miracle stick update

If you've read my blog from the beginning you read a wonderful testimony from our friend Vayra in Israel called "From death to life" (http://1ncisfan.blogspot.com/2010/01/from-death-to-life.html).


Here is an update:
Thank you to all who kept asking me about my 'miracle' stick. I am finally sending an updated photo of it.
Sorry for the group email!

It has been growing so beautifully. 8 new twigs all together! I love its large, fresh green leaves.

It's been encouraging and fun to watch it grow. And I had this Scripture on my heart when I was sitting next to it:




Psalm 92
12 The righteous will flourish like a palm tree,
they will grow like a cedar of Lebanon;

13 planted in the house of the Lord,
they will flourish in the courts of our God.

14 They will still bear fruit in old age,
they will stay fresh and green,

15 proclaiming, "The Lord is upright;
he is my Rock, and there is no wickedness in him."

Be blessed and flourish! :-)


Varya

So for those who have been broken by life, there is healing and renewing and a hope that you too can be a "miracle stick"!

blog exhaustion?

I haven't had a chance to check, but I imagine there must be millions of blogs out there being entered about anything and everything. And I can imagine that getting to read all these blogs must be exhausting. So I imagine that not that many people read this blog. The reason I say that is because I just noticed that if anyone had, they would have noticed that I put Father's Day as this past weekend, not the one coming up.

But then again I'm thinking....a person is having ten to hundreds of things happening in their daily routine and we get exhausted. And because of that we may not look at everything that is going on around them. And because of that there are things that happen that will never get noticed or looked at.

And they can be good things, such as:

-people having ideas like my friend Chad Elliott's school(http://www.blogger.com/www.trevecca.edu/socialjustice),
is doing to help those around them; especially after the floods that affected the Tennessee area this spring

-young children are being adopted from other lands where there is strife and hunger; such as my friend Nicole Galvan is doing this week;

- people are being fed & sheltered and given hope like the children being sponsored by some our congregants at CBS through the ministry of Compassion International

-the unborn are being saved and those who would try to kill them are being exposed; through the NRLC (National Right to Life Committee) and a very brave young lady named Lila Rose whose videos are exposing what Planned Parenthood is really doing to those who come in their doors....

-people are being evangelized-Jews (such as through the ministry of the late Moshe Rosen (thanks Chad for reminding me [http://chadelliott.wordpress.com/2010/05/23/remembering-moishe-rosen-1932-2010/]) and Gentiles (many different ministries) in many different countries

-and many other actions.....

Or they can be evil things; such as laws passed that make governments more tyrannical, people being tortured or killed for their faith in the most gruesome ways, people accused of crimes for the simple act of standing for what they believe in, cowardice being shown instead of stands for faith and freedom, the unborn being murdered by ways so terrifying that the practitioners would be put in jails for years if they did the same actions to people already born....dictators in other countries starving their people to death (and being tolerated by those who should oppose them), and many more violent acts.....

But just I double-checked the blog entry and saw what was going on; one day there will be a time that there will be a "double-checking" of sorts and it will be conducted by God almighty himself; Jesus spoke about it in Matthew 25:

31"When the Son of Man shall come in His glory and all the holy angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory.


32And before Him shall be gathered all nations, and He shall separate them one from another as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats.


33And He shall set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left.


34Then shall the King say unto them on His right hand, `Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.


35For I hungered, and ye gave Me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave Me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took Me in;


36naked, and ye clothed Me; I was sick, and ye visited Me; I was in prison, and ye came unto Me.'


37Then shall the righteous answer Him, saying, `Lord, when saw we Thee hungering and fed Thee, or thirsty and gave Thee drink?


38When saw we Thee a stranger and took Thee in, or naked and clothed Thee?


39Or when saw we Thee sick, or in prison, and came unto Thee?'


40And the King shall answer and say unto them, `Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.'


41"Then shall He say also unto them on the left hand, `Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.


42For I hungered, and ye gave Me no meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave Me no drink;


43I was a stranger, and ye took Me not in; naked, and ye clothed Me not; sick and in prison, and ye visited Me not.'


44Then shall they also answer Him, saying, `Lord, when saw we Thee hungering or athirst or a stranger, or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister unto Thee?'


45Then shall He answer them, saying, `Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to Me.'


46And these shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal."

So the question is-which side would you rather be on? And next time, I'll try to do a better job of checking dates, so I don't put journal entries on dates where they shouldn't go......:)

Father's day

On Sunday, it will be Father's Day. I know for many the word "Father" brings up many different images, ranging from happiness to anger and bitterness. Many of these come from the background that one was raised in.

Mine is somewhere in the middle. But the thing that I will always remember the most is the way my father was during the time in the hospital. I will always remember how at first, my Father was sickened whenever the wound nurse came in to change the sponges in the open wound in my abdominal area. But by sheer force of will, he began to learn to tolerate what was going on to the point where near the end, he became an unoffical aide to the wound care nurse. He would have all the instruments, sponges, and other things out ready for her. And he would even help in the procedures.

One of the other things that he did was to help was that, when I would be out doing my physical therapy walk, he would change the bed from top to bottom and be able to get whatever blankets I would need. He would be there every morning as soon as he was allowed (actually some days, he was there earlier), and stayed until late in the afternoon to be at my side and help me to take care things that I needed to do.

During that time, he became more than a father to me, he became in a sense, my left arm. My favorite memory of how much he had been appreciated was on certain days, he was given a free meal by the staff so that he wouldn't have to go out for lunch.

And in a sense, although I don't know whether or not he thought about it; my father was giving an illustration of the type of the love that our Heavenly Father has for us. He loved us and gave of Himself for us to take care of the need that we had, the need for salvation.

So no matter how our relationship goes (and at times it can go from one extreme to another), I'll always remember and appreciate what he did for me and the example that he gave....to me, to those he came in contact with....and I pray that he will hear the words "Well done, thou good and faithful servant" in relation to this time.....

How can something that small.....

When you look at the human appendix, it isn't a large part of the body...a little less than 4 inches long (or about the size of my middle finger), yet when this "little part" of the body ruptured in my body on March 13, 2008, it affected the whole body, almost causing it to shut down permanently. It wasn't until this April that the last of the effects was taken care of....25 months later....and throughout all that time; there was a whole lot of pain and agony that I had to go through.

Now think about sin.....a "little white" lie, a careless thought let slip by, a moment of rash action....yet when it explodes and is exposed in a life, it can cause so much damage- to reputations, to lives, to marriages, etc...sometimes destroying these things in the process. And sometimes, there may be effects that last a whole lifetime and never get relieved. And you can ask those who have been victims of that damage and many of them can tell you that there was so much pain and agony that they are going through.

Yes, there is relief and there is forgiveness, but to be on the safe side and not go through all of those problems....think about what you are doing....before something explodes...and you go through agony when you could have been having joy....