Is that your best offer?

When you’re in Gatlinburg on vacation, you should understand that you WILL be approached for a “Time Share” presentation. The lure of this 90 minute lecture is the following – if you listen to everything they have to offer, they will give you free tickets to an area show. I know this because my husband I fell victim to this madness several years ago… and now we are frequent visitors to Tennessee because – you guessed it – we get to use our Time Share. Yep, they got us!

Well, this year’s vacation to the Great Smokey Mountains was no different than any other in the past five years. The moment we checked into our little two bedroom facility, they gave us the directions to the “benefits” room… that’s code for “Time Share” appointment office - or what they now like to call the “Vacation Exchange Program”. Anyway, I headed over there and set up our appointment because we had two other couples with us that didn’t have a “Vacation Exchange Program”, and, to be truthful, we wanted some discount tickets to Dixie Stampede. So, we set up our allotted time and went about our business.

When the time came for our rendezvous, we all headed over to their office… and for an hour and a half we listened to how great this program would be for everyone involved. Then, we got down to the nitty gritty. The manager came to my friends, “This is the best offer I can give you.” he said. They counter offered. Then for the next hour, we heard that manager, come back with his “best offer”, about three more times, until the price was cut in half from the original asking price.

I know that’s the way business is done, but I couldn’t help but think that this is the way we sometimes negotiate with God, too. We start off by offering our best to Him if He’ll just... save so-and-so… pull our loved ones through surgery… let us get that job – and then when we do get what we want from Him, we forget those promises. At first we offer everything and when everything is said is done – He is lucky to get even half of our “best offer”.

"I'm Sorry"

Four things you can't recover:
The stone........after the throw.
The word.........after it's said.
The occasion.....after it's missed.
The time.........after it's gone.
Author Unknown

Today my husband and I packed up our things in the car, and headed out the door on our vacation. Seven hours later, we finally made it to our destination. Now, that's all fine and good - except for the fact that we realistically could have been where we were going about 2 hours earlier.

Here's the deal... Murphy (and his law) was all up in our business today! No matter what we did, it was wrong:
We went to the wrong restaurant for breakfast... our waitress told us after 45 minutes of waiting that she forgot to put our order in!
We followed the wrong directions... we had to turn around so many times that I thought I was on a Merry Go Round.
We went to the wrong restaurant for dinner... the waiter accidentally hit my husband's elbow with a stack of dishes and his hand was numb throughout our entire meal.

But the worst thing that happened today... Because of the stress of everything going wrong all day long, my husband and I both said things to each other, out of anger, that we both regretted. We allowed the stress we were feeling to get the better of us, and because we didn't have another outlet available - we took our anxiety out on each other! But, you know what? The saying is true... Once the word is spoken, it's spoken.

Thank God, "I'm Sorry" is as easily said.

Crash Test Dummy

I heard a funny thing today… What do you call your first born child? A crash test dummy! I have to admit that I kind of agree with that saying. I had a young mother say to me the other day, “Why don’t they (babies) come with instruction manuals?” I sure felt like that when I was a young mother. I sometimes still feel like that, and my son is 24.

We are given this beautiful, loving creature that speaks a different language than we do, and they can’t figure out how to relay they desires to us. The only thing this little bundle of joy knows how to do really, really well is scream at the top of their little bitty, teeny tiny lungs… and they do that very often. We are taught patience through caring for them.

As they grow, they learn numbers, colors, shapes, letters, and every other thing. And we are taught to see the world the way we used to see it. We reinforce lessons in them and us… we make mistakes with them and carry the guilt inside us. They become a crash test dummy, yet we are the ones with the bruises. Why? Because it hurts us every time we hurt them.

Now, imagine the hurt that God feels when we are in despair. We can turn to Him and let Him carry that burden. His is willing to take our pain and ease our bruises… He loves us because we are His children. He wants to protect us just as much as we want to protect our own children. And fortunately for us, He is much better at it than we are – no crash test dummy here!

Photo - http://www.faqs.org/photo-dict/phrase/4615/crash-test-dummy.html

Trying to please everyone……

Trying to get everyone to like you is a sign of mediocrity.
You’re never going to be able to control what others think, so don’t spend too much time stressing over it.
Instead, work on the things you do have control over… yourself, your emotions, your thoughts and your actions.
Spend your energy in the creation process, and on people who do deserve your attention and love.
Try for a week. You’ll find life’s a lot more rewarding.
~Author unknown

The Scarlet Letter

Today in my morning Bible study class, we were discussing how unfortunate it is that something can happen in your life, and you can become known by that ACT the rest of your life. In the Book of John, there’s a woman that isn’t even mentioned by her “name” because of a mistake she made. This woman will forever be referred to as “a woman caught in adultery”.

If you’re not familiar with the story:
John 8: 3 The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group 4 and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5 In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?”

7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”

I couldn’t imagine being known by my past sins. “Oh, here comes the Divorced Sinner!” “Look, there’s the girl that cheated on her math test in 6th grade!” “Get away from the lady that …. ”

Jesus knows all of my past sins, yet He loves me anyway. When I asked Him into my heart, He erased those labels that had held me down for so long. He knew all the sins of the woman in the story above, too. The words He shared with the Pharisees are just as important for us today.

10 Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
11 “No one, sir,” she said.
“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”


What label would you be known by? It doesn’t matter. Because of Jesus, I can say to you: “Oh, here comes a child of God!”


Some notes on the Bible story:
The Pharisees weren’t really following the law - The “Law” they are speaking of - the one Moses commanded - stated that the woman should be stoned IF she was a virgin that was promised to be married to someone else AND that the man she was caught with should be stoned, too! (Where was the man that committed adultery with her? Was she a virgin? Was she promised to be married? Where were the witnesses?)
Plus, the problem for Jesus here is two-fold: 1) If Jesus said to stone her, He is breaking the Pharisees law, because Jews cannot command this to be done. 2) If Jesus said not to stone her, He is telling them He doesn’t agree with their Law.

The Privilege to Vote

It was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote…

Remember, women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the vote.
Because of that picketing, forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of 'obstructing sidewalk traffic.'

They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air.

They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cell mate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.

Thus unfolded the 'Night of Terror' on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right to vote. For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms.

When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press…

Ladies, did you take advantage of your privilege to vote today?


Check out the facts - http://www.snopes.com/politics/ballot/womenvote.asp

Swiper the Fox

My granddaughter and I were watching one of her favorite cartoon series the other day - Dora the Explorer. Dora has a character on her show that always gets into mischief... Swiper the Fox. Swiper seems to have a compulsion for "swiping" things from other people in every episode, and it's up to Dora and her friends (including us in the audience) to keep Swiper in line.

Anyway, I guess my granddaughter was fed up with Swiper on this particular day, because we had a conversation that went something like this:

HER - "Nana, why are some people not nice?"
ME - "I guess they don't know that Jesus loves them and wants them to be nice to everybody."
HER - "Well, I'm gonna turn into a bird, and fly up to Jesus, and tell Him to tell them people to be nice. Then, I'm gonna turn back into me and come back down here."

Isn't it awesome, at 3 1/2 years old, she had the concept of talking to Jesus regarding the people she was angry with instead of turning her back on them? What a lesson for those of us with a little more years under our belts.

Of course, we don't have to turn ourselves into birds and fly to Heaven to have a conversation with Jesus... All we need to do is open our hearts to Him... and our minds to Him... and our ears to Him. It's not enough to tell Him what WE want. We need to be open to what HE wants, too.

And, of course, keep our imaginations open - remember Jesus said, "For the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who are like these children."