Category Archives: Quotes

Labor Day ~ Sept. 3, 2007

Happy Labor Day to You All ~

Hoping you find rest today!

Labor Day: How it Came About; What it Means

“Labor Day differs in every essential way from the other holidays of the year in any country,” said Samuel Gompers, founder and longtime president of the American Federation of Labor. “All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man’s prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Day…is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race, or nation.”

Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.

To read more go here.

Good News for all those who labor!

Mathew 11: 28-30 ~

” Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

ht: http://www.dol.gov/opa/aboutdol/laborday.htm

James 5: 14-15 ~ I’m Wondering…

I’m not called the Happy Wonderer for nothing. There are lots of things I wonder about. Right now I’m in the midst of my yearly Bible reading (reading each book of the Bible 20x ~ which will take way longer than a year) I’m in the book of James.

James 5:14-15 ~ “Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven.

So my questions are:

Has anyone called their elders when they are sick? Did they come?

Did they annoint you with oil and pray for you?

If you haven’t done this, why not?

Is it a common practice?

What has your experience been with this instruction?

Leave a comment with anything that might help my wondering….

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Thankful Thursday ~ Psalm 100

  Psalm 100

Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good and his love endures forever, his faithfulness continues through all generations.

I am praising and thanking God that I am experiencing His love and care by being with my children and closest friends these two weeks in Washington. I am basking in the goodness of it all! Praise God from whom all blessings flow…

To see more Thankful Thursday Posts head on over to Sting My Heart….

In Other Words Tuesday ~ “The Lord Is My Banner”

“Under the banner of God, victory is always assured; but apart from it, defeat is a certainty.  When the banner of God’s rod was not held high, Amalek prevailed.  You can’t do battle against the flesh under your own power.”

~ Kay Arthur ~author of  LORD, I Want To Know You  Above quote is in reference to Exodus 17:15: “The LORD is my banner”

So in other words…

As believers we all have our “Amaleks” that are waging war with us. Our sin nature daily wants to separate us from the God who has redeemed us. We will wage this battle until we enter into our final rest with Christ. We should not be deceived into being passive and unaware of the fact that we have to turn away, work hard, get rid of things in our lives that keep our eyes off of God. We need to claim who we are in Christ. We need to resist the enemy. We need to battle daily the thoughts and actions that would keep us from the victory that Christ has won for us. We need to see God’s banner before us and follow behind that banner and claim the victory we have been promised in Christ. “Apart from Him we can do nothing.”

So today I wake up and say Thank you God for going before me into this day and defeating the enemy before me. Help me to be obedient to you and give me your victory today in my thoughts, my actions, my hopes and my dreams. May I be aware I am in your army and that you are my King. Thank you for what you have done for me.

I John 5:4-5

“For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world – our faith. Who is the one who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?”

To read more In Other Words Tuesday posts go to Joy in the Morning…

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Resentment ~ Poison ~ Quote

 The pastor at the church we attended today shared this quote that I wanted to pass along…

Resentment is the poison we swallow while hoping the other person dies…”

Something to dwell on instead,

“Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, and slander, as well as all types of malicious behavior. Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.”  Ephesians 4: 31-32

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I Sing a Song of the Saints of God ~ L. Scott, 1929

 I Sing a Song of the Saints of God

                  I sing a song of the saints of God
Patient and brave and true,
Who toiled and fought and lived and died
For the Lord they loved and knew.
And one was a doctor, and one was a queen,
And one was a shepherdess on the green,
They were all of them saints of God – and I mean,
God help me to be one too.

They love their Lord so dear, so dear,
And his love made them strong;
And they followed the right, for Jesus’ sake,
The whole of their good lives long.
And one was a soldier, and one was a priest,
And one was slain by a fierce wild beast:
And there’s not any reason – no, not the least-
Why I shouldn’t be one too.

They live not only in ages past,
There are hundreds of thousands still,
The world is bright with joyous saints
Who love to do Jesus’ will.
You can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea,
In church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea,
for the saints of God are just folk like me,
and I mean to be one too.

L. Scott, 1929

ht: Jan Karon’s ~Mitford Cookbook & Kitchen Reader

ht: Brian Jacques ~The Redwall Cookbook

Holiness ~ Quotes ~ R.C. Sproul and D.A. Carson

Here are a couple of quotes I wanted to share today….

“I am not obsessed with holiness because I am holy. I love the holiness of God because it is my only hope. Without his mercy and holiness there would be no restraint to my wickedness.” R.C. Sproul

This is a quote from my archives that my pastor used in a sermon a while back. I thought it a good one to share also…

From For the Love of God by D.A. Carson;

“People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to scripture, faith and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slide toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.”

I Peter 1:13-16 ~

“Preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”

I Peter 2:9

“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

In The Sweet Bye and Bye ~ Hymn

Mr. Webster, like ma­ny mu­si­cians, was of an ex­ceed­ing­ly ner­vous and sen­si­tive na­ture, and sub­ject to per­i­ods of de­press­ion, in which he looked up­on the dark side of all things in life. I had learned his pe­cul­i­ar­i­ties so well that on meet­ing him I could tell at a glance if he was mel­an­cho­ly, and had found that I could rouse him up by giv­ing him a new song to work on.

He came in­to my place of bus­i­ness [in Elk­horn, Wis­con­sin], walked down to the stove, and turned his back on me without speak­ing. I was at my desk. Turn­ing to him, I said, “Webs­ter, what is the mat­ter now?” “It’s no mat­ter,” he re­plied, “it will be all right by and by.” The idea of the hymn came me like a flash of sun­light, and I re­plied, “The Sweet By and By! Why would not that make a good hymn?” “May­be it would,” he said in­dif­fer­ent­ly. Turn­ing to my desk I penned the words of the hymn as fast as I could write. I hand­ed the words to Web­ster. As he read his eyes kin­dled, and stepp­ing to the desk he be­gan writ­ing the notes. Tak­ing his vi­o­lin, he played the mel­o­dy and then jot­ted down the notes of the cho­rus. It was not over thir­ty min­utes from the time I took my pen to write the words be­fore two friends with Web­ster and myself were sing­ing the hymn.

Sanford Fill­more Ben­nett (1836-1898)

This song was sung in the Acad­emy Award win­ning mo­vie Ser­geant York (1941).

~ 

In the Sweet Bye and Bye

There’s a land that is fairer than day,
And by faith we can see it afar;
For the Father waits over the way
To prepare us a dwelling place there.

Refrain

In the sweet by and by,
We shall meet on that beautiful shore;
In the sweet by and by,
We shall meet on that beautiful shore.

We shall sing on that beautiful shore
The melodious songs of the blessed;
And our spirits shall sorrow no more,
Not a sigh for the blessing of rest.

Refrain

To our bountiful Father above,
We will offer our tribute of praise
For the glorious gift of His love
And the blessings that hallow our days.

I chose this song this week because of two funerals in our Russian Community and the fact that this song is one that this community likes to sing at funerals. Both women are in the sweet by and by. One of the ladies made peace with her heavenly Father just two days before she died.

http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/i/n/t/intsbab.htm

The Wonderful Gift of a Letter

I’m reading Pride and Prejudice right now and I am always struck at how important letters were. A different time when this was the best form of communicating when apart. No phones, no email, no instant messaging. Wouldn’t it be fun to receive a good old fashioned letter in the mail. Signed, sealed, and delivered! Here’s some interesting tips from Emily Post.

Emily Post (1873–1960).  Etiquette.  1922.

THE ART of general letter-writing in the present day is shrinking until the letter threatens to become a telegram, a telephone message, a post-card. Since the events of the day are transmitted in newspapers with far greater accuracy, detail, and dispatch than they could be by the single effort of even Voltaire himself, the circulation of general news, which formed the chief reason for letters of the stage-coach and sailing-vessel days, has no part in the correspondence of to-day.

THE LETTER EVERYONE LOVES TO RECEIVE

  The letter we all love to receive is one that carries so much of the writer’s personality that she seems to be sitting beside us, looking at us directly and talking just as she really would, could she have come on a magic carpet, instead of sending her proxy in ink-made characters on mere paper.

Let us suppose we have received one of those perfect letters from Mary, one of those letters that seem almost to have written themselves, so easily do the words flow, so bubbling and effortless is their spontaneity. There is a great deal in the letter about Mary, not only about what she has been doing, but what she has been thinking, or perhaps, feeling. And there is a lot about us in the letter—nice things, that make us feel rather pleased about something that we have done, or are likely to do, or that some one has said about us. We know that all things of concern to us are of equal concern to Mary, and though there will be nothing of it in actual words, we are made to feel that we are just as secure in our corner of Mary’s heart as ever we were. And we finish the letter with a very vivid remembrance of Mary’s sympathy, and a sense of loss in her absence, and a longing for the time when Mary herself may again be sitting on the sofa beside us and telling us all the details her letter can not but leave out.”

20spring.htmlhttp://www.bartleby.com/95/28.html

Thankful Thursday ~ I Chronicles 16:8-12

 

 

Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name; make known among the nations what he has done. Sing to him, sing praise to him; tell of all his wonderful acts. Glory in his holy name; let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice. Look to the Lord and his strength; seek his face always. Remember the wonders he has done, his miracles, and the judgments he pronounced, …”

One of the miracles that the Lord has done in my life is leading my Father and Mother out of Iran (Persia back then) to the U.S.A. This was before my Father was a believer but God’s hand was on him in a mighty way leading my Father to himself. My Mother was a believer when she married my Father. I am so thankful to God for His hand of mercy that gave my parents the desire to immigrate to the U.S. In 1963, fifteen years after immigrating to the states, my Father became a believer at the Billy Graham Crusade in Los Angeles. I am remembering and thanking God for His amazing grace in my Fathers life and the benefits of that grace to me…

Thank you Lord for all you’ve done. I will sing praises to you and rejoice. I will look to you for strength and seek your face always. I will remember the wonderful things you have done. Glory to your holy name. Amen.

To read more Thankful Thursday Posts or to participate head over to Sting My Heart…