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 |  This contains entries to Take up Your Cross, Space Blog, Blog City PF and BC of Friends |
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Created by the talented [Link To User poulynoe]")     "prompt: Write a prayer or entry about everything you want God to do for 2022 and don't forget to settle everything with God about 2021."I want God to do for me in 2022 just what He did for me in 2021. I seldom pray for myself. What people fail to understand is that God never thinks of God. He thinks only of others. I would be happy yp pray for others but not myslf.  "Prompt: I was cruising the galaxy with Bugs Bunny and found this planet":
"Write about music in your Blog entry today." I have come to find that I am a better singer than I thought. I rang bells for the Salvation Army during the Red Kettle season this year. I took my iPad with me and played Christmas carols in the background. I began to sing with the songs and people loved my singing. My donation rate doubled once I began singing. |
| image:2227275-75%} "Prompt: How will you show God's love to others in 2022?" I will show God's love to others in 2022 the same way I did in 2021. I will do my very best to treat others exactly as I would have them treat me. I will continue to always try to do the next right thing. I know I will fall short along the way. I often do. However I have found that if I try to do the next right thing in all situations it usually works out for the best. "Prompt: I was cruising the galaxy with Dr. Beverly Crusher and found this planet": tj-turkey-jobble-jobble-hard-J   Read this item:
I have a very dear friend that I made in cyberspace. I have never met her face-to-face yet we have developed a very close relationship. I know she is a private person so I will not name her on here. She knows I care deeply for her. |
| image:2227275-75%} "Prompt: What will you do to work on improving your relationship with God in 2022?" This is a tough question because I honestly do not know. For one thing, I have found that there is nothing I can do to change me into what God requires to begin with. My righteousness to God is like a used tampon. My best behavior is appalling to God so I am beyond human help. I must depend totally on God and He will change what needs changed. I often wish He would do so more quickly because I am an expert at self-condemnation. I know what I deserve and cannot lie to myself about that. I have sin in my life that no matter what I try I find myself entangled in. I know God will removed it in His time and His way. We have these preconceived notions that all we have to do is pray about a sin and God will immediately take it away from us. I do not believe that is how God works. At least that has not been my experience. Sometimes I struggle with sin for ages before God removes it. Does that mean the sin will send me to hell? I do not think so. I believe Christians exist in two states of being: The first state of being is our saved state. This is the state God always sees and it is the state of being covered by the blood of Jesus. Then there is our actual state which is our lives. We stumble and trip along the way and God works with us to slowly, ever so slowly grow us toward perfection. In this state He prunes us and removes this or that sprout to allow the top branches to thrive. He prunes us in His time and may allow an unwanted sprout to grow for a very long time before removing it. We often have the misconception that a Holy God does not tolerate sin. All we have to do is look around us to realize that God not only tolerates sin, He permits it to continue. Why do I say that? I say that because He lets the world continue to go on. He has allowed the world to continue on for thousands of years. He therefore allows sin to continue on. He does not like sin and absolutely never indulges in it, but He permits it. The sin in our lives is the same way. He permits it and will remove it in His time. Today's star appeared out the port viewer during the third shift. Baloney Bill  writes about dreams and window shopping in
My dream is to live to be a ripe, old age. I am 60 years old and just about to finish up my Master of Divinity degree and a second bachelor's degree. I will then have two associate degrees, two bachelor's degrees, and a master's degree. I plan to go on to post graduate school and pursue my doctorate degree, either in psychology or ministry. I plan to use my degrees to help others. Exactly what form that will take is yet unknown. I am guessing that I will volunteer for a substance abuse agency. I say volunteer because most such agencies cannot afford to pay me what my education is worth. Besides, as a volunteer I can carry out my pledge that started in my recovery. I was a drug addict for nearly three decades. During that time I allowed others to convince me that I was somehow mentally handicapped to the point that I could not compete with "normal people". I guess by today's standards they would have said I was autistic at best and possibly brain damaged or something. Anyway, since this was coming from people I trusted such as my mother, father, siblings, and professionals, I believed them. Since I believed them I never tried. As a result, I was on disability for nearly 30 years, during which I occupied myself by writing and doing drugs. In 2009 this all began to change. I entered recovery and the first principle I was taught there was to be brutually honest with myself. I was also taught to reexamine everything I had ever believed about myself and more importantly, I was told to start over. I eliminated all of my former circle, including limited contact with my family. I developed new relationships with new people and eliminated anybody from my life who told me I was "different and could not". I surrounded myself with people who believed I could do anything I wanted to do in spite of anything against me. My first order of business was to make amends to society for believing the lies and not trying to succeed. I also wanted to make amends for being a drain on society and living on disability for decades. Volunteer jobs allow me to give back to society. Volunteering is a part of my amends. What are my dreams? My dream is to use the rest of my life getting enough education to make a difference in the world I leave behind. Perhaps I will write some ground breaking research paper or positively change the life of a future leader. I do not know how I will change the world. I just know I want to positively impact my little niche in it. |
| image:2227275-75%} "Prompt: What have you learned in 2021 that will improve your relationship with God going forward?" I 2021 I figured out that I cannot get rid of sin in my life until God is ready to deal with it. I think many of us have this delusion that becoming a Christian means we never sin again. Many preachers make it sound like that. However we all sin. I have sin in my life that haunts me every day and try as I might I simply do not have the strength to fight it. I have had sin in the past that was persistent. I prayed about it, repented of it, and went through all the "religious motions." The sin did not disappear until God took it away. So 2021 has taught me that I am totally dependent on God. I cannot overcome sin on my own and God may not be ready to remove it when I think it should be removed. He deals with it in His time and His time is not my time. I know many may find it shocking to believe that God would allow sin to continue. However God allows the world to continue and we know it is sinful. The good news is that in spite of my sin I am saved because I am covered by the blood. I know God will make me sinless in time. As long as I am in this flesh some element of sin will continue in me and God will continue to seemingly not care about it. God does care and He is slowlyworking me toward perfection. The sin I pray about and cannot overcome is in His hands and He will remove it when He is ready to do so. Prompt: "Today, while getting settled in from my long furlough, I saw a star. Sarah Rae  writes
I was both mother and father to my son from the time he was 3 weeks old and on. He was not my biological son or at least I was not aware that he was. His mother lived with my wife and I because she had married my wife's cousin and then the marriage was annulled. She got pregnant prior to their marriage and had the baby while living with us. She had no idea what she was doing with him and she had post-partum depression. He was virtually neglected. My wife challenged me to take him on and take care of him and I reluctantly did so. The moment I held him the first time I fell in love with him. I went on to deal with colic that kept him up and me walking the floors with him at all hours of the night. I was a writer and otherwise unemployed and uncommitted so I found that it was best to sleep when he slept. I got to the point where I could fall into a deep sleep in seconds and awake at the slightest sound from him. Parenthood is the best thing that ever happened to me but it had moments where it was a living nightmare. I still would not change a second of it. My son is grown now and I have found the old saying to be very true. "When they are little they walk on your toes. When they are adults they walk on your heart." My son and I seldom talk these days. I have called him a few times and even provided him with a phone at my own expense so he could stay in touch. When we do talk he is always in a rush to get off the phone. I have gotten to the point where I no longer try. He'll call when he is ready and hopefully his dad will be able to respond. I got angry with him for this on Christmas Day and told him that I was not forced to be his dad to begin with. I guess he felt guilty because he messaged me the next day and tried to hold a conversation. I knew it was to appease a guilty conscience so I was cordial with him at best. When he is ready to have a sincere conversation he'll call, |
I am officially back from my extended leave. During my absence I worked 10 hours per day ringing the bell for the Salvation Army Huntington Corps. I was a volunteer and often had the top kettle for the day so I raised a significant amount of money, though the corps still fell way short of its goal. I know my readers missed me when I was gone and I ask you to forgive me. "Prompt: As we prepare to go into a new year and live out the last few days of this one, Let's think about where we are spiritually. Where are you in terms of your walk with God? Are you where you want to be, or does your relationship with God need improvement?"Ringing the bell for the Salvation Army both brought me closer to God and at the same time drew me away from God. It brought me closer because the whole time I rang I played Christian Christmas music in the background and sang carols such as "Silent Night", "Joy to the World", "Hark the Herald Angels Sing," "O Come All Ye Faithful", "The First Noel" and others. I was told by most people that I have a beautiful singing voice. I sing deep, sort of a baritone. The women particularly loved my singing and a number of men told me that they admitted that I was good. Most of the people who complimented my singing backed up their compliments with a %5.00, $10.00, or $20.00 contribution to my kettle so it gave me a little more confidence in my ability to sing publicly. I was a little apprehensive about it because my commander at the Huntington Corps Salvation Army was a music major in college. One day I sang with a hastily assembled praise team at church. One of the younger men kept singing off key and off time and I commented to my commander that some members of the praise team had messed up. She said "Yes, some people think they can sing when they can't." That same night she invited the praise team to assemble and the young man whom I thought san off key and out of time was the first one she invited to join the evening's praise team. I was not invited. I took that to mean she thought I was the bad singer and have tried to quell my singing in church ever since. During the bell ringing I for some reason began singing when "Silent Night" came on the soundtrack. Donations to my kettle immediately began being big bills such as $20.00 bills and people gathered around listening to me sing. It took a few days but I figured out that I had misunderstood my commander and even if I had not misunderstood her, most people enjoy hearing me sing whether she does or not. So I plan to become a member of the now developing praise team at church. I am also going to do worship solos at church. I originally said that bell ringing had both drawn me closer to God and drew me away. That requires some explanation. I say it drew me closer because singing those old Christian Christmas carols also requires hearing the words in them. Songs such as "The Virgin Mary Had a Baby Boy" are so full of doctrine that they practically preach! The named song alone tells of how at least six different witnesses witnessed the birth of Jesus. Listening to these songs and singing them drastically increased my faith. On the other hand the long hours I worked weakened my body and my resolve to stay close to the Holy Spirit. I often found myself acting in ways that I normally would not act and treating people in ways I normally would not due to exhaustion and fatigue. I also failed to practice my spiritual disciplines such as prayer and bible reading because I found myself sleeping during the times I would normally do them. So I can say I both gained and slid backwards, if that makes sense. Happy New Year everybody. I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas. I am back from my extended absence. I was ringing the bell for the Salvation Army Red Kettle Campaign, which provides the funding for Salvation Army programming throughout the year. I thank (3010) for covering for me so I could work for this wonderful charity. As a note, I know that many of you heard the bad press the Salvation Army received and how an internal audit by the Army to determine if any of our policies were in anyway discriminatory was used by enemies of the Salvation Army to claim the Army demanded an apology from whites for being white.The Salvation Army did not ask whites to apologize for being white nor will they ever do so! The Salvation Army's policy is clear. We serve human needs without discrimination. I wanted to state that. Sorry for the rant. On the way back from the starbase where I was taking my extended leave for vocational purposes, I visited the home star of [user:tigger} who has dozens of planets in her system. One planet was
which is a cafe ran completely by felines. The service there is excellent. Stop by there and write about your visit in your blog today. I visited this cafe and while I am not a really big feline fan, I found the service to be excellent and the cuisine great! Princess Megan Snow Rose   has talent that exudes from her very pores and a heart that is pure gold. Princess Megan Snow Rose I love and appreciate you very much!Prompt |
| Hi Readers Well the kettle season for the Salvation Army is finished. That means that starting Monday, December 27, 2021 I should be back to blogging. I would like to send a special thank you to Princess Megan Snow Rose and Marvelous Friend who covered for me during my prolonged absence. I am exhausted physically as I have been working 16 hour days since early November without a break. It was work, come home sleep, and go back to work. I do not have a total but I believe I collected over $15,000.00 for the local corps, which helped provide Christmas this morning for nearly 3,000 families and will provide assistance to people throughout the year. Thank you to those who contributed to my kettles. |
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