Thankful Thursday

If she were still with us here on earth, that’s what my mother would have asked.

Blog­ging is, for the vast major­ity of us, an avo­ca­tion rather than a voca­tion or pro­fes­sion. A pleas­ant diver­sion from our daily toil.

I am thank­ful today for my friends in the blog­ging com­mu­nity. And happy for those who have sup­ported one of my recent endeav­ors, The Sev­enth Day Blog Car­ni­val. I appre­ci­ate the kind words and par­tic­i­pa­tion of many won­der­ful fel­low bloggers.

So I found myself scratch­ing my head in bewil­der­ment when one lone voice rose up to chas­tise me. What was my trans­gres­sion? I vis­ited her blog and left a com­ment, invit­ing her to par­tic­i­pate in the Carnival.

“He can turn this test into a tes­ti­mony;
He can turn this mess into a message.”

Rev. Tim Storey,
Spir­i­tual Adviser to Duane “Dog the Bounty Hunter” Chapman

But does that mean that his tele­vi­sion series can or should go back on the air?
That’s the ques­tion that A&E exec­u­tives have not yet answered.

The Good News today is that Dog, like the rest of us, is for­given. Whether or not the television-watching pub­lic for­gives, for­gets, and is will­ing to tune back in is, in the long run, of no import. If Dog really under­stands why his behav­ior was com­pletely, utterly wrong, and totally with­out jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, — and repents — he will stand for­given. In the eyes of the Sav­ior who made the ulti­mate sac­ri­fice so that we never have to, the slate will be wiped clean. Forever.

My pur­pose in writ­ing is sim­ply this: that you who believe in God’s Son will know beyond the shadow of a doubt that you have eter­nal life, the real­ity and not the illu­sion. And how bold and free we then become in his pres­ence, freely ask­ing accord­ing to his will, sure that he’s lis­ten­ing. And if […]

His dis­ci­ples said, “Finally! You’re giv­ing it to us straight, in plain talk—no more fig­ures of speech. Now we know that you know everything—it all comes together in you. You won’t have to put up with our ques­tions any­more. We’re con­vinced you came from God.”

Jesus answered them, “Do you finally believe? In fact, you’re about to make a run for it—saving your own skins and aban­don­ing me. But I’m not aban­doned. The Father is with me. I’ve told you all this so that trust­ing me, you will be unshak­able and assured, deeply at peace. In this god­less world you will con­tinue to expe­ri­ence dif­fi­cul­ties. But take heart! I’ve con­quered the world.”

John 16:29–33

(The Mes­sage)

I don’t have all the answers.

“To which ques­tions?” you ask.

Most of them.

And that’s per­fectly all right.

Because I do have the answer to the one of life’s most impor­tant ques­tions: Is the above pas­sage true?

Absolutely!

I didn’t feel thank­ful today. I didn’t feel like a “Hope­ful Spirit,” either. I felt depressed, dis­cour­aged and disappointed.

I really wanted some­thing and did not get it. I thought for sure that I would because all the objec­tive signs and indi­ca­tors led to that con­clu­sion but, at the last minute, I didn’t. So it was sort of a “dou­ble whammy” in the sense that I thought I had it “sewn up” and the peo­ple around me were telling me that it appeared to be a “done deal”.

I almost skipped Thank­ful Thursday.

It can’t really be Thurs­day again already! What hap­pened to the week? Where did it go?

Does time pass quickly in your life? Do you blink and find that it is already Thurs­day again?

Is the quick pas­sage of time a bless­ing or curse in your life?

This week, Iris has asked us to share “five rea­sons that I am thank­ful this week and why I think Jesus rocks/I ‘dig’ Him.”

First, though, I hope you noticed the new Word Press theme. The pre­vi­ous theme was a stop­gap mea­sure until I could get every­thing trans­ferred over from Blog­ger and set up here on Word Press. I have spent many hours work­ing on this tran­si­tion and it is still not com­plete, but I am pleased with how it is com­ing along.

I am very happy that I made the switch to Word Press — thank­ful that I received an answer to my prayers about whether or not to make the change. The migra­tion has proven time-consuming and some­times frus­trat­ing, but very much worth the effort expended.

Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures for­ever. Psalm 107:1 Hard to believe that it is Thurs­day again already. Must time pass so quickly? Tonight we need to hold up in prayers our neigh­bors in the South Lake Tahoe region who have been impacted by the Angora fire. I can’t imagine […]

I’m late! I started play­ing around with the lay­out … and then sev­eral hours went by. Funny how that works! So I’m thank­ful that the prin­ci­ples of CSS are start­ing to make a bit more sense to me. I was able to get the bot­tom columns to line up but I’m not going to con­fess here how long […]