Friday, November 26, 2010
jfactor: I recently read an article by Rachel Ehrenberg abo...
jfactor: I recently read an article by Rachel Ehrenberg abo...: "I recently read an article by Rachel Ehrenberg about cockroaches and locusts that answered the age old question, 'Why did God make cockroach..."
jfactor: Is there ANYTHING we an eat? I caught the tail en...
jfactor: Is there ANYTHING we an eat? I caught the tail en...: "Is there ANYTHING we an eat? I caught the tail end of the Dr. OZ show Tuesday. It was about the things we eat that make us fat. Here are so..."
jfactor: I love to hear stories of how God is working in th...
jfactor: I love to hear stories of how God is working in th...: "I love to hear stories of how God is working in the life of others. jim Praying for the ImpossibleLysa TerKeurst ''For I know the plans..."
jfactor: The Economy
jfactor: The Economy: "As we listen and watch news programs, we often hear the words economy, jobs, national debt, health-care cost, foreclosures,..... and it's al..."
jfactor: Brown Friday Morning
jfactor: Brown Friday Morning: " What a GREAT morning. I am thoroughly enjoying my Brown Friday although I overheard a disparaging remark about how nice it would be to get ..."
Brown Friday Morning
I'm enjoying the fact that mowing season IS OVER and most things are dormant with the exception of a few weeds.
"For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it." Mark 8:35 (NIV)
Devotion:As I write this, it is fall and the leaves are changing in a glorious display of color. Each landscape looks like God Himself personally painted it—red, yellow, orange and green. I marvel as I drive, soaking in the visual display that is a feast for the eyes, thanking God for His creativity and care for even the smallest of details on this earth.
When my daughter asked me one day why the leaves change color, I scanned the recesses of my brain for this most basic of elementary science facts. But there was nothing there. I patted my daughter and assured her, yet again, that we would learn this answer together. (Sometimes my children wonder if I ever went to school and—if I did—how it is I managed to retain precious little.)
We read a book together and learned why the leaves change color. The leaves are slowly dying, their hold on the tree loosening a little more every day. The more they detach, the more a substance within them called chlorophyll dissipates. Chlorophyll is green in color, which causes the whole leaf to appear green. But when the chlorophyll is gone, other colors have a chance to surface. The red, gold, and orange colors were within the leaf all along—they were just overshadowed by the presence of the chlorophyll. It took the process of dying for their glorious color to be displayed.
We are in the process of dying every day, just like those leaves. When we choose to follow Christ, He asks us to take up our cross and follow Him, engaging in a daily process of giving up our rights, our pride, and ourselves in the name of service, giving and submitting. It is the painful work of death, yet in it we find colors we didn't know were there emerging. Once our sense of self and entitlement overshadowed us, coloring us an eternal—yet common—green. In the dying process, we find that God designed us to be more brilliant and colorful as we surrender our lives to Him.
People are drawn to this colorful display. They want to know how they too can break out of their same old green-colored lives and live with this kind of brilliance. In our humanness, we want to cling to the security of the tree - the security of money, or family, or our comfort zones and routines. But God asks us to let go, to trust Him, and to die a little more every day. We must trust the dying process and encourage others to do the same, displaying our colors so that people far from Him are drawn to Him, just as He intended.
Dear Lord, I don't want to live a me-colored life. Please show me how, through dying to self, Your brilliant colors can be displayed in me. In Jesus' Name, Amen.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
The Economy
As we listen and watch news programs, we often hear the words economy, jobs, national debt, health-care cost, foreclosures,..... and it's all bad news. Times are tough and most of us are feeling the pinch. I found an old article about the U.S. economy written in 1986 by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. This is an excerpt:
Full employment is the foundation of a just economy. The most urgent priority for domestic policy is the creation of new jobs with adequate pay and decent working conditions. We must make it possible as a nation for every one who is seeking a job to find employment within a reasonable amount of time. Our emphasis on this goal is based on the conviction that human work has a special dignity and is the key to achieving justice in society.
Full employment is certainly a worthwhile goal, but at this point in time, seems completely out of reach. Job lose seems to be an everyday occurrence and the likelihood of finding another position is rather remote.
Employment is a necessity not an option. Most of us have mortgages, car payment, other obligations and the loss of income puts us in jeopardy, which in turn causes stress, and if it lasts for a long period, panic.
One of the things I've picked up on during these turbulent times is that perhaps it is better to have multiple streams of income. That's not to say that if one is unemployed he or she shouldn't look for work, but I think it's a great time to explore other opportunities. I think at some point in time everyone has thought about starting a business, creating something, making something, doing something that you enjoy while earning some income.
I'd like to share some of the things I've been doing over the past several years that is generating income. The things I'm doing may or may not be of interest to you but help generate some ideas of your own and start you down path of, at the very least, making a few extra bucks, to owning your own business and generating enough income to sustain you.
In each post I'll share one of the things I'm doing and why.
The first is Blastoff. My site is www.blastjim.com
Blastoff is a wonderful site for shopping online and lets face it, there are many people shopping online. Registration is free, no hidden cost involved, so within a few minutes you can have your own site. Once you are up and running you have access to hundreds of stores including travel, phones (some of the best deals around), electronics....... What makes shopping through your blastoff site is that you get discounts, in addition to that you get cash back. It gets better. If you share blastoff with someone and they get a blastoff site through your site, you get a percentage of everything they purchase. You can do this ten levels deep.
This is not a get rich scheme but a viable way of making some extra income. Think about it, you may not fill a bucket with one drip but when you have several drips coming in the bucket will fill.
The way I look at it is what have you got to loose, it's FREE. Christmas is coming and people WILL buy stuff. There are already lines forming for Black Friday.
jim
http://twitter.com/jimmz45
Full employment is the foundation of a just economy. The most urgent priority for domestic policy is the creation of new jobs with adequate pay and decent working conditions. We must make it possible as a nation for every one who is seeking a job to find employment within a reasonable amount of time. Our emphasis on this goal is based on the conviction that human work has a special dignity and is the key to achieving justice in society.
Full employment is certainly a worthwhile goal, but at this point in time, seems completely out of reach. Job lose seems to be an everyday occurrence and the likelihood of finding another position is rather remote.
Employment is a necessity not an option. Most of us have mortgages, car payment, other obligations and the loss of income puts us in jeopardy, which in turn causes stress, and if it lasts for a long period, panic.
One of the things I've picked up on during these turbulent times is that perhaps it is better to have multiple streams of income. That's not to say that if one is unemployed he or she shouldn't look for work, but I think it's a great time to explore other opportunities. I think at some point in time everyone has thought about starting a business, creating something, making something, doing something that you enjoy while earning some income.
I'd like to share some of the things I've been doing over the past several years that is generating income. The things I'm doing may or may not be of interest to you but help generate some ideas of your own and start you down path of, at the very least, making a few extra bucks, to owning your own business and generating enough income to sustain you.
In each post I'll share one of the things I'm doing and why.
The first is Blastoff. My site is www.blastjim.com
Blastoff is a wonderful site for shopping online and lets face it, there are many people shopping online. Registration is free, no hidden cost involved, so within a few minutes you can have your own site. Once you are up and running you have access to hundreds of stores including travel, phones (some of the best deals around), electronics....... What makes shopping through your blastoff site is that you get discounts, in addition to that you get cash back. It gets better. If you share blastoff with someone and they get a blastoff site through your site, you get a percentage of everything they purchase. You can do this ten levels deep.
This is not a get rich scheme but a viable way of making some extra income. Think about it, you may not fill a bucket with one drip but when you have several drips coming in the bucket will fill.
The way I look at it is what have you got to loose, it's FREE. Christmas is coming and people WILL buy stuff. There are already lines forming for Black Friday.
jim
http://twitter.com/jimmz45
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