Community Chat

[gloriajean]

Hello my friends! Woke up to 8 degrees this morning! Getting colder! I thank my God for our warm house - a great blessing! Although Linus twisted his back yesterday in the house, he still went to butcher deer at his brother's and was there for hours - We had some deer meat for supper - some sliced, floured and seasoned and fried along with hashbrowns mixed with sweet potato and our greens I froze which was wonderful! Green beans for the vegetable we froze - a very good meal! It was delicious and I'm glad we have more of that meat to use at a later time. I'm not used to deer meat, but I'm finding out it's great! Tomorrow he's going to the chiro, Dr. Mike to get straightened out. Hey! good news on the gin and raisins! Right away he noticed that his arthritic neck had no pain!! Thanks be to God for working through the raisins and gin! Another thing - it tastes wonderful!! Know that you're always in my prayers. All of you, even you, who don't post - you are also in my prayers. Please pray for us, too.

Avoid negative thinking because this leads to unnecessary worry. Lord, I

rely

on You to guide and sustain me and I know that with You I can move easily

around life's obstacles.

Scripture for the day:

"From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law

indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus

Christ." ~John 1:16-17

Meditation for the day:

As God's power in our lives in creases, so does our ability to

understand God's grace. The power of God's grace is only limited by

the understanding and will of each individual. God's miracle-working

power is only limited in each of us by our lack of spiritual vision.

God respects our free will, the right of each of us to accept or

reject this miracle-working power. Only the sincere desire of the

soul gives God the opportunity to bestow it.

Prayer for the day:

I pray that I may not limit God's power by my lack of vision. I pray

that I may keep my mind open to day to God's influence.

ROUGH WATERS

By Sally I. Kennedy

He..rebuked the wind and the raging waters; the storm subsided, and

all was calm. Luke 8:25

Recently my husband was in Marathon, ‘the heart of the beautiful

Florida Keys’, for a fishing trip with some guys. He said it was

windy and really rough out. I could picture the boat getting slammed

with the waves. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t have even left the dock in

this kind of weather, but the men were only there a brief time (so

they ‘had to do it’).

According to my husband, an experienced fisherman, calm waters are

usually close in to shore, near the land which protects it. The

rougher waters are out farther, in between the shallow and the deep,

over the reefs. The depth of the water, however, isn’t what matters

in how rough it is. Interestingly, more fish are usually caught in

these rougher waters.

This particular day they were offshore about nine miles. The men got

a banner catch that day, a bull dolphin and some schoolies. A marlin

even took the bait, which is rare for this time of year.

I doubt anyone wants to get banged up and bruised from the ‘rough

waters’ we all encounter in life. Nor be nervous, or afraid, to say

nothing of perhaps not being able to ‘fish’.

The rough waters we have can be calmed by the protective shore of

Jesus, who is always there. He spoke to the elements in nature, and

they obeyed. He can also speak to our hearts, and supernatural calm

can replace our rough waters.

That is good news.

Hello! Is there too much noise in your life?

I AM your Lord God speaking!

Would you like me to speak louder?

Is it you who can't hear me already,

in the mere creation that was made by my hands;

Like the sun, which I shine on your face everyday,

or the wind, that blows through your window,

which you don't notice because your always in a hurry?

Can you not hear me in the Mass,

where I offer up myself to you through the Eucharist,

in a homily where my child speaks my words,

in the Bible - where I teach you how to live,

in prayer - where you listen and hear me speak,

or in any act of Love you experience

through another one of my children during a normal day?

I AM with you always, right here,

but unless you have time

and turn down the volume of the stereo of life,

how do you expect to hear me?

Prayer For Inner Peace

Lord, please put your peace in my heart. I'm worried and anxious. My mind

races and obsesses. I can't help thinking about my problems. And the more I

think about them, the more depressed I become. I feel like I'm sinking down

in quicksand and can't get out. Calm me, Lord. Show me down, put your peace

in my heart.

No matter what problem I have, Lord, you are bigger, you are more powerful

than it is. So I bring my problem to you. I know what I want. I know my

will. I do not know yours. I do not know how you will use this problem for

my salvation. I do not know what good you will workout at this evil. But I

trust you. I trust your goodness and your wisdom. So I place myself in your

hands. Please fill my heart with peace.

I Can Pray

When the world about me seems tossed to and fro,

When personal problems begin to trouble me so,

When many heartaches and disappointments come my way,

I am so thankful that I know how to pray.

I'm thankful , too, that I can pray when all is well.

His blessings for me are far too numerous to tell;

But I can thank Him for some of them, one by one,

And can praise Him for all the things He has done.

I can pray and then pause and listen to God speak to me.

This makes communion real and vital, you see.

For prayer with the assurance that God will hear,

And His presence becomes so wonderfully near.

I can pray in the darkness or in the sun's golden light;

O wherever I am, prayer seems to be right.

Oh, I can pray, and this I do cherish!

I pray that my loved ones will not perish.

I pray that they will know this privilege I know,

Then they, too, can thank God for loving them so.

Because I can pray I never feel alone,

For God has promised to draw nigh to His own.

A peace fills my heart and mind each day,

As I rejoice in the knowledge that I can pray!

Now this is the Living Bible:

His name is Tim. He has wild hair, wears a T-shirt with holes in it, jeans,

and no shoes. This was literally his wardrobe for his entire four years of

college.

He is brilliant. Kind of profound and very, very bright. He became a

Christian while attending college. Across the street from the campus is a

well-dressed, very conservative church. They want to develop a ministry to

the students but are not sure how to go about it. One day Tim decides to go

there. He walks in with no shoes, jeans, his T-shirt, and wild hair. The

service has already started and so Tim starts down the aisle looking for a

seat. The church is completely packed and he can't find a seat. By now,

people are really looking a bit uncomfortable, but no one says anything. Tim

gets closer and closer and closer to the pulpit, and when he realizes there

are no seats, he just squats down right on the carpet. By now the people are

really uptight, and the tension in the air is thick.

About this time, the minister realizes that from way at the back of the

church, a deacon is slowly making his way toward Tim. Now the deacon is in

his eighties, has silver-gray hair, and a three-piece suit. A godly man,

very elegant, very dignified, very courtly. He walks with a cane and, as he

starts walking toward this boy, everyone is saying to themselves that you

can't blame him for what he's going to do. How can you expect a man of his

age and of his background to understand some college kid on the floor? It

takes a long time for the man to reach the boy. The church is utterly

silent except for the clicking of the man's cane. All eyes are focused on

him. You can't even hear anyone breathing. The minister can't even preach

the sermon until the deacon does what he has to do. And now they see this

elderly man drop his cane on the floor. With great difficulty, he lowers

himself and sits down next to Tim and worships with him so he won't be

alone. Everyone chokes up with emotion...

When the minister gains control, he says,

'What I'm about to preach, you will never remember. What you have just seen,

you will never forget.'

'Be careful how you live. You may be the only Bible people will ever see'.

Stranger Is a Dangerous Word

Num 11:25-29 / James 5:1-6 / Mk 9:38-43,45,47-48

About a fifteen years ago, Time magazine reported on a curious experiment

conducted by the sociology department at Stanford. It seems the department

took a late model automobile into a nearby residential neighborhood and

abandoned it for a week. They hadn’t really abandoned it, of course, because

they were watching from a hidden vantage point to see what might happen.

What happened was absolutely nothing. Adults and kids walked or drove by,

looked at the car, and obviously wondered whose it was and why it was there.

But nobody laid a finger on it.

After a week of this the hidden observers ended their vigil and drove the

car away. But not very far, just a few blocks, to a spot on the side of a

well-traveled road that wasn’t part of any particular neighborhood. Once

again the car was "abandoned" and the observers took up their binoculars to

watch from a distance. But this time they hadn’t long to wait. Well-dressed

adults and teenagers in decent cars - the same kind of folks who lived in

the first neighborhood - descended like locusts on that car and took what

they wanted, tires, stereo, seats, doors, engine, the works! Within five

hours only the frame remained.

The same car, the same community, two locations just blocks apart. What made

the difference? The scholars thought a lot about that and finally concluded

that the difference lay in a simple distinction: ours vs. theirs. Even if we

don’t quite know the details, a car parked in our neighborhood is presumed

to be one of ours. Whereas a car parked out in no-man’s land is labeled

"theirs," the property of one of the faceless "them," who have no connection

with us, who are outside our circle, and thus merit no consideration from

us.

That ugly little distinction, we vs. they, ours vs. theirs, is constantly in

play, always sneaking up on us and trying to take over. It labels a person

as a "stranger" — not one of us — and then gives permission for just about

anything.

How could a person kill someone entirely unknown to him in a drive-by

shooting? Easy. The victim was a "stranger," not of the group, so his life

just didn’t count.

How can an airman drop bombs on innocent non-combatants below? Because they

are strangers and not ours.

How can we sometimes be so callous about the sufferings of the homeless and

destitute? Easy! Because they are strangers, people without faces, not one

of us.

And how can some of us be so rude and aggressive to other, perfectly decent

drivers on the freeway? Because they are strangers, not one of us. Can you

imagine acting that way if you knew the other driver was a friend or a

client or your mother?!

The pattern shows up in even the tiniest of things. I’ve learned that even

cigarette butts can tell us the same tale. At the end of a typical Sunday

morning, when more than a thousand of our own parishioners have passed

through these doors, hardly a cigarette butt is to be found anywhere on the

grounds. But have a handful of visitors here for a 30-minute wedding, and

you’ll find butts everywhere, even ground into the floor inside the church.

To some of those visitors, we are strangers, not one of theirs, so anything

goes.

In this gospel, Jesus had the disappointment of hearing his best friend John

make this same ugly distinction, we vs. they, ours vs. theirs. "Jesus," he

said, all puffed up with pride, "we saw a man using your name to expel

demons and we stopped him, because he was not one of ours!" What a

disappointment for Jesus! John had already heard the Good Samaritan story at

least as many times as we have. For nearly three years he’d seen Jesus

befriending everyone who came along, showing no preferences, making no

distinctions, welcoming everyone into his life, and leaving no one outside

the circle of his love.

John had seen and heard all that, but just like us, he still hadn’t taken it

all the way into his heart. His old instincts were still in charge. But

Jesus didn’t give up on him. He just told him again: for us there can be no

such thing as a stranger, only brothers and sisters. For us there can be no

"them," only an all-inclusive "us." The circle of our love has to grow so

wide that no one is left outside. This is our life’s task and we’ll achieve

it only with God’s help.

So let us turn to God in prayer.

Lord, we have set limits on our love and have been willing to call many of

your people "strangers." Help our hearts to grow ever larger. Teach us to

recognize all people as brothers and sisters, and show us the way to bring

all people into the circle of our love. Amen.