Playing Scrabble with my family:
“Is ‘eWorked a word?”
“Well, there’s Elance, eHarmony, email, elope. Sure, eWorked is a word.”
36 points for that new word in the Scrabble dictionary. 🙂
This year I have learned that procrastinating is not worth the pay off from procrastinating.
So why do I procrastinate? What are the payoffs?
– having fun doing other things instead of the thing that I put off doing.
– doing easy things instead of tackling the difficulty of the thing that I am putting off
A blessing by Jean Vanier
May all your expectations be frustrated.
May all your plans be thwarted.
May all your desires be withered into nothingness
That you may experience the powerlessness and poverty of a child and sing and dance in
the love of God the Father, the Son and the Spirit.
I am an ENFP.
“ENFPs are basically happy people. They may become unhappy when they are confined to strict schedules or mundane tasks. Consequently, ENFPs work best in situations where they have a lot of flexibility, and where they can work with people and ideas. Many go into business for themselves. They have the ability to be quite productive with little supervision, as long as they are excited about what they’re doing.
Because they are so alert and sensitive, constantly scanning their environments, ENFPs often suffer from muscle tension. They have a strong need to be independent, and resist being controlled or labelled. They need to maintain control over themselves, but they do not believe in controlling others. Their dislike of dependence and suppression extends to others as well as to themselves.” (italics added to point out the characteristics that particularly apply to me.) From http://www.personalitypage.com/ENFP.html
I am grateful that I am in ministry that allows me a lot of flexibility and to work with people and ideas.
What’s your type?
I needed some mindless reading, and my genre of choice is a good whodunnit mystery.
Remember that old TV show Murder She Wrote? I read one of the books “Domestic Malice”. The writing is not particularly great, but the basic storyline is decent. It’s easy reading, and while it is not a page-turner, it at least kept my interest. The ending had a bit of a twist but nothing very intriguing. Wishing again that Agatha Christie was alive…
“Why do you behave so well in Bible drill but not in worship?” I asked a fifth-grade boy.
“Because I don’t want my mom to get mad at me in Bible drill.” He replied.
Even as adults we are often motivated by external forces without any inner change. We can act good and proper in certain circumstances but when no one’s looking or when it doesn’t matter, our true self comes out.
I attended the funeral of Ron D, an 80-year-old very devoted Christian man. I didn’t talk to him much when he was alive, but I sure learned a lot from him today.
One testimony stood out to me. A man said that when he was a young man, Ron told him to read the Bible. “Why would I want to read that crap?” He replied.
Ron said, “If nothing else you can at least say you’ve read it. Many intelligent people have read the Bible.” What a brilliant response!
The man took that challenge and read through the Bible in four months. He found that the Bible had much to say about life. Somewhere along the way, he said, he became a Christian. Today he is a pastor.
I’m inspired to invite people to read the Bible. “If nothing else you can at least say you’ve read it. Many intelligent people have read the Bible.”
My sister is into jewelry. She tries hard getting me interested it in. “You order it and it’s mailed to you in a beautiful box,” she says excitedly.
But honestly, jewelry is not something I get excited about.
What I look forward to in the mail are books! When I order a book from Amazon, I am so excited waiting for it to arrive! And when I see the package, I rip it open, flip through the pages, and start reading the foreword. Now that’s exciting.
My sister and I are very different, you can tell!
I experienced my first Lectio Divina today. I enjoyed the 55 minutes of meditating on one passage of the Bible along with 7 other ladies. It gave me a relaxed time to focus on God and silent prayer. There was no pressure to talk, although I did share my thoughts. And it was good to hear what some of the other ladies were reflecting on. I might’ve fallen asleep if I was meditating by myself for that long, but in a group setting sitting on hard chairs kept me alert.
I usually feel guilty doing something for myself that is not “productive”, but today, I felt very relaxed just sitting and meditating. Maybe it was because I was 25 miles away from home spending time that was specifically scheduled for this. I couldn’t get up to vacuum or read a book or prepare a lesson or check my email. It was time well spent.
This year, I want to be more of a Mary and lead by example. Lectio Divina today definitely took me a step towards that.
The full title is “Since nobody’s perfect… How is good enough?” This is a small booklet that is packed with great stuff, much more than I expected.
“The logic behind good people go to heaven is seemingly impenetrable on two accounts. First, it is fair. By fair, I mean people who do good deserve good things… Second, it coincides with the notion that there is a good God. If there is a good God, and if he dwells in a good place, then it makes sense that God would fill heaven with good people.”
Stanley goes on to dispel this common ideal that “Good people will go to heaven.” It explains many well-reasoned points why this concept really isn’t “fair”, as most consider that this notion is a “fair” way to determine who goes to heaven.
What’s the alternative? The answer is not the usual quoting Bible verses. He explains it in a very understandable and palatable way.
I highly recommend little book.