RAMBLINGS OF A RETIRED MIND…

“i was thinking about how a status symbol of today is those cell phones that everyone has clipped onto their belt or purse.   I can’t afford one.
So, I’m wearing my garage door opener. I also made a cover for my hearing aid and now I have what they call blue teeth,

I think You know, I spent a fortune on deodorant before I realized that people didn’t like me anyway.
I was thinking that women should put pictures of missing husbands on beer cans!
I was thinking about old age and decided that old age is ‘when you still have something on the ball, but you are just too tired to bounce it.’
I thought about making a fitness movie, for folks my age, and call it “Pumping Rust.”
I have gotten that dreaded furniture disease. That’s when your chest is falling into your drawers!
I know, when people see a cat’s litter box, they always say, “Oh, have you got a cat?” Just once I want to say, “No, it’s for company!”

Employment application blanks always ask who is to be notified in case of an emergency.’ I think you should write, “A Good Doctor!”
Why do they put pictures of criminals up in the Post Office?
What are we supposed to do… write to these men?
Why don’t they just put their pictures on the postage stamps so the mailmen could look for them while they deliver the mail?  Or better yet, arrest them while they are taking their pictures!

I was thinking about how people seem to read the Bible a whole lot more as they get older Then, it dawned on me, they were cramming for their finals.
As for me, I’m just hoping God grades on the curve.”

Selected just for the fun of it. Hope you enjoyed some of them.

“ONE DAY AT A TIME, SWEET JESUS”

A popular country, western song written by Marijohn Wilkin and Kris Krisofferson and sung by many artists was “One Day At A Time, Sweet Jesus.”  The  words give us a great message:

“I am only human, I’m just a man/woman, help me believe in what I could be and all that I am.  Show me the stairway I have to climb.   Lord for my sake, help me to take One Day At A Time.
One day at a time sweet Jesus that’s all I’m askin’ of you.
Just give me the strength to do every day what I have to do.
Yesterday’s gone sweet Jesus and tomorrow may never be mine.
Lord, help me today, show me the way One Day At A Time.
So you remember when you walked among men, well Jesus, you know if you’re lookin’ below, it’s worse now than then.
Pushin’ and shovin’ and crowdin’ my mind.  So for my sake, teach me to take One Day At A Time.
One day at a time sweet Jesus that’s all I’m askin’ of you.
Just give me the strength to do every day what I have to do.
Yesterday’s gone sweet Jesus and tomorrow may never be mine.
Lord, help me today, show me the way ONE DAY AT A TIME.”

Our lives consist of the past, present and future.  We posses the past by memory, the future by anticipation but we live in the present.  The two most difficult days are yesterday and tomorrow.. Yesterday, because we keep dragging in skeletons from the past and tomorrow because we try to cross bridges before we get there.  We are a part of our past.  We must learn from the past or we will relive it in the future.  We can’t live in the past, it is gone but we can accept its lessons to help us in our present living.  Also, we are a part of the future.  The dreams, visions, aspirations of our lives help make up the kind of living we do in the present.  We can’t live in the tomorrow but we can live for tomorrow.  That is, we must have a tomorrow to live for today.  So, the past has value and the future has promise.  However, we must not allow the ghost of yesterday to haunt us nor try to cross bridges before we get there.  We must live for today.

Daniel Webster was asked, “What is the most profound thought you ever had?”  His reply was, “The most profound thought I ever had is my personal responsibility before God.”
Live for Jesus in the present and He will wipe out your past and give you a brand new tomorrow.  The Apostle Paul said it, “FOR ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST, TO DIE IS GAIN.”
Philippians 1:21

DADDY’S EMPTY CHAIR

A man’s daughter had asked the local minister to come and pray with her father. When the minister arrived, he found the man lying in bed with his head propped up on two pillows. An empty chair sat beside his bed. The minister asked about the empty chair. “Oh yeah, the chair,” said the bedridden man. “Would you mind closing the door?” Puzzled, the minister shut the door. “I have never told anyone this, not even my daughter,” said the man. “But all of my life I have never known how to pray. At church I used to hear the pastor talk about prayer, but it went right over my head. I abandoned any attempt at prayer,” the old man continued, “until one day four years ago, my best friend said to me, Johnny, prayer is just a simple matter of having a conversation with Jesus. Here is what I suggest. Sit down in a chair, place an empty chair in front of you, and in faith see Jesus on the chair. It’s not spooky because he promised, ‘I will be with you always’.then just speak to him in the same way you’re doing with me right now. So, I tried it and I’ve liked it so much that I do it a couple of hours every day. I am careful though if my daughter saw me talking to an empty chair, she’d either have a nervous breakdown or send me off to the funny farm.”
The minister was deeply moved by the story and encouraged the old man to continue on the journey.

Two nights later, the daughter called to tell the minister that her daddy had died that afternoon. The minister asked, “did he die in peace?” “Yes, but there was something strange about his death. Apparently, just before Daddy died, he leaned over and rested his head on the chair beside the bed. What do you make of that?” The minister wiped a tear from his eye and said, “I wish we could all go like that.”               Selected

“The Simplicity of Prayer”
“Prayer is so simple, it is like quietly opening the door
And slipping into the very presence of God;
There in the stillness to listen to His voice;
Perhaps to petition or only to listen,
It matters not, Just to be there in His presence
Is prayer.” Author Unknown

“This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.” I John 5:14
Speak to Him often.

WHAT DO WE NEED TO DO TO BE SAVED?

A young boy was asked, what did you need to do to be saved? He simply answered, you have to die.

We live in a death denying age. Death spoils our plans to gratify our flesh. We love this old body.. We pamper it, perfume it, exercise it, do any thing to keep it as beautiful as we can.. BUT IT IS A LOSING BATTLE. Time beats us up. We grow old and the body shows the marks of aging. We get disease, sickness, deformities. all kinds of difficulties. ONLY DEATH CAN STOP AGING,

WHAT IS DEATH? It is the separation of body and soul. WE DEPART. The Bible teaches LIFE INSTEAD OF DEATH. Jesus came to destroy death by replacing it with life. Only by the power of God could that be done. Jesus lived through this experience. He came back from the dead. Jesus paid for sin once and for all and took away death’s license to do business. God through the resurrection of His son, Jesus, gives us who believe in Him the assurance of life with Him. . .

Certainly it is difficult for us to understand because we are such earthlings, Even the early followers of Jesus did not understand. Listen to what Jesus said to them AND US, “Do not let your heart be troubled. Trust in God. trust also in Me. In My father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with Me that you also may be where I am.” John 14:1-3 NIV .

Eternal life is the continuation of fellowship with God. Death is the gateway home..

DON’T WIDEN THE PLATE

In 1996, the first week of January in Nashville, Tennessee 4,000 baseball coaches gathered.  The speaker was John Scolinos, who had been a coach since 1948. He stood before the group with a full sized, stark-white home plate hanging around his neck.  He finally said, “You probably are all wondering why I’m wearing a home plate around my neck. I want to share with you what I have learned about home plate in my 78 years of living.” He then asked the crowd, “Do you know how wide home plate is?” The answer came thundering back, SEVENTEEN INCHES. Now what do we do with a pitcher who can’t put the ball across that 17-inch plate? Get a pitcher who can. What would happen if we decided just to widen the plate to suite the pitcher?
If you can’t hit a seventeen-inch target, we will make it eighteen inches, or nineteen inches. Do we change the size of the plate to fit each pitcher? Of course not.

This is the problem in our homes today and in our marriages. We don’t expect accountability to meet standards, we just widen the plate. Without discipline for our children, we just keep widening the plate.

This is the problem in our schools today. The quality of our education is going downhill fast and teachers have been stripped of the tools they need to be successful and to educate and discipline our young people. We just widen the plate so as to get by.

This is the problem with the Church, where powerful people in positions of authority have taken advantage of young children, only to have such an atrocity swept under the rug for years. Leaders are allowed to air their opinions as if it were the gospel truth. Our church leaders are widening home plate.

If we keep widening the plate, our families, our faith, our society will continue down an undesirable path. We must hold ourselves to a higher standard, standard that we know is right. If we fail to hold our spouses and our children to the same standards, if we are unwilling or unable to provide a consequence when they do not meet the standard; and if our schools, churches, government fail to hold themselves accountable to those they serve, we are headed for dark days.

Coach Scolinos died in 2009 at the age of 91 but not before touching the lives of hundreds of people.  His message was clear: “Coaches, keep your players, no matter how good they are, your own children, and most of all, keep yourself at seventeen inches. QUIT WIDENING THE PLATE.
(I hope I have not done injustice to the original article as I have shortened it to fit for my devotional.)

JULY 4, 1776 – A SPECIAL DAY

It has been 245 Years since founding fathers set pen to parchment and produced the Declaration of Independence. In a bold move against Great Britain, the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, proclaimed the independence of the original 13 colonies. It was natural for the Revolutionary War patriots to embrace what were primarily Thomas Jefferson’s words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
It is easy for Americans to take freedom for granted. Many of us think of Independence Day as just another day off work, a day for hot fun in the sun, barbecues, beer, boating, and fire works.

July 4th is a special day in the life of our great nation. The desire for independence today, too often, is just a desire to do one’s own thing. Sinful, selfish things are done under the disguise of liberty, independence, freedom. It doesn’t matter what name you call it: Black Power, White Power, Communism, Socialism, Religion, any abuse of man’s relationship with God and man’s relationship with man is a misuse of freedom. Hate, greed, violence, immorality, vengeance and such are all wrong in the sight of God. Such things depersonalize and destroy people. It is true that we have been called to liberty but it is not the freedom to bite and devour one another like animals. Then, how free is free? Your freedom ends where my nose begins.

Freedom demands restraint. Listen to God through the Apostle Paul: “You, my bothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature, rather, serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command: Love your neighbor as yourself. If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.” Galatians 5:13-15

Tic Tock in the “Wizard of Oz,” the mechanical man, had a special grace of always doing what he was designed to do, but he wanted to be human. And what was the thing he lacked? Freedom of choice. We do not. Make up your mind to be alive in Christ. Know this, that anything that is alive must, to remain alive, be tied to something else. A tree is fastened to the earth. If someone frees it by pulling its roots from the ground, it is free only to die. To remain both free and living, we must be tied to something life giving.

Choose Christ and life, not sin and death. God gave you such freedom, use it wisely.