The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten. After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. Upon receiving such orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.
About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everybody’s chains came loose. The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted, “Don’t harm yourself! We are all here!”
The jailer called for lights, rushed in and fell trembling before Paul and Silas. He then brought them out and asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”
They replied, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household.”Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all the others in his house. At that hour of the night the jailer took them and washed their wounds, then immediately he and all his family were baptized. The jailer brought them into his house and set a meal before them; he was filled with joy because he had come to believe in God—he and his whole family. Acts 16:25-34
Where is my post? Where is all that work? It was here, I saw it, and now it is gone.
This is my good friend Ed. I wrote a very romantic post about him and it posted. It was here. I saw it. Now it is gone.
I will attempt to reproduce what I wrote before. Sighs.
I encountered Ed and his fiance sitting close to each other on the sunny side of the street last November. As always, he had a hug and a lopsided smile for me.
Ed is a very kind and generous man. I once saw him give $100 to a friend as a going-away present. He earns his money by picking up aluminum cans off the roadside. Sometimes people give him their cans, too.
I have seen Ed weep when he hears the sweet old hymns sung, like “How Great Thou Art”. But he does not sing. He was born with a mouth deformity and cannot even talk well. Only his closest friends can understand him at all when he speaks, but he pantomimes well enough for me to understand.
I admire his spunk, to think of marrying at his age.
Someday I will write a fictionalized account of his life and I will be his co-star. 🙂
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Okay. Posting again. Thanks for your patience, everyone. Sure do hope this is not something that happens often.
This lovely, hope-giving incident has made many smile through their tears. Enjoy:
This past week has been quite a doozy for me, and I find myself emotionally empty, physically drained, and in need of true fellowship and respite. I can’t get it from Levi today, as he is taking a well-deserved geek/guy break up in Denver with his buddies.
Anyway, after everything that has happened over the last month or so, I found myself itching to just get out. So, I decided to take the kids to Wendy’s. No play place, where they could share all kinds of yuck with any number of kids. The last thing I need is more illness. But that’s not what this post is about.
I was standing at the counter, ordering kids meals for all but Durin. He got an adult meal – the kid is officially a bottomless pit.
The lady tells me the total: $24.67.
I reach for my wallet, which … isn’t … *panic* … there
Joshua commanding the sun to stand still (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Now then, just as the Lord promised,
he has kept me alive for forty-five years
since the time he said this to Moses,
while Israel moved about in the desert.
So here I am today, eighty-five years old!
I am still as strong today as the day Moses sent me out;
I’m just as vigorous to go out to battle now as I was then.
One thing different, this year: I was formulating my very first solo PowerPoint presentations. (Yeah, I know, NOW that they are becoming passé!) I was totally consumed with learning this new-to-me tool.
Another big difference was that I am now doing everything here, myself. No kids to help out. So, while there is less dust falling, less mud gobbing, and less bathtub ringing, every single daytime chore has fallen onto me. Hubs helps with things when he’s here, evenings, but . . .
Third—and I realize there is reason to rejoice for each of these—we now spend at least one whole day, per week, in another town, working on our possible second career.
So I could not work ahead and schedule posts for while I was gone. The best I could do was drag my laptop along and try to keep up with y’all.
Therefore, I have decided to try something different, which is to condense my topics into blog posts so you can see if you would like to order, soon, the audio version of them on CD. I receive no payment, but would be happy to share these with you.
I did speak on burnout. Moms, with all the kids at home and all the neighbors gone cha$ing rainbow$, can burn out. What does that look like?
It comes in two stages, both related to fire, as I related in my workshop.
The exciting stage of burnout looks like an explosion. Mom goes berserk and soon will have nothing left to give. The more lack-luster stage looks more like what we call it, “burnout”, because Mom is plain gone, out of fuel, spent.
Nothin’ cold as ashes . . .
I once posted on the song, “Pass it On” which begins: “It only takes a spark to get a fire going.” In that post, I told of how to build a one-match fire in the fireplace, and that was my intro to this workshop. However, I quickly relocated that fire in a forest and told of what foresters do to prevent forest fires.
They fight fire with fire.
In the cooler seasons when fire danger is low, they start a smart fire that can easily be controlled. They actually call this fire a “control burn”. Using drip torches, they, YES, start a forest fire, carefully watched by several professionals wielding special heavy-duty rakes and shovels, and backed up with bulldozers. The purpose is to remove all the dead, deadly debris on the forest floor, making it difficult to ignite with a careless cigarette thrown out on a hot, windy day. These lower temperature fires do no damage to mature trees, because the thick bark on them insulates the living part of the tree from the lower heat.
It’s a bit like an immunization for a forest.*
And I wonder—what kind of “debris” is in my life, that could cause a big “fire” with just the right spark and leave us with everything within me — gone?
And I wonder that about yours, too.
* (Incidentally, your state probably provides heavy fines for doing this at home, without knowing what you are doing. Don’t play with fire.)
An amazingly poignant post from a young lady who had fought an uphill battle against Lyme disease for so many years . . . to find the thrill of victory. Savor the sweetness here . . .
Those are the words that my LLMD said to me last week. “We’re finally winning.” I can’t even begin to describe what hearing that was like. I heard the words; I smiled. But those fantastic words didn’t sink in right away. I felt… like I was staring down a beautiful cliff, unsure of what I was doing there and what I should be feeling – awe from the spectacular view or fear from being so close to the edge.
I was talking to another Lyme friend of mine recently about how hard it is to trust those words I was told. Here’s a snippet of what I said, “I haven’t ever lost hope of recovery, but somehow this feels different now. It’s not sometime in the future. It’s starting right now. I want to accept that gratefully, but I’m still protecting myself from the possibility I’ll get worse again. It’s…
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