Ready, Set, Go

Thanksgiving is over and “Black Friday” has begun. All though, black Friday deals already started on Wednesday.

Where did the term Black Friday come from?
Wondering about this question, I did a little research and found out the black Friday (as it was officially called) started in 1924 by Macy’s on the Friday after Thanksgiving. It marked the time of year when if the store was running short in profit (in the red) would make up for it during the Christmas shopping season. Macy’s would mark down some prices on the most wanted items to draw shoppers into the store to buy. Other stores caught on quickly and began to do the same.

Today, retailers can’t wait to start getting their fingers green with cash, so some of them start the sales before Thanksgiving and run them for a week. Years ago I remember some retailers opening up at 4 am, then it was midnight now it starts on Wednesday.

I don’t blame the retailers for wanting to make a profit, but we have gotten to the point where Thanksgiving is an afterthought, just a planning day on searching newspaper ads and flyers to find out which store is going to have the best deals for what ever you are looking for.

As I think back to the days of my childhood, I remember the times my family would have Thanksgiving at home. Mom would cook the turkey, and it would be the one day I could look forward to and be excited about, being with my father all day. I know my father loved me, but we were never close. My dad, rarely spent any quality time with me due to reasons I won’t go into. So for me Thanksgiving meant that I was able to spend time with pop.

The American culture over the years, like it has done with every holiday, has turned a day to spend quality time with family, into a holiday of “me first-I want it now” attitude of self-indulgence.

I hope that Thanksgiving for you was as memorable for you as it was with my family and grand daughters. Our family tries to forget about all the deals and sales and focus in on each other, sitting around playing card games watching the grand daughters play and just having fun laughing with each other and most of all remembering why we have this day of Thanksgiving.

As we move now into the Christmas season, I pray that each one of you will remember Christ first, remembering that this is when God sent His son to earth to save us from eternal death.

I hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Through A Child’s Eye

Thanksgiving is now just a few days away. Many families as well as mine, have made plans to get together for a nice diner and maybe some games after. The most amazing thing I love to hear when you ask a small child “What are you thankful for?” is their pure innocent answers. Like, thankful for mommy and daddy, my little kitty, my brother and/or sister, my red bike, my teddy bear etc.

Children will answer to what ever is most important to them without any thought of how it might seem to others. Their answers are pure from the heart as they have not yet been tainted by worldly views and pressures.

Children and their answers remind me of how we should be when talking to our Savior. God does not want big powerful words from us, nor does He want us to be endulgent with our wants or needs. God asks us to come to him like a child, pure in heart with a gratitude of praise. He wants us to be thankful for the little things, the little blessings we so often miss each day because we are too busy to notice them. Stop for a minute and just think about your day……Are you thinking?

Where did you lay your head down last night? What about the roof over your head? When you turned on the water to get a drink or take a shower did you get a blessing from the water crinching your thirst or the shower being hot?

In every thing we do, everything we touch, being able to communicate, walk, see, hear, smell are all blessings from God. At any one moment God could take those away and we take it all for granted. Weather you believe in God or not, God is in all of us, God is in every living thing here on earth. When we look at God through a child’s eyes, we then really start to see who God really is.

I sincerely hope all of you and my blog followers have a Blessed Thanksgiving, remembering the One who gave us life and will lead us to the big thanksgiving table in heaven someday.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Cell Phone Blaahs

At times we take things for granted and don’t realize how much we really depend on them. Yesterday, while working in a bookstore booth for a college football game, I drop a hand-held scanner on my cell phone and broke the screen. Not only can I not see what is on the screen but it rendered my phone to nothing but an expensive piece of electronic junk.
After just 24 hours of not having my cell phone, I realize just how much I use it. Scary in a way, that I depend so much on that dumb smart phone to keep me updated on family members by just a simple text. Now without a phone, I feel lost and disoriented and out of touch.

As Christians, sometimes we take God for granted. We know God is there watching over us, but we fail to give God His time alone with us. It may take more than 24 hours, but without communication with Him, we will start to feel lost and out of touch, finding ourselves in situations otherwise we would have avoided.

Just because we call ourselves’ children of God, doesn’t give us the excuse to ever take God for granted. We need to communicate with Him on a continual basis by reading His word, bowing our heads of quiet time in prayer and thanking Him for all the blessings He has given us even when we don’t feel like it. Non-believers may think they have control of their lives and don’t want to know or have anything to do with God, but as Christians, we know this will only lead to death. Not just physical death but spiritual and everlasting death.

It is easy to take God for granted especially when everything is going smoothly. At these times in our lives we tend to forget that God has blessed us with time of rest. It is at these resting times,
we should be communicating with God even more and thanking Him for what He has taught us from our past trials. In the bible, David going through trials or rest always looked to the Lord and said “Bless the Lord all my soul” even when he didn’t feel like it, because he knew where his strength came from.

I will get over my dependency of my cell phone, but I don’t ever want to get over my dependency of God. God is my refuge and strength in times of good and bad.  Bless the Lord oh my soul, for your ways are always just and righteous.

Throwing Curve Balls

The one amazing thing about cars is, that you don’t think about all the mechanics involved. You just turn the key and it starts………well it’s suppose to.

A few days ago, my wife was meeting with me at a local fast food place     as we usually do on a Monday night before band practice. She came in and told me her car felt like it was bogging down. I took it as may be just a fuel filter clogging up and told her I would get one and install it for her and it would be all better. A few days past, I haven’t time to replace the filter yet and the car stopped running. I went and got the filter, installed it and still it wouldn’t start. Then I spent a couple of hours on the internet trying to figure out what else could be wrong. Came up with a couple of scenarios got the parts put them in and still the same results. Frustrated at this point, I call up the garage that does  all the work for my car, told them the problem and had it towed to them. The next morning I get a call telling me of real bad news. 2 of the 4 cylinders are dead. The cost of putting in a new engine to the cost of repairing the existing one was only a mere 3 or 4 hundred dollars. The thought of buying a new car crossed my mind but going back in debt for a car loan didn’t appeal to me. (All my vehicles are all paid for with titles sitting in my filing cabinet) Just what are my options at this point. Taking into consideration of the year of the car and the excellent shape the body was in, I opted for a new engine. Still have to get a small loan to pay for it, but it is much better than having a regular car loan.  The car is currently sitting in the repair garage awaiting the arrival of the new engine which will have a 3 year 100,000 mile warranty on it which will hopefully give us a good 9 or more years of service.

Why did I write this? In life, we are thrown with series of curve balls and it is how we deal with them tells us of our character. If you find you don’t like who you are, you have the power to change and put in a new engine. When you become a Christian, God will change your engine and give you new life. A life that will be better, stronger, happier and more fulfilling then you could ever imagine. But it also comes with responsibility and the willingness to submit to God’s teachings. It doesn’t matter to me what how many curve balls live will throw, because I know God has got me covered in his Grace and He has a place for me at His table in Heaven.

One Time Won’t Hurt

For many Americans, we wake up in the morning and look forward to smelling and drinking that special morning cup of coffee. For some of us though, it doesn’t stop after 1 or 2 cups. Some of us just have to keep drinking that coffee until late in the morning. We leave an extra 15 minutes early for work just to stop at our favorite coffee spot to pick up a cup. If you are one of those people, you are probably addicted to caffeine.
In this “I want it now” America, we have many addictions, some of them harmless (so we think) and others are family breakers.

So just what is an addiction?

In Webster’s, addiction is defined by “A compulsive engagement in naturally rewarding behavior or compulsive drug use, despite adverse consequences. It can be thought of as a disease or biological process leading to such behaviors”.

Although my thoughts here are directed to us men, I hope that some women will keep reading on and maybe will gain some insights on how us men see things.

This is not a topic which I look forward in sharing, but I do feel it is important enough that we as men need to think about and the consequences of it. What I am referring to is the addiction to porn. When I was growing up, the only time you saw naked women was in magazines like playboy, but now with the computer age that has changed everything. It is so easy to find porn on the internet and it is so very easy to be drawn into it and be addicted.
It may seem harmless at first, like what does it hurt to watch 1 or 2 movies? Then maybe a week later another 1 or 2 then maybe 3 or 4 days another. This can go on for a month or more. Before you know it, porn becomes the force that you just can’t get away from. The addiction of porn comes on you so slowly, that you don’t even realize your hooked.
As harmless as it seems, (talking from experience) it will or can have devastating effects of every day life, especially if you are married. You may think that there is no harm watching porn after all, you would never have sex outside your marriage. Like I stated before, porn is a slow burner. You watch it and it stays with you and will bring you back to want more. After a long enough time you become desensitized and want even more, then making love to your wife becomes boring and so you make up excuses that your wife won’t do this or that so you rationalize going outside your marriage to fulfill that lust porn has created. Once you have acted on that lust, you have put your marriage and your health into jeopardy just because of that first time of watching 1 or 2 harmless porn movies.

Yes unfortunately, I have been there years ago a time of which I wish I could forget. A time that has left an ugly mark on me and at a big cost.

So ok,  How do I get away from it?

First of all, you need to understand that porn is an addiction and it is as just as bad if not worse than drugs. You need to admit that you have this addiction and in some cases, you will need to go or find an addiction center that will help you overcome it. If your loved one or spouse doesn’t know, you need to sit down and have a very serious conversation with her. (I didn’t say it would be easy) You also need to take time and understand more about yourself. Know what your limits are and reset your priorities. You also need to know that men are wired up in such a way, that we get turned on just by looking. God made us that way and it is not a bad thing. But we also need to exercise self-control and know that it can be dangerous without it. Women, I want you to know also that if you have a man addicted to porn in most cases, IT IS NOT YOU THAT MADE HIM DO IT.  SO DON’T BLAME YOUR SELF. We as men sometimes fantasize on what it might be like with another women, it is just that a fantasy,  most of us never have the intention of ever doing it or going outside our marriage. Your man still loves you but porn has taken over his thoughts and emotions and he is going to need a lot of help over the next few years to recover if he is seeking help. If he is not getting help, be understanding and loving. Offer to seek help with him.  At this point, he really needs to know you still love him and care for him. He knows he has broken his commitment to you and is probably just as devastated from it as you are. Knowing his women still cares for him even after what he has done will hopefully give him the strength he needs to seek help.

Of course, everything I have said here is only my opinion. I am not a Doctor, I am only speaking out of experience and like all addictions there are many other factors at play also. I got help and I hope other men will do the same. Porn can and has destroyed families and marriages and you as a man if you let it. Porn is not an addiction we here much about because it comes on so slow, but it is as widely spread if not more than illegal drug use. Please take porn as a serious matter. Watching just 1 or 2 movies WILL harm you, I have seen it happen to many of my friends, yes even my Christian friends and it has happened to me. We as Christians are not immune from this ugly addiction. God will help us fight through and overcome, but the best thing is not even to get close to it.