and care enough to help when I call.

 

It reminds me of some verses from Psalm, Chapter 8.

 

"O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens...When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?...O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!"

How excellent indeed!!

Just a few thoughts from my heart, to yours. May your day be blessed and your heart be happy!

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.

We've all heard some version of this growing up, and more false words were never spoken. I don't know who said this, but clearly they'd never felt the sting of hateful words. There are times when a sock in the gut would hurt less, and certainly for less time, than words spoken in haste and anger. The funny thing about physical pain, is you can't remember what it feels like. Sure, you remember it hurt, but you can't recall the actual feeling of the pain. Not so with words. Our minds can call them back time after time, and they can hurt just as much years later as they did when we first heard them.

The book of James in the Bible (one of my personal favorites) speaks about the tongue being a deadly evil, full of poison. “But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. Therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God. Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be.” (James 3:8-10)

Sounds like words can be pretty harmful to me. As Christians, we need to be very careful of what we say to others. We can tear down, or build up. We can discourage, or encourage. Sometimes a kind word is what a person may need most.

Words were very important in the Bible. God's word spoke the very Earth into existence! Proverbs 18:21 states that "Death and life are in the power of the tongue"! Such a small part of the body, but so powerful! I want my tongue to speak life!

Just some thoughts from my heart, to yours. May your day be blessed and your heart be happy!

Ten years ago, my sister got sick. She was just really weak and tired, short of breath. She would get tired just walking from the car to the house. Little things really wore her out. She thought maybe she had bronchitis or some sort of bug, so she went to her doctor. He gave her some medicine and sent her on her way.

A day or so later, she was at a luncheon with the people from her work, when she couldn't breathe. She just couldn't get enough air. The lady she works with put her in her car and rushed her to the emergency room of our local hospital. When she got there, she was told she was in congestive heart failure.

What?! Congestive heart failure? Isn't that something that happens to old people? She was only 33 years old! She had been pretty healthy her whole life. Where was this coming from anyway?

Our local hospital sent her to a more specialized one an hour down the road that deals with cardiac problems. I was there the morning they did a catheterization to see if she had blockages or something causing the problem. I remember the doctor coming in to talk to my parents, my brother-in-law, and myself after the procedure. He told us there were no blockages, but that her heart was functioning at less than 10%. It was enlarged to about twice its normal size, and just stretched out like a rubber band that won't bounce back. He said there was really nothing much they could do and she would need a heart transplant...

Words like that really send you reeling. Heart transplant? My dad, the one who always fixed things for me and my sister when they were broken growing up, asked the doctor if there was nothing that she could do to strenghten her heart..he was trying to get some glimmer of hope. The doctor basically wasn't giving us any. My dad looked at him and said, "You do all you can do. We'll pray." The doctor said they would pray too.

And pray we did. Churches joined us all over in praying for my sister. I poured my heart out to God, asking him to please give my sister a miracle. You see, she isn't just my sister. She's my best friend.

She came back to church for the first time on Easter sunday that year, so weak she was hunched over when she walked. She plays piano at church, and we bought her an office chair with arms on it to sit at because she was too weak to hold her arms up to play. In the following weeks, she got back to playing the piano. Then she stopped using the chair and went back to using a bench. Then she got back up there and started singing with me again...something I love to do and still cherish. For her to have enough breath to do that was a miracle already.

Last year, she went back for her yearly check up, and the technician doing her heart study told her she had such a beautiful heart, she could be a heart model! You see, God isn't a stranger to healing hearts. He takes hearts of stone and turns them into hearts of flesh, and he takes broken ones and mends them. He took hers that was enlarged and not functioning right, and made it go back to normal size and normal function. She travels, she shops (my how she shops!), she sings..she loves life!

I could never thank God enough for the miracle that he has given us. I am so thankful for my sister. We share so many things that no one else will ever share. We keep praying for her. Last year her function was a little bit less than normal, but we are hoping that was just a variant of the reading, because we know God hasn't brought her this far to drop her now. He has truly worked a miracle in her life, and I want the world to know that miracles aren't just in the Bible. They still happen today. What a mighty God we serve!

So Happy Anniversary, sissy! I love you!