Tag: Bible

Just Breathe

So hey, maybe it’s time to just take a step back out of the day and out of the hectic, to look at the big picture. Is it really all that and worth getting anxious about? Is it really?

Sometimes, we get a clearer view when we distance ourselves from the activities! Grab a cup of Christmas tea and breathe through the next moment. Sometimes if we step back just a bit, we can see the facade and maybe begin to remove some of the layers, just to lay it all out before ourselves and our Saviour, in these final days of our Advent season! What ploughs through, that needs not to be so aggressive? Panic? Fear? Worry? Failure to get done what you so planned to do? Christmas isn’t about what we do or how we do it or how much we can do? It’s about enjoying precious moments with family and friends through our imperfections. It’s about forgetting the deadlines, or at least placing them into proper perspective!

So hey! This busy day you’re in, it’s time for tea and refreshment. Take time to come before the Lord and Savior and in quiet moments just light a candle ~ just you and Him alone. Let His words be a Lamp to your feet and a light to your pathway of next steps. Ask for His counsel, act on His still, quiet voice, and begin to peel away those things that shouldn’t be there cluttering up your beautiful Advent season.

“Tis a time for warm delights, family traditions, memories, and making more. Don’t let the sweet moments of the season dissipate into busy, chaotic schedules and fast-paced rituals, just because! Don’t let them sink into fearful thoughts and panic moments of ‘What’s next.” Rather, find ‘calm’ in His presence! Delight in His words and a new strength in His power!

So go ahead light that candle just between you and our Lord and find peace, find Joy, and find a love so extraordinary it will soften the harshest moments of your fear, anxiety, chaos, and strife.

“Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted, but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.” Isaiah 40: 30 31

Unwrap God’s divine Gift of JOY in the quiet silences of the moment

by Categories: Advent Season, Because Of Bethlehem, Bible, JoyTags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

An Eye for an Eye

Yeah, I know, so often don’t we just want to rip through those who have shoved us under the bus for no reason? Ahh, Just to settle the score would make us feel so much better wouldn’t it? It would just make everything so right in our own eyes to give back what we were given? Just do what they did, only maybe find a bigger bus to shove them under. Sadly, that’s the way of the world and the thinking behind so much violence that happens around us today.

Jesus condemned that practice of personal retaliation when He stood on the Mount of Beatitudes, a hill in Northern Israel on the Korazim Plateau, and preached to the twelve apostles, and as Matthew 4 states, ‘A great multitude of people’. He preached to a large crowd of listeners to guide them in a life of discipline based on a new law; a law of love, even to our enemies, rather a law of retribution.
He spoke to them and to us today when he preached the words in Matthew 5: 38 -42,

“You have heard that it was said, ” An Eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I tell you do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles.”

Now, Jesus wasn’t talking about harsh, evil, and abusive behavior here. The ‘slap on the cheek’ is a figure of speech, to simply portray letting the offense go! However, harsh, evil, and abusive behaviour is the work of darkness and Jesus condemns it in Ephesians 5: 11-13. Emotional and physically abusive treatment calls for clear thinking and immediate action. Make sure to seek help if you find yourself in such a dark place. You are not to blame for the treatment you receive. Rather, you are so very valuable in God’s eyes and He places you above that kind of wicked and disorderly conduct.

Ahh yes, and back to the simple offense, as much as we feel the need to lash out, being obsessed with retaliation will only make us bitter! It will eat away all the good, hiding deep within our soul and eventually, it will destroy us.

Perhaps, as the season of Advent approaches an appropriate preparation for our own hearts, would be to simply forgive the hurt, let it go, and let the healing begin, so that the Love that was born that night long ago, can rise up within our soul and bring us the peace that our Saviour brings. What a transforming Advent prep for us to consider before the fun, family festivities begin.

by Categories: Advent Season, Bible, Food for Thought, peace, Soul note to self, Soul Nuggets, ThinkersTags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

The Star of the Season

So much happening in our world today with so much unrest, it seems as if our world is unraveling around us very quickly. As Advent season draws nearer our own worlds become full with much to do and as the days come and go, our panic buttons become on high alert.

So, here we are today, with busy minds on shopping, baking, and decorating, and yeah, our hearts go out to so many others in the midst of bombings, shootings, and catastrophe, and on it goes. Sometimes life just isn’t fair in the big scheme of things, and when we can’t do much to help we can hold them up in prayer, and be in prayer for the ones on the job day and night to restore destroyed lands and properties.

For those of us still blessed with a home, and the anticipation of a family gathering, Christmas always brings a busy time. It can bring so much to the table with our thoughts going in a million different directions and our hearts heavy for the losses of so many.

Yet in all that comes and goes, Christmas is still the same season of Hope and the same season of Joy, we just might have to search a little deeper into the heart and soul of us to remember to find a resurgence of the Hope that it brings.

So, today, with so much going on in our minds, we need to regroup and reset for this coming beautiful Advent season! Let’s reset for the season that rejoices in the birth of a divine, heavenly baby born into an earth world for a huge purpose! To deliver Hope to a world that unravels before our very eyes.

Advent? No matter what’s happening around us, it’s all about Him ~ The Christ Child, the Star of the season! His royalty, His divinity, His part man, part God side, who left the portals of Heaven to become flesh! Born to walk among us, feel the dusty earth beneath His feet, the hurt of rejection, the pain of sin, and the sting of death.

Take a time out to ponder His life as He lived it out in real-time, in real life, and for us. You and I and we and us. Yeah, forget the heaps of stuff on your plate and ponder Him, the Christ One. The divine baby, born in the stable to become the Christ Child, to become a man so human, yet so divine to walk among us! To become our Saviour and the Savior of the World. Oh, how beautiful He is to us not just at this season but all year, through the year!

Yet, perhaps our Advent season brings Him closer as our minds ponder Him more. So, let’s reset our thinking patterns, our mindsets, and our goals, and our purpose to focus on the Reason for our celebrations. Today just embrace His grace! Rest in Him! Rejoice in His mercy! Rejoice in His power to save one horrendous world that we find ourselves living in. Today! Rejoice in His unconditional love for the hurting and the fleeing! the lost and the ruined. The loved and the unlovely and the ones so desperately in need of Him and His tender touch!

Yeah, beautiful soul ~ Sit back and search your heart with “Time out” to reflect on His goodness at the beginning of a beautiful Advent season and remember where He brought you from and the golden threads He’s woven around you to bring you where you sit today.

So go ahead, get out your traditions packed in boxes and your fine, ornaments to grace the home with merry thoughts of Christmas and family and friends! Go for it! I love this time of year. Don’t you? Dig out the recipes for sweet treats and cookie exchange and bake up a storm because a fine celebration is about to begin! A celebration so rich and sweet with festivities that go so much deeper than decor and sweets and tinsel and lights and gifts! A celebration that goes beyond us and reaches to the King of Heaven who resides and lives in the life He’s given us ~ and still keeps giving and giving and giving!

Yeah, so before you begin the scurrying, “Reset” ~ grab a cup of tea, light a candle ~ you, yourself and you and reflect on the amazing season about, to begin with, the divine, Baby born in the manger ~ Our Saviour of the world!

“Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.”
Isaiah 7:14

by Categories: Advent Season, Because Of Bethlehem, Inspirational, Just Thinking, Soul Notes To Self, Soul NuggetsTags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

The Light of the World

John 8:12,
“I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.”

Sixteen gold bowls were filled with oil and lit during the Festival of Shelters. Jesus stood beneath them in the inner courts of the temple, in a section known as the Treasury, John 8:20 and said that He was now the source of the Light.

The Light of Jesus brings salvation, not just to Israel, but to us, the world, regardless of who we are, race or location. As Christ Ones abiding in His words, in obedience to His perspective and guidance we will not only walk in His beautiful light, we ‘become’ as light reflecting the radiance of Christ in our character.
Philippians 2:14,15.

Let’s be honest and ask ourselves a point-blank question. Is our light shining? Is it radiantly obvious in our actions? In our behaviours? In our countenance? Is it shining forth to light up the dark corners for others or do the batteries weaken somewhat as life happens and takes us with it? Yeah, maybe we need to recharge before the God of our salvation and the Christ who stood under the sixteen golden bowls of oil, lighting the temple and point-blank stated in John 8:12,

“I am the light of the world. If you follow Me, you won’t have to walk in darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life.”

Philippians 2:14,
“Do everything without complaining and arguing. So that no one can criticize you. Live clean, innocent lives, as children of God, shining like bright lights in a world full of crooked and perverse people.

by Categories: Bible, Love Notes, Soul note to self, Soul Notes To Self, Soul NuggetsTags: , , , , , , Leave a comment