A Quick Drive By Quote For Ya

As you can tell, I have not been around this week. We've had a really nutty couple of weeks with a family member in and out of emergency and hospital several times, so my brain is mush and I just haven't had time to blog. But I found this quote and it really struck me so here ya go:

"We have been given an absolute armload full of blessings and gifts from God. But instead of appreciating or even paying attention to what we've been given, we often pitch a fit and drop everything to run after the one thing we want."

Dr. Gregory L. Jantz

Gotta Have It!

freedom from wanting everything right here, right now

pg. 157-158

P. S. This book is well worth the read and study. I've gotten so much out of it (my review here, scroll to #38).

The Week in Words

Melissa at Breath of Life hosts the Week in Words. In her own words: " just write a post of the quote(s) that spoke to you during the week (attributed, of course) and link back here. They can be from any written source, i.e. magazine, newspaper, blog, book. The only requirement is that they be words you read."

I love good quotes that really make me think or strike my heart so I'm right in here. How about you? Join us as we share the quotes the that spoke to us over the week.

"It is as easy to draw back a stone thrown with force from the hand, as to recall a word once spoken."

Menander as quoted in Here Burns My Candle
by Liz Curtis Higgs pg 117

This one always hits me no matter how or where I find it written. I'm one who very easily lets things out of my mouth that I wish I had stopped up and thought about first, and then of course it is impossible to grab those words and stuff them back. It is an area that God is on a constant work with in my life and something that He is trying to teach me to be always aware of. I am so much better but still have much work to do. Sigh.

This next quote really hit me because I've been trying to make better choices as to the food I allow into my body. I'm definitely not to the point of study and buying right from the farmer type of eating (expense, people, expense!) that a lot who are way more knowledgeable than I, but that doesn't mean I can't make small steps each day and do what I am able. I am definitely not in the category of food snob, far, very far, from it, and will never be, but at the same time I want to make better choices than I am right now. As I'm in the middle age bracket (heaven's, I hate even typing that but it's a fact) I want and need to make small choices that make big steps in my overall health. Here the author is talking about how our eating used to be much simpler before government stepped in and convenience foods and/or eating out became our norm. I'm interested in this because I tend to be on the end of thinking that government and media get on their little bandwagons and tout semi research as absolute facts and then retract them years later. Simple eating has become complicated and expensive which it should never be. Anyway, I'm just trying to make better choices within the things I buy. So...

"...a lot of people in the government developed an opinion about why all the people were getting fat.
And suddenly, food got really complicated...Something that ought to be easy as pie -literally- became fraught with challenges, shrouded in myth, and obscured by a combination of complicated government regulation, marketing mystique, and dietary hysteria."

David Zinczenko & Matt Goulding
quoted from Cook This, Not That
pg.2

"Here's the actual good news: So much of the confusion about what to eat and how to eat surrounds the stuff that's prepackaged or cooked up in a restaurant. Cook at home, for example, and you'll automatically put a damper on your trans fat consumption. ...at home, in the comfort of your kitchen, you're in full control. No secret fats, no hidden sugars, no misleading menu descriptions. Just you and the simple building blocks for your next meal."

David Zinczenko and Matt Goulding
quoted in Cook This, Not That
pg. 4

I love this set of books. They are in the Eat This, Not That series. I find them really a simply written guide that helps you to make better choices at restaurants, the grocery store and this particular book, with cooking at home. They actually show you in terms of brand names which are better choices and why. They don't advocate buying super expensive foods, they just give you tools to make better choices.

To join in, head on over to Melissa's.

The Week in Words

The quotes I picked today are all from The Glaen Book blog. And all from one post. They are really simple yet really profound. I found myself really thinking that if I would change my way of thinking to what these three quotes are saying what a huge difference they would make in how I love and how I communicate that love with those closest to me. This is a very interesting blog and worth browsing around and checking out. It is connected to a book called "Glaen" which I reviewed here.

“The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost” – G. K. Chesterton

“We’re on loan to each other” - Robert Fritz

Robert Fritz points out that we are on loan to each other…that is quite true. Isn’t it interesting how we care for things loaned to us in different ways than we often care for things we ‘own’? -Fred Lybrand: the Glaen Book blog

Join us over at Breath of Life and share the quotes from your reading that have touched you in some way this last week.

The Week in Words

This week's Week in Words is brought to you here by a very fuzzy-minded, very sleepy Living to Tell the Story person. I am soooo tired. This "Spring Ahead, turn your clocks ahead and lose an hour sleep" idea that our province has us do every March is really kicking my tail this time around. Saturday midnight was when we turned them ahead but wouldn't you know that is the day that we wanted to/had to go to the big city and had to be up by 5 a.m., which in reality was 4 a.m. And wouldn't you know, that Saturday night my son did not have a key to get in the house after work, which was at midnight, which with the time change conveniently became 1 a.m., and guess who had to stay up to let him in? Are ya following that? My sleepy brain cannot get any clearer. Anyway, operating on 4 hours sleep, with a drive ahead of us, I collected my free Tim Horton's coffee that I won, and off we went at the crazy hour of 6 am which don't forget my body was screaming, was really 5 am. After hitting the Home Depot to collect our tiles which they would not deliver without a fee, even though it was their error (a very long story), we hit the big new mall. We took our son to the cool store he missed out on the last time, (only to realize I forgot my camera) and after 2 hours in there, we hit the rest of the mall. After all that walking, 2.7 km just to walk the main aisle of the mall, at least another 2 hours worth in the mall itself, we hit our favorite restaurant for supper before we headed out for the long drive home. I am zonked. And that is my story for my big run-on, crazy sentences, and I'm sticking to it.

So just to make it easier on you, I'll give you somebody else words. Words that will probably actually make sense. Join us over at Breath of Life with your favorite quotes that you've found from your readings this week.
The first one I chose really hit me over the head this morning, even in my sleepy, fuzzy state. All I can is "Ouch". The author is talking about outbursts that we have and how revealing they really are about our relational and spiritual states and has quoted C.S. Lewis to make his point.

"Surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is? Surely what pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is the truth? If there are rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them from hiding."

C.S. Lewis quoted in:
Us-A User's Guide by Daniel L. Tocchini
pg. 83

The second is out of the novel that I'm reading at the moment and just really blesses me. St. Francis seems to have a lot of quotes that really stick out to me. They are so simple and yet so profound at the same time. This one is no less:

"All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle."

St. Francis of Assisi
quoted in Here Burns My Candle by Liz Curtis Higgs
page before the first chapter

Hope those words make better sense to you than my babbling this morning. They certainly do to me. :v)

The Week in Words

Melissa over at Breath of Life hosts a weekly carnival called The Week in Words. It's all about sharing quotes from our readings from the past week that have spoken to us or touched us in some way. The only requirement is that they be words you read. I think Melissa is taking a bit of a blogging break right now but I still wanted to do this because I love me some quotes and I think it's a great place to just write them down somewhere.

I saw this quote over at Gold in the Clouds. It really spoke to me because I have some major decisions to make that may change my career after providing child care for 20 years. But, as you can imagine changing careers after 20 years is pretty darn scary and is full of questioning and wondering. It's been really hard and I'm afraid to do the wrong thing, sorta the jumping out of the fry pan into the fire kind of fear.

"Faith isn't the ability to believe long and far into the future. It's simply taking God at His Word and taking the next step."

Joni Erickson Tada

I've been reading this awesome book called "Unexplainable -Pursuing a Life Only God Can Make Possible" (link is in my sidebar). It's been taking me forever because it is one of those books where there are so many gold nuggets that it is full of my underlining and notes and thoughts all over the pages. This week I started a chapter on God-given Passion. It is speaking about when so many people today are just going through the motions of life that people with passion stand out & make a difference. The first sentence started with this quote:

"Catch on fire with enthusiasm, and people will come for miles to watch you burn".

John Wesley quoted in Unexplainable pg 199

It sorta made me laugh because I know he is talking about people being drawn to enthusiasm but my mind sorta first thought with today's voyeuristic world, people enjoy watching others "crash and burn" as evidenced by the profusion of reality tv. LOL. I guess that is where my mind tends to go now with the above mentioned career decision. But when I read it in the correct context that the John Wesley meant, I totally understand what he is saying. I am the same way. I love being around people with passion and enthusiasm. It makes life so much more fun and gives purpose. And usually people with passion and enthusiasm and purpose stir that within others too. And I want to be one of those people. I want to be enthusiastic and full of passion for life and for Jesus. So I love this quote by John Wesley.

Any quotes you'd like to share that stood out to you in your reading this week?

The Week in Words

It's Monday, so that means it's time for "The Week in Words" hosted by Melissa at Breath of Life. It's all about quotes that have touched you in some way from your readings from the past week. Click here for the details and then join in!

My first quote is from a fiction novel I read last week. It is by one of the main characters speaking to the media outside a courthouse regarding a situation that was absolutely inconceivable and the decisions that had to be made, absolutely impossible. The three characters were all believers and had resolved the situation peacefully. What the fictional character, Nate Camfield, said resonated with me because I have some hard decisions to make and even though I do not face anything on the scope of what they had to deal with in the story it still put my focus back where it should be.

"We are human - all of us...and as you can imagine we have each had feelings of anguish, of guilt, of anger. But the world won't understand how our situation has been resolved without hate, without lashing out at one another, without lawsuits aimed at destroying each other. Listen carefully because I'm going to tell you exactly why..

It is because we have placed our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is because our belief that our treasures are stored up in heaven, not here in this fleeting life on earth. That is the reason we are able to see beyond our selfish desires...If you can see the peace written on our faces in the midst of this horrilbe situation, don't think that it comes from within ourselves. Never. It is peace that only comes from God Almighty, through His Son, Jesus Christ, a peace that I can testify passes all understanding. It is a peace that comes from a sure knowledge that we have given our wills, our very lives over to Christ. We have put our faith and trust in Him alone. And we are filled with the assurance that He can take even tragedy and turn it into something beautiful."

Beneath a Southern Sky by Deborah Raney
pg 296

If you want to read more about this book you can go here for my review. It's a really great read.

My second quote is about God's timing in answering prayer. Oftentimes I am very much impatient, wanting God to answer it immediately in the way that I want. This really spoke to me.

"Being patient with God does not mean believing that He is still in process but believing that He knows - better than we do - that we are still in process. Being patient with God means trusting that He is sovereign and loving. It means believing that His love will not allow Him to answer requests that don't line up with His ultimate purposes ...

"As the heavens are higher thanb the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts" -Isaiah 55:9...

...When we know that God is loving and just, we don't have to understand His ways in order to be at peace in the midst of life's stresses. We can accept that God operates on His own timetable."

The Love as A Way of Life Devotional

by Gary Chapman pg 57 & 58

The Week in Words

Melissa at Breath of Life hosts The Week in Words. It's a carnival to celebrate words. Words that inspire, words that make you laugh, words that lift you up, words that direct you. Write a post of quotes that spoke to your heart during the week credited to their author and link back to Melissa.

My first one I found at Donnetta's My Quiet Corner

"The world can out out finance us, out entertain us, and out number us. Let it never be said that the world can out love us."

~Dr. Erwin Lutzer

That is a powerful statement especially when Jesus said that we are to be known for our love. Sometimes I think we lose sight of this and we are trying to compete with other aspects, such as in the financial world and the entertainment world, in order to have a testimony, but in reality what brings testimony to Christ and change is the love that we are supposed to show. This quote is very challenging and convicting and makes me wonder where in my own life I need to readjust my thinking and attitudes so that this quote is evident in my everyday. The answer was everywhere. Ouch.

And then to go with that this quote jumped out at me in the book I am reading. It was in the chapter entitled "God says: "Bear More Fruit". It of course, is talking about doing good deeds.

~"As we travel through life, God wants to express Himself through us."

~" ...simple expressions of "doing good" put the love, the kindness, the goodness, and the gentleness of God on display in a tangible way"

~"I like to think that God places a host of potential good works in my path every day. Then as I walk through my day, it's up to me to respond to each opportunity as a way of bringing God's presence and influence into the world"

~"We engage in good works in response to the influence of the Holy Spirit upon us."

~"As we abide in Jesus, and walk according to the Holy Spirit, we too are able to see the good works in our path and tap into the power of God to carry them out."

~Don Cousins

in Unexplainable: Pursuing a Life Only God Can Make Possible

pg. 121-123

And these quotes from Unexplainable really brought home to me that it is in God's power that we do these works not in our own. Yeah, I think just maybe God might be trying to tell me something.

What quotes have touched your hearts this week? Link up at Breath of Life.

The Week in Words

Melissa at Breath of Life hosts a fun meme where you can do a post on what words have touched you this week, quotes from things that you have read the previous week.

"Exodus 15:22 - 17:7

SITUATION: For centuries the Israelites had lived on fertile farm land in Goshen. What a contrast the desert was to this previous comfort. With no way to provide for themselves, the Israelites complained to God. He performed daily miracles to provide water and food for them. Manna appeared in flake form with the morning dew. The Israelites ground it like grain and cooked with it.

OBSERVATION: The Israelites focused on physical needs, but God focused on their need to learn to trust Him.

Max Lucado in the Max Lucado Devotional Bible

That observation absolutely jumped out at me as I was doing my readings for the week which happened to be in Exodus. At a time in my life when things are a little tight, and I've found myself questioning "Why is this happening, God?", this small sentence carried a ton of impact. God has not removed himself from me but is taking me in another step in learning to trust Him. That is almost freeing. I can let go of the questioning and the constant craziness of trying to figure it out and start taking steps that turn me towards trusting Him.

"If we wait until the people around us rise to a higher standard before we speak words of kindness, we may never speak. But if we take every opportunity to show the power of kind words, God can work through us to change lives."

"When you are tempted to think kindness shows weakness, remember that God shows His power through kind words."

Gary Chapman and Elisa Stanford
in The Love as a Way of Life Devotional pg. 20

Our words can lift a person. It is a very powerful thing to be open enough to God to put ourselves aside, our agenda's, our defenses, our anger, and allow Him to use our words to instead uplift another person.

Please join us at Melissa's.