Communication Part II

Well I see in rereading what I wrote yesterday...I slid off topic.  Huh why am I not surprised! I tend to do that when I am feeling passionate about something.

What I was saddened about yesterday was the fact that my one grandson would find this group of people somehow worth looking up to. My grandson had posted something of interest to himself that he wanted to share with his friends on Facebook.  So I listened.  I guess I should say I tried to listen.  First of all it was very difficult to understand and there was a great deal of repetition of the same words over and over and over again.  And to me, they made no sense at all.  The first time or the thirty-first time.  Plus there was no enunciation, so that made it even more difficult to understand anything more than about three or four words.

Well I suppose there message wasn't that important to them to convey, because if it was important, perhaps they would have taken much more care in expressing themselves in a manner that would have been more comprehensible to more people, rather than to such a narrow audience.

Okay in all fairness I must say that there was music that I listened to in my younger days, I still listen to it on occasion, that my mother would say wasn't music at all.  It wasn't a symphony or an Italian opera, so to her it wasn't music.
In my own defense I must say, at least you could understand the words that were spoken and there was music and instruments not just boom, boom, boom....

Am I just getting old?  I have gotten to a point in my life that I really don't want to waste my time or words on nothingness.  I want to be doing something that will make a difference for someone in some way.  Like writing this blog.  I seriously hope that I touch some one some where with what I write here.  Today I am saying make your words count.  Don't let them be empty.  Have a purpose.  And if your not sure of what your purpose is, ask the Lord to direct your steps.  Ask the Lord rather than anyone else or anything else, the Lord is the only safe way to go.  Anyone else will have their own agendas to advance, whereas the Lord wants only for  your best to be seen and sent out into the world.

There is so much going on anymore and it is not all good.  However I am going to focus on the good.  It is to easy to constantly find fault.  Okay so I don't understand the "music" that my grandson listens to....my mother couldn't understand the music that I listened to.  However there is some wisdom acquired with age.  Spend your time in wise pursuits.  Think about what you are doing and what you expect to accomplish thru your pursuits.  If it does end in something good, than I would reconsider.  And don't let this guide just your doings, let this guide your vision, what you allow yourself to look at, what you choose to listen to.  Consider it all.  God is good....allow Him to guide you.

Time to be a blessing! Who will you bless today, and I am not asking this tritely I am asking this honestly, who will you bless today?

Communication

Do you ever consider our ability to communicate?  And what all goes into our communication.  There are the words themselves, and then you can throw in the pitch of our voices, then add the look on our faces, and lastly the way that we are standing or other body language.  Hmmmm!

Every morning I check out Facebook.  And this has become a very present way for us to communicate.  I can send out one message to all my children and there spouse's, in one feel swoop.  It is very handy for a busy person who still wants to stay in touch.

It is also a great way to (very lightly)  stay in tune with what our grandchildren are into on a daily basis.  But this is very lightly.

This morning when I looked at Facebook I saw something from one of my grandchildren, so I clicked on it.  Well I wasn't horrified, however I was saddened.
Now you may be curious as to why I was saddened and so I will communicate this to you.  I said earlier that there is a lot more that goes into our communication skills, and I do not make this statement lightly, than just mere words.
I know that today it is the thing for a certain section of our society to walk around with there pants just about falling down, and pretty boxers hanging out and showing a whole lot more than is needed. And if it is warm enough let's do the previous and not wear a shirt.  Now I suppose that to a young women or perhaps even a female child, this is probably a "turn on" why is this whole lifestyle accepted by these children's parents?  To me it says, I am lazy and just don't care about anything at all.  (And so much more.)
I just can't see it!  My one daughter is living in SC, she is not wealthy, and she has several children(5), that she does a very good job taking care of.  And one thing that I can tell you is that she will, only occasionally fall into the slang of her peers.  And I am extremely thankful for this.  She is as bright as any of my children and probably brighter than most.  I have always been a little sad that she didn't further her education, because I really truly feel that she would have made a great psychologist or at least a therapist.  Anyway back to her communication skills.  To hear her speak you would think that she has had time in college, or I should probably say what we used to hear from our college graduates.  I think people have just gotten lazy and do not bother to speak clearly and enunciate.  To me this is very sad.  I think I can also equate this with the lack of time spent reading good quality books,  the classics.  This is just not done, much, any longer.  Well for me I will continue to read the greatest book ever to be published, the Bible, and I will continue to read it in the King James version.  Believe it or not I do believe this keeps my ability to communicate concisely, sharp.

Okay I have introduced you to one of my pet peeves....I guess I am getting older and less tolerant.  I will have to work on this.  I do know it is time to get ready for work and to find someone to bless.  How about you?

Church 3/3/13 continued

Did you read Luke 15, to find out about this wonderful father in the story of the Prodigal Son?

Yesterday we ended at the point were the younger son had just returned from his escapades...and Daddy was so glad to see his son.  Do you remember what the father did?  He said to his servant, bring me the best robe, put a ring on his finger, sandals on his feet and kill the fatted calf!

And what was the first thing the son did?  He apologized to his father, he told his father I am not fit to be called your son, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight....I am not worthy.

Every Easter when we have the Easter celebrations at church, the one thing that I am always very much aware of, is the fact that we as a people, myself especially, are so completely unworthy of the amazing grace that our Father has extended to us.  Wow.  Isn't God wonderful?  Okay I have digressed again....

So the father has dressed his youngest son and now the older son is on the scene...and he is feeling kind of like he has been slighted...he has feelings, I am sure of jealousy, distrust, and perhaps even disgust.

Hey he thinks...I have been here all along, I have worked hard, and you, father, have never killed the fatted calf for me....what is up with that?  He wasn't a happy camper...he was basing his relationship with his father on his little brothers messing up.
Instead he should have based his relationship with his father on the love that he had with his father and the love he received from his father.  His brother messed up, but that wasn't any part of the older brothers plight.  His father still loved him.

How may times do we base our success on other peoples failures?  Does this ever happen in our families? Or where you work?  I can guarantee that it does!  I can look at the families that I am familiar with and I can see where it does and were it isn't happening.

The key is to rear your family in such away that this doesn't happen.  Make sure that your children are very secure in themselves and in their relationships with both mom and dad and especially with their heavenly Daddy, and in order to do this make sure you are a good and godly model for children to mimic.

Well it is time to find someone to bless and to take a quick picture out my front door.  So here you go and have a wonderful and blessed day!

Out the front door at 6:30AM on Wednesday march 6, 2013

Church on 3/3/13

Well before we get to what I learned on Sunday I thought I would share with you the current dish clothe I am making....these are my therapy if you would.  I really enjoy making them, but I also really enjoy giving them.  I think that is the most fun part of the making, is knowing I can give them away.  When I buy yarn for dish clothes, I generally buy the cotton yarn that comes on a cone.  So I end up with lots of clothes that are the same color...oh well...they aren't all staying in my kitchen so what does it matter.

And here are a few more that I made off of the same cone.  Okay so you all now know that this is my therapy...I find this to be very calming... they are dish clothes so it doesn't matter if you make a mistake.  And I use them to lean new stitches.  This is a great way to learn, at least this is the way I practice new stitches.


Alright this past Sunday at church I learned many things. One of which is that you can not run in heels.  Sometimes in the beginning of our service there are goodies given away, and this time I was the recipient of a two CD set by Scott Schang titled Living in a Family Culture.  I think this is going to go in my car so I can listen to it.  I have found this is a great way  to learn...it's quiet and I can really hear what is being said to me.  So I received my CD gift and then the sermon, which Pastor Don titled, "All in the Family."
The sermon was about the Prodigal Son.  Wow.  A totally new approach to these verses.  Did you know that just because you are born into a family, this doesn't mean that you are entitled to anything.  Although if you asked, I believe that most people would feel a sense of entitlement.  Why?  We didn't earn it, we didn't pay for our parents home, we didn't pay for their car's or their boats or invest so wisely.... what makes most people feel that the family estate belongs to them?  Perhaps you have gone off and lived your life your way and have had nothing much to do with your family.  And say your parents got to be really close to someone else.  Maybe these other people are more deserving than are you!  But I digress.  Pastor Don did touch on entitlement, but he didn't hit us over the head with it.

Do you know that the story of the Prodigal Son is not really about the son...it is more about the very loving and forgiving father.  Now with this in mind, how about rereading the verses in Luke 15.  It will really give you a different point of view.
When the youngest son decided to leave the family farm, he said to his father, give to me my portion.  So the father divided the farm between the two boys, even though the older son wasn't looking for his share, this is what the father did.  What made this boy think that he was going to be the 50% owner of his fathers farm?  Tradition?  I would say.  However this doesn't necessarily apply today.  I am not sure, I know a little about what has transpired with my own dis-functional family, but frankly I am not sure that that is what would transpire in a "normal" family.  So the baby went out and completely spent all his money, he got a job, slopping the pigs on someone else's farm and he found that the left over corn cobs, mind you, they were left over from the pigs, looked appetizing to him because he was so hungry.  Have you ever been that hungry?  It is not fun to be even a little hungry...we are so spoiled as a people.  We, for the most part, have no idea, what it is like, to be really really hungry.
So this boy decides...why am I doing this, I can go home and be a servant for my father, way he would think his father would allow him to come back as a servant, I am not sure.  So he went home and his father, who had been watching for his return, ran across the field, when he realized this was his son that had left.  And he hugged him and hugged him.  This doesn't look to me to be a father that is going to bring his son back into the family as a servant...I think not.  This boy will be coming back as a full fledged son.
Now we will continue on this tomorrow morning or maybe later today, I am not sure.

Are you going to get snow today....we probably are...I am very excited...I can't wait...we haven't had a descent snow in a couple years!  Yippy!

You know it...go be a blessing!

In Retrospect.....

Do you never sit down quietly and just let the Lord speak to you and thru you?

Well that is what I am going to do this morning.

How was your weekend?  And yes this question is asked to honestly want to know how was your weekend...I am aware that there are times when someone asks this question, but their main purpose is not to find out how your weekend was....but rather an opportunity to tell you what was great about theirs.   Self indulgent people are not my favorite.

Since I can not hear about your response I will tell you briefly of my weekend.  My weekend starts, these days on Friday morning, rather than Friday evening, because my week has been temporarily shortened.  Which is really okay with me.  It is giving me opportunity to do some things that I wouldn't ordinarily have the opportunity to do.  Like go to church and offer my services...whatever may need done I will happily do. Now this past Friday...was tad different..I spent time on my blog and then I did a bunch of stuff on my computer that I really needed to get done...home running type stuff, family finances...not my favorite thing to do, but something that is necessary. Cleaned up my kitchen a bit and did some knitting.
On Saturday Tim got up and went to the men's breakfast at church, I got up had my tea and wrote a longer than usual blog...and then I thought ...I haven't had waffles for a while...so I made waffles....big, huge, awful mistake....my body has gotten so used to having oatmeal with some cinnamon and coconut oil, and blueberries that I felt so miserable from putting this other stuff into me....I will not do this again!  I felt horrible...I had NO energy to do anything...and that made me feel even worse...because there were things I wanted to do that day.  Like go to my one grandson's championship wrestling match, which he won.....Yay Ryan...he is only nine and just nine, but he won his weight class title.  His Pappy was there.  Thank you God for that.  I stayed home, and it wasn't until later, after Tim had left, that I actually had the energy to get some things accomplished, that I needed to get accomplished.  Like I made a pumpkin roll...we really like them.  And they aren't that bad for us to eat....one thing I need to find out about making them is, I use regular white sugar.  I think I need to start using raw sugar in the things that I make.  I wonder, is brown sugar bleached first and then is molasses added to it?  I don't know, I will have to find this out.

On Sunday Tim and I went to church and after words we went to a spaghetti supper at church to help raise money for a new stove at a homeless shelter down in the York, Pa area.  That was quite good.  We then stopped and spent a short amount of time with my friend Barb and her husband Buzz.  Didn't want to stay to long...Buzz needs his time with his family.  I told you a little bit about these friends the other day.  Such a blessing to me....

Well it is Monday morning and I need to get a move on...time to get ready for my short week...and I will find someone to bless...how about you?

Blessings

Does God bless you?

                 Do your parents bless you with the blessings of God?  

                                  Do you bless your friends with the blessings of God?

Theses are three things that I want to look at this morning.  

The first one...does God bless you.  Every morning that you get out of bed, you have been blessed by God.   Every breathe that you take is a blessing from God.  When I came to know God as  my Savior and I asked Jesus to reside within me.  I was totally washed over by an amazing sense of peace and calm.  Now you may say that I am being redundant by using these two words to describe the way I felt and to this day still feel.

The peace that I felt was a gift from God, it was a comfort and stillness within me, within my soul, knowing that even if I made mistakes that I would always have this presence and knowledge that God was with me.... if I would just be still for a moment and listen for Jesus to speak.

The calm that I felt was as a result of the peace that I had received for Jesus.

Yesterday I wrote about "buttons" those nasty little rascals...I have to say for the most part, during my day, as I go thru my days, I am a calm person.  I spend time in the word, I listen to Christian music...I sing Christian music, I hum Christian music, I whistle Christian music.  As long as I keep my eye on Jesus I seem to be able to keep those button pushing rascals away...when I do not...oh boy...I just open myself up for those buttons to be pushed.

The Bible says: 

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

New King James Version (NKJV)

¹⁶ Rejoice always, ¹⁷ pray without ceasing, ¹⁸ in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

This is one of my absolutely favorite verses and one that I want to live by every moment of every waking part of my day.

Now let's move on to the next part for today.  Do your parents bless you with the blessings of God?  This brings to mind something I have almost always said to my children when they went out the door each day and sometimes a couple times a day.  I would tell my children, "be careful."  I could have been saying God bless you because that is essentially what I meant...hmmm..now thinking back I should have said,"God Bless you!" Do you know where that saying came from when someone sneezed?  It was thought that evil spirits could enter the body when someone sneezed.  Hence, God bless you!  My children when they first learned to drive would get upset with me when I would tell them this...I think they thought that I was doubting their abilities behind the wheel.  What they didn't realize, was that I doubted the abilities of other drivers out there, and that I wanted them to be careful of those others. So if you are a parent don't make my mistake, tell your children God bless you, when they go out the door, if this is what you mean, rather than, be careful.  
What other ways do our parents bless us?  If your parents are believers then they are blessing their children by walking with God. And by constantly showing their children their walk.  For this the Bible says:
Proverbs 22:6

New King James Version (NKJV)

⁶ Train up a child in the way he should go,
And when he is old he will not depart from it.

Children learn by emulating there elders.  So be a good model.  This is probably the greatest blessing you can bestow on your children from God.

The last thought to examine for today is do you bless your friends...and maybe we should expand on this a bit to include the people with whom you are generally in contact with through out your days.  Like your boss, your coworkers...the people at Rutter's or Sheetz's, these are some of our local gas stations/convenience stores.  Pastor Lori (Pastor's Don Wolabaugh's wife)will occasionally pay for someone else's gas or she might pay for someone else's order when in line at Wendy's or Micky D's...people are just so blessed by this.  This is truly being a blessing...we are to be the hands and feet of Jesus and this is surely one way to bless those with whom we are in contact.

Do you jog?  If you do, how about praying for the people that you pass along the way...or for the people within the homes that you pass.

This may seem a little odd to some of you...and I didn't really have the best relationship with my mother, but I would frequently come home from school as a child and my mother would either be on her way to the hospital or in the process of leaving the house to then go to the hospital or at the hospital already.

So as my response to this I pray for whoever may be involved when I hear a siren...doesn't matter if it's a police siren, or an ambulance, or a fire truck.  They immediately jump to the front of my prayer line.

Anyway back to blessing your friends...if my daughter where to read this today she might have some different thoughts about this....but that is her story.  I have a very dear friend who is dealing with a very sever situation.  Her husband is slowly passing away.  He is in the end stages of a very nasty cancer, that was only just recently diagnosed.  This is a tough situation.  And I am trying to be the best friend to her, and to him, as I can be.  She has been an amazing blessing to me and I doubt that she even knows it.  So how can I bless her more? I don't know right off the top of my head but I am sure of one thing, I well continue to try.

I have another friend that lives over in the Reading area, this women I have kind of lost track of but she is very busy as am I, and if you want to maintain a friendship you will have to work at it.  It won't just happen.  So if you have someone in your life...a really good and true friend, cultivate it because really good and quality friendships are really hard to come by.  And remember, just because your friend doesn't agree with you all the time, this doesn't mean they aren't a good friend, perhaps they are just being really honest with you, and the fact of the matter may be that you are wrong...hmmm...something to consider.

Well I hope that I may have conveyed a small portion of wisdom today.  If I have let me know, I would really like to get to know, who the people are out there that are taking the time to read my ramblings...and don't forget...Be a blessing!

BUTTONS

Buttons...do you have them?  I do!  I have them on the little jacket that I have on right now.  I also have them in other forms, as do most people, and almost on a daily basis I have to deal with them...ya know I have really enjoyed going thru the last few books of the Bible with you, but I have missed this...this time of just speaking to you about the ordinary things of everyday life, that have such a huge effect on our everyday lives...

And I have also just had an epiphany, I am sure that the devil has been working hard to try to find things to bother me with...and it really must be a struggle for him, because, for the most part I answer most difficulties with prayer. 

 While driving my car, if one of the warning lights comes on, I pull off the road, turn off my car and say a little prayer.  Hey our God is omnipotent and omniscient, so then I ask you, why wouldn't he be able to correct whatever may be wrong with my car? I then turn my car back on, and off I go.  Now I know there have got to be people out there that are po-poing my thoughts but this is actually one, just one of the ways that God works in my life...God is so good.

Back to my epiphany...I just had a realization that one of the places that I can defiantly point my finger to, in an area of my life where I allow, and yes this is a conscious choice, where I allow the devil a foothold if you would, is my buttons...and I am sure that there are plenty of people out there that have this identical problem.

When I feel I have suffered, and I use this word, quite loosely, an injustice to my person, I can sort of feel that the hair on the back of my neck sort of rise up, as I endure whatever this little injustice may be...And this is a place where instead of reacting carnally I need to immediately pray to Jesus...well I am going to put that in practice immediately.

So, and I would really like you to think about this, what are your buttons?  What lights you up...and remember this image...the next time someone presses your button or buttons, imagine this as an off/on switch...when the button is pushed will you exude the bright white light of Jesus, or will you exude the red and orange light of the devil?  Hmmm...I know what color light I want to exude, now I must just do it.

You know I am sure, that once a problem is recognized, it is much easier to deal with. But please be assured that you will not deal with this unless you ask Jesus for His help.  So once you perceive a difficulty in your personal walk with Jesus make sure that you ask Him to help you to deal with this button.

Then you can spend a bit of time watching for that next button, to raise it's ugly little head.  We will call it ugly, because, let's face it, sin is ugly, but we will call it little because with Jesus nothing is impossible and all things can be conquered.

Now every time I turn on my iPad/android I see something and I want to share this picture with you all...I am working on uploading this picture to a place were I can get to here...and it is fighting me...so I just asked God for His aid...TaDa...actually i went to my regular computer and did it...have to be honest with you guys...that is very important!

I know this will be a little hard to see, but just look at that little face.  Studying that toy...this little guys is such a joy to me...and on this note...

Go into the world and be a blessing for Jesus!