by
Chet
28. May 2010 09:24
FREEDOM ISN'T FREE(I don't know who wrote this)
I watched the flag pass by one day, It fluttered in the breeze. A young Marine saluted it, And then he stood at ease.. I looked at him in uniform So young, so tall, so proud, With hair cut square and eyes alert He'd stand out in any crowd. I thought how many men like him Had fallen through the years. How many died on foreign soil How many mothers' tears? How many pilots' planes shot down? How many died at sea How many foxholes were soldiers' graves? No, freedom isn't free. I heard the sound of Taps one night, When everything was still, I listened to the bugler play And felt a sudden chill. I wondered just how many times That Taps had meant "Amen," When a flag had draped a coffin. Of a brother or a friend. I thought of all the children, Of the mothers and the wives, Of fathers, sons and husbands With interrupted lives. I thought about a graveyard At the bottom of the sea Of unmarked graves in Arlington. No, freedom isn't free.
by
Chet
16. May 2010 07:04
True Friendship"It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them."- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882)"A friend loves at all times, And a brother is born for adversity." - Solomon - Proverbs 17:17
"One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives."- Euripides, Greek playwright
"Never injure a friend, even in jest."- Cicero, Roman Philosopher 106BC – 43BC
"A true friend stabs you in the front."- Oscar Wilde"Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light."- Helen Keller
"Be slow in choosing your friends; slower in changing."-Benjamin Franklin"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."- Martin Luther King Jr."Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up.”-Solomon – Ecclesiastes 4:9-10&ld...
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by
Chet
10. May 2010 13:26
Here is a copy of a speech that I helped a 16 year old at my church develop. It was both fun and rewarding to help her with this and watch it and her develop over time. But it was even more interesting to see how her life suddenly got crazy busy while she was working on a speech about busyness and how we can be prepared for it and handle it. Not avoid it. Be ready for it. Because there are times, and perhaps even entire seasons, of life, where it’s both unavoidable and important to do what we are doing.
She sent me another quote a week or so after the fact from Abe Lincoln: “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
Good job, Tabi. I'm very proud of you.
Am I too busy to serve the Lord?By Tabi Layton
Some years ago a young man looking for work approached a foreman of a logging crew and asked him for a job. “It depends,” replied the foreman. “Let’s see you take this one down.”
...
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by
Chet
29. March 2010 10:30
"Contrary to what might be expected, I look back on experiences that at the time seemed especially desolating and painful with particular satisfaction. Indeed, I can say with complete truthfulness that everything I have learned in my seventy-five years in this world, everything that has truly enhanced and enlightened my existence, has been through affliction and not through happiness, whether pursued or attained. In other words, if it ever were to be possible to eliminate affliction from our earthly existence by means of some drug or other medical mumbo jumbo... the result would not be to make life delectable, but to make it too banal and trivial to be endurable. This, of course, is what the Cross signifies. And it is the Cross, more than anything else, that has called me inexorably to Christ."
- Malcolm Muggerridge, A Twentieth Century Testimony
I'm reading a book by Eugene H. Peterson (translator of The Message) titled Run With the Horses right now... I don't know if it's int...
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by
Chet
19. March 2010 08:12
Honest communication in love is the only way to live and grow in friendships. There are ebbs and flows. There may be real hurt and disappointment. But with the grace of God firmly holding us, it is possible to nurture and sustain deep friendships. We are designed to live in relationship and share in the lives of other women. We need one another. God knows that. We have only to ask and surrender, to wait, to hope, and, in faith, to love. We must also repent.For a woman to enjoy relationship, she must repent of her need to control and her insistence that people fill her. Fallen Eve demands that people “come through” for her. Redeemed Eve is being met in the depths of her soul by Christ and is free to offer to others, free to desire, and willing to be disappointed. Fallen Eve has been wounded by others and withdraws in order to protect herself from further harm. Redeemed Eve knows that she has something of value to offer; that she is made for relationship. Therefore, being saf...
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by
Chet
15. March 2010 13:15
Me thinks I need some Howard Thurman reading... these are some monster good quotes:
"Community cannot for long feed on itself; it can only flourish with the coming of others from beyond, their unknown and undiscovered brothers."
"Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that. Because what the world needs is people that have come alive."
"There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. It is the only true guide you will ever have. And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life spend your days at the ends of strings that somebody else pulls."
"Commitment means that it is possible for a man to yield the nerve centre of his consent to a purpose or cause, a movement or an ideal, which may be more important to him than whether he lives or dies."
"A dream is the bearer of a new possibility, the enlarged horizon, the great hope."
by
Chet
5. March 2010 07:57
We come into the world with a longing to be known and a deep-seated fear that we aren’t what we should be. We are set up for a crisis of identity. And then, says Frederick Buechner, the world goes to work:Starting with the rather too pretty young woman and the charming but rather unstable young man, who together know no more about being parents than they do the far side of the moon, the world sets in to making us what the world would like us to be, and because we have to survive after all, we try to make ourselves into something that we hope the world will like better than it apparently did the selves we originally were. That is the story of all our lives, needless to say, and in the process of living out that story, the original, shimmering self gets buried so deep that most of us hardly end up living out of it at all. Instead, we live out all the other selves which we are constantly putting on and taking off like coats and hats against the world’s weather. (Telling Secret...
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by
Chet
5. November 2009 09:59
This is an extended excerpt from a newsletter I received yesterday from The Noble Heart. It's an excellent picture of walking with God through the dark times.
Night vision. It feels like night vision is required when looking into our own life or the life of another. We can make out the shape of some things that seem to be significant in the discovery of who we are, but they remain fairly dim and undefined or can disappear altogether. I remember several late evenings (actually early mornings) getting up and walking into the kitchen to get a pain reliever for a headache. I would leave the lights off hoping not to wake my wife and avoiding any other reasons for my head to hurt. As I would walk through the dark living room, I would sometimes catch a glimpse of a pair of shoes or the vacuum cleaner with my peripheral vision. As I tried to focus directly on it, it would often disappear. As soon as I looked straight ahead, I would see i...
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by
Chet
14. October 2009 08:26
I'm reading a book by Andy Stanley called Visioneering. Excellent book about not just leadership, but finding out who God made you to be, and what He made you to do, and how to get from "here" to "there." Right now I'm reading all about that "wait and pray" phase that so often is right before the "give up because it must not be God's will" phase. This post is a place for me to jot down quotes, thoughts, and things I learn from the book.
The basic building blocks of a vision:
A vision begins as a concern.
A vision does not necessarily require immediate action.
Pray for opportunities and plan as if you expect God to answer your prayers.
God is using your circumstances to position and prepare you to accomplish his vision for your life.
And some quotes and lessons as I go through the book.
CHAPTER 1 - A VISION IS BORN
We've forgotten who we are and where we came from.
"Visions are born in the soul of a man or woman who is consumed with the tension between what is and what ...
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by
Chet
23. September 2009 09:43
"To look into the face of a suffering child is to see the depth of humanity and the heart of God."
This is a timely quote as I read through the book Fields of the Fatherless. The world is full of children, families, and men and women with no hope... without even a hope for hope.
I heard the words above in a video I saw today. It's graphically realistic.
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