How to donate to Chile earthquake relief effort.

Click here to see several ways you can donate to help out with humanitarian aid efforts in Chile:  http://mashable.com/2010/02/27/chile-relief/

Dr. Haim Ginott gives teachers something to reflect on in how they react to children in the classroom

“I’ve come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It’s my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or de-humanized.”
–Dr. Haim Ginott

Please pray for our local National Guard soldiers as they leave home to serve their country today. God Bless our National Guardsmen.

I am praying for Peace on Earth.  Please say a special prayer for our local National Guard soldiers who are leaving home to go to war on our behalf this morning, from Milan, Tennessee.  I pray that God will watch over them as they train for the next two months in preparation for their deployment to Iraq in February, 2010.  I am overwhelmed with pride and compassion when I think of all our troops do to serve their country, and because I love them so much for what they are doing, I wish they didn’t have to go to war.

The Apology of Aristides, I think this is a good description of how Christians strive to behave.

Whatever Christians would not wish others to do to them, they do not to others. And they comfort their oppressors and make them their friends; they do good to their enemies…. Through love towards their oppressors, they persuade them to become Christians.
—The Apology of Aristides

All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum

All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten
by Robert Fulghum

Most of what I really need to know about how to live
and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten.
Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain,
but there in the sand pile at Sunday school.

These are the things I learned:

Share everything.
Play fair.
Don’t hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life—learn some and think some and
draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work everyday some.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic,
hold hands and stick together.
Be aware of wonder.

 

Happy Thanksgiving! =D

“Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever.” (NIV)

A Source of Strength

“Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, YET I WILL REJOICE IN THE LORD, I WILL BE JOYFUL IN GOD MY SAVIOR. The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights!” Habakkuk 3:17-19

gratitude. Thank you Jesus.

I found this excellent explanation of why I am always happier with my life when I am doing everything in the spirit of gratitude for everything in my life and decided I would like to share it with you all.  It was written by the noted American Philosopher Paul K. Moser of Loyola University in Chicago (click here to see original website, and click here to check out a few of his wonderful books.):

Gratitude:

(the following is an excerpt of a piece written by Paul K. Moser)

The Maker of heaven and earth has, out of merciful love, embarked on a rescue operation toward us, His enemies. We have rebelled against God in ways that leave us in bondage to selfishness, idols, and death. God, however, has not responded in kind. Instead, He has sent Jesus, His Son, to befriend us, His enemies. In the life and death of Jesus, God offers forgiveness and reconciliation to all people, and proves His love for all people. How are we to respond to this Good News of amazing mercy toward us? How are we to enter in to the friendship offered?

We must be grateful to God if we are to enter in to loving friendship with Him. In particular, we must be grateful, above all else, to God for His merciful love in Jesus. Such a response of gratitude is the gateway to trust, hope, and spiritual healing in God, our Rescuer. We should think of gratitude as a central ingredient in Jesus’s love commands. In particular, we should understand those commands as prescribing gratitude as follows:

The most important commandment requires this: Be thankful for the Lord your God and His Son Jesus with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second commandment requires this: Be as thankful for your neighbor as you are for yourself. There is no commandment greater than these. (cf. Mk. 12:28-31)

When our gratitude conforms to these two commandments, we are attuned to the living God. Our gratitude will then bear lasting fruit, even the fruit of God’s Spirit (see Gal. 5:22-23), in how we are and live. We will then have lasting joy, come what may. Such gratitude cannot be self-made by humans. It comes as a gift from the living God, who alone can empower us, through His Spirit, to put love and thanks toward Him first in our lives.

Ingratitude, as the refusal to be grateful to God, is spiritual sickness and rebellion against God. Such ingratitude rests on the arrogant presumption that a human is in a position to judge the perfectly loving God to be unworthy of gratitude. It exalts human standards for what is worthy of gratitude above God’s standards. Something is very wrong with this picture: the selfish creature is presuming to find fault with the perfectly loving Creator. Ingratitude toward God is perhaps the most fatal human sickness. It motivates idolatry (see Romans 1:21-23), and leaves a person joyless, frustrated, and angry. In the end, the ungrateful life is not worth living.

Let There Be Peace For Christmas…

Beware of the leaven of the Orthodox teachers. Beware also of the leaven of the materialists and of the rulers of government…” -Jesus Christ

:: “And Jesus said: Beware of the leaven of the Orthodox teachers. Beware also of the leaven of the materialists and of the rulers of government. But most of all, beware of the leaven of the self-styled ‘Orthodox’, for in them is the chief stumbling-block.

And when the people understood what he was speaking about, he repeated: Most of all, beware of the teaching of the scholars, the self-styled Orthodox. Beware of them, because they occupy the place of the prophets who declared the will of God to the people. They have of themselves assumed the authority to preach the will of God to the people. They preach words, but do nothing. They only say: Do this and do that. But there is nothing to do, because they do nothing good, but only talk. They tell people to do what cannot be done, and they themselves do nothing. They only try to keep the teaching in their own hands, and for that purpose strive to appear imposing; they dress themselves up and exalt themselves. Know therefore that no one should call himself a teacher and leader.

The self-appointed Orthodox call themselves teachers, and by so doing hinder you from entering into the kingdom of heaven, and do not enter it themselves. These Orthodox think that people can be brought to God by external ceremonies and pledges.

Like blind men they do not see that the outside show is of no importance and that everything depends on the soul. They themselves do what is easy and external, but what is needful and difficult-love, mercy, and truth-they neglect. They only wish to appear to be within the law and to bring others outwardly to the law.

Therefore they are like painted tombs, which seem clean externally but are loathsome within. They outwardly honor the holy martyrs, but in fact they are just the people who torture and kill the saints. They were, and are, the enemies of all that is good. All the evil in the world comes of them, because they hide the good and put forward evil in its stead.

Most of all to be feared, therefore, are the self-appointed teachers. You yourselves know that every other mistake may be corrected, but if people are mistaken as to what is good it cannot be corrected, and that is the case with the self-appointed leaders.”

-Jesus Christ (Lk. xii. 1&5, xx. 45, Mt. xxiii. 2)