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A Week of Love...The Challenge

"I have always found in my life that the more I truly know a person, the more I have been priviliged to share in their deepest pain and joy, the more there was for me to love of that person. Underneath each of our well groomed images there lives a very lovable person who finds this hard to believe. That person is you and me. A majestic unique creation of our Heavenly Father, whose intrinsic value and worth lies in the  fact that He loves us and accepts us as imperfect people.

 ~

'I have nothing to offer anyone....except myself.

Me, such a forgettable figure...of nothing;

Which runs through life laughing...at the wrong time,

Who cannot convey a serious thought...without sounding false,

Who is really afraid of people...not taking her seriously.

A person searching for another...who understands,

What she is like and...wants her, inspite of herself.

A person who will be brave enough to LOVE HER...

.. when she cannot love herself.'

~

The Father's love for is was so completly overwhelming that He sent His Son into this world too die for us and rise again for our justifciation. Now, because He lives, we live also. But only because He lives!

Galatians 2:20 " I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." This is the secret of our new power. We are closest to the heart of our Lord Jesus and His Kingdom of Grace when we realize that we too have been crucified with Him and now live our life in the flesh as one who is free to love nad give himself for others. And in this self-giving of our love to others, we fulfill His new Commandment to love one another as He has loved us.

Someone is out there waiting for you today. 

Waiting for you to love them as you have been loved and 

as you have been now commanded to love.

~

The Love in Your Heart

Wasn't put there to stay

Love isn't Love, Till You Give It Away

~

Do you Love Me? 

~ 

You Told Me Once.

~

But I Forgot.

~

 

A Week of Love...a poem

" Be reckless, free and open with your love. Our two children need more love than either I or my wife are able to give. They also need your love to be whole in life. Let me illustrate this by telling you a story from the life of Toyohiko Kagawa, the late Japanese Christian who made so many important contributions to religious education in Japan. On one occasion, in the slums of Japan, he found a baby who had been thrown away. It was customary then to throw babies away when parents couldn't take care of them. When he saw this little baby girl in the filth of the gutter, he picked her up and took her to his home. He called her, for lack of knowing her real name, Little Ishi (It means Rock or Stone--Debi) He knew the child was dying, she was cold and struggled for each breath. He held the little child in his arms and wept. And as his warm tears of love fell upon the child's face, they shocked her back to life. He then sat down and wrote this poem.

'I am sodden with sleep
But I wake with my starling's fretful cries.
Thin dirty little baby
Wailing with pain all the while.
She is ill, Little Ishi-
Life has abused her so.
Safe from the one who meant to kill,
Fever has made her low.
Through the night I laboured to save her.
We two are all alone.
Sharp in the fearful stillness,
The neighbor's clock struck one.
Why is the world so cruel?
Seen with Ishi's eyes,
The earth and all the things in it
Is a mountain pile of ice.
Oh, to be taught what to do.
Men are consoled by their women,
But this scrap in my heart lies shriveled-
Dull from the junk heap.
And the strong man who holds her cries.
Why are you quiet, Ishi?
Why are your eyes shut? Why?
Wait, oh wait, little sick one.
It is too soon for you to die.
Cry again, Little Ishi. 
Cry once more, once more.
What will it take to make you wake?
For I cannot let you go.
I call but you do not hear me.
I clasp you, but you do not move.
It is not to pain I would bring you again.
There is love in the world. There is love
Will she not cry?
Here in my close embrace, I kiss her wan lips-
growning grayer. My drawn face touches her face.
Fast are my frightened tears falling,
Falling on Ishi's eyes.
With her cold, still tears, they are mingled
Oh, God! At Last! She cries.'

Because of the love of this one man, the little child lived. Someone has said, and rightly so, that the only problem with all our love is that it has been either too late or too small. Now is the time as the committed people of our Lord Jesus to correct our smallness to match His Bigness. 


 

A Week of Love....What's in A Name?

The Name of the Pamphlet that these passages are being taken from has such an interesting title that I'm giving it it's very own post.

 "All the walls were covered with white paper. The patients could write or draw anything they wanted on the paper draped walls. On this day as my eyes scanned the writing and pictures, I was struck with an inner terror when I read these words.

'I REACHED OUT

NO ONE

WAS THERE
I CRIED'

"These words didn't originate from the lines of a poem or a book of neatly filled illustrations. They were formed by a broken heart crying out the only way it knew how. These lines were written by one who had crashed through the threshold of unknown personal terror and pain to etch their inner emptiness upon impersonal walls.

I imagined a person desperately reaching out for anyone who would allow his presence with a reasonable amount of dignity. The depth of the human isolation expressed in these words was enough to make me sit to calm my own mounting rage of anger. Who was "No One?" And why wasn't "no one" there? Do you mean to tell me that a world which daily faces a spiraling population crisis, could not produce one person with the necessary compassion to love this abandoned refugee from the human race. There words are a sad commentary to a shallow depth at which we continue to live our lives. "

A Week of Love...Making the Time

'Part of our problem is that we just don't have time anymore. Time to be there when we are needed. If we are forever reluctant to make time for those who cry out in need, who will be there when the tears are from our eyes? On one of our youth retreats a teenage girl wrote this story about growing up in a world which has lost the true value of time. She titled this little episode: There Wasn't Time '

"Time. It hangs heavy for the bored, eludes the busy, flies by for the young and runs out for the aged.

Time. We talk about it like it's a manufactured commodity that some can afford, others can't.

We waste it, crave it, abuse it, curse it, and kill it. Is it our friend or our enemy?

I suspect we know very little about it. To know it all and its potential, perhaps we should review it through a child's eyes.

When I was young, Daddy was going to throw me up in the air and catch me and I would giggle until I couldn't giggle anymore, but Daddy had to change the furnace filter - AND THERE WASN'T TIME.

~

When I was young, Mama was going to read me a story and I was going to turn the pages and pretend I could read, but she had to wax the bathroom floor- AND THERE WASN'T TIME.

~

When I was young, Daddy was going to come to school and watch me in a play. I was the fourth Wiseman, (in case one of the three got sick), but he had an appointment to have his car tuned up and it took longer than he thought- AND THERE WASN'T TIME.

~

When I was young, Grandma and Grandpa were going to come for Christmas to see the expression on my face when I got my first bike, but Grandma didn't know who she could get to feed the dogs and Grandpa didn't like the cold weather and besides- THEY DIDN'T HAVE TIME.

~

When I was young, mama was going to listen to me read my essay on 'What I Want to be When I Grow Up.'; but she was in the middle of the Monday night movie and Gregory Peck was always one of her favorites- AND THERE WASN'T TIME.

~

When I was older Dad and I were going fishing one weekend, just the two of us and we were going to pitch a tent and anf fry fish with the heads on them like they do in the flashlight ads, but at the last minute he had to fertalize the grass - AND THERE WASN'T TIME.

~

When I was older, the whole family was always going to pose together for our Christmas card picture, but my brother had ball practice, my sister had her hair up, Dad was watching the Colts and Mom had to wax the bathroom - AGAIN THERE WASN'T TIME.

~

When I grew up and left home to be married, I was going to sit down with Mom and Dad and tell them I loved them and I would miss them. But Hank (he's our Bestman and a real clown), was honking the horn in front of the house, - SO THERE WASN'T TIME.

So if you need a Fireproof fix...

The producers of Fireproof have edited the whole story into 60 seconds :)
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A Week of Love...a quote

"You soon forget the one you laugh with, but never the one you cry with."

-Norwegian Proverbs

A Week of Love...Loving the Loveless

          "Another day as I was walking down the dreary corridors of the state hospital with the familiar odors of urine and sweat penatrating every nook and cranny, I heard the familar sound of dragging feet. I had the distinct feeling that I was being followed. So I stepped up my pace to see if the one who I thought was following me would do the same. He did. The message was clear; whoever it was wanted to catch up with me. So I gave him the chance by slowing my pace.
          In a matter of seconds someone reached out and took hold of my hand. That's what the chase was was all about, someone just wanted to hold my hand. But when I turned and saw who or what it was that was holding my hand, my first response was to snap my hand from his tenacious grip. Here was perhaps one of the ugliest portions of humanity I have ever seen. From the top of his bald head to the bottom of his bare feet, there stood a lad about 15 years old, covered from head to foot with enourmous welts the smallest being the size of a half dollar. He was so disfigured I could hardly stand to look at him. It took all the strength I had in my body to just let him hold my hand.
          He made no other demands, he couldn't he was mute. He just wanted to hold someone's hand, and, at that moment, that someone was me. Then I thought to myself, "Yes, how easy it is to love the beautiful, the talented, the handsome, the dexterous athlete, the popular person, or the pleasing person- but how difficult and almost impossible- to love those who need it the most, such as the ugly, the untalented, the shy, the slow learner, and the disfigured." How cheap and unreal our love has become, because for the most part we have continued to give it to those who really don't need it, and likewise we have withheld our love from those who have reached out to us in quiet desperation, hoping and praying with an inner rage that we would be the one who would hold their hand.
         Let me illustrate this with a story. A man recently visited a home where there were five children. He was supposed to be  a kind of godfather to them and was trying to get involved with them on their level. He asked one of the little girls about her doll collection: " Which one is your favorite?" She answered, "Promise you won't laugh if I tell you." "No I won't laugh," he said. She went into the next room and brought back a doll that was the most tattered, dilapidated, worn-out doll he had ever seen. A real refugee from the trash heap. All the hair was missing, and the nose was broken off and an arm was cracked. He didn't laugh, but he couldn't cover his surprise. He said to her, "Why do you love this one the most?" The little girl replied, "Because she needs it most. If I din't love her, nobody would."
          Jesus said that God is like that. God is loving us most when we need it most. So we ought to take a lesson from this and enrich our love by loving those who need it the most, instead of loving those who in someway please us the most.

A Week of Love...The Mission

"A new Commandment I give to you,

that you love one another;

even as I have loved you, 

that you also love one another.

By this all men will know that you are my disciples,

if you have love for one another."

-John 13:34-35-

A Week of Love...Introduction

Two years ago, possibly three, My parents and I attended a dedication of a little miracle child.
There we met a friend of the family who was a devoted man of God.....

~
A year later or so, Dad and Mom attend the man's funeral.

~
There they picked up a pamphlet- a collection of certain parts of the man's sermons dealing with Love.
Specifically, the love we are supposed to give to one another following the example of Christ.

~
It's a powerful 16 page set of papers.
I read it when it first came to my house, and several things have stayed with me over that past year.

~
So in the next week..I'm going to be posting selections from the selections :)

Snow in Madrid
by Joy Davidman

Softly, so casual,
Lovely, so light, so light,
The cruel sky lets fall
Something one does not fight.
How tenderly to crown
The brutal year
The clouds send something down
That one need not fear.
Men before perishing
See with unwounded eye
For once a gentle thing
Fall from the sky.

A Week of Quotes....Tuesday

" A vision without a task is but a dream,

A task without a vision is drudgery,

But a Vision and a Task is the hope of the World."

-Carved on a Church in England

A Week of Quotes...Monday

"The amazing thing about Miracles...

...is that they Happen."

-C.S. Lewis

A week of Quotes....Sunday

"We have all of eternity to celebrate the victories

and only a few short hours before Sunset to win them."

-Amy Carmichael

A Week of Quotes....Saturday

"Far better is it to dare mighty things,

to win glorious triumphs,

even though checkered by failure,

than to rank with those poor Spirits

who neither enjoy much or suffer much,

because they live in the gray twilight

that knows not victory or defeat."

-Theodore Roosevelt

A week of Quotes...Friday

"Let those be thy choicest Companions...

who have made Christ their Chief Companion."

- Thomas Brooks

A Week of Quotes....Thursday

"It is easier to serve God without a vision,

Easier to work for God without a call,

Because then you are not bothered by what God requires;

Common Sense is your guide,

veneered over with Christian Sentiment.

You will be more prosperous and successful,

More leisure-hearted, if you never realize the Call of God.

But if once you realize a commission from Jesus Christ,

the memory of what God wants will always come like a goad;

You will no longer be able to work for Him,

on a common sense basis."

-Oswald Chambers

A week of Quotes....Wednesday

"Unless there is an element of risk in your exploits for God,

there is no need for Faith."

-Hudson Taylor

So....Dad reminded me that I have a blog

So I'm taking a few seconds to update it :)
I'm afraid I haven't anything interesting to write, I haven't had the time to put thought it to it.

This is pretty much what I've been doing this past week:
Click to Enlarge

And Seriously I've been doing it almost 8 hrs a day. I've done over 40 lessons in my math book since last Monday.

Interesting things....it's 2009. 2008 flew by, but I really feel like it was a year of changing and growing. I'm definitely not the person I was 12 months ago. Not so much change on the outside, I'm still 5'5" (I always thought that I would give Katie a run for her money as the tallest in the family. No such Luck...Joe's passed me up now.)

Last Books I read:
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Anointed for Burial by Todd and DeAnn Burke.

Next on my List:
Nicholas Nickelby by Dickens
The Hiding Place (I read this book probably twice a year...and It's just great...each time)

Oh and I LOVE MY JOB!!!! I don't think you all know about my job....well, that's too long a story for now so...another post...soon I promise :)

Do Good and Avoid Evil :)
Go with God,
-Debi