Why do stars fall down from the sky
ev’ry time you walk by?
Just like me,
they long to be
close to you.
— Hal David, 1963 (renewed, 1991)
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Photo credit: Wikipedia
Saturday Sayings – Close
Tag: relationships
Weekly Photo Challenge: Close
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.
Sunday Scripture – Friendship
Friendship
You adulterous people,
don’t you know that friendship with the world
is hatred toward God?
Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world
becomes an enemy of God.
Or do you think Scripture says without reason
that the spirit he caused to live in us
envies intensely?
But he gives us more grace.
That is why Scripture says:
“God opposes the proud
but gives grace to the humble.”*
— James 4:4-6
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*James, the actual half-brother of Jesus,
is quoting, here from the
Proverbs, chapter 3, verse 34.
Saturday Sayings – Friendship
True happiness is of a retired nature,
and an enemy to pomp and noise;
it arises,
in the first place,
from the enjoyment of one’s self;
and, in the next,
from the friendship and conversation
of a few select companions.
*See also my posts on true friendship, beginning here.
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Photo credit: Stifts- och landsbiblioteket i Skara)
Photo credit: Stifts- och landsbiblioteket i Skara)
Weekly Photo Challenge: Friendship
Are you friends with your relatives? This grandfather is friends with all his teen grandsons.
He has brought them several hundred miles to his old stompin’ grounds to find the best huntin’ in America. He says.
Did they bag anything?
Nah.
Except closer bonds.
Fun memories.
Greater respect for Granddad.
Experience in hunter safety.
Wild dreams.
Bellies aching from laughter.
Listening to songs of night creatures.
Back-slappin’ good times.
Not much.
Summing up Summer
Do you ever come to the end of the summer vacation with NO IDEA where the days went?
I have found a solution that we love, that worked several summers for us.
We kept a journal.
It wasn’t fancy—just some lined paper stapled between construction paper, but we made it more fun than it sounds. You may want to copy this idea.
After the children chose the color for their journal cover, they took turns adding decorations to the front. These usually were made with crayon and stencil, for ease and speed, but you could do some creative cut and paste and make the cover, itself, part of the event.
My kids are so no-nonsense.
You will need enough pages for the whole summer, say, ninety days. We eventually made ours simple as possible, but if you would like illustrations along the way, inside your journal, you will have to allow more pages. We would put two day’s of activities on each page, in a list form.
Some days’ activities were planned for us. We always shopped on Tuesdays, for instance. When green beans HAD to be canned, they just had to be, regardless of our wishes. Excess rains might mean an extra mopping chore. No matter. Whatever we did, we recorded.
The other minor rule we used was that we would do two note-worthy things each day. They did not have to be magnificent or impressive; they just had to be things we actually DID. Of course, the children preferred writing about the fair and the water park, but our goal was to realize where the summer went, and if it went to mopping and canning, then so be it.
In the end, we had a great little reminder of each day, plus a good grasp on where all those days went. Try it this summer, and see!
Sunday Scriptures: Hands
The Commander took the young man
by the hand,
drew him aside and asked,
“What is it you want to tell me?”
Acts 23:19
I have long loved this verse because it shows a type of beauty often missing in our world.
A man, a tough, martial kind of guy, has a child by the hand. Gently.
And it’s not just any ol’ kid, either. The Commander has the son of the enemy by the hand. People who hate him have spawned this boy and he’s got him by the hand, drawing him to a private place somewhere inside the deep crevasses of the Roman military barracks.
Away from the other guys.
Away from listening ears.
Away from perhaps terrifying sounds and cruel or obscene remarks about Jews.
The young man has a message for him and believes the Commander will want to hear it. Why? Maybe he’s watched the man in action, before and noted a spark of humanity in him. Maybe the man has shared a bite of ration with him.
Maybe the boy just thought it worth the risk. After all, his message could save a man’s life — his uncle’s life, in fact.
The record states he took it upon himself to approach the Roman Commander with his news, though, and for some reason, the Commander took the boy quite seriously.
Maybe he enjoyed being watched, perhaps imitated, by a young kid.
Maybe he noted the earnestness in the lad’s face and instinctively knew something of great import was on his radar screen.
Maybe he was a dad far from his own brave son.
However it was, a huge, hardened hand of a Conquering Commander held the smooth, youthful hand of a Jewish boy, and together they changed history:
The boy’s uncle, Paul of Tarsus, escaped a wicked assassination plot, a lynch mob.
The last words we know of from this man with the huge hands are, “Don’t tell anyone that you have reported this to me.”
It was, after all, quite politically incorrect for them to have had a conversation at all.
But they had hands.
And they held history in their hands.
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