Living Simply
Amazing! This run by the Seattle Seahawks player Lynch is absolutely fantastic!
This shows what real teamwork can do — in business, marriage, personal relationships and as a church.
1 Corinthians 12:2 Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. (NIV translation)
 |
| Southview Seventh-day Adventist Church in Minneapolis, MN |
We entered through the front door. Since there were no greeters, we assume most people came in through the side door.
 |
| Front Door, Southview SDA Church, Minneapolis, MN |
 |
| Side door, Southview SDA Church, Minneapois, MN |
 |
| Sidewalk to side door of Southview SDA |
The wood in the church was dark. This is a chandelier that hung from the ceiling.
 |
| Stained glass window at Southview SDA Church in Minneapolis, MN |
The stained glass windows were pretty.
This church reminded me of the one I left in Seattle although the one in Seattle had streams of light that came in and the wood was lighter.
The sermon was on remembering the poor. The leaders, including the Pastor, were energetic and kept my attention — a good thing.
 |
| Near Calgary, Alberta, Canada |
In the January 2011 edition of O, The Oprah Magazine, Oprah says “Once you clarify your purpose for doing something, the way to do it becomes clear.”
I have personally found that to be true. It’s easy to go through life with no direction. Nothing really gets accomplished. But when you define what your purpose is then your mind takes the steps necessary to make that purpose a reality. Your heart follows and anticipates the accomplishment.
Sometimes there are people who go away and we don’t see them for awhile. We wonder what happened to them, if they’re still alive. Sometimes all it takes is for someone to reach out and bring them back into our arms.
Listening to a spiritual podcast by Joyce Meyer, I was reminded of my humanness as she talked about anger.
Sometimes we get angry at people and we hold onto it as if our anger is going to somehow make them change. Yet it doesn’t. It only changes us by filling us with resentment and sometimes hate.
A phrase that Joyce Meyer used to describe it is “we’re still eating poison hoping they will die.” The poison is the anger. And instead of them dying it is us who slowly die by hanging on to things that should have been let go of long ago.
The Battlefield of the Mind: Winning the Battle in Your…
And here’s a blog from my friend William on how Christ responded to his persecutors when crucified. Instead of anger, love and forgiveness. I pray that will be the way I respond to the “little” things in my life that I get angry about.
One of my favorite speakers is Joyce Meyer. She reminds me of myself in so many ways. She always talks about things that happen in her life and about being practical. Her moods used to sway back and forth just like mine.
Recently she spoke about being upset with her husband and when they went to bed she lay way on the other side of the bed so as not to touch him. Lying in bed, she was cold but felt too much pride to reach for the blanket. Meanwhile, her husband slept peacefully on the other side. Which made her even madder.
I laugh at this shared experience but remember an identical one in my own life. Quite stubborn and proud.
I’ll bet as humans we all share similar experiences but are afraid to talk about them for fear other people may think we’re not normal. I have yet to figure out what normal is.
But I do know that the more I’ve trusted in God, the less proud and selfish I’ve become.
Power Thoughts: 12 Strategies to Win the Battle of the Mind
People make such a fuss about the “new year.”
In reality, every day that we wake up is the start of a new year. Every day we have choices. We can:
Choose to be kind or unkind
Choose to eat healthy or unhealthy
Choose to be productive or lazy
Choose to clean or be messy
Choose to live or die, physically and spiritually
It’s all up to me what I choose and how I live the first day of the rest of my life.
Today I received a blog from a friend on worry and anxiety. It touched my heart so I thought I’d share it with you.
Click here to read it.
When I would go hiking, I used to worry that a bear would creep up and maul me to death. It never happened. It has happened to other people but I have not been one of them. How much time I spent worrying over something that MIGHT have happened instead of enjoying the walk that I was on.
I hope you enjoy my friend’s blog.
I’m not a fan of going to see movies at the theatre. I’ve always felt it was a waste of money. However, having company during the holidays, we went to see a movie called True Grit.
I had seen the original 1968 movie on TV when I was younger and never paid much attention to the word “grit” which means firmness of character.
The story is about a 14 year old girl whose father is killed and she hires the best U S Marshall to avenge her father’s murderer so the family can have justice.
I was surprised when the opening line of the movie started with a a Scripture from the Bible found in Proverbs 28:1 that says “The wicked flee when no man pursueth.”
The proverb set the background to the movie. When the music started the familiar tune I’ve heard in church services many times played “Leaning, leaning, safe and secure from all alarms. Leaning, leaning, leaning on the everlasting arms.”
Leaning On The Everlasting Arms
Early in the movie, the girl states “You must pay for everything in this world. Nothing is free but the grace of God.” Amen to that!
I wasn’t expecting to catch glimpses of Scripture throughout the movie but again the girl quotes from Ezekiel Chapter 37 when she states how she feels during one scene — “as dried bones.”
The movie ends with the same classic hymn “Leaning On the Everlasting Arms.”
Much like the real world, the young girl who seeks revenge suffers physically for that journey in her life.
Overall it was a good movie although I do not enjoy people shooting other people nor bloodshed.
In reading today’s devotional from the book Conflict and Courage by Ellen White, it reminds me of a truth that seems clear to me but perhaps not to everyone. The truth that the Bible is true, there is a Creator God and that our lives are transformed when we embrace Him.
I have to wonder why God would allow a book such as the Bible to be propagated in His name.
EW states it this way: “It is a subject of wonder to many that inspired history should narrate in the lives of good men facts that tarnish their moral characters.”
Most of the stories are of seemingly uncaring humans who struggle with temptations and fall time after time. Selfish humans. Lying humans. Adulterous humans. Unforgiving humans. Murdering humans. Humans who are not a good witness to those God wants to reach.
Or are they? If you want to understand the world of a pig you should get in the mud and roll in it with him. I’m not calling humans pigs here — just a parallel.
When the first humans of the world, Adam and Eve, decided to disobey God’s instruction and follow their own hearts, the rest of creation in harm’s way and sent this world into a spiral that it has not recuperated from.
So here we are. Weak fragile humans with the same inadequacies as the Bible people we read about.
What makes the difference is how some of the Bible people respond to a God calling out to them and how God responds back to them.
I have always marveled when reading the story of Adam and Eve because after their failure in obedience, God comes to them and asks “Where are you?” fully knowing where they were, fully understanding what they had done and yet fully loving them.
This is the behavior we can emulate when those around us fail us. We may know of their misdeeds and their weaknesses and yet fully love them.
Yet we can only emulate this behavior if it exists in us. And it can only exist in us if we have embraced the God who is perfect and who made us to be like Him.
And there’s where the rubber meets the road.
Whether the Bible is true or fiction should not depend on whether people can see the character of God in our lives. There is plenty of nature and science that speaks to the creative power of a God in heaven. However, weak and fragile though we be, the best witness we can have to those who can’t comprehend what all the fuss is about — a God or no God — is to allow His character to live in us.
When people see the transformation in my life perhaps they will look up to the heavens and say “surely there must be a God.”
