Tag Archives: Religion

The 06/02/13 Joy Jar

1 Jun

The only way that some can express their insecurity, fear, and inability to really relate to others is through demeaning them, insulting them or trying to embarrass them. Moi got the moniker, OLD FART from a slur meant to drag moi down. Really. When slurred or slighted just remember God always sees the best in us and we are very precious in His sight.

You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result. Genesis 50:20 (NASB)

It is by and through the Grace of God that moi’s future is so bright, she’s gotta wear shades.

Today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ is the incredible healing power of forgiveness.

“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”

Oscar Wilde

“People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.

If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway.

If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway.

The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway.

For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.”

Mother Teresa

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”

Mahatma Gandhi, All Men are Brothers: Autobiographical Reflections

“The truth is, unless you let go, unless you forgive yourself, unless you forgive the situation, unless you realize that the situation is over, you cannot move forward.”

Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience

“True forgiveness is when you can say, “Thank you for that experience.”

Oprah Winfrey

“Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.”

Mark Twain

“Forgiveness is not an occasional act, it is a constant attitude.”

Martin Luther King Jr.

“To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”

C.S. Lewis

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The 05/14/13 Joy Jar

14 May

 

Every Tuesday moi joins a prayer group in the morning. Today, after leaving the group, moi thought about the Bible passage Joshua 24:15:

New International Version (©2011)
But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.”

Today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ is service.

Galatians 5:13 For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.


The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?” But the good Samaritan reversed the question: “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”Martin Luther King Jr

“Prayer in action is love, and love in action is service. Try to give unconditionally whatever a person needs in the moment. The point is to do something, however small, and show you care through your actions by giving your time … We are all God’s children so it is important to share His gifts. Do not worry about why problems exist in the world – just respond to people’s needs … We feel what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean, but that ocean would be less without that drop.“

Mother Teresa

“If we do not lay out ourselves in the service of mankind whom should we serve?”-

John Adams

“It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life, that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The PC morons are going to get us killed: Yes, Virginia evil walks among us

19 Apr

Here is today’s COMMENT FROM AN OLD FART: As this post is written, the authorities are searching for the suspect(s) who were involved in the Boston Marathon Bombing We, as a society are reluctant to call it what it is-a case of pure EVIL. For those who want to celebrate diversity or respect cultural competency or don’t want to make judgments because we believe there is a level of cultural equivalency, moi says you are morons. Just as every race, cultural, religion, creed, and family may have individuals who are for lack of a better description, batshit crazy, this goes beyond crazy, it is EVIL.

According to the Free Dictionary.com definition, EVIL  is:

adj. e·vil·er, e·vil·est

1. Morally bad or wrong; wicked: an evil tyrant.

2. Causing ruin, injury, or pain; harmful: the evil effects of a poor diet.

3. Characterized by or indicating future misfortune; ominous: evil omens.

4. Bad or blameworthy by report; infamous: an evil reputation.

5. Characterized by anger or spite; malicious: an evil temper.

n.

1. The quality of being morally bad or wrong; wickedness.

2. That which causes harm, misfortune, or destruction: a leader’s power to do both good and evil.

3. An evil force, power, or personification.

4. Something that is a cause or source of suffering, injury, or destruction: the social evils of poverty and injustice.

adv. Archaic

In an evil manner.

EVIL is an ideology, a way of life. Just because folk use the umbrella of a more benign philosophy to shield them from criticism for their dastardly deeds doesn’t mean the clear thinking and rational folk can’t point out that it is not a benign philosophy which caused the murder and the mayhem, it is the FREE WILL CHOICE of individuals propelled by EVIL impulses. The abortion bombers were no more representing Christianity than a non-believer. They used the umbrella of the Christian name to attempt to shield themselves from criticism. It is interesting that the most successful social movements are led by those who espoused Non-Violent Protest

So, for those wimps who are afraid to call out EVIL and terrorism because they are afraid of hurting some one’s self esteem, your stupidity will get a lot more people killed. We need be united in removing the umbrella from those who seek to shield themselves from the discovery that they are EVIL. EVIL knows no race, color, creed, religion, class, gender, or sexual orientation. EVIL simply seeks destruction for whatever twisted pleasure is derived.

“Evil is no faceless stranger, living in a distant neighborhood. Evil has a wholesome, hometown face, with merry eyes and an open smile. Evil walks among us, wearing a mask which looks like all our faces.”

Dean Koontz

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The 03/31/13 Joy Jar

30 Mar

The story of Easter Sunday is the story of the Resurrection of Christ. Because of the empty tomb, death is conquered and those in Christ will have eternal life. Today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ is the Resurrection of Jesus which gave moi eternal life.

‘Twas Easter-Sunday. The full-blossomed trees
Filled all the air with fragrance and with joy.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Spanish Student

The story of Easter is the story of Gods wonderful window of divine surprise.

Carl Knudsen

The joyful news that He is risen does not change the contemporary world.  Still before us lie work, discipline, sacrifice.  But the fact of Easter gives us the spiritual power to do the work, accept the discipline, and make the sacrifice. 

Henry Knox Sherrill

Easter is not a time for groping through dusty, musty tomes or tombs to disprove spontaneous generation or even to prove life eternal.  It is a day to fan the ashes of dead hope, a day to banish doubts and seek the slopes where the sun is rising, to revel in the faith which transports us out of ourselves and the dead past into the vast and inviting unknown.

Author unknown, as quoted in the Lewiston Tribune

There is not room for Death,
Nor atom that his might could render void:
Thou – Thou art Being and Breath,
And what Thou art may never be destroyed.

Emily Bronte

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The 03/30/13 Joy Jar

29 Mar

Easter comes in the Spring, it is a floating holiday. It seems fitting that just as there is new growth in nature, there will hopefully be new growth for us. Today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ is the anticipation of Easter

“The gifts of the Master are these: freedom, life, hope, new direction, transformation, and intimacy with God. If the cross was the end of the story, we would have no hope. But the cross isn’t the end. Jesus didn’t escape from death; he conquered it and opened the way to heaven for all who will dare to believe. The truth of this moment, if we let it sweep over us, is stunning. It means Jesus really is who he claimed to be, we are really as lost as he said we are, and he really is the only way for us to intimately and spiritually connect with God again.”
Steven James, Story

“Easter was when Hope in person surprised the whole world by coming forward from the future into the present.”
N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church

“If man had his way, the plan of redemption would be an endless and bloody conflict. In reality, salvation was bought not by Jesus’ fist, but by His nail-pierced hands; not by muscle but by love; not by vengeance but by forgiveness; not by force but by sacrifice. Jesus Christ our Lord surrendered in order that He might win; He destroyed His enemies by dying for them and conquered death by allowing death to conquer Him.”
A.W. Tozer, Preparing for Jesus’ Return: Daily Live the Blessed Hope

Easter is the demonstration of God that life is essentially spiritual and timeless.

Charles M. Crowe

“Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.”
Pope John Paul II

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The 02/27/13 Joy Jar

26 Feb

Today was the first day of moi’s prayer group which meets from 6:30 a.m. To 7:30 a.m. Every Tuesday. That’s right, 6:30 a.m. Definitely not moi time. The group meets and prays as the Spirit moves. Prayer is not only a great gift, but a great comfort. Those who are prayerful people radiate a sense of peace. Today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ is the gift of prayer.

“Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one’s weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.”
Mahatma Gandhi

“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”
Søren Kierkegaard

“Forgive me my nonsense as I also forgive the nonsense of those who think they talk sense.”
Robert Frost

“Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love,
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved, as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive,
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”
St. Francis of Assisi

“The Simple Path
Silence is Prayer
Prayer is Faith
Faith is Love
Love is Service
The Fruit of Service is Peace”
Mother Teresa

“I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had no where else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day.”
Abraham Lincoln

“Any concern too small to be turned into a prayer is too small to be made into a burden.”
Corrie ten Boom

“If the only prayer you said was thank you, that would be enough.”
Meister Eckhart

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The 02/14/13 Joy Jar

13 Feb

Many are focused on Valentine Day. Will they get flowers, jewelery, and/or candy. Will there be a romantic evening or day. The greeting card companies, jewelers, and chocolatiers promote the holiday, as they should. It is good to show affection for those one loves. Shouldn’t that same, love, affection, and respect be shown every day? There is nothing wrong with an extra special day, but shouldn’t there be a baseline? Today’s deposit in the ‘Joy Jar’ is 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, the truest expression of love.

1 Corinthians 13:4-7

New International Version (NIV)

4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

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Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Constitution: Like what would Jesus do, folk wonder what would Martin do?

20 Jan

Here’s today’s COMMENT FROM AN OLD FART: There are a group of Christians whose reflex actions to a host of contemporary issues is to ask the question what would Jesus do? The answer is contained by reading the Bible, it’s in there. Similarly, folk of all persuasions like to play the what would Martin Luther King, Jr. do or think. Conservatives like to quote the “I have a Dream” speech for evidence that there should be a “color-blind” society. Moi guesses “liberals” are calling themselves “progressives” or maybe they are still “liberals” like to quote anything from Dr. King which advances their agenda. People change, grow, and often modify their views or time. The best indicator of what a person was thinking is what they left behind in terms of conversations particularly if their life was ended too soon. Moi read this self-serving pronouncement from a group of church folk, which was reported in the Seattle PI.com article, Pro-gun protest ‘shockingly insensitive’ — area clergy:

Seattle religious leaders have drawn up a letter, with 201 signatures as of early Friday, decrying as “shockingly insensitive” a pro-gun rally scheduled at “high noon” Saturday in Olympia, during the weekend of the national holiday honoring assassinated civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

The letter will be released on Friday morning.

“We find it shockingly insensitive to Dr. King’s message, and contemptuous of his legacy, to celebrate the very instrument of his assassination during a holiday weekend dedicated to his memory,” said a draft of the clergy statement.  “The way to honor Dr. King’s memory is to condemn violence and to oppose any and all racial hatred, and we call on gun rights activists to join us in doing this rather than in focusing on the very means of Dr. King’s murder.” http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics/2013/01/17/pro-gun-protest-shockingly-insensitive-area-clergy/

Moi understands that many in the faith community do not like guns because their abhor violence, but shockingly insensitive? Really folks, you need thicker skin to exist in a world where oil worker hostages get blown up.

So, let’s play that game what would Dr. King do or think when confronted with a group exercising their FIRST AMENDMENT rights? If one reads the actual text of Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream Speech” one is struck by the references to the U.S. Constitution, a document which he put his faith in to bring equality to those disenfranchised. Here is a portion of that speech:

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. http://www.usconstitution.net/dream.html

Piers Morgan refers to the U.S. Constitution as “that little book.” Well, that little book is a bit like the Bible. Folk like to pick and choose passages from the Bible that suit their purpose and discard portions that they don’t like. Most Bible scholars agree on rules of construction for how the Bible is to be read and interpreted. So it is with the U.S. Constitution. One cannot discard the FIRST AMENDMENT or the SECOND AMENDMENT because one finds them or people who exercise their rights under the Constitution “shockingly insensitive.” The Constitution guarantees ,like the Grace of God protect the good, the bad, and the indifferent.

Too bad those who are asking what would Dr. King do, don’t have the same faith in the U.S. Constitution that Dr. King did.

Where information leads to Hope. ©                 Dr. Wilda.com

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

Blogs by Dr. Wilda:

COMMENTS FROM AN OLD FART©                              http://drwildaoldfart.wordpress.com/

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The 01/07/13 Joy Jar

6 Jan

Most people want to be on the receiving end of acts of generosity, although a tiny minority may curse the giver. Dictionary.com defines generosity:

gen·er·os·i·ty

noun, plural gen·er·os·i·ties.

1. readiness or liberality in giving.

2. freedom from meanness or smallness of mind or character.

3. a generous act: We thankedhim for his many generosities.

4. largeness or fullness; amplitude.

Today’s deposit in the ‘Joy Jar’ is generosity.

“Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need. ”
Khalil Gibran

“Give a bowl of rice to a man and you will feed him for a day. Teach him how to grow his own rice and you will save his life.”
Confucius

“You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you.”
John Bunyan

“Give what you have. To someone, it may be better than you dare to think.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“That’s what I consider true generosity: You give your all, and yet you always feel as if it costs you nothing.”
Simone de Beauvoir

“Among the rich you will never find a really generous man even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away; they are egotistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it.”
G.K. Chesterton

“The wise man does not lay up his own treasures.
The more he gives to others,
the more he has for his own.”
Lao Tzu

New Living Translation (©2007)
Don’t forget to show hospitality to strangers, for some who have done this have entertained angels without realizing it!
Hebrews 13:2

“True generosity consists precisely in fighting to destroy the causes which nourish false charity. False charity constrains the fearful and subdued, the “rejects of life,” to extend their trembling hands. True generosity lies in striving so that these hands–whether of individuals or entire peoples–need be extended less and less in supplication, so that more and more they become human hands which work and, working, transform the world.”
Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

“It is well to give when asked, but it is better to give unasked, through understanding.”
Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

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The 01/04/13 ‘Joy Jar’

3 Jan

What makes the difference between those who are successful and those who could have accomplished what they intended. There are two two traits, perseverance and endurance. Today’s deposit into the “Joy Jar’ is endurance.

“Endurance: It is the spirit which can bear things, not simply with resignation, but with blazing hope. It is the quality which keeps a man on his feet with his face to the wind. It is the virtue which can transmute the hardest trial into glory because beyond the pain it sees the goal.”
Anonymous, Come Be My Follower

“On the second floor was the office in which Houston pounded an ancient typewriter with two fingers, always setting an example of unceasing hard work for his admiring students. They had no hint of the fact that their hard-driving dean had contracted tuberculosis while serving as a GI in France in Word War I. Houstan always seemed vibrant and impassioned in the chase for justice as he tried to expose his students to everything relating to the law that might give them an advantage.
. . .
“I never worked hard until I got to the Howard Law School and met Charlie Houston,” Marshal told me. “I saw this man’s dedication, his vision, his willingness to sacrifice, and I told myself, ‘You either shape up or ship out.’ When you are being challenged by a great human being, you know that you can’t ship out.”
So Houston rescued Marshall and launched him into a career as one of the greatest lawyers in American history.”
Carl T. Rowan, Dream Makers, Dream Breakers: The World of Justice Thurgood Marshall

Endurance is not just the ability to bear a hard thing, but to turn it into glory.
William Barclay

“If God sends us on strong paths, we are provided strong shoes.”

Corrie Ten Boom

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