Filed under: Uncategorized
For some unknown reasons I am dealing with spammers. They have posted comments relating to their websites. All kinds of websites, including porn. I am so discussed with it all I am thinking of deleting this blog. I also think they have infected my site with a virus. Since I am pretty illiterate about blogs I know of no way to stop it except erase. But they keep coming. So what do I do?
I saw one of those signs today and realized how many times my opinons and feelings have changed about it.
When I was a youngster and traveling with my family I wasn’t sure what it meant. Was God just up ahead and we were going to meet him? I hadn’t attended any church at that young age but I did know there was a God. I would ask my parents what that sign meant and never got an adequate answer to my question. At least not one I understood.
As an adolescent I began to attend church and during times of traveling at that period in my life, the sign made me scared. Was I going to heaven soon? Is that how I was going to meet God?
As I reached adulthood and fell away from not only the church but God as well, I scoffed at those signs. To believe such a thing was preposterous and whoever was planting those signs along the highways and roads was obviously ignorant.
Many years later as I have become reacquainted with God and found a lovely church that has kind and wonderful people who attend, I think so differently. So today as I passed one of those signs I smiled. And of course that made me think of the journey I have taken to be at this point in my life. Through some almost unbelievable situations and problems, I have come to trust God so much that now I know not only what that sign means but that I have the faith to smile when I see it.
A wonderful lady that I go to Church with and I have discussed the differences between being raised in the church or coming to Christianity later in life. She was raised in the Church and I came in late.
So what is the difference? She says that she doesn’t ever remember NOT being in Church. She has attended all her life. She expressed that she felt it would be harder for those who start going to Church later in life and I have to agree with her. It is still hard for me to not do some of the things I use to do in my former life. Such as cursing. I have gotten it down to a minimum and don’t use the worst of the words I use to say. But I still utter a few of those not so bad ones once in awhile.
One Sunday after I had only been attending the church a few months, during worship service it was hymn time. I grabbed the hymnal and started to look up the one we would be singing. The singing started before I could find the page. Then I dropped the hymnal on the floor.
It made a big thunk.
Immediately out came a cuss word. Thankfully the singing was loud enough that the word didn’t reverberate throughout the congregation. I looked to the pew behind me and a young man standing there with a hymnal in his hands had this big 0 on his mouth. I was soooo embarrrassed.
It is still a topic of converstaion. I get teased about it once in awhile. But that is the price I have to pay for cursing in God’s house. It sure wasn’t funny to me at the time. Thankfully the passage of time does make mistakes easier to handle.
My mother use to call it the green-eyed monster. I haven’t heard that phrase in years but it is always the one that comes to mind when I notice someone is being envious of others.
Jealousy has been around since Eve took her first breath. Money and possessions and the lack thereof seem to be one of the most prevalent of jealousies. I want and then I want some more. It has long been said that money can’t by happiness. It can buy you all the possessions you desire, but if you don’t possess the qualities that make you a good, kind and giving person, what good are all those *things*?
I heard on the news the other day that the middle class is shrinking and losing it’s battle to stay middle class. Most are tumbling farther and farther down the economic ladder and only a few are still reaching the elevated status they so yearn for. Credit card debt is at an all time high, as is bankruptcy.
So many people live in the world of want. And generations of those people have created children who become determined to have all they desire, no matter the cost.
Most of us would like to have more of the green stuff. I know I sure would. But you can’t take money with you when you leave this earthly world and I doubt many have grieved over or missed loved ones because of their money.
Filed under: faith
Those U turns save our sanity at times, don’t they? U turns allow us to get where we need to go when we get lost. Getting lost is a common occurance for me. Even if I have been somewhere several times I will still get lost.
It makes me think about how God allows us the same courtesy. When we get lost he allows us to take a U turn that will take us back to Him. As Christians we do try and not take the wrong turn and get lost, but we are not perfect. Thankfully we are not called to be perfect.
So many in the bible made mistakes, some pretty horrible mistakes. I think of the crucifixion and how almost every one of the Disciples deserted Jesus. But afterwards they spread the word of his love to many places. That was their U turn.
We all stumble, but thankfully most of us get back up, dust ourselves off and make the turn that puts us back where we belong.
