Beautiful song.

Love it!

more about "Beautiful song.", posted with vodpod

gratitude.

Send some rain, would You send some rain?
‘Cause the earth is dry and needs to drink again
And the sun is high and we are sinking in the shade
Would You send a cloud, thunder long and loud?
Let the sky grow black and send some mercy down
Surely You can see that we are thirsty and afraid
But maybe not, not today
Maybe You’ll provide in other ways
And if that’s the case . . .

We’ll give thanks to You
With gratitude
For lessons learned in how to thirst for You
How to bless the very sun that warms our face
If You never send us rain

Daily bread, give us daily bread
Bless our bodies, keep our children fed
Fill our cups, then fill them up again tonight
Wrap us up and warm us through
Tucked away beneath our sturdy roofs
Let us slumber safe from danger’s view this time
Or maybe not, not today
Maybe You’ll provide in other ways
And if that’s the case . . .

We’ll give thanks to You
With gratitude
A lesson learned to hunger after You
That a starry sky offers a better view if no roof is overhead And if we never taste that bread

Oh, the differences that often are between
What we want and what we really need

So grant us peace, Jesus, grant us peace
Move our hearts to hear a single beat
Between alibis and enemies tonight
Or maybe not, not today
Peace might be another world away
And if that’s the case . . .

We’ll give thanks to You
With gratitude
For lessons learned in how to trust in You
That we are blessed beyond what we could ever dream
In abundance or in need
And if You never grant us peace

But Jesus, would You please . . .

Gratitude by Nichole Nordeman

today’s thoughts…

Thoughts of today:

1. Eternity is defined as without beginning or end. Eternity is past, eternity is present, and eternity is future. We live in eternity with the Father.
2. I love the truth that I have been resurrected, I am being resurrected, and I will be resurrected. It is 3 fold – eternity in motion. Not only to come, but has come and is now. Thank you, Lord, for your resurrection power!
3. I played shuffle board last night for the first time…I think it might be my new favorite game.
4. A friend of mine said today, ‘I wish I had a personal assistant to take my stuff to the dry cleaners.’ My response was, ‘I wish I had a personal assistant to pass off all of my hard emotional problems to…’ – okay, not really because I think life is wonderful when emotions are involved…but lately, I just haven’t had the gusto to handle all the ones flowin’ my way. Yikes.

amen.

TRUTH be my food, in a land of barren lies.

Hold tight to deep roots, when all around dies.

A wasteland of naught, but life lives within.

Hold fast my dear soul, to the sunshine within.

Contemplating…

This is worth reading. A section from “New Seeds of Contemplation” by Thomas Merton.

I’d love to hear what others think about what he’s saying, so if you have any thoughts, please share .

“It would be sentimental folly to expect men to trust one another when they obviously cannot be trusted. But at least they can learn to trust God. They can bring themselves to see that the mysterious power of God can, quite independently of human malice and error, protect men unaccountably against themselves, and that He can always turn evil into good, though perhaps not always in a sense that would be understood by the preachers of sunshine and uplift. If they can trust and love God, Who is infinitely wise and Who rules the lives of men, permitting them to use their freedom even to the point of almost incredible abuse, they can love men who are evil. They can learn to love them even in their sin, as God has love them. If we can love the men we cannot trust (without trusting them foolishly) and if we can to some extent share the burden of their sin by identifying ourselves with them, then perhaps there is some hope of a kind of peace on earth, based not on the wisdom and the manipulations of men but on the inscrutable mercy of God…

What is the use of postmarking our mail with exhortations to “pray for peace” and then spending billions of dollars on atomic submarines, thermonuclear weapons, and ballistic missiles? This, I would think, would certainly be what the New Testament calls “mocking God” – and mocking Him far more effectively than the atheists do. The culminating horror of the joke is that we are piling up these weapons to protect ourselves against atheists who, quite frankly, believe there is no God and are convinced that one has to rely on bombs and missiles since nothing else offers any real security. Is it then that we are intent upon utterly destroying these people before they can destroy us? Even at the risk of destroying ourselves at the same time?

I do not mean to imply that prayer excludes the simultaneous use of ordinary human means to accomplish a naturally good and justifiable end. One can very well pray for a restoration of physical health and at the same time take medicine prescribed by a doctor. In fact, a believer should normally do both. And there would seem to be a reasonable and right proportion between the use of these two means to the same end.

But consider the utterly fabulous amount of money, planning, energy, anxiety and care which go into the production of weapons which almost immediately become obsolete and have to be scrapped. Contrast all this with the pitiful little gesture ‘pray for peace’ piously canceling our four-cent stamps! Think, too of the disproportion between our piety and the enormous act of murderous destruction which we at the same time countenance without compunction and without shame! It does not even seem to enter our minds that there might be some incongruity in praying to the God of peace, the God Who told us to love one another as He had loved us, Who warned us that they who took the sword would perish by it, and at the same time planning to annihilate not thousands but millions of civilians and soldiers, men, women, and children without discrimination, even with the almost infallible certainty of having the same annihilation for ourselves!

It may make sense for a sick man to ray for health and then take medicine, but I fail to see any sense at all in his praying for health and then drinking poison.

When I pray for peace I pray God to pacify not only the Russians and the Chinese but above all my own nation and myself. When I pray for peace I pray to be protected no only from the Reds but also from the folly and blindness of my own country. When I pray for peace, I pray no only that the enemies of my country may cease to want war, but above all that my own country will cease to do the things that make war inevitable. In other words, when I pray for peace I am not just praying that the Russians will give up without a struggle and let us have our own way. I am praying that both we and the Russians may somehow be restored to sanity and learn how to work out our problems, as best we can, together, instead of preparing for global suicide…

If men really wanted peace they would sincerely ask God for it and He would give it to them. But why should He give the world a peace which it does not really desire? The peace the world pretends to desire is really no peace at all.

To some men peace merely means the liberty to exploit other people without fear of retaliation or interference. To others peace means the freedom to rob others without interruption. To still others it means the leisure to devour the goods of the earth without being compelled to interrupt their pleasures to feed those whom their greed is starving. And to practically everybody peace simply means the absence of any physical violence that might cast a shadow over lives devoted to the satisfaction of their animal appetites for comfort and pleasure.

Man men like these have asked God for what they thought was ‘peace’ and wondered why their prayer was not answered. They could not understand that it actually was answered. God left them with what they desired, for their idea of peace was only another form of war. The ‘cold war’ is simply the normal consequence of our corrupt idea of a peace based on a policy of ‘every man for himself’ in ethics, economics and political life. It is absurd to hope for a solid peace based on fictions and illusions!

So instead of loving what you think is peace, love other men and love God above all. And instead of hating the people you think are warmakers, hate the appetites and the disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war. If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed – but hate these things in yourself, not in another.”

my best friend.

I have a best friend…

her name is Tracy.

She does special things for me all the time. On Monday, I received great news from my work. That evening, I found this on my bedside table…just a small note to tell me she was proud of me.

No one has a better best friend than me. I am so blessed.

I love my best friend.

i’m so blessed!

I would just like to say that my life is filled with INCREDIBLE people! I feel like the luckiest girl in the world…Why is God so good to me in this way? I’m not sure…but I love it and am so thankful.

favorite song of the month…

Instead by Madeleine Peyroux

Instead of feeling bad
Be glad you got somewhere to go
Instead of feeling sad
Be happy you’re not all alone
Instead of feeling low
Get high on everything you love
Instead of wastin’ time
Feel good ’bout what you are dreaming of

Instead of trying to win something you never understood
Just play the game you know eventually you will you both look good

It’s silly to pretend to have something you don’t own
Just let her be a woman and you’ll be her man

Instead of feelin’ broke
Buck up and get yourself in the black
Instead of losing hope
Touch up the things that feel out of whack
Instead of being old
Be young because you know you are
Instead of feeling cold
Let sunshine into your heart

Instead of acting crazy chasing things that make you mad
Keep your heart ahead, it’ll lead you back to what you have
With every step you are closer to the place you need to be
It’s up to you to let her love you sweetly

Instead of acting crazy chasing things that make you mad
Just keep your heart ahead, it’ll lead you back to what you have
With every step you are closer to the place you need to be
But it’s up to you to let her love you sweetly

Instead of feeling bad
Be glad you got someone to love
Instead of feeling sad
Be happy there’s a god above
Instead of feeling ‘lone
Remember you are never on your own
Instead of feeling sad
Be happy that she’s there at home
She’s waitin’ for you by the phone
So be glad she all your own

Get happy…
Watin’ for you by the telephone…

For the fear of dating.

I’ve been having a conversation with myself lately regarding how to meet new people…more specifically, people of the opposite gender. Here’s the question: How am I ever going to date anyone if I don’t know any single men? And how do I find those men without meeting new people? It may seem silly, but I really am perplexed about this process. So I’ve been asking myself and others how someone my age would go about meeting single men.

Of course, most people tell me it requires that I ‘get out more’. This definitely makes a lot of sense and I’m all for it. However, I don’t know what ‘get out more’ looks like. Does this mean I go into bars and sit there hoping someone will approach me? Does it mean I go to clubs and dance with random people hoping they’re thinking of more than getting in my pants? Should I join clubs and activities with the expectation that other single people my age will be involved as well and that they will also be looking to meet new people? Maybe I should get involved with the ‘singles’ at church, even though the idea of joining a singles group kinda makes me want to cringe. I’m not saying that any of these suggestions are bad or that I’m unwilling to try them, however, I can’t get past the idea that they make me feel put on display. And maybe that’s what I need to do…but for me, that feels super scary. I don’t want to be on display for people to look at. Thinking of it provokes the ‘fight or flight’ response (heavy emphasis on the flight…).

Another suggestion many people have made lately is to try online dating. I have been very opposed to this…very anti-online dating. But recently, I feel that my mindset is changing. (Does that just mean I’m getting desperate…I don’t know…).

I think actually that my mindset about dating in general is changing. I have a friend at work that I’ve been discussing the topic with at length. She is going through a similar pattern of thought, and so we have been on this verbal journey of what it means to date, what that looks like in the context of the church, how the church has taught us to believe what we do about dating, how unnatural it feels, and mostly, how scary it is.

Why am I so scared of it? What makes me want to run the other way at the idea of it, and yet, it is something I deeply desire. I want to get to know people – I want to be able to have a conversation with someone I just met and feel comfortable. I am not good at either. Trace tells me all the time that I am awkward when meeting new people…and I know I am. Why is that? I have many thoughts, but that’s for another post.

But right now I’m talking about dating…and how to meet new people. So, to the world of readers…any suggestions? Thoughts, advice, wisdom on how someone would go about meeting guys my age that aren’t already married? I welcome any thought because unfortunately, they aren’t showing up at my door.

Oh, lover…

Where in the world are you?