Primarily our blogging efforts are for creating traffic to our websites, sharing personal notes, and overall social activities. There are those times when I use mine to share what is on my heart. This is one of those times.
I know that the world is aware of the total devastation that the country of Haiti has suffered as a result of the recent earthquake. Without actually being there it is truly difficult to imagine what those people are feeling.
Just think what it would be like to all of a sudden have your world, your possessions (few as they are in Haiti), your children, your parents, family members, food, water, limbs, etc. ripped from under you. Just the thought of this horrific occurrence brings tears to my heart.
I realize that with our economy the way it is, some of us are having difficulty meeting our expenses and would find it hard to give for the relief cause for Haiti. I was in the grocery store the other day and they asked me if I wanted to “round up” my bill for the Haiti Relief program. I said yes, of course. I looked at the register screen and was sad to see it was only four cents. But even that meager amount, when coupled with other people’s four cents will add up and make a difference. I am retired and on social security and find it a challenge to make ends meet. This brought to my mind the story in the Bible of the widow’s mite. (Mark 12:41-44) God will honor your giving, no matter how small it may be. He knows what is in our hearts.
The Haitian people need everything. Perhaps a look in your closet will reveal clothes that you are no longer using. Maybe your children have grown out of some of their clothes. There are organizations that are collecting clothing items to send to Haiti. Whatever you can give, I know will be appreciated.
The enormous lack of all things in Haiti is something that has been going on for many years and will continue in the future. This earthquake has only intensified the situation. They will need our help for many months to come.
I personally know of people whose family members have been killed in this earthquake, while other family members are still among the missing.
If we have come to the bottom of our pockets and what we can financially contribute to Haiti there is still something that we can do. We can make intercessory prayer on behalf of these people. We can cry out to God for them to have the courage they need to go through these times, peace and understanding for the loses, especially for little children that have lost their parents and home and now find themselves living in the street with no food or water, and the list goes on. We can pray that God will provide people to make great sacrifices and go to Haiti to help. We need to keep all those people who have gone to Haiti to provide their services in our prayers as well. Whatever is on your heart can be given to God.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. Please join with me in remembering Haiti in your prayers.
Holidays are just around the corner. What do holidays mean to you? They all mean something different to each of us. Before we are caught up in the chaos of Thanksgiving and Christmas let us all take a deep breath, sit and take a quiet moment to search our hearts and decide what these special days mean to us.
We all have a lot to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. The God who sits on the throne of our hearts, our families, loved ones, friends, the lives of our people in the military service, and the list goes on. It means more than turkey, all the trimmings and Grandma’s favorite pumpkin pie.
Remember those who have lost their lives for our freedom and have left families and loved ones with memories of their lives. There are those who have lost their jobs or encountered financial difficulties. A meager turkey sandwich, or no meal at all could be their meal of celebration. These people will be thankful just for having survived another day. As we give thanks let us keep each other in our prayers. Reach out to those in need. Think of ways we can bear one another’s burdens.
Now on to Christmas. With economic conditions as they are this is going to be a very stressful time for many. I hope the following will give some encouragement. This piece was written many years ago during a very difficult time in my life. I had been divorced after 12 years of marriage when my husband chose a different lifestyle, lacking financial support and feeding my 2 children on $10.00 a week. By the grace of God I am here today to help others in whatever way I can. I am recently retired and can’t financially help others, but I can be that gentle touch, or caring shoulder to cry on and show them that they are loved, not only by me, but by Jesus.
THE GREATEST GIFT
As the last faint sounds of Christmas carols fade off in the distance, and the water begins to chill around your ankles as you soak your aching feet …. What will you really recall about Christmas? What was the greatest gift?
I honestly believe that if a poll was taken as to the true meaning of Christmas, “receiving/buying gifts” and “Santa Claus” would rank as the most often answered.
Will a smile of love and appreciation cross our faces in the midst of scurrying around to find a bigger and better present for sister Sally than what brother Joe will give her; hunting down the fullest and tallest tree, and decorating our dwellings. Will we remember the real purpose of this Holiday Season, the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ? Will we stop to ponder about that baby in the manger and how His life and death has brought meaning to our lives? His life was an example of the way we are to live. He loved us so very much that He was obedient to the end, even unto death on a cross.
We seem to get so caught up in the materialistic outlook of life we lose touch with the most important gift we have to give, not only at Christmas, but every day of our lives. That gift is the gift of love. Not love as the world knows it, but as Jesus Christ lived it. Instead of, or in addition to, decorating the outside of our dwellings, we should decorate the inside of our “temples”. We should take Christmas out of our pocketbooks and put it back in our hearts!
Have a blessed Holiday and remember that Jesus is the reason for the season! ~~~
You are loved for the person you are and your love for others. Especially during these hard times you don’t have to “buy” your way into someone’s heart and wonder how you are going to pay your credit card bills. True love cannot be bought!
I hope that you will have a blessed holiday season. A loving hug or a special phone call will mean so very much to the people whose lives you have touched. You are a special person who is loved without a present in your hands.
By law, full-power television stations nationwide must begin broadcasting exclusively in a digital format by June 12, 2009. The U.S. Congress approved an extension of the deadline, which was originally set for February 17.
I was thinking about this this other day and a few things crossed my mind. How many people are out there running around in a tizzy trying to make sure everything is in place for June 12th so they will not be without television?
Are we sure that our “heart” reception is in place for when that last trumpet blows and we are called home? Far too few of us are giving as much thought to that as we do to our televisions.
In this day of economic crisis many of us are in a state of great turmoil as to how we are going to survive, and how we are going to provide for our families. It is important that we don’t get caught up in the fear of “What will happen?”, “What am I going to do?” and woe is me. This kind of thinking will immobilize you for what you need to do NOW.
I have been through hard times. I was divorced after 12 years of marriage and raised two beautiful daughters through some very financially difficult times. There were many weeks that all we had was $10.00 for food to last us. Believe me, I can relate to people going through hard times. I do not take this lightly. Yes it is difficult.
Sometimes it is through our most difficult situations that we find greater opportunities. We will come out on the other side of our economic crisis better off if we are encountering our trials with the right mindset. After trying to be in control of my life and make everything better I realized that God is much better at these things than I am. He knows what lies ahead. I gave my life to Him and the control of it as well. I am sure there were many times that people thought I had an “I don’t give a darn” attitude, but that was not case. I lived by faith and knew that by the grace of God we were going to be okay.
Two years ago I was laid off from a pharmaceutical company that had to downsize. I was planning on this being my last job before retiring. I was unable to find a comparable job and last year I filed for an early retirement.
I had already been working at a home based internet marketing business. I continued with that. Let me take this opportunity to stress that before you embark on a home based business be sure you know all of the facts about the company you are considering. After working extremely hard at the one I was in it became apparent that there was a lot of money going out and nothing coming in. I am not a quiter, but had to admit that it was time I faced facts that this company was not going to work for me.
I felt that there was still opportunity and benefits to working at home. I perserved and found the following online internet business opportunities that I would highly recommend. I am a retired grandparent in the world of online business opportunities. Never let it be said that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks!!
In joining $200 Per Day Bluprint there were other systems involved to make everything work. It wasn’t long and I signed up with The New Plan Network (GlobalNPN.com). For $10.75 a month you will be amazed at the marketing tools that you will have in addition to being able to use NPN’s Unique “Power of 1″ Marketing Strategy to generate $47,508.00 by just making one easy $10.75 sale per month.
The next step was becoming involved with the Crazy Foxes Marketing Group. This is an amazing group of like minded leaders in the industry that provide support 24/7. I learned more from the Crazy Foxes in three months then I did the previous three years I was working online. They provide training tutorials and it is a marvelous family community. Get your FREE Crazy Foxes Report, DAM-It. These will be the best 7 pages you have ever read. They can change the direction you are going in your business.
The next step in developing my business and online marketing tools was to become connected with Veretekk. By this stage I could not help but think….”It just keeps getting better.” Veretekk is a very powerful system providing lead generation, portal and SEO marketing, Veremail, Vereconference with live training, training modules and video tutorials for every aspect of the system. You can sign up for FREE to be a Silver Member and if you sign up before April 1st to be a Gold Member the upgrade fees have been waived. April 1st there are going to be many more features included. There will even be a social network, and the Conference room is being increased to 5 seats included in your membership.
The Crazy Foxes also keeps its members abreast of new business opportunities that they have looked over and feel are beneficial. Members are not obligated to join these, but recently I joined an opportunity that is worth promoting.
The name of the company is Ultra International. It is a global opportunity that provides solutions for your home, health and wealth. These products are chemically free, and even the bottles are biodegradable within 30 days. If you are one 94% of the mothers who were recently surveyed that replied they would change their cleaning and healthcare products if they knew they were harmful …. now is your opportunity. There is no financial investment requirement. The products all have a 90 day money back guarantee. You can even sign on as a customer and as a loyal customer you will be rewarded and can over time make $10,000.00 a month. Where do you find a company that rewards faithful customers? The products are spa quality. Check out the compensation plan. You will be amazed.
On one of the Ultra training calls, “Wake Up with Scott and Bobbie” this morning Scott made a meaningful statement. He is looking for the calvary coming over the hill to save him and his family. Ultra is the calvary and our economic rescue. This is a program where you transfer your buying habits.
I want to personally share my testimony about one of the Ultra products. It is their Body meal replacement product. I started taking it the end of January and I have currently lost 23 pounds. Although losing this weight is truly exciting, there is something that excites me more. For the past two years I have been on medication for knee pain, leg pain and lower back pain. I had many sleepless nights laying there with pain starting at my waist, in my hips and down my legs to my feet. I had to move my office downstairs because I could not do the stairs any more. When I went shopping with my daughter I could barely get in and out of the car, let alone walk without pain. And I really was sad to hobble along with my grandchildren. Last weekend my daughter and I were out shopping for 7 hours, and 6 stores. I must admit the bottoms of my toes were sore because of the shoes I wore, but that was the extent of the pain. Any other time I would have been unable to move the next day. The only thing I am doing differently in my life is taking Body!”
I hope that this information will be helpful to you. Please take the time to check out these opportunities.
I wish you all of the very best. You can survive these times!
There is so much in the news nowadays about the economic bailout situation in our country.How can our young people not hear about it and wonder how it affects them?I am sure there are many parents wondering exactly how much information they need to share with their children, especially concerning their personal financial situation.I hope that what I have to say will shed some light on that issue and also help with the guilt that I know parents are feeling at not being able to give their kids all the want.
I remember a time in my life that I was suffering from hard personal economic problems.My girls were 11 and 12 years old.I was recently divorced and a struggling single mom.Financially, we did not have much.It was in 1981 and granted things were a little less expensive.We lived in southern Florida.I became a pro at feeding my girls on $10.00 a week.Although we did not have money in our pockets we had a lot of love in our hearts.We were blessed to have found an awesome church family at the First Christian Church of Boca Raton.The first time I walked into that church my thought was, “These people really love one another.”They reached out to me and my girls and truly showed us the love of Christ.I am forever grateful to this family of friends.
When Christmas came I just didn’t have any money for gifts.The girls needed new nightgowns so those were more of a necessity than a gift.I felt so very sad.My children had been through a lot.Divorce is not easy on the spouses, but it is very difficult on the children as well.Christmas Eve I wrapped the nightgowns and put them under the tree.I sat down with a very heavy heart and cried.Why is it when we can’t “buy” things for our children we feel like failures?
As I sat there that night I wrote my girls notes that ended up being my true Christmas gifts to them.Sometimes, as parents, we try to hide our feelings from our children.Don’t under estimate their ability to understand.I found that with being “real” with my girls we were very close and shared each other’s burdens.My notes simply, but sincerely, told them how much I truly loved them and was there for them.I expressed my sadness for not being able to buy them lots of gifts…but I did give them the greatest gift I had to offer….My Love!!
The nightgowns were a hit but let me tell you the notes ended up being very special gifts.I was never afraid to say, “I’m sorry”, “I made a mistake”, or most importantly, “I love you” to my girls.There were times when the stress of a day caused me to lose my temper and composure and I would find myself sitting on the bottom of their beds tearfully apologizing.I used to say, “When you came into this world, God did not have instructions tied on your toes!”I was the first to admit, I was not perfect, and I made mistakes.
I hope that you will find in this financially difficult time of the year that you can be honest with your children.Simple joy will benefit us all more than beginning 2009 in debt and facing a personal economic bailout.They can handle a lot more than you think and in the long run you will draw closer together and be able to share the best gift you can give each other….the love in your heart.
I truly wish you hearts filled with love, an awesome Christmas and a 2009 that will be filled with lots of “Aha” joyful moments.
There are a lot of differences of opinion regarding this subject. This forced me to do a lot of research.You see I am not the kind of person who just accepts what I am told without finding out if and why I should!
Children can be very cruel and it was painful to watch last year as a child was condemning another child saying that he was a devil worshipper and whoever had ever told him that Halloween was okay was lying to him.How is that for a silent slap in the face of his parents? (who by the way are Christians) It broke my heart as this little guy who was so excited about being the Phantom of the Opera doesn’t have a malicious, evil bone in his body.
The accusing child could not tell you exactly why Halloween was evil (other than the fact that he had been told that as a Christian he should have nothing to do with it) and I could see that he really wanted to put on a costume, grab a pillowcase and take take off down the trail of trick or treating.
We should be prepared to tell people WHY we believe the way we do and be able to back it up with information. Let our children know the full story. If they just think they can’t participate in Halloween because they have been told that Christians don’t do this, in my opinion, can cause resentment and rebellion.
So what do you think…..is Halloween really evil?Perhaps the following information will shed a new light on your thoughts. I would like to share some information I found with you.Make your own decision on whether or not Halloween is truly evil.I learned a lot of things I didn’t previously know.
Please check out the following article on “The History of Halloween” written by Pastor Dennis Rupert of New Life Community Church of Stafford.He obviously has done his homework and a huge amount of research.I think he has done a great job on presenting this information.If you will note, he is diligent to keep his information updated.
It is a little lengthy but well worth your time. At the bottom of Part 1 you will find a link for Part 2.Be sure to read to the end of Part 2. Our children need to know why they believe something and not just be parroting their parents or others.And not just when it comes to Halloween.
We as Christians can be visible with our children on Halloween and share the love of Christ with our neighbors. We should not hide our light under a basket or behind closed doors. If we don’t share the love of Christ with non-believers, how will they ever know the love of Christ?
I have my treats ready to hand out.I enjoy seeing the kids dressed up at my door, especially the little ones.Are they evil? Is it their intent to go out and cause havoc and damage? I don’t think so. I still agree that parents need to check all of the loot when it arrives home.There are some sick people out there desiring to harm our children.They are evil, but I honestly don’t believe Halloween is.
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