Monday's Meditation - Let's Eat

I figured with “Thanks-to-God for all His giving’s” Day coming up, most of us would be spending more time with family and less time on email. So I take this opportunity to share a thought as we prepare to partake of the abundance that is “Thanksgiving Dinner”.

In addition to deep frying a turkey (pray for me), our menu includes corn-on-the cob, macaroni, candied yams, garlic mashed potatoes, collard greens, green-bean casserole, cranberry sauce, and sweet potato pie.
(open invite to anyone close enough to come by)

Did I forget anything?......Oh yeah, BREAD!

Here’s the Word:
John 6:48 I am that bread of life.
50 This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die. 51 I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.

Everyday is a day of thanksgiving. We have so much to be thankful for and I pray that we would share our blessings as we share our ‘Bread’. I grew up in poverty; actually I grew up in Chicago but we were sho-nuff poor. The more I think of it, we were really only monetarily poor. We were often blessed because someone else who had concern for us gave to us. But with such a faithful and strong Christian grandmother, we always had ‘Bread’. Let’s eat.

Happy Thanks be to God for all of His Givings, especially the Bread.

Wednesday's Word - Prayer Aware

In November 2001, the American Heart Journal published findings from a feasibility-pilot, known as the MANTRA (Monitoring and Actualization of Noetic TRAinings). You may remember hearing of this news which indicated that cardiac patients who being prayed for faired better than cardiac patients who had no one praying for them.
As this thought popped into my head recently, I thought, neither group of patients knew that anyone was praying/or not praying for them. But the prayers knew…and God knew.
WHAT A REVELATION! You can better someone’s life without them even being aware. Would to God that we would be sensitive to the needs of neighbors, co-workers, our congregations, pastors & politicians.
Here’s the Word:

Luke 6:28 Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.
Hebrews 13:18 Pray for us: for we trust we have a good conscience, in all things willing to live honestly.
Acts 6:4 But we will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word.

To quote a comic book phrase: Our ‘Spidey senses should tingle’ meaning our spirit should be moved when in our deep affection causing us to pray for people, that they would experience the Love of Christ. I wonder how much things be different if we were more prayer aware.

In Him,
Cros

Wednesday's Word - Proper Ventilation

Question; Have you ever been so passionate about something that you had a hard time trying to articulate exactly what it was you felt deep inside? No?...just me then. Okay.
There’s a saying: “May you live in interesting times”. We watch the news as these times get more interesting everyday; record-breaking temperatures, drought and where the heck have the bumble bees gone? (Google it).
This alone can be disconcerting. Add the trials of everyday life (& traffic) and not even Calgon can to take you away.
Christians are vilified as hypocrites whenever we don’t have a happy go lucky, peaceful smile plastered on our faces.

Here’s the word

Ephesians 4:26 Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath:

Being angry, yet not sinning? Is that possible? Yes, Vent. The key is not going further into sin. This world presents a myriad of challenges and we long for the culmination of all things. But while we continue with our hands to the plow each day, we, like creation itself, groans (Romans 8:22) and keeping that steam built up inside will produce let’s just say ‘unexpected results’.
Don’t assume that holding back emotion equals strength. Not so. I’m not saying it’s easy, it may take some practice and forgiveness-seeking, but when circumstances arise, you can vent without compromising your spiritual elevation. Pray for and seek Proper Ventilation.