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That long dark hallway.

I know about those doors… When I look ahead in life I see doors, and stairwells, and places where bridges should be but are not. I see slippery inclines and stupendous walls, and I wonder how I am going to proceed. There are scores of doors; some have no doorknobs or handles and some have more than one. Sometimes there are multiple doors blocking my progress and I occasionally choose recklessly.

However, when I look back at the past, all I see it is one, long, smooth, perfectly straight corridor. That is God taking care of me. No point then in my thrashing around along the way. God is still on the Throne and sometimes that Throne is right in the middle of my heart. At those times, I am the most joyful and most humbled. That’s where God wants me to be eventually, on my knees before the Throne singing out in songs of unfathomable joy. I like to think that perhaps I will be just outside The Great Hall listening to the Angelic Choirs sing their hymns of praise. I would like to hum along as I listen. Sometimes when I am not trying to think about that, I feel I may already be humming along for a few seconds at a time, and then when I stop to listen I can’t recall the tune any longer. I have to move on down the corridor to try and catch another few notes.

When I wander from that lovely corridor, He will let me bounce off the walls for a while and then gently steer me toward a better decision. What a good God we have! I sometimes imagine His goodness like this:

Think of a very large work of art, a canvas covered with a riot of beauty. On the canvas, under the paint, there is a thin but clear pencil line. More than one artist contributes to the art; more than one theme is portrayed. The palette covers the entire spectrum of colors. The images include forests and seas, mountains and valleys, creatures of every kind and people of every race and time. The layers get thicker and thicker and the discord between the images intensifies. It is The World doing the painting, The World and the Prince of The Air, adding chaotic disarray to this huge canvas. And yet, the pencil line – the one drawn by God’s own hand – is still there.

That pencil line is the corridor along which we walk. Despite the tumult around us, we can literally “walk the line” with certainty that it will lead us through every possible distraction if only we pay attention to the line and not the painting. Easy to say and hard to do, it is nonetheless worthwhile and doable when our companion along the way is none other than the Artist who drew the straight line.

A straight line is the most perfect component of art, I believe. It can literally go on forever without ever changing. If you were to graph it, you could draw a line clear across the graph without ever lifting your pencil or changing the direction of your movement. It is simple. It is integral. I guess some might think a circle is the most perfect component of art, but I would still stay with the line, because a circle is a figure, and a line is just a line. A circle is a line that has no end or beginning, but it circumscribes a space. A line doesn’t do that. A circle goes where it is. A line goes where it goes, and God’s line goes out from Him straight to Him with nary a curve or bend or angle or twist. How’s that for perfect?!

Let the paint fly! I will keep looking for the line. It’s supposed to be right there, right under my feet. Ah! There it is! He did it again! Another obstacle cleared. Praise God!

Pray for the people, Beloved. Pray for ALL the people. Whatever, whenever, wherever, whoever, however, if ever — at your service

Chick

Remember to ask for JC’s healing before the planned surgical intervention. Get that tumor outta here!

Whatever, whenever, wherever, whoever, however, if ever, forever — at your service, Beloved

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Today I encourage you to think about a short passage in Proverbs (Prov 3:5-8) and I will share my thoughts with you.

Proverbs 3:5-8

“5. Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. 6. Seek his will in all you do, and he will direct your paths. 7. Do not be impressed with your own wisdom. Instead, fear the Lord and turn your back on evil. 8. Then you will gain renewed health and vitality.”

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Have you ever had a difficult decision or an important choice to make and wished you knew how to make the right choice with certainty? Of course you have! We have all been through that. It is an essential part of human life to decide. We are created to be choosers. We call it free will. It is one aspect of our lives that demonstrates we are created in God’s image. The difficulty arises because we are unsure about whether or not we can trust ourselves to make that decision correctly, and that is recognition that we really don’t know everything after all. You may recall something I wrote for you several years ago, “If you really knew as much as you think you know, you’d know it’s not enough.” Well, something to that effect anyway.

Our ability to choose is a gift from God. It is He who knows what is best for us because only He knows everything about us. Everything. He has given us intellect, reason, knowledge, and we can use those attributes to gain understanding and wisdom. That’s good if we recognize that our understanding wisdom will be imperfect because it will always be incomplete.

Even though our understanding and wisdom is imperfect, it can still be enhanced by conferring with wise counselors, and even more so by God’s word both in print and as spoken in our hearts. This is what we call, “Seeking God’s Will.” I’m thinking back to another previous message about what we want from God. It seems that for the most part men want to know the mind of God and women want to know the heart of God. God wants US to forget about that stuff and focus on the Love of God. He encourages us to give Him primacy in all things — a difficult task for us because we are generally more inclined to give primacy to ourselves.

When we focus on ourselves more than on God, our values and priorities are skewed toward temporal things rather than eternal joy. In another passage in Proverbs (16:1-3), we read

1. We can gather our thoughts, but the Lord gives the right answer. 2. People may be pure in their own eyes, but the Lord examines their motives. 3. Commit your work to the Lord, and then your plans will succeed.

The cool part is that these ideas apply to ALL our plans and ALL our decisions. When God is an integral part of everything we do, success — doing the right thing at the right time for the right reason with the right outcome — is the result. =Even when we do wrong things or things wrong, we can DECIDE to change that. I know there are moments in my past which demonstrate that I can be spectacularly and tragically wrong. But I also know that God’s infallible integrity is the basis of his justice as well as his love. Because of that justice and love, there is mercy, and from mercy comes hope. Hope leads to faith, and faith unites us with the heart and mind of God.

Now, if you’re tired of my preachy Aloha Friday cards, you can choose to delete them. They may or may NOT RESONATE with your life, and so you can ignore them. From time to time I just find this bubbling up inside of me because of the joy I feel. Sharing that bubbling and that joy with YOU just seems like the right thing to do. Thank you for your love, and especially for your patience with this note. May God richly bless you and everything you think, say, or do. He will, you know, whenever He is part of every though, word, and deed. And even if something goes terribly wrong, even if your decisions are unfruitful, He will always return to restore order whenever you invite Him. It is your choice to welcome Him or leave Him standing there waiting for you to decide.

Choose something in your life that will blossom and bear fruit. Love, joy, peace, patience and perseverance, gentleness, goodness, faith, kindness, self-control, are all attainable in your own life. Choose them all that your joy may be full.

Deuteronomy 11:26-28

26 See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse- 27 the blessing if you obey the commands of the LORD your God that I am giving you today; 28 the curse if you disobey the commands of the LORD your God and turn from the way that I command you today by following other gods, … .

Deuteronomy 30:19-20

19 I call heaven and earth today to witness against you: I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, 20 by loving the LORD, your God, heeding his voice, and holding fast to him. For that will mean life for you…

Aloha nui loa kakou! Whatever, whenever, wherever, whoever, however, if ever, forever — at your service, Beloved

chick

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Happy Aloha Friday, everyone. Is everything looking up in your life despite so many people, places, things, and ideas being so down? I hope so. Looking up is a handy thing sometimes.

I look up a lot. Well, I mean, I look a lot of things. I’ve always been kind of a research freak. I had the Richard’s Topical Encyclopedia when I was a kid – still have it in fact in my home library. It was one of those things my parents bought for me before I could even read. It also came with ten year’s worth of In Our times, an annual publication that summarized the year’s events. As I recall there was also a set of books called Lands and Peoples and a collection of popular books like Black Beauty, Heidi, Treasure Island, and even Tales from Shakespeare. One of my favorite places to look up things was the Funk & Wagnall’s Standard Dictionary of the English Language. It was two big, blue, thick, heavy volumes of thousand of words all defined to the nth degree. I loved using all those books and read for hours and hours just looking up one thing after another.

Of course, another mode of “looking up” is like, “Things are looking up!” I can remember joking (badly as is often the case in my life), “Well what are ‘things’ looking at?!” Of course that expression, things are looking up, means that life is getting better. I keep hearing that the things that are happening in the economy mean that “things are looking up,” but I am not convinced yet that they really are. I mean, we’re being told that what’s going on will make things better and that there would be consequences even more direr if we didn’t do them.

I just wonder if the duplicity and amorality that got us into this mess is the best approach to getting out of it. Can we really solve our economic crises by just printing more money and using it to pay for more stuff? I’m not very good at understanding that kind of thing, and the more I look up about it the more confused I get. I find that looking down on it doesn’t do me much good either. Looking past it or overlooking it doesn’t seem to be very helpful either. My thinking is moving more and more toward “stop looking” and “get involved.”

We look up to people we respect – our elders, our heroes, our loved ones. That’s a good thing in some ways as long as we don’t put them up so high that all we can do is look up but never reach up high enough to connect up. We do that with God sometime – put him up so high and far away that we forget He’s walking along with us every inch of the way, and even live in our hearts! We look up to all these persons as persons of quality, persons who will accept the gifts of respect and love we exchange between them and us.

All of us have done the kind of looking-up at clouds and stars, and the moon (hooray for the MBN!!), and airplanes, and sky-scrapers, and birds (another hooray for the Iwi and albatrosses here on Kaua`i!!), and all manner of things above our heads. Of course, we still have to pay attention to what’s around our feet, and whatever is within our sphere of experience and responsibility. Looking up in awe is great exercise

This week, yesterday in fact, there was another kind of looking up that we commemorated: The Ascension. To me, that event is so reassuring. It is a very strong central tenet of my faith. And in a way, it’s one of my favorites because the angels in that account have a little bit of attitude about them.

Here’s what I mean. Jesus has just been talking with the disciples, and suddenly WHOOSH! He’s on the Cloud Elevator going back to spend eternity with His Dad – Abba. Very, cool. And if we could be there watching (and we are – I’ll tell you about contemporaneous concomitance sometime), we would see the disciples standing there literally dumbfounded. Then two angels show up and say, “Men of Galilee, why-y-y-y are you standing there looking into the sky!? This same Jesus, who has been taken up from you into Heaven will return to you in the same way you saw him going up into Heaven.” Man! How great is that?!?! I think that passage is just amazing. I guess some scholars can debate about “in the same way” or “in like manner” but for me the word that jumps off the page and makes my ears ring is SAME as in THIS SAME Jesus. Now for those of you who are true Biblicists, really-real Bible scholars, I may be stepping out on a limb here. In the Greek used in Acts, the word for same is houtos I can put the Greek letters here, but they might not display correctly on your screen: οὗτος. So it turns out that this word, which is used in a bunch of places in the Bible, means this one, the one visibly present here, the one just named and none other than this one. There’s not another one, there’s no way it could be someone else. It will be precisely, exactly, permanently that same guy you just saw take off into the clouds. It is HE who will return to you.

Pre-millennial, post-millennial, silently or with a mighty trumpet blast, in fire or in thunder – I don’t really care about any of that. I only care that it will be Him. I don’t care if He comes with The Church Triumphant or The Bride of Christ or with Many Crowns or a white horse and an army or whatever. It will be HIM, and that is all I need to know. It is also the best reason I have for always looking up in every sense of the phrase. He won’t be coming to us from inside us – where He lives now for all who accept Him. He will be coming back from somewhere UP THERE. Look up, Beloved. What went up will be what comes down: Christ, The LORD.

WHATEVER, WHENEVER, WHEREVER, WHOEVER, HOWEVER, IF EVER, FOREVER— AT YOUR SERVICE.

Make it a great day. Pray as you look up. Pray for healing, health, and hope for our loved-ones who are ill – yours and mine. Pray for justice, mercy, and peace – yours and mine, theirs and ours. Pray for enemies who seek to destroy life, faith, meaning, and freedom – yours and mine and even their own. Pray for those who pray. They are ours, together.

~chick

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Happy Aloha Friday, everyone! Well, last week’s message pretty well reached the limits of weird, so this week I’m going to send just a few anecdotes and aphorisms again.

• Character is like the foundation of a house – it’s below the surface

• Love looks forward, hate looks back and anxiety has eyes all over its head

• A guy was stranded on a desolate road not far from San Francisco. It was raining and starting to get dark. He spotted a light farther up the road and headed for it. It turned out to be a monastery. A monk came to the gate and greeted the man, heard his situation, invited him in, and offered to bring him something to eat. He returned with a plate of fish and chips. The man ate the meal and declared it was the best fish and chips he’d ever eaten. He decided to compliment the chef who had prepared the meal. He went to the kitchen spoke to the person he assumed to be the chef. With a smile and a wind he asked, “Are you the fish fryer?” The other guy responded, “Nope. I’m the chip-monk.”

• By the time I got to greener pastures, I couldn’t get over the fence! My get-up-and-go had got up and went.

• Middle age is when Father Time catches up with Mother Nature.

• There are many people who want to live a long life, but still don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy day.

• I am at an age now where my broad mind and narrow waist have exchanged places.

• There are two kinds of leaders: Those who are interested in the flock and those who are interested in the fleece.

• The secret of happiness: It is not to do what you like but to like what you do.

• You don’t have to have fun to be happy. You have to be happy to have fun.

• What’s the difference between a jeweler and a jailor? One sells watches and the other watches cells.

• You will not have a friend until you first become one.

• Money cannot buy friends, but it can get you a lot of high-class enemies.

• The best time to make friends is before you really need them.

• A man finds joy in giving an apt reply—and how good is a timely word! Proverbs 15:23

• A cheerful look brings joy to the heart, and good news gives health to the bones. Proverbs 15:30

The football coach and the basketball coach were discussing their players and bemoaning the fact that the kids were just plain dumb. The football coach said, “Here let me show you what I mean. Johnson, go over to the coach’s and see if I’m there!” Johnson gets up and starts walking to the office. The basketball coach says, “That’s nothing. Watch this.” He shouts over to one of his players, “Edmunds, here’s a dollar. Go over to the Cadillac dealer and bring me back a car! And hurry!”

The two players meet later on and Edmunds says, “No wonder we don’t win many games. My coach is so dumb! He gave me a dollar to buy him a Cadillac but never said what color!”

Johnson says, “My coach is even dumber! He sent me over to his office to see if he was there. He was sitting right next to your coach’s phone. He could have called!”

Make it a great day beloved. Be kind to everyone. It’s the best way to put more kindness into the world. Pray for the people – all the people, and especially those who cannot or will not pray. On their behalf, let your prayer be an offering to God of the very best of their day:

Jesus, lover of mankind, You came to Earth centuries ago to be the way, the truth, and the life, and yet countless men and women, boys and girls, do not know You, do not love You as well as they could, and many are indifferent or opposed to You. In this state of being, Lord, they might not consciously offer You their lives today. There are millions more, Lord, who do know You, do love You, but do not know about, do not care about, or have forgotten about making a daily offering, so Lord, on behalf of all of these souls I offer You the best of their day today so that You might be loved and honored in some way by them, too. Lord Jesus Christ, be merciful to them all as miserable sinners, forgive them their sins, and bring them to everlasting life. Amen.
(You’ll find this in the Share-A-Prayer section under Standard Prayers)

Whatever, whenever, wherever, whoever, however, if ever, forever — at your service.

chick
—
AGE QUOD AGIS
In God WE trust

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Screen Savers and Life Savers

This past Sunday I was thinking about the Trinity and how we often depict it using a triangle, one side for each Person of the Godhead. I wondered what was in the middle. If the three lines represent Father, Son, and Spirit, then what is in the space they enclose? My first guess was Love, because God is Love, but somehow that seemed too static and too (ah-HA!) two-dimensional.

What if we thought of the Trinity as something three-dimensional – like a Tetrahedron? Then each face of the tetrahedron could represent one person of the … Hold it. The tetrahedron has FOUR faces, Mr. Mathless! OK. No problem, the fourth side is going to represent … Love? No, because if the triangle’s space represented love, then the tetrahedron’s volume must be the representation of Love. But, Love could be the foundation of the Trinity – be the fourth side – and then the other three faces would be the three Persons. That would sort of make sense.

However, that just didn’t seem to satisfy me. I started thinking about that screen saver in Windows® and how you can set it to a shape based on a tetrahedron. It morphs through hundreds of variations of color and shape – all of them tetrahedrons – and then I realized maybe that’s how the Trinity works, too.

Which side is the base?

So we can get some other ideas about the Trinity, about the Universe, and about our role in all of that by looking at a screensaver image and watching it “change.” It appears to change, but it’s really always the same thing: A tetrahedron. No matter how we see or understand God, God is always God-in-Three-Persons.

Speaking of screen savers, do you know why we have them? (Some of you are saying, “Now what?”) Well, screen savers do just that – they save your screen from getting burned by static images. If you’ve ever looked at an old Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) that has been used to constantly display a data table (like the payment screen at Wal-Mart or Costco or on the gas pump), you might recall that after a while, the lines in the table are “burned” into the phosphors in the screen. Because Screen Savers keep something moving on your screen all the time, the likelihood of an image getting burned into the screen is very, very low. The same goes for a static image of the Trinity. Getting that “burned” into your screen – the image processor in your mind – makes it harder to see the dynamic power of the Godhead.

And you know what else? I think maybe we get to be part of that Image, too, because we are made in the Image of God. Do you think maybe we move in the same way His tetrahedron moves? Might we even move within His Tetrahedron? Consider John 17:20-23 — 20 “I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21 so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. 22 And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me.”

In The Cloud of Unknowing the writer urges us to ONE (“one” as a verb) with God by pursuing God through the “naked intent” and “blind love” of being immersed in the presence of his Presence. “One-ing” is like a screen saver for the soul. It keeps you form getting one image of God burned into your heart by making infinite infinitesimal changes in your perceptions of the Trinity. Finally, one day, you stop doing that in your temporal life because you transcend that life and continue your contemplation of the Trinity in person and eternally.

In this, we see that God’s plan for us is to know Him by being in Him as He is in us. His screen saver is our Life Saver, (I’m not thinking of the candy-with-a-hole), and our lives are eternally saved when he “tosses” us the chance to be surrounded by Him in a sea of troubles and sin.

The lifesaver became popular after the Titanic went down. It is in the shape of a torus like this one on the left. The torus like the one on the right has also been used to represent the fullness of the Godhead. The significant thing to remember about a torus is that it is also rotational and dynamic. Keeping our hearts and minds fixed on a static, unchanging, inflexible understanding of the Trinity leads to burn-out. Yet it is important, very important, to remember that just as a tetrahedron is always a tetrahedron or a torus is always a torus, God is, was, and always will be God. That He chooses to be in us and welcomes us to be in Him – that is the entry-way to “one-ing,” both temporally and eternally. That is something to contemplate! No matter how we understand Him/Them the complexity of the Trinity is its simplicity as well. No matter how much or how little of it we understand, it is always part of us and we are always part of it. Shazzam!! However you perceive Him to be, God is always the same, always, faithful, always loving, always saving, always ONE.

Whatever, whenever, wherever, whoever, however, if ever — at your service.

Keep praying for JC, OK? Progress is being made. Ask for a list of intentions – people requesting prayers – and find another aspect of one-ing!

chick

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Happy Aloha Friday, Beloved! Let’s celebrate!

April is a very full month for me. I want to share the celebrations with you, so here is a list:

1. April 3, 1955: 54 years ago I made my first profession of faith at Corona Presbyterian church in Denver. I was 9 years old.
2. April 5, 1960: I was Baptized in the Roman Catholic Rite. My Godfather was Stephen Fehrer, Godmother Crucita Gonzales. I also participated in Firs Confession and First Communion that day.
3. April 5, 1992: I started working at Hu Hu Kam Memorial Hospital in Sacaton, AZ. I worked there until Sept 20, 2000.
4. April 18, 1955: I was granted membership in the faith community at Corona and presented to the congregation by Pastor Robert S. Lutz.
5. April 19, 1969: I got married that day to Crucita A Gonzales! Best decision I ever made!!
6. April 28, 1978: Timothy Olin Todd was born, but on that day he did not know that was his name. We finally met on December 23, 1978 when Crucita and I went to pick him up for adoption from Albuquerque, NM. At that time we were living in Los Alamos, NM

This was the first house where Tim lived. He was also Baptized in Los Alamos at Immaculate heart of Mary Parish on January 22, 1979.

At that time, Mom and Dad started a tradition that ran through Tim’s life – and ours – for many years. We dedicated Tim to the Lord.

Up until the time Tim was 12 years old, we held an annual votive Mass in our home celebrating his Dedication to the Lord. At that Mass we used specially selected readings. We always held the Mass at about the same time of the year because it was close to the Feat of Sts. Timothy and Titus – January 26th.

Here is the Dedication Prayer we used for those Masses. Crucita and I still pray it every year on January 26. Tim knows this Dedication is permanent, and acknowledges he will always belong to God and must honor God in all he does.

Tim’s Dedication Prayer

On January 22, 1979, Timothy Olin Todd was consecrated to the Service of God. Since then we have celebrated a special day with him on the Saturday before or after January 26th, the Feast of Sts. Timothy and Titus. Because our prayers were answered, our hope fulfilled, we invite you to join with us in giving thanks to our LORD, and in rededicating Timothy’s life to God.

TIMOTHY:

What shall I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I’d give Him a lamb.
If I were a Wiseman, I’d do my part.
What shall I give Him? I’ll give him my heart!

Charles: O LORD, OUR LORD, how glorious is your name over all the earth! Out of the mouths of babes you have fashioned praise! Our love for you is enriched immeasurably by your love for us. We have put our trust in you, and you, in your infinite wisdom and grace, have showered us with constant blessings, not the least of which is this child and the tender reflection of your love he brings to us. We know now, and have always known, that your love for us and all human-kind is boundless.

Crucita: Almighty God, we humbly offer you our gratitude for this extraordinary gift of love: A son. He is truly a gift from you. We prayed for this child, and you granted our request. Now we, in turn, give him to you. We ask that you acknowledge and accept the consecration of our son, Timothy Olin Todd, and our whole family, to you in token of our love. We ask you to fulfill your promise to give each of us a new heart. We praise you, father, for having fulfilled this promise in Jesus Christ, your Son.

Charles: Make all our hearts like His heart. Let that love shown to us through the Sacred Heart of Jesus preside over our family to bless all that we do, to dispel our troubles, sanctify our joys, lighten our sufferings, and overcome the advancing evils in this world. With humble and contrite hearts, we seek your guidance and blessing on this, your child, who you have seen fit to send into our home to prepare him as your servant. We joyfully accept this magnificent gift of Grace and pledge our lives to you.

(*=*=*PLEASE JOIN US IN THIS PRAYER*=*=*)

EVERYBODY: Gracious and loving Heavenly Father, we offer you this prayer, and this child, as an act of faith in the promises of our Saviour, Jesus Christ. In His Name, and for His Glory, bless and approve this offering, and grant us your Peace. AMEN.

If you know Tim, perhaps you will join us on January 26th every year and help us renew his dedication to teach about The Holy Name of the Lord.

May God continue to bless all of the history in April. It seems he chose this time of the year to set up an incredible number of long-lasting blessings. May God also continue to bless you – not just in April – but every day of your life for now and the rest of eternity. AMEN!!

Whatever, whenever, wherever, whoever, however, if ever, forever — at your service, Beloved
chick

The first minute of the first hour of our son, Timothy.

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Today is Good Friday. It is a day of solemn remembrance for billions of people. It is the crucial juncture between the Old and New Covenants. If you think about the symbol for infinity it is the place where the “loops” cross – on The Cross.

We are often reminded at this time of year – and also in times of trials – that “There is no Easter without there first being a Calvary.” Even better is the corollary of that adage: “There is no Calvary without an Easter.”

Today I am going to list a few things for you to think about over this coming weekend. I actually hope you will think about them even beyond this coming weekend. Some of these sayings or observations come from a recent Mission given in our Parish by Fr. Bill Burton, OFM (http://www.biblicist.net/http%3A__www.biblicist.net/Biblicist.net_-_Fr_Bill_Burton.html). Others are just things I collected along the way. In instances where I can attribute the statement, you’ll see that in italics.

In the Old Covenant, everything that was offered in sacrifice was something that could be used as food. Fr. Bill Burton, OFM (Think about that especially this weekend.)

One often meets one’s destiny along the road taken to avoid it.

Not all thorns have roses.

“God helps those who help themselves.” Hezekiah 9:9 *

“God helps those who can not help themselves.”

“God helps those who help others.” Vivian Gordon

“God helps everybody whether they know it or not, whether they believe it or not, whether they ask for it or not. Regrettably not everyone accepts that help.” Chick Todd

Remember the smile on your face was put there by you but the ability to do that is a Gift
from God! Be generous with that gift!!

People often don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

“We were made by God and for God, and until you figure that out, life isn’t going to make sense.” Rick Warren (The Purpose Driven Life)

Tough times don’t last, but tough people do. C. Wynn

Micah 6:8 ~~ He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. God through the Prophet Micah

In my view, this is the path to Peace. Let’s walk it together with Him in whom all Peace resides.

“Where you sit depends on where you stand.” Chick Todd (See Luke 14:8-11 [Thanks to Fr. Bill!])

You can be a thermometer or a thermostat. One testifies to what’s going on. The other not only testifies, but also changes the environment to preapproved conditions. Number 27 in “27 Beautiful One-Liners”

A.S.A.P.!
There’s work to do, deadlines to meet;
You’ve got no time to spare,
But as you hurry and scurry-
A.S.A.P. – ALWAYS SAY A PRAYER

In the midst of family chaos,
“Quality time” is rare.
Do your best; let God do the rest-
A.S.A.P. – ALWAYS SAY A PRAYER.

It may seem like your worries
Are more than you can bear.
Slow down and take a breather-
A.S.A.P. – ALWAYS SAY A PRAYER

God knows how stressful life is;
He wants to ease our cares,
And He’ll respond to all your needs
A.S.A.P. – ALWAYS SAY A PRAYER. Lisa Englehardt

And so, Beloved, I will say a prayer for you: May your day today be filled with Love and Light from Him by whom are made all good things in Heaven and on Earth. AMEN.

Thank you for YOUR love and light. You have made something beautiful and wonderful out of the love God created for you and in you. I am humbled and blessed to know you have shared that love in your prayers.

Prayer is one of the best gifts we receive because it is inspired and empowered by God. The only cost is the will and time to do it, but the rewards are beyond comprehension. Let’s continue to pray for one another.

God blessed YOU, so make it a great day!! God blessed me by leading you into my life (or leading me into your life, eh?), so for me, it’s ALREADY a great day!

Oh, and don’t forget to give God a little PUSH once in a while:
Pray
Until
Something
Happens

P’s Power
Plan Purposefully, Prepare Prayerfully, Proceed Positively, Pursue Persistently!
May “P’s” be with you!!

I love that one!!!

Whatever, whenever, wherever, whoever, however, if ever — at your service
chick
* And for you astute Bible students: Yes, I know there is no book in the Bible called “Hezekiah.” That is why this famous quote is not in the Bible!

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AGE QUOD AGIS
In God WE trust

Serving Him on Earth may not always garner the best wages, but the retirement plan is out of this world!!