The end of one year and the dawning of a new one provides an excellent opportunity to wipe the slate clean and make a fresh start.
The following are excerpts were taken from a column written by Norman Vincent Peale many years ago.
William Ewart Gladstone , once a minister of Great Britain said: " It is a dangerous thing for any person to start out a new year without the thought of God."
None of us can see very far ahead of life's pathway. We are surrounded on every hand by insecurity. The only certain and for sure factor in this world is the Eternal, 'the same yesterday, today and forever.' God is our security. So it is well to keep God in mind as Gladstone suggests.
As a young boy Norman Vincent Peale said his father would bring a Bible to the dinner table on every New Year's Eve and solemnly, he would open it, turning to its very beginning to read the first four words of the first chapter of Genesis. "In the beginning God." That was all-just those four words. He never explained , but that they are still remembered shows that they registered. It is very true that anyone who will make those four words basic philosophy will have what it takes to meet whatever problems come during the year.
This is so because such reliance on God and His power activates a new start and with it the belief that you can forget yesterday and go forward confidently into the future. The Bible is filled with emphasis on new starts and fresh beginnings. . Such words as: "Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before," " I press toward the mark..." And again : "Old things are passed away; all things become new." and still again, "Behold, I make all things new."
Don't lug the past into the future. You have made mistakes, done dumb things. Who hasn't ? Extract from them what experience they contain and then turn and face the future to those wonderful new starts and great new beginnings.
Yes, we can leave the sins and failures of this past year behind us, accept His forgiveness, and press on to higher ground. Remembering God's faithfulness and forgetting past mistakes will make entering the new year a time of joyous anticipation. And don't forget "In the beginning God."
Friday, December 31, 2010
A Prayer for the New Year
God grant us this year a wider view
So we see others faults through the eyes of You-
Teach us to judge not with hasty tongue,
Neither the Adult...nor the Young
Give us patience and grace to endure.
And a stronger faith so we fell secure
And instead of remembering, help us forget
The irritations that caused us to fret
Freely forgiving for some offer
And finding each day a rich recompense
In offering a friendly helping hand
And trying in all ways to understand
That all of us whoever we are
Are trying to reach "an unreachable star"-
For the Great and Small...the Good and Bad,
The Young and Old...the Sad and Glad
Are asking today "Is Life Worth Living"
And the answer is only in Loving and Giving
For only Love can make men kind
And kindness of Heart brings Peace of Mind
And by giving Love, we can start this year
To Lift the clouds of Hate and Fear.
Helen Steiner Rice
Monday, December 6, 2010
A Christmas Prayer For You
LORD
We welcome You
into our hearts
and homes.
Bless us with
Your peace, fill us
with Your joy,
surround us with
Your love.
We celebrate You
and thank You
for coming.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY JESUS!
Amen.
We welcome You
into our hearts
and homes.
Bless us with
Your peace, fill us
with Your joy,
surround us with
Your love.
We celebrate You
and thank You
for coming.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY JESUS!
Amen.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
President Bushs' Thanksgiving proclamation
Americans are a grateful people, ever mindful of the many ways we have been blessed. On Thanksgiving Day, we lift our hearts in gratitude for the freedoms we enjoy, the people we love and the gifts of our prosperous land.
Our country was founded by men and women who realized their dependence on God, and were humbled by His providence and grace. The early explorers and settlers who arrived in this land gave thanks for God's protection and for the extraordinary natural abundance they found. Since the first national Day of Thanksgiving was proclaimed, Americans have come together to offer thanks for our many blessings. We recall the great privilege it is to live in a land where freedom is the right of every person and where all can pursue their dreams. We express our deep appreciation for the sacrifices of the honorable men and women in uniform who defend liberty. As they work to advance the cause of freedom, our Nation keeps these brave individuals and their families in our thoughts and we pray for their safe return.
While Thanksgiving is a time to gather in a spirit of Gratitude with family, friends, and neighbors, it is also an opportunity to serve others and to share our blessings with those in need. By answering the universal call to love a neighbor as we want to be loved ourselves, we make our Nation a more hopeful and caring place.
This Thanksgiving, may we reflect upon the past year with gratefulness and look toward the future with hope. Let us give thanks for all we have been given and ask God to continue to bless our families and our Nation.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of American, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim Thursday, November 22, 2007, as a National Day of Thanksgiving. I encourage all Americans to gather together in their homes and places of worship with family, friends, and loved one to reinforce the ties that bind us and give thanks for the freedoms and many blessings we enjoy.
IN WITNESS THEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this fifteenth day of November, in the year of our Lord two thousand seven, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-second.
Our country was founded by men and women who realized their dependence on God, and were humbled by His providence and grace. The early explorers and settlers who arrived in this land gave thanks for God's protection and for the extraordinary natural abundance they found. Since the first national Day of Thanksgiving was proclaimed, Americans have come together to offer thanks for our many blessings. We recall the great privilege it is to live in a land where freedom is the right of every person and where all can pursue their dreams. We express our deep appreciation for the sacrifices of the honorable men and women in uniform who defend liberty. As they work to advance the cause of freedom, our Nation keeps these brave individuals and their families in our thoughts and we pray for their safe return.
While Thanksgiving is a time to gather in a spirit of Gratitude with family, friends, and neighbors, it is also an opportunity to serve others and to share our blessings with those in need. By answering the universal call to love a neighbor as we want to be loved ourselves, we make our Nation a more hopeful and caring place.
This Thanksgiving, may we reflect upon the past year with gratefulness and look toward the future with hope. Let us give thanks for all we have been given and ask God to continue to bless our families and our Nation.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of American, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim Thursday, November 22, 2007, as a National Day of Thanksgiving. I encourage all Americans to gather together in their homes and places of worship with family, friends, and loved one to reinforce the ties that bind us and give thanks for the freedoms and many blessings we enjoy.
IN WITNESS THEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this fifteenth day of November, in the year of our Lord two thousand seven, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-second.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Thanksgiving Proclamation 1863
It is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon, and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations are blessed whose God is the Lord.
We know that by his divine law, nations, like individuals, are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world. May we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war which now desolates the land may be a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptious sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people?
We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity, we have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown.
But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.
It has seemed to me fit and proper that God should be solemnly reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November as a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.
Abraham Lincoln 1863
We know that by his divine law, nations, like individuals, are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world. May we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war which now desolates the land may be a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptious sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people?
We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity, we have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown.
But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.
It has seemed to me fit and proper that God should be solemnly reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November as a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.
Abraham Lincoln 1863
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Thanksgiving History and Traditions
America's first Thanksgiving, in 1621, was a three-day celebration of feasting and recreation. The prior year was the Pilgrims' first winter at Plymouth, and it was so harsh almost half of the colonists perished.
By the second harvest, there was reason to rejoice. A peace treaty was signed with the Wampanoag, the Pilgrims' Native American neighbors. And Massasoit, their leader, shared his agricultural expertise, which resulted in a bumper crop. As was common in England, where the Pilgrims originated, they chose to commemorate their bounty with a harvest festival.
Most accounts of the actual event mention neither turkey nor pumpkin, our modern Thanksgiving staples. Indian corn was plentiful, however. Four valiant Pilgrim housewives supervised the feast that Massasoit and 90 of his people attended, bringing five deer as their contribution to the communal table.
Presumable, the Pilgrims followed the English custom of the day and served their neighbors buffet-style; dishes were placed on the table and guests helped themselves. There were no forks, only knives, spoons, and large napkins that were used to pick up hot foods and to tidy the face and fingers. Food could be eaten directly from the serving dish or you could share a trencher (wooden plate). No meal could begin without saying grace, since the Pilgrims believed that their good fortune was due to their relationship to God.
Similar New England harvest festivals evolved into an annual tradition, officially acknowledged in 1777, when the Continental Congress declared the first national Thanksgiving. President Lincoln established Thanksgiving as a national holiday in 1863, after 23 years of lobbying by Sarah Josepha Hale, an acclaimed author and editor.
The regional foods of New England, including turkey, cranberries, and pumpkin, came to be identified with the holiday, as did the inspirational story of the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag tribe feasting and coexisting in peace.
By the second harvest, there was reason to rejoice. A peace treaty was signed with the Wampanoag, the Pilgrims' Native American neighbors. And Massasoit, their leader, shared his agricultural expertise, which resulted in a bumper crop. As was common in England, where the Pilgrims originated, they chose to commemorate their bounty with a harvest festival.
Most accounts of the actual event mention neither turkey nor pumpkin, our modern Thanksgiving staples. Indian corn was plentiful, however. Four valiant Pilgrim housewives supervised the feast that Massasoit and 90 of his people attended, bringing five deer as their contribution to the communal table.
Presumable, the Pilgrims followed the English custom of the day and served their neighbors buffet-style; dishes were placed on the table and guests helped themselves. There were no forks, only knives, spoons, and large napkins that were used to pick up hot foods and to tidy the face and fingers. Food could be eaten directly from the serving dish or you could share a trencher (wooden plate). No meal could begin without saying grace, since the Pilgrims believed that their good fortune was due to their relationship to God.
Similar New England harvest festivals evolved into an annual tradition, officially acknowledged in 1777, when the Continental Congress declared the first national Thanksgiving. President Lincoln established Thanksgiving as a national holiday in 1863, after 23 years of lobbying by Sarah Josepha Hale, an acclaimed author and editor.
The regional foods of New England, including turkey, cranberries, and pumpkin, came to be identified with the holiday, as did the inspirational story of the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag tribe feasting and coexisting in peace.
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Criticism
I consider myself a good cook. My taste buds are sharp. I detect when a strong or wrong spice is used in food. I complain when the meat is tough, the potatoes are not done, the gravy lumpy, the salad limp. You get the picture . Often, I complain about other things as well.
Examining the reason for complaining usually points a finger back at me. Am I finding fault with the issue to make my self feel superior, or am I genuinely wanting to make an improvement?
Are you a fence straddler or do you speak out when an important issue comes before you. Do you make a positive comment, an opposing comment or do you just stay mum. I'm usually vocal with my opinions and sometimes it gets me into trouble.
Recently I read an enlightening article (author unknown) that pointed out how you can actually learn to like criticism. This was a unique idea that people only appreciate 'constructive criticism.'
The key issue is how to take criticism...whether you can take it in stride, or if it shakes you up, or if, hopefully you can use it to your advantage. Sometimes criticism is really a test of how strong you are... and how you can profit from it by trying to improve yourself, and recognize what you know and what you don't know. Few people can take harsh criticism without appearing to be upset by it, but if we take criticism gracefully we can use it to our advantage.
A poet once wrote: "The stones that critics hurl with harsh intent, man may use to build a monument."
Examining the reason for complaining usually points a finger back at me. Am I finding fault with the issue to make my self feel superior, or am I genuinely wanting to make an improvement?
Are you a fence straddler or do you speak out when an important issue comes before you. Do you make a positive comment, an opposing comment or do you just stay mum. I'm usually vocal with my opinions and sometimes it gets me into trouble.
Recently I read an enlightening article (author unknown) that pointed out how you can actually learn to like criticism. This was a unique idea that people only appreciate 'constructive criticism.'
The key issue is how to take criticism...whether you can take it in stride, or if it shakes you up, or if, hopefully you can use it to your advantage. Sometimes criticism is really a test of how strong you are... and how you can profit from it by trying to improve yourself, and recognize what you know and what you don't know. Few people can take harsh criticism without appearing to be upset by it, but if we take criticism gracefully we can use it to our advantage.
A poet once wrote: "The stones that critics hurl with harsh intent, man may use to build a monument."
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