Tag Archives: Inspirational

Success and Burdens

22 Oct

On the Porch
Onisha Ellis

I'm a winner

We were blessed to have a visit from my aunt and cousin recently. We did a whole lot of eating and a whole lot of talking. One evening we even went to the performing arts center to see Jeanne Robertson. She is one of my favorite comediennes and all of her material is clean and funny. I first saw her at a Women of Faith conference and have watched many of her clips on You Tube. If you have the chance, catch her tour. I know she will be in Florida in April. This is a clip of my favorite story.

On Monday my cousin and I went on a final jaunt around town. We did a little shopping, ate some Chinese food and scoped out the new location of a doctor’s office. Of course we got a bit turned around and that was a good thing. There is this mystery store in town that I have been looking for. I call it a mystery because I had heard about it but could not remember where it was located. As we wandered around, my cousin pointed to a store and asked what kind of store is that? I looked and yelled, I want to go there! She whipped the car around in the middle of the street and right into a parking place. I was impressed. It takes my husband a little longer to react, which is why I haven’t made it into the store. We walked across the street only to discover the shop was not open any longer…BUT it was still an operational facility AND the owner offered us a tour. (Yea!) The business is Appalachian Harvest  according to their website:

“Owners, Kim and Kevin Baldwin, founded Appalachian Harvest in 1998. “Our gourmet condiments are still made in small batches, hand stirred and hand poured, just like grandma made”. No artificial colors or preservatives are used, letting the natural flavors come through. Appalachian Harvest adds a unique ingredient to all of their products, love!

These products have been featured in Taste of the South magazine, and were used for catering the 2005 Superbowl in Detroit, Michigan. Appalachian Harvest adds a unique ingredient to all of their products, love! “

The kitchen set up reminded me of my grandmother’s and that is probably why I am drawn to what I call “working kitchens.” Big pots attract me like a bear to a picnic cooler in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. I want to see what is inside and sneak a taste. Kevin, who gave us the tour offered us a jar of their Hot Pepper Jelly with Cherries so I didn’t have to push down my urge to go all bear on him.

Pour pepper jelly over a bar of cream cheese to make a delicious and easy party treat.

Pour pepper jelly over a bar of cream cheese to make a delicious and easy party treat.

The best part of the tour was hearing their success story. Their newest client, William-Sonoma will be selling Appalachian Harvest Cherry Pie Filing this year. That is big for a husband and wife run company.  The quart jar we were shown was a thing of red cherry  beauty and the ingredient list showed basic ingredients, just like you use if you canned it yourself.

Here is my final thought for this week. Do you ever feel like things are falling apart around you and you need to prop them up? I do. I like to be a fixer, and then I become stressed when I can’t fix a problem. I am taking up a burden God does not ask me to carry. He wants to carry them for me!

I love this song from my childhood. When I hear the song in my mind, I am taken to a happy place and hear my parents voices singing it.

Come Unto Me

Hear the blessed Savior calling the oppressed,
“Oh, ye heavy-laden, come to Me and rest;
Come, no longer tarry, I your load will bear,
Bring Me every burden, bring Me every care.”

  • Refrain:
    Come unto Me, I will give you rest;
    Take My yoke upon you, hear Me and be blest;
    I am meek and lowly, come and trust My might;
    Come, My yoke is easy, and My burden’s light
  • Are you disappointed, wand’ring here and there,
    Dragging chains of doubt and loaded down with care?
    Do unholy feelings struggle in your breast?
    Bring your case to Jesus—He will give you rest.

Matthew 11:28

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We’ve a Story to Tell

19 Oct

My Take

DiVoran Lites

1

Author, Poet and ArtistWe had dinner with Bill’s sister, Judy, and her husband, Fred, the other night. We do that at least once a month. October was different, though, because this time the Wills’ daughter, Karen, and her husband, Brian Clements joined us, as did our son, Bill.

Karen and her husband, Brian, are going into the new adventure of being missionaries with Greater Europe Mission (GEM). They have two grown children and live in the Chicago area. Karen is a buyer of children’s books at their town library and Brian, until recently has worked for the Baxter Healthcare Corporation. Both are well-educated and skilled in various disciplines. Now they have been called to become missionaries to the world and they are raising their support. They love their new job, though Karen hopes to stay with the library part-time as long as the Lord allows.

The statistics state that only 2% of the people in Europe are Christians now, so it’s exciting to be this close to a small part of the action.

The organization was started by a World War II Navy chaplain, Robert P. Evans, in 1949 who was also part of the Billy Graham Youth for Christ movement.

Karen’s grandfather was a Military chaplain, too. Karen and Brian were teens when Brian’s dad was the pastor of the English-language church in Heidelberg. Fred and Judy worked tirelessly in many areas of the church. Brian and Karen were 14 when they met, and by then, they had both fully given their lives to Jesus. They married several years later in America. What a match!

Because Brian and Karen have been church leaders in their home area near Chicago for twenty-two years, have reared two successful children, and Brian has been to seminary, they also have a great deal to teach children and parents about how to link up with God and how to run a home. Besides that they are just plain dear and hard-working people. We love them and they love us.

Brian has been working informally with GEM for a year and will be helping tend to some of the business side of the organization. Naturally, he travels, but he also regularly uses Skype as well. He (and sometimes Karen) will be helping the team to teach four new-missionary conferences in Colorado Springs every year. In between conferences Brian will contribute his business experience as well as his ability to mentor newer, younger team-members.

In the European countries, every job applicant is required to speak English. Brian enjoyed working with the GEM team that successfully negotiated for an academy in Madrid where immigrants will be able to learn to speak it. They’ll have access to computers, but more to the point they’ll have a chance to meet our Lord Jesus. The hope is that someday they can move back to their own countries taking Christianity and their new life-empowerment with them. If you’re flying around on the Internet someday and have time, take a look at the GEM organization and the new ways in which they are trying to reach the people of the world.Here’s what our friend and blog-mistress, Onisha, had to say about this news.

“Gem Missions sounds like a wonderful opportunity to serve. For some reason, I feel like I have heard of them from someone else. I am sure Judy was glad to have Karen and her husband visit with them and will offer their support too. Europe is a fine mission field, especially with all the refugees flooding the countries.  I read one person who said American Christians should not complain about all the Muslims settling here, but should think of it as God sending the mission field to us. That really stuck with me.”

I agree with what Onisha has written and I’d like to add that our omniscient Father is seeing to it that they’ll learn the language that is quickly becoming a means of communication for everyone in the world.

We’ve a Story to Tell to the Nations

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Three secrets to get a good night’s sleep. | Janet Perez Eckles

17 Oct

Walking by Faith, Not by Sight

Janet Perez Eckles

Turken

Naked Neck Chicken (Turken)

“Wait a minute,” I said, “let me put on some lipstick before you shoot that video.”

Why can’t I toss vanity out the window? But dare I say that we all have a trace of that from time to time, don’t we?

Some of us are way too conscious. We dress well to look sharp, dress up so we look great, wear black to look thin, fix the hair so we look young, and dress down to look cool.

And beyond how we look, we strive to do what might be impressive. We try hard to reach the top, get busy doing good stuff or even go places to rave about what we did.

Those efforts aren’t bad, unless they rule our lives. Or unless they stir electric signals to the brain, keeping it awake when it should be resting.

Jan-TurkenThis past Saturday, at the Access Life event for individuals and their families living with disabilities, a sort of strange animal taught me a big lesson about total trust and rest. I got to hold a “turken” or naked neck chicken. This peaceful little creature is half turkey and half chicken. The body of a chicken, the neck of a turkey and the head of a chicken. Since I’m not able to “see” it, I imagine it to be a sort of ugly creature.

But does it even show concern about its looks? You tell me. As I held it, it fell asleep. It had no clue a blind woman was holding it. It didn’t care how it looked, what appearance it displayed or even care about who took its picture. It showed no worry about others staring at her.

Why can’t we be like that? Why can’t we rest in peace just the way we are—with failures that might be known. With flaws that stand out. With weaknesses that are evident, or things left undone? And in face of it all, we, dare to live in complete trust. In total peace. And undisturbed confidence, the kind of confidence that we too fall asleep in God’s arms.

But we can. And here are three steps to enjoy sweet sleep in those long nights:

Visit Janet’s website to read more:  Three secrets to get a good night’s sleep. | Janet Perez Eckles

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Snakes, Doves and Renting Crowds.

10 Sep

On the Porch

Onisha Ellis

I'm a winner

All week I have been strolling through my brain cells, in search of a topic to blog about and came up with zilch. This morning as I embarked on my walk around the world, reading blogs and searching twitter, I came across this post:

Rent a crowd

I had heard that some of the recent protest events had used paid protestors but even though I am always looking for an easy way to make money, I couldn’t see myself as a  paid protestor.  This post indicated some politicians had used paid cheering sections. I can cheer! After all, I once cheered for Disney World when they filmed their Christmas Parade. Then I read the part about scripted answers to questions from the press. I marked that one off too. I’m still looking for a way to make easy money so if anyone needs to hire a crowd to open a new Cold Stone, Brusters or Marble Slab ice cream store, I am available. Ditto for Krispy Kreme Doughnuts. If Dippin’ Dots is hiring, I will work in exchange for the dots as I love those cold BBs of ice cream and they are too expensive for me.

Dippin dots

Remember when people would say “a picture is worth a thousand words”? If you saw a picture of someone’s action, then you took it as truth. Now with Photoshop and video editing one is wise to consider carefully what we see, hear and read before accepting it as truth. Our Father knew about this and gave us wise counsel in Matthew 10:16

Matthew 10-16

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He Was There All the Time

31 Aug

He Was There All the Time copy

My Take

DiVoran Lites

Author, Poet and ArtistSometimes I write down what I think the Holy Spirit is saying to me. It’s as if I were sending God a letter. At other times I sit and wait to hear what He says back. Yesterday I wrote out 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18: “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” That was, of course, exactly what I needed to hear.

After I had thought about it for twenty-four hours I felt like writing some more. I don’t pretend to have any answers, and I’m sure I make mistakes, but here’s what I wrote: (I write in second person because it makes the message more personal. Perhaps you do this too.)

Beloved, I felt God say, sometimes you recall hard things in your life that you wish had happened differently. You feel sorrow that you had to go through those experiences. You try to reconstruct ways in which outcomes would have been better if circumstances had been different. None of that does any good. Do you know why? It’s because I, The Father, set up those circumstances or, at least allowed them for my purposes.

My dear child, wouldn’t it make you angry to think I had set you up for hurt — that I deliberately ruined at least a part of your life?

More likely you think I wasn’t even there and that you caused everything yourself. It is so easy for you to come up with the wrong perceptions. It’s as if there were a part of your brain that insisted on lying to you. It’s a trickster, a devil, a demon, the flesh, the self, the carnal nature. It makes up stories about your life and then you cling to them. It says seek always, but do not find. It desperately needs intimacy with you in order to feed itself. It is false. Only I am true.

You have always had choices. Sometimes the choices you made were less than productive, but I didn’t leave you alone on dark paths of fear, bitterness, and greed. I went with you. I buffered the cold winds when I knew something would be too much for you. I worked always to bring you to my side

Could the same scary things have happened if you had made right and good choices? Yes and no. Every choice sent you down a different path so that every one of them had a potential for a different outcome.

Remember, dear one, your life in Me is a finely choreographed dance. You need to rehearse with me so that our steps will match. I have plans for good for you and not for evil. Remember, you need me and I need you. I have always loved you and I always will. Nothing you could ever do would change that.

“He Was There All the Time”

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How to become a winner. | Janet Perez Eckles

11 Jul

Recently, I sat beside my dearest friend at a banquet presented by AWSA (Advanced Authors and Speakers Association) as I munched the yummy dish before me, I listened to the awards being issued to illustrious authors in various categories. There was even an award to singer, comedian, and author, Chonda Pierce.

And when the details were announced about the candidate for the BEYOND ME AWARD for modeling a “You first life in a me first world,” I was quite impressed by the description of that individual.

Suddenly, my friend elbowed me. “Stop eating.”

I gave her a puzzled look.

When my name echoed in the room as the winner, I tried to swallow, but it wasn’t easy as the excitement, surprise, joy and deep gratitude nearly choked me.

I did not deserve this award. And nope, contrary to what you might think, the award which is given to those who go “beyond themselves” to reach out to others didn’t define me. But rather it defined God’s grace and His loving nature.

That night I lay on the pillow of disbelief and gratitude. Not only was the award lovely, it served as the reminder to keep going, keep on believing, serving and hoping. Pressing forward through struggles, pain, hardships and disappointments. While we press on, in spite of the enemy’s discouraging whispers, we draw closer to the reward that has nothing to do with earthly recognition, but everything to do with God’s eternal rewards.

via How to become a winner. | Janet Perez Eckles.

via How to become a winner. | Janet Perez Eckles.

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