Time by Barbara

A pleasant surprise, Time is today’s special word. Two influential people in my life taught me and exemplified the gift and treasure of Time. Today’s is Mom’s earthly birthday and Wonder-filled way to recall her and Dad’s influence.

The Year 2020 has caused the earth’s inhabitants to a year of lifestyle change and reflection for the most essential actions on life. A reflection that shpuld have presented some permanent lifestyle changes for our betterment.

Some may have found that Time and Effort spent to communicate with loved ones was the Greatest earthy gift give, received, and treasured. In the years that followed Jesus’ resurrection that is exactly the first gift given to anyone before their conversion. The acknowledgement of their presence, their humanity, and their spiritually need. This gift of Time continued as the church gathered in home, catacombs, and secret places.

A return to the first fruits and accord of the church may be a good step for 2021. I know our household has and is looking forward to a more God Centered year.

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When God Isn’t Good

Brilliant.

S. Kim Henson ~ Getting Your Own Life While Loving the People In It

25498277_10210788921936316_8092344017807675615_n“Live (and die) so that anyone who knows you knows God is good.”

The night before we left to meet family for Christmas, my husband John and I drove 45 minutes to Pawleys Island (Pawleys for short), a community where we bought a creek lot this past summer. We wanted to decorate the property by hanging an ornament and putting spotlights on the live oak that shades it. One of appeals of buying in Pawleys was its close proximity to The Abbey, a church we joined just months before we made our purchase.

On the way there, John said, “They’ve called in hospice for Chuck.”

“I hated to blurt it out tonight,” he said, “but there wasn’t going to be a good time to tell you.”

Bishop Chuck Murphy was our rector at The Abbey until he resigned three weeks ago. He died a few days later.

Chuck was diagnosed…

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Happy Hour

Great stuff form GREAT counselors!

The Romantic Vineyard

It’s time to share with you posts that stood out to us this week. We pray you’ll find the time to browse the list and read the posts that will help your marriage improve. God bless you and have a blessed weekend!

Gary Thomas

  • He Ate My Chocolate – Gary shares an excerpt from a new book byDebra Fileta entitled Choosing Marriage: The hardest and greatest thing you’ll ever do.

Heaven Made Marriage

Marriage Missions International

Uncovering Intimacy

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A Pirate’s Life for Me

This is VITAL. Please read!

Along the Way

Along the Way @ mlsgregg.com

Gentle Reader,

Long have I been fascinated by pirates, specifically the 17th and 18th century variety. Many were coarse, foul, murderous, thieves. Others, usually British or French, operated under the authority of the government as “privateers.” Most really did abide, at least loosely, by the dictates of a pirate code, which varied from ship to ship. These codes were at times strikingly democratic; crew members, no matter how lowly, each had a vote in “the affairs of the moment,” as Bartholomew “Black Bart” Roberts put it. There were female pirates – Cheng I Sao, Grace O’Malley, Anne Bonny, Mary Read – who could and did go toe-to-toe with any man.

This “golden age of piracy” has been romanticized in novels and on the big screen for decades, but the reasons for deciding on the brutal, short life of a pirate were anything but glamorous. European governments had no problem with…

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Waiting Well (what do we do while we wait for Irma?)

This is a truly excellent post about waiting. Please read!

S. Kim Henson ~ Getting Your Own Life While Loving the People In It

cup-339864_960_720“My mother taught me, when I was a little girl, that when anything very dreadful happens, I must think of what I would be doing if it had not happened, and then do that.

This excerpt comes from a World War II story about an Englishwoman who greeted her minister at the door when he showed up to let her know about her husband’s death. The woman interrupted his news and invited him in for tea. He was astounded by her hospitality in the midst of sorrow.

My wish isn’t so much about receiving bad news with grace, although I want that too, as it is about waiting with that same grace. It’s about waiting well.

Since last October, I’ve waited on Hurricane Matthew to come and go close by our beach house; the fires to extinguish at Table Rock near our mountain house; news about my car’s…

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It’s Here! It’s Here! [plus a Giveaway!]

If you read German, here’s a wonderful book from Katha von Dessien…

It’s Friday and we gather at Five Minute Friday to write about neighbors today. This week has been crazy for so many people around the world, but it has also been an amazing example of the love human beings are capable of.

It’s also September 1, and this means it’s time for the post below. This has been two years in the making and with a lot of supporting friends and neighbors it has now come into reality. I hope you join me for the celebrations!


The last few months have been a whirlwind of emotions.
There was excitement – very quiet at first because I had to keep it all a secret.
There was exhaustion – so much to prepare and so little time.
There were aha-moments – so many new things and techniques to learn.
There were doubts, oh yes – inner voices wondering whether I’m doing the…

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The Drama Triangle (replace your role with your purpose)

S. Kim Henson ~ Getting Your Own Life While Loving the People In It

“We all have family dysfunction. It’s why we’re successful, to fill that hole.” Eli Attie

family-469580_960_720

My husband John and I kept a distance from our families of origin for years, even while one or both parents were alive. It wasn’t an ideal choice, but I didn’t think our marriage would survive otherwise, so I pushed for detachment. We’d leave family get-togethers and I’d exhaust him by scrutinizing how everyone acted. A family member filled me in later about bets they placed on how long our marriage would last. I didn’t have energy to fight John and confront that kind of judgment I suspected was happening.

By the time I heard the story, it was because of the irony of it – we were the only couple in the family still married to our original partner. Maybe I was right about having a better chance of staying together if we detached…

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Atheism Doesn’t Pay

Blaise Pascal, the 16th-century mathematician, addressed the question of faith in the form of gambling (Pascal’s Wager).

  • God is, or is not, and reason can’t make a choice.
  • Hence, it is a wager, and it is not optional. The wager is belief.
  • If there is no God, nothing matters, for all will end in the cold dark.
  • If there is a God and one believes, one forgoes temporal joys for infinite salvation
  • If there is a God an one does not believe, one forgoes infinite salvation for temporal joys.
  • The ‘loss’ in the ‘God exists but I don’t believe’ choice is far worse, as it’s eternal.
  • Hence the rational choice is to believe; it offers the greatest gain and the smallest loss.
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It Has To Be Told

Starting The Day With Grace

“The schools would fail through their silence, the Church through its forgiveness, and the home through the denial and silence of the parents. The new generation has to hear what the older generation refuses to tell it.” – SImon Wiesenthal

He who has ears, let him hear…and heed.

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When God Seems Idle

This post is a true gift!

The Barefoot Blog

I read the most disturbing, kind of hilarious thing today.

According to TIME Magazine, the human attention span is officially lower than a goldfish’s.

8 seconds, ya’ll: the average human attention span.

WHAT!?

I believe it. When I get restless, I am quick as a whip to pull out my phone or fill my time with whatever is right in front of me. With convenient entertainment increasing, there is always something for us to turn to when we are in a funk.

This inability to focus may seem obvious when it to our everyday lives, but how do you think it rubs off onto our spiritual lives?  When we find ourselves in a season of wandering, I am willing to bet these distracted tendencies play a huge part in the ways we wait on God.

In Exodus 32, the Israelites were still wandering through the desert when God called Moses and Joshua…

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