Some days... and what makes a difference--

 Philippians 3:13  Brethren, I count not myself yet to have laid hold: but one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before, 14)  I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

 Solitaire, a game of aggravation.  Maybe you're so close, but no dice, you just do not have the right card at the right time.  In those moments you realize you just can't pull it off. Or maybe you lay out your cards, and it doesn't pan out at all... so the best thing to do is close it up. Does your life ever seem like one of those games of solitaire?

Are you like the popular saying, "I'm always a day late, and a dollar short".   By the end of the pay period I'm stretching things to make ends meet.  Maybe it's the same for you.  Maybe it's money, maybe it's time, or it might be that your life goes from one crisis to another.

During his sermon, a preacher related a situation that happened while he was attempting to counsel a family.  The mother had called him during a problem with one of her grown children.  He went a number of times to try helping them.  During one of his last visits, when he entered their living room, there they sat watching a soap opera, and it occurred to him--that's what their lives are like, a living soap opera.  They were always having a crisis.

I have witnessed the times when children come to visit, they keep their moms busy by going from one table, to another surface, then on to another place pulling items down, or off of that area.  The mother will run behind putting things back where they were, only to keep going all around the room, picking up after their child... 

What is wrong with this picture?  It is similare to the game of Solitaire, being a day late, dollar short, or even making your life into something that resembles a soap opera.

The last case is easily remedied.  Instead of following around after the child, do what they did in the old Western movies...cut them off at the pass.  That child is smart enough to figure out how to control adults, so you must be smarter than the two year old (or how ever old the child is).  First, put the child--gently but firmly-- out of commission, be it chair time, play pen time, or some form of time out.  Then put the mess aright.  There needs to be an adult in control of the situation.

In the soap opera case it would be similar.  Identify just what is causing the crisis, and cut it off at the pass.  If it is a person tell them they are no longer in control of your life; their behaviour is not going to be rewarded.  Time for them to move on and grow up.  If it's your own behaviour--tell yourself the same thing.  Time to grow up and move on.


If your life keeps turning into a game of solitaire that won't go anywhere...again analyze what the reasons may be.  Is it your own personal habits?  Is it things that happen and take you unaware?  Never have enough money?  Is your money spent on 'doodads'?  Things you want, don't need, and are counter productive...  What about not enough time?  Well, the same can go for time.  What do you spend your time on?  There are time-suckers that you don't need, and they are usually counter productive as well.  My grandmother used to say 'We work first, then we play'.   Not enough resources?  Sometimes with a little ingenuity, a little thinking outside the box even that can be overcome.  First you need to identify what is holding you back.  Sit down, be honestly critical, write down what you would like to see happen for good in your life--your analysis is a key here.  Ask yourself--in this game...what do I really need?  What do I really need to win; what do I need to be my highest self, and ultimately to be happy.
Three things I've learned this week are: decide who you are, and who you are going to be-- in all kinds of situations, aim high, don't let Satan control your life through the life of others, or through your own short comings--cut him off at the pass.

Romans 8:28  And we know that to them that love God all things work together for good, even to them that are called according to his purpose.
Hallelujah, what a Savior!

Somethings That Just Happen

The pilot is doing stunts during an air show.  Suddenly a wing just breaks away, falling to the earth.   The audience can't believe what it is seeing--a one wing plane still airborne.  Several at the show keep repeating, 'Where's his wing?  Where's his left wing? ...they know what must happen...or will it?  My reaction was an oh,no!, and a sinking feeling of something cataclysmic about to happen.  The next few seconds passed more than quickly.  The plane had been climbing straight up--up--up, suddenly the wing is gone.  What the pilot does next was short of amazing.  He takes the small plane into a series of twists, upside downs and arounds, and brings the plane around so that it is sideways, its one wing parallel to, and skimming just above the runway, quickly he flips it onto its wheels, and-- just short of a miracle in my eyes, brings it into a safe landing right side up on its wheels.  I can't believe that it was a planned emergency, a planned thrill getting technique, but it all happened so fast, and so professional it appeared as normal as a peanut butter and jelly.  I doubt the pilot thought, 'just another day, just another show' as he threw back the cock pit cover.


I Thessalonians 5:1  "But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. 2)  For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night."


I can think back on any number of times that I have gone about my daily work always assuming it was an everyday day.  On the way home one day, I pulled up to the stop light intending to stop at the library before heading home, but I keep hearing a rattling sound coming from our van.  Instead of the library I drive down a couple of blocks to where my husband works.  He examines the van and...the only thing holding the front tire on is two lug nuts.  In another incident, we are driving slowly to pull into the drive way when a back passenger tire falls off and rolls into the ditch.  And then there is the time I hit a patch of black ice, spin around a couple of times in the middle of the road before a tire catches on the pavement.  When we come about we were going the same direction we started from...as a semi and several cars are barreling at us from the opposite direction.

There have been other such happenings, narrow escapes, and some may say we have been lucky, but...

While living in this world things happen.  This life will not last forever.  Many young people think they're invincible. They are too young to die.   They have many more years so, careful?  That's for someone else.  The older people get they push thoughts of mortality away from their consciousness.  That's still for someone else.  Push those thoughts away, but there is something people of older generations knew that we apparently don't remember.

Times and seasons, "But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write..." 
Some things seem harsh, but at a point they set us free.  When my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer, and only a year to live, my sister and I were faced with what to do?  How to approach the subject of death, funerals, of the ultimate real end?  What to say...so many things that concerned us--and mother.  A friend of my husband and I, as a funeral director before he became a preacher had seen too many people come to the end of life not prepared.  There was no one better to ask what to do.
Approach it by telling her, we know you are terminal.  Sister and I are concerned with what you want for funeral arrangements.  Tell us what are your wishes--that's all we want is to honor what you want. 
And that's what we did for mother.  We were free to be honest.  No one beat around the bush, no one changed wording in order to sound palatable, it was what it was. People used to know that life was like that, like a vapor.  Here today, but tomorrow?
James 4:14  "Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. "
In our modern age our lives are no more secure than anyone else in history, yet we live as if we are cats with not just nine lives, but a thousand and nine lives.
"For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night."
Just as the pilot in the stunt plane may have thought when he started his show, 'just another day, just another show', or the many times I started out my day thinking 'just another everyday, day'-- there come those times when we are made aware that each day is precious.  The time and the season to admit none of us are immortal is today. Our times and seasons can come to an end quite abruptly, and with out warning--like a thief in the night.
People have been taught that there is no God.  We hear it often from people who believe they are intelligent, but just because they believe themselves to be smart doesn't make it so, nor does it make it right about God either.  There have been many many more (and much more intelligent) people who believe there is a God than these other self-proclaimed experts. 
They pretend that science supports their theories, but true science supports that there is a supreme being, it does not support evolution.  There has never been proof of evolution.  No fossil record, nothing to give credence to that theory--only self-important people with loud voices trying to drown out the truth.

2Thessalonians 2:10  "and with all deceit of unrighteousness for them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. 11)  And for this cause God sendeth them a working of error, that they should believe a lie: 12)  that they all might be judged who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness."
These people don't love or seek the truth, therefore they find what they are looking for: a lie.  They are seeking unrighteousness, and that is what they find.  Their pleasure is in unrighteousness, and their purpose is to take as many souls with them to destruction as they can, because...
Because if there is a God then they will be subject to Him, and they want to be their own gods, but...
But the next thought is, what if--they are wrong?  What if, as the Bible tells us in: Hebrews 9:27  "And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:" there is a day of reckoning?  What happens when these sinners come to die?  What if they find themselves at the judgment?  Even the very same judgment they deny there will be, before the very same God they deny exists...what happens then?  Eternity is a very long time to spend in the company of the devil, his demons, and souls of the  people you would not have wanted to spend your lifetime with.  Whether you believe it, or not will make no difference to the outcome, and I'm very sure it is not the time in one's existence to be saying, 'just surprise me'.  We want surprises to be pleasant, don't we...

 Matthew 25:41  Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:
--Everlasting fire (hell), a prepared place for prepared beings.  Not some place you want to prepare to stay for eternity.