Every time I see one of these irises, I’m reminded of the living flowers in the old animated Alice in Wonderland movie.
It was all nice and sweet until they asked Alice what kind of flower she was. When she replied that she wasn’t a flower at all, they took her for a weed and ran her out of the garden. Satire, anyone?
p.s. I wish there really were bread-and-butterflies!
The blooming or the ’bout to.
One is an in-your-face here-I-am;
the other, an ooh-what-will-I-be tease.
Think I’ll take both, please.
I felt so bad about posting this one that I had to cover the name of this church and pastor. Yes, I agree wholeheartedly with the meaning behind this sign. But I think whoever handles the signage needs a grammar checker. ๐
NOTE from Jo: This is Kevin’s first post here!!!!
I looked at the internet to see what the “news” was saying. Frankly, I have a very difficult time believing anything that comes from the mouth of our president. He is the most pro-death president in the history of our young country. He seems to be pretty much the opposite of me. He is pro-death, pro-homosexuality, pro-war, and seemingly anti-marriage and anti-God.
The people that signed Roe vs. Wade into law are bigger terrorists than Osama could have ever been. Those people are directly responsible for upwards of fifty million deaths, probably closer to sixty million. They killed all of those babies and made us support it financially. The taxpayers of this country are still being forced to pay for Planned Parenthood. 98% of what they do leads parents to commit murder. A more accurate name for them would be Planned Barrenhood. They have no interest in adoption. They are abortion mills (murder factories) more horrible than any concentration camp and more successful in their treacherous terror.
Back to Osama. Let’s assume for a moment that Osama is actually dead. This is a pretty daring assumption considering the trustworthiness of the news and our leaders. How much can you trust someone who is not led by the Creator? How much can you trust someone who is absolutely against the Church and everything it stands for? What’s interesting is that people who do not trust Obama and even hate him, automatically believe him when he says that someone else they hate is dead. And why do they hate Osama? Is it because he is/was supposedly evil. To my knowledge, not one single person that I know has ever met Osama bin Laden. No one I know knows/knew him. The only source we have to feed our hatred of him is what we are fed by the media and our government.
This reminds me of the Cold War days that I grew up in. Some people in our country believed that the citizens of the U.S.S.R. loved us and wanted us to come in and save their country. Isn’t that the mindset we seem to always have? You may be surprised to know that this concept is often far from the truth. Governments are spin doctors. The U.S. was convincing us to hate the U.S.S.R. while the U.S.S.R. was convincing their people to hate us. This is the way that war and propaganda work. People always say that there are two sides to every story. I say that there are at least three: yours, mine, and the absolute truth without our personal (often unaware) manipulations.
The truth of the matter is that God has told us that we can’t hate anyone, including Osama. If we are the Christians that we like to think we are, we have to want love, peace, and happiness for all, including Osama. We have to hope and desire that he goes to heaven. All the Catholic Churches in the world should pray for the repose of the soul of Osama bin Laden this coming Sunday. The Church is to be the example for everyone else to follow. As Christians, we are to desire that Osama repented of his sins and turned to Christ as his savior before he died.
News Alert: If he did repent and accept the Lord as his savior before he died, Osama will be in heaven. You see, the problem is that people really don’t believe what they say they believe. They say they believe that anyone can be forgiven if they are truly repentant and ask God’s forgiveness. But they really only believe this if the person is not too bad by their standards. God would forgive stealing a piece of candy from the store, but he wouldn’t forgive murder, or sexual assault (especially on a minor), or whatever someone deems to be horrible in their own opinion. But your opinion doesn’t change much of anything. It definitely doesn’t change what the truth is.
Mortal sin is mortal sin is mortal sin. No exceptions. You may think that not following Church teaching on something like fasting on Good Friday or not going to Church on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation is not nearly as big a deal as molesting a child. What about adultery? It seems that lots of people don’t seem to think that’s a big deal. After all, it is sex between consenting adults. Of course, they don’t think about the other spouse at home who does not consent, or of God who doesn’t consent. Is Osama so much worse than we are?
There are millions of murderers in this United States. Yes, I said murderers. They’re not murdering people who they don’t even know. Unfortunately, the most likely person to molest you and/or kill you is your parent, not some “terrorist.” How sick is that? We are a sick race in dire need of God right here and now. Maybe we should get the plank out of our own eye instead of being so quick to examine the one in Osama’s eye.
Maybe we’re all terrorists in our own way. Maybe you’re terrorizing your wife by not treating her like you should, or by cheating on her. Maybe you’re terrorizing your children by teaching them false doctrines. Maybe you’re teaching them that it really doesn’t matter what you do as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else.
Wake up!!! Everything we do affects someone else. Yes, even if you do it behind closed doors where no one else sees. You are still sinning and affecting the world. You cannot hide from God. Are you teaching your child that it’s okay to kill a baby, or to be with someone of the same sex? We are held responsible for what we do and for how we guide our children.
Someone said that it was God’s will that Osama be killed on May 1st. That seems utterly ridiculous to me. First of all, we rarely know God’s will. All we can do is study the Bible and try our best every day to be true to the Trinity and the Church. Why would it be God’s will for Osama to die? Is it because we have decided that he is evil and that he should die? Is it because we hate him? If His will was for Osama to die on May 1, 2011, I can only logically concur that God’s will must have been for Osama to live all of the days prior to May 1st.
This is really a dangerous line of thought. We can easily become theologically confused in such matters. If someone walks up to you today and shoots you in the head, was that God’s will? We base what is God’s will on what we like and dislike. See, if we hate Osama, then it is God’s will that he died. What about someone who dies in a car crash at the age of 16? Is it God’s will that they die? Most people I encounter would think that it wasn’t. We like that person, so it couldn’t have been God’s will that they die. Or some people turn against God because of His will being something that they couldn’t deal with.
The theological principle of double predestination states that your destiny will be your destiny no matter what you do. In other words, Osama was going to die yesterday no matter what he did, even if he were a good and holy Christian. His fate of heaven or hell was also decided from the beginning of time. This thinking is dangerous because it follows that it really wouldn’t matter what we did if our end result was guaranteed one way or the other from the beginning. This heretical teaching strips us of one of the gifts that God gave us to help us grow. That gift is free will.
Predestination states that God does have a plan for all of us, but we’re not necessarily bound by God’s control to follow it. We have free will to choose it, or not. There really can’t be true love without free will. If we only loved God because we had no choice, it really wouldn’t be love at all. I firmly believe that God’s plan was for Jo to be my wife, but she still has free will which means that she could have ignored God’s plan and told me to go away. I’m very thankful that she did follow God’s plan, but she wasn’t forced to by God. If you have to make someone love you, it’s not love at all.
The truth is God allows evil people to be. If He wanted someone to die, He would only have to remove His hand from them. The scourges of society are potential saint makers. Dealing with someone who is “evil” can lead you toward being an evil, despising, hateful, warmongering person, but it can also help you to see the flaws in yourself and influence you to strive harder to achieve holiness. The evils we encounter, whether they be evil persons or situations or illnesses, help to refine our souls into the purity that we must attain in order to see God in heaven. We are born impure and we must have trials and fire to burn out our impurities. We cannot wish that anyone dies or goes to hell or suffers in any way. To do so would be evil and against God.
God is love. Where love is, God is. Where love is not, God is not. Hatred and love cannot exist in the same place. We must decide who we will follow. To follow the path of love is to follow God. To follow the path of hatred and unforgiveness is to follow the evil one. To paraphrase my hero, Blessed Pope John Paul 2, we must win with love. Evil will devour itself. Unless we win with love, that evil will just come back over and over under a different name.
Be aware that I am not defending Osama in any way. I just think that our perspective is very warped.
Aww! Don’t you just wanna squeeze them?
I took this one behind my parents’ house. I love the incongruity of the dainty flowers flourishing amid the hardy cacti.
As we were sitting in a meeting waiting for someone to return the other day, Kevin pointed out a photocopied quotation thumb-tacked to a board. It’s by Charles (Chuck) Swindoll.
“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company … a church … a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past … we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude … I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you … we are in charge of our attitudes.”
Imagine people reading this, taking it to heart, and actually acting on it. The world could be changed for the better in an instant.
It brings out some points that I try to instill in my students and my own kids, advice that I’m always giving myself, as well:
I also really like the analogy of the “one string” we have to play. If our attitude is our string, our instrument, then with it …
We make choices every second of every day. Think about it.
Nestled in the corner of the Big Lots furniture department, I stumbled upon this item: a Special Collector’s Edition Inaugural Lava Lamp!
Wow! Can you believe it? Don’t you wish they were open right the second, so you could drive over and get one all for yourself?!
So, anyway, when I showed it out to Kevin, he wanted to know why it says DRAMA over President Obama’s head. ๐
And I realized that it does, in fact, look like like DRAMA. That one little sliver of a rounded side on thE “O” is the only thing separating OBAMA from DRAMA.
I’d just glanced over those white bubble letters, knowing what they’re meant to say because they’re right over his picture.
Hmmm.
I wonder if it’s really a coincidence or if someone deliberately maneuvered that “O” just enough to make the difference. I guess we’ll never know.
Even after four shots and a finger prick-and-squeeze, Atticus still had it in him to hug Mrs. Charlotte. Then, at least. Later this evening, when I mentioned that he really liked her, he said, “Yeah, but I don’t like her shots!”
Today was the day for his school physical because he’s eligible for kindergarten this fall.
I still can hardly believe my “baby” is heading to school soon. It seems like just yesterday that we were cradling him, changing him, and feeding him bottles. The older you get, the faster time seems to fly.
By the way, Charlotte Williams is pediatric nurse practitioner at Piedmont Primecare next to the mall in Danville, and she is AWESOME!
She spent so much time with Attie! She listened to him sing two songs (the “Our Father” and the Latin “Ave Maria”) and was so impressed that she wanted him to sing for the other doctors and nurses afterward. She was so sweet and kind and really made our whole visit much less painful — as always. She is highly recommended!
The storm clouds were all a-swirl behind our sitter’s house this evening. It was a pretty scary sight, given the recent rash of tornado destruction and deaths.
I’ve seen reports of one fatality, a number of injuries, and a lot of damage in Halifax County, just east of us. And so, so many have been killed and injured across the deep South.
We pray for everyone affected: those who have lost their lives, those who are left to mourn, those who have been hurt, and those who have lost their homes and property.
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen
Today’s picture is of the word “square” for the Scrabble Facebook group‘s “Play Outside” challenge.
Not much of a challenge, though, really, since I pass by this Market SQUARE sign virtually every day. ๐