You know that favorite cliché when traveling, “Are we there yet?” Well, what about in our lives—are we there yet? Are we happy and content yet with our lives? Or are we still waiting, withholding enjoying life, until we arrive at some destination in our lives? You know, like when someone says, “Well, I’ll be happy when I get a new job,” or “get a new car,” or “get a new house,” or “get married,” or “have kids,” or “retire,” or when “this or that” happens. All we are doing is putting off enjoying life until the next “this or that” happens when we are supposed to enjoy life now. If we put off enjoying life until tomorrow, we may not ever enjoy life because tomorrow never comes; we only live in today.

A post from a good friend of mine this week on Facebook really challenged and inspired me.  It was a great post.  One of those posts where you know you were supposed to read that, and grateful that it didn’t get lost in the sea of non-essential posts.   She compared God’s word as a home that we should intimately know and dwell.  She stated that over the years she had started treating His word as a vacation spot, instead of home.  This post really hit me because it made me realize I do the same thing.  I am not dwelling in His word.  We are to make sure that the “word of Christ” dwells inside us “richly, teaching and admonishing” us in “all wisdom” (Col 3:16).  

She said she couldn’t be in our church because our church is full of sinners.  Those weren’t her exact words, but it was the subtext of her complaint.  One member once stole something, she said.  Another gossips.   Another has impure thoughts.  People never listen when she tries to share her problems. 

One by one she pulled from her gunnysack examples of how we each miss the mark.  None of us could quite jump high enough to touch the line on the wall that would make us acceptable in the sight of God and man.

Many end-time Christian prophecy watchers are fascinated by this news and intrigued by what has recently been announced by the Temple Institute in Jerusalem, Israel. They have recently declared they have completed construction of a Temple altar suitable for conducting sacrifices according to Israel's Sacrificial System and Temple procedures––many are stunned by this most ambitious project that allegedly defines another closer step toward the building of a third Temple. 

A few blocks from where I sit is a thoroughfare named after a certain Todd George, a respected citizen of Lee's Summit, Missouri from generations past.  Not only was he a civic leader, he was also, as legend has it, one of the big shots in the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan.  (See page 170 of Truman, by biographer David McCullough).

Thankfully, this community has put away that sordid attitude, but local legend also has Todd George crossing paths with one Harry S Truman when the latter was running for office in Jackson County.

This week leading up to Passover and Unleavened Bread, a thought has been going through my head. Do I love Jesus as much as He loves me? Do I want Him in my life as much as He wants me in His? Am I willing to sacrifice everything for Him, like He did for me? And lastly, am I willing to lay down my life for others like He did for all of us?

Jesus loves us more than we can comprehend. He allowed Himself to be transformed from a spirit being to a human, and then He was tortured, so that we can have eternal life.

Spring has arrived, and luckily, in East Texas we finally have sunlight and some warmer weather. So, it really feels like spring. I sympathize with all my readers who are still freezing up north. My husband is about to take his third business trip to Boston, so he can really sympathize with anyone in the upper northeast US.

Anyway, spring, whether it feels like it or not, is here, and with it starts God’s Holy Day seasons. I love how we have the beginning of God’s Holy Days in one of my favorite seasons and the end of His Holy Days at my other favorite season. It just makes these times even more special.

“Be careful what you pray for because you might just get it.”  I have heard that assertion and it puzzles me.  It’s akin to prayers answered for Uncle Harry’s cancer, only to see the man die in a car wreck two weeks later.  Did God answer our prayer to heal him, and then pull a double cross because we didn’t ask God to protect him too?  

Be careful what you pray for because you might just get it?  That doesn’t seem like the God that Jesus described:  “Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone?  Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent?” (Matthew 7:9-11 NKJV) 

“Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits” (Proverbs 18:21).

You know the old saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me”? Well, I don’t know who came up with the cliché statement, but they were definitely wrong. Words can hurt. Words are powerful. The tongue may be small, but one little spark can set a forest ablaze. How much can a tongue used unrighteously cause a “fire” (James 3:5-6)? We have to pay attention to the words that come out of our mouths.

“Rash words are like sword thrusts” (Proverbs 12:18a). It is easy to see a black eye, but it is not easy to see the internal scars of rash words.

I am in a love/hate relationship.  I love the King James Version of the Bible.  I love the cadence of language and the ease of memorization that such cadence provides.  I love its impact on the history and culture of the English-speaking world.   Scholarly works and study helps such as concordances are most often keyed to the King James Version.  Of all the English translations I have used, I find myself always gravitating back to the King James Version.  It is my main study Bible.

But the translation aggravates me time and again.  I can get around the “thee’s” and “thou’s” and the archaic usage of certain words (“convict” instead of “convince” and “by and by” instead of “immediately”), but some egregious mistranslations completely aggravate me.   

I need to learn to dance in the rain because life is all about showers here and there. Right now, we are currently in at least the twelfth week of rain. It hasn’t rained every day, but it has rained ever week. How do I know? Well, my family and I finally bought a house, and it has been ready for us structurally, since January. All that needs completed now are the utilities. We do have electric and most of the septic finished, but the rain has halted any more progress. We can’t even drive back to the house because the ground is so saturated we will get stuck. Trust me, I know personally; so does my mother-in-law.

Let’s admit that politicians flip flop, and they often do it because of the expediency of the moment.  But these people are people just like we are and therefore subject to human weaknesses.  We can say we expect better from our duly elected officials, but we have what we have and often we have the leadership we deserve.

At the same time, what looks like a flip flop might not be a flip flop.  Sir Winston Churchill, who many would say was more statesman than politician, began his political career as a Tory, switched to the Liberal Party, and then between the two world wars flip flopped back to the Tories.

Sometimes I really get tired of being mediocre. You know, someone that isn’t really fantastic at anything. I admire people that are genuinely intelligent, extremely athletic, awesome singers, fantastic artists, etc… I remember as a kid wishing I would wake up one morning and find out that some part of my brain turned on, and I was finally a genius. What can I say? I had lots of “castles in the sky” dreams.  

Well, the thing is, I have realized I just haven’t really accepted and enjoyed who I am. Why is that? Is it because I keep comparing myself to others that I believe are way more talented than me? It is easy to do this when you can see the craftiest people in the world on Pintrest and the accomplishments of the masses on Facebook. And how about the brilliant and skilled on YouTube?

The title is not meant derogatorily or sarcastically. My meaning is this: blessed are those that don’t have many worries, like children. The simplest things can make a child happy, and this week, my children were ecstatic. We had snow days!

Okay, so for my readers who are up North, snow days are common occurrences and get rather redundant as winter drags on and on, but for us who live in Texas, snow days are rare opportunities. We have to make the best of them because they don’t happen that often. In fact, every year my children pray a lot for snow, and their prayers have been answered, but usually it is in the amount of an inch at most.

In Matthew 18 Jesus teaches a lesson about forgiveness with an interesting twist. This is a tale forgiveness that is not paid forward, and ends with the rich man, who represents God, condemning the unforgiving soul to be handed over to tormentors.

This strikes us as a bit harsh for a loving God, but Jesus was actually teaching a fact of psychological health validated by modern psychology. To illustrate this point I want to relate the story of Louie Zamperini, made famous through Lauren Hillenbrand’s biography Unbroken and lately in a movie of the same title directed by Angelina Jolie.

Anger can be the bitterest fruit of all destructive emotions. “It shatters friendships and destroys marriages; it causes abuse in families and discord in business; it breeds violence in the community and war between nations. Its recoil, like that of a high-powered rifle, often hurts the one who wields it as well as its target” (Billy Graham).

How true that statement is. I have seen the destruction of anger. I have been a victim of others’ anger, and I have definitely been the one lashing out in anger. The thing is, neither situation is any fun. I am never proud when I give into anger, and I definitely don’t like it when I am on the receiving end.

A long life might be considered a blessing, but then I look at my Dad. He’s almost 92 years old, and in a way he’s the last man standing.  He’s the only one left from his World War II unit. None of his old buddies are still alive.

I thought about this when I contemplated how many of my friends who, just over the last few years, have either passed or have suffered from chronic ailments of one sort or another. Solomon was on to something when he wrote, “Better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for death is the destiny of every man.  The living will take it to heart” (Ecclesiastes 7:2).

Judge not, that you be not judged. (Matt 7:1 NKJ)

A friend tells me that Matthew 7:1 is the most widely quoted scripture these days.  “Judge not that you be not judged.”  I’m not inclined to argue with the scriptures, but I do take issue with the scriptures being misused.  In post-modern America, we’re told that we shouldn’t judge other people and what they do.  Who are you to tell someone else that they are wrong?  Judge not!