Do Pretty Girls Know They are Pretty?

This is The Purpose Filled Life

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I hope in reading this you may gain some new insights and generate some fresh enthusiasm for care and kindness, and being The Light of the World, as Jesus named us. 

I love that word en-thus-iasm.  As you may know the "thus"  in the middle (t-h-u-s) comes from the Greek word Theos.  Theos means "God" in the Greek language.  It is the first part of the word Theology which means God Knowledge,  God-ology.

So en-thus-iasm really means to have God energy, or God inside, that you are a God driven God centered person.  Add enthusiasm to “You are the light of the world”  and we have a mighty important presence.

I was told a few days ago about a women’s Bible Study to which a stranger showed up and took a seat.  The meeting continued on dealing with its agenda and then adjourned.  Rightly behaving Christians would see to it that stranger had thirty people around her welcoming her.  Instead there was one. Okay, that is all it takes, but there should have been 30 concerned women tripping over each other to get to her side.  Instead of one.

My dear friends YOU  must take ownership of this challenge to make the world a better place, to care about strangers, to reach out into uncomfortable places where you’d rather not be.

Many of you have seen the powerful movie The Passion of Christ.  What a comfort shattering experience that is!!  It calls us to suffer too.  It insists that we too give our lives for others.  WE ARE CALLED TO LEAVE THE COMFORT ZONE AND GET HURT IF NECESSARY WHILE TRYING TO BRING HEALING TO OTHERS.

WE MUST DIE FOR OTHERS.  AND WHENEVER WE WALK ACROSS THE ROOM, INTROVERT THAT I may be, and welcome a stranger, as ineptly as I may do it I AM DYING FOR HER. AND IN DYING FOR HER I AM RESUSCITATING HER, RAISING HER A LITTLE, FROM THE DEAD.

I BEG YOU TO TAKE TOTAL OWNERSHIP OF EVERY ROOM YOU SIT IN, OR ENTER.  I BEG YOU TO TAKE LEADERSHIP IN NOTICING WHO IS THERE AND INTENTIONALLY APPROACHING WHOEVER MIGHT POSSIBLY BE ALONE AND ENDEAVOR IN SOME FAULTY, TREMBLING, INARTICULATE WAY IF NECESSARY, TO include them and bring them IN. 

JUST BE THERE!!  We must think of every human being as “the walking wounded”  but our task is not to fix them.   FIXING IS UNDERWAY WHEN WE GREET A STRANGER, OR LIFT THE SPIRITS OF ANYONE.   LEAVE THE  DELIBERATE FIXING TO GOD.  I LIKE THIS PLAY ON WORDS    “Don’t just do something.  Stand there.”

God surrounds us with His Presence while allowing for the God-created natural process to run its course.  AND THAT IS WHERE WE COME IN.  BE THERE!  BE WITH PEOPLE.  Greet them.  Touch them.  Smile at them.  Listen to them.  Walk with them.  Weep with those who weep.

In a Peanuts cartoon Charlie Brown asks Lucy:  “Do pretty girls know they are pretty?”    

                                    “Only if somebody tells them,” says Lucy.

That Peanuts cartoon is a metaphor about life in general.

A compliment to a pretty girl makes them even prettier.  Kind words are like vitamins that nourish  the spirit.  A nourished spirit makes the body healthier and inspires the person to their own good deeds.  So care and kindness is a strategic way to generate an ever-expanding chain of goodwill spreading like a prairie fire across the world, creating much needed global warming.

What does the Lord require of you?  “To act justly. To love mercy, And to walk humbly with your God.”  Mic. 6:8

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is to look after orphans and widows (and strangers, geeks, teenagers, sick people, the walking wounded, the aged, the grieving—and everybody else struggling, hurting and handicapped, or diminished. --adapted from James 1:27.

Placebos Can Help

PLACEBO

(Faith Healing)

Pla-ce’-bo (plå-sē’-bő), n. [Latin, “I shall please.”]  Med. A medicine, esp. an inactive one, given merely to satisfy a patient.

                                                            Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, copyright, 1961

-                      a medication prescribed more for the mental relief of the patient than for its actual effect on his disorder.

Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, copyright, 1979

The mention of a placebo makes people smile the smile of a shared secret.  It connotes a beneficial little trick pulled on the not-really-sick.  A pill is given tricking the complainer into thinking something truly medicinal has been prescribed.  So believing many have been fooled into feeling better.  At least that’s how we have in the past thought about the placebo.  Recent research indicates there’s much more to it than we’ve supposed.

Apparently when the placebo is taken by some trusting patients, it actually causes the body to heal itself.  When the sick or hurt person with confidence in the medical profession, medicine, scientific effectiveness, pops the placebo pill into his system, the body produces chemicals called endorphins.  One of these is a pain killer more powerful than morphine.  Pain is then reduced or eliminated by the body’s own chemicals, the production of which was stimulated by the placebo taken in faith.

The body heals itself.  The self-healing capacity of our human system is being stressed more and more by medical sophisticates.  The placebo research underscores it in a striking way.  It shows that pulling the right trigger can initiate self-healing.

Throughout all of history healing has occurred in ways that defy modern science’s self-confidence.  While some may come straight from God, many others may come from Him through the mysterious miracles of faith in a practitioner, an herb, a touch, an incantation that triggers the self-healing potential of the human body.

If the trusting patient can be helped by a placebo in the form of a medicine it becomes obvious that faith in the healing power of God, or the hand of a praying person, or a drop of olive oil, could also release, or speed up the healing powers created in the person.

Primitive people have always responded to “unscientific” healing ventures.  Civilized Americans who have trusted science above all could hardly profit from anything but the productions of laboratories.  As we see the scientific evidence of the body’s self-healing capacities even we modern people may find ways in which faith can heal.  We may begin again to ask that the elders lay their hands on us, pray over us, and maybe even put the oil on us, believing with scientific basis that such love, care, attention, may trigger the healing process God has created within us.

Research on Prayer

Research on Prayer for Seeds

A few years ago some people decided to do research on prayer. They believed prayer could affect any living thing- plant, animal or human being. They decided to start with plants; more specifically seeds.

In their first experiment they spread a large number of seeds, immersed in water, on two cookie sheets. One tray they then prayed over intensively, for three days. The other seeds were allowed to germinate without special attention.

The results were astounding. The prayed over seeds germinated far more promptly, and more completely, than the seeds that were left alone.

They decided to push it further. They added a third tray. This one included the seeds and water but they added salt to the water. Adding salt to the water was like making the seeds sick because salty water is harmful to living seeds and plants.

To their surprise the salty seeds, that were prayed for, did germinate and even more rapidly than those in clean water.

The conclusion they drew was that prayer may be especially beneficial to the ill and injured, like the sickened seeds in the salt water. Their neediness may make them the best candidates for prayerful care. An interesting and provocative thought about prayer. It may be most powerful with the weakened.

When Are the Twelve Days of Christmas?

“When are The Twelve Days of Christmas?”

We love to sing that joyful, and slightly humorous, song at Christmas time.  But does anyone know what those twelve days are about?  Is it part of Advent?  Or maybe it is just a random number around which someone has created an enjoyable song.

It is not a random number.  The days are not about Advent.  The twelve days refer to a specific period of time after Christmas.  After Christmas!  They are the days between December 25 and January 6 to be exact.  Here is what they stand for—

Our Christmas is December 25.  The Wisemen arrived on January 6.  We give our gifts to each other on December 25^th but in a major part of Europe, especially Eastern Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians present their gifts on January 6.  That is the day the Magi presented their gifts to the baby Jesus, Joseph, and Mary.  In northern Europe gifts are given starting on December 25, and every day, continuing until January 6.  This is the origin of the song-a gift every day.  

January 6 is  known as Epiphany.  Epiphany is a Greek work that means “to reveal”.  In the Christmas-Epiphany season it is the revelation of God’s incredible love to humanity that is revealed.  The Wisemen from the East represent God’s gift of The Christ Child to the Gentiles, to all of us. 

As we sing the joyful “Twelve Days of Christmas” now we know it is about God’s wonderful gift celebrated on Epiphany.

 

The Twelve Days of Christma -explained

“The Twelve Days of Christmas”-explained

From 1558 until 1829, Roman Catholics in England were not permitted to practice their faith openly. Someone during that era wrote this carol as a catechism song for young Catholics.

It has two levels of meaning: the surface meaning plus a hidden meaning known only to members of their church. Each element in the carol has a code word for a religious reality which the children could remember.

-The partridge in a pear tree was Jesus Christ.

-Two turtle doves were the Old and New Testaments.

-Three French hens stood for faith, hope and love.

-The four calling birds were the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke & John.

-The five golden rings recalled the Torah or Law, the first five books of the Old Testament.

-The six geese a-laying stood for the six days of creation.

-Seven swans a-swimming represented the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit--Prophesy, Serving, Teaching,  Exhortation, Contribution, Leadership, and Mercy.

-The eight maids a-milking were the eight beatitudes.

-Nine ladies dancing were the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit--Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness,  Faithfulness,

 Gentleness, and Self Control.

-The ten lords a-leaping were the ten commandments.

-The eleven pipers piping stood for the eleven faithful disciples.

-The twelve drummers drumming symbolized the twelve points of belief in the Apostles' Creed.

So there is your history for today.

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A Kindness Suggestion for Christmas Time

Last night, at about 8:00, I stopped at a home, the residents of which were strangers to me.  I rang the door bell and a man came to the door.  He looked puzzled by my presence, which he should have been.  I greeted him and simply said "I just stopped to tell you how much I appreciate the Christmas lights on your house and bushes.  This is the most beautiful display in the neighbeorhood.  Thank you!"

 He smiled in appreciation and explained a little about how long he has been doing it and how he got started.  But the main thing is that he was patted on the back by a stranger for making the world, at Christmas, a more beautiful place.

Go and do likewise, my friends.  I felt like a million dollars after that stop.  And I think he did too.

 X-MAS

When I was a child I was told that to write X-mas instead of Chistmas was bad. X-mas was, the teachers said, an unbelievers way of having "Christmas" but leaving Christ out.

My children, thirty years later, carry home the same woeful tale.

Guess what! It isn't true! For one thing the X in X-mas isn't really an X. It is the Greek letter chi(ki), transliterated as kh and representing the Greek word Khristos, which is Christ, of course.

So X-mas is really Christmas too. If you don't believe me look up X-mas in the dictionary. Uh, unfortunately, you have to look it up under the letter X.

IXTHUS

Speaking of Greek, do you know what IXTHUS means? It is the Greek word for fish. So what!? Well now for the first time you may understand why a fish is a well-known symbol of Christianity. Here is why: the first letter of the Greek word for fish is the first letter of the Greek word for Jesus, (I) lesus. The second letter X, stands for the word Xristos (Christ). The two letter TH stand for THEOS (GOD). The U stands for the Greek word for Son (Uios). The final letter S stands for the Greek word Savior (soterios).

Put it all together and the letters of the word give this message:

I - Jesus X - Christ TH - god's U - Son S - Savior

So IXTHUS (FISH) = a symbol of Christianity,