It's a new
year . . . now what?
The
Christmas decorations are all put away.
The urge to shop has waned since the bills are
piling up. The kids are back at school, you're back at work, and perhaps
the post-holiday blues have set in.
The compulsion to write your New Year's
resolutions has come and gone, and if you've written
them, you're probably still working on them.
If you haven't written them (nay, even scoffed
at them and those who write them), life is back to
"normal" (whatever that means).
Did you
know the average new year's resolutions only last two
weeks, but it takes 21 days to make something a habit?
Kinda depressing, isn't it?
I
assigned my students a journal topic this week:
"New year's resolutions get a bad rap.
Write five goals for the new year."
The incredibly observant students said,
"There's no difference between a resolution and a
goal, is there?”
I said, "It's all a matter of
semantics."
I was teasing them a bit, but it's still true.
Resolutions, goals, list, whatever you call
them, they are the human's desire to perfect, to
improve, to make life just a bit better.
Benjamin Franklin called this the "bold
and arduous project of arriving at moral
perfection."
In his "Autobiography" (also an
assignment for my students, incidentally), he wrote,
"I was surprised to find myself so much fuller of
faults than I had imagined."
Really? As
my students would say, "Duh!"
So what
do we do? We
have a desire to improve, yet we know we're doomed to
fail. Now
what?
If I
had written a list of things I wanted to improve on,
the list would be pages long.
I have a deep-seated desire to be perfect, but
one glance at me and my dining room/computer area, and
you'd know I'm far from it.
Most of all,
however, I want to recapture the closeness I have felt
with Jesus. Oh,
how we long to be close to Him!
After what my high school youth director used
to call "mountaintop experiences," we feel
so close to Him.
My "mountaintop experience" this past
year was the Women of Faith conference I attended.
But the hectic pace of the holidays and the end
of the first semester of school sure killed that and
stuck me somewhere in a snow drift or some such place
far below the mountaintop.
I have
no sure-fire formula for achieving closeness with God.
As I have stated, I'm just human, and nowhere
near being a saint.
My game plan is to read the Bible more, pray
more, and write more in my journal.
Will I keep up with my "resolution"
to write every day? I am sure there will be days that
I will fail. I
have yet to do a "quiet time" every single
day, even though for years that was my #1 resolution.
I think
making goals, or resolutions, are good.
I really do.
I also realize that as humans we're bound to
fail; we're not perfect, much as it pains me to admit
that about myself.
So the solution, as I see it, lies somewhere
between the law and grace--the law of our list versus
the grace God extends to His children.
Most of all, dear friends, remember that God
loves us just the way we are, in spite of our lists
and desires and foibles.
Oh, and
by the way, HAPPY NEW YEAR!
“You’re
not finished when you’re defeated
… you’re finished when you quit.”
~
Van Crouch
1
Cor 15:57
But
thanks be to God,
who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus
Christ.
“Danger
In The Shadows”
By Dee Henderson
Review By
Pattie Reitz
“Danger
in the Shadows” is the story of Sara Walsh, a
young professional woman.
Sara writes children's books under her real
name, but under an alias she writes adult novels of a
completely different sort. Sara's life is not like most other people's--she is protected
by the FBI. She
has a sophisticated home security system, guards day
and night, a personal escort, and lives with her
brother who is also a member of the FBI.
She lives under close surveillance and has
little personal privacy.
She has learned to live this way because
without the FBI, she might be dead.
So how
can a woman so closely watched and protected fall in
love? A
chance encounter on an elevator that is stopped
without power. Sara
has a past, however, that makes it difficult for Adam
Black, former pro football player, to get close to
Sara. Slowly,
slowly, Sara lets Adam into her world, a world haunted
by a kidnapping in her childhood and a stalker who
reminds her of it every chance he gets.
A world of pain and loss. A world of fear. Adam, who is a celebrity because of his football
endorsements, has to be careful not to give Sara's
location away to her stalker.
Throughout
the intriguing story of Sara and Adam, Dee Henderson
weaves a tightly knit plot, an engrossing story, and
incredibly sympathetic characters into a wonderful
Christian intrigue novel.
The key verse, on the first page, is Isaiah
41:10: "Fear not, for I am with you."
It's the verse Sara clings to in her darkest
hours, and the God who protects her is the same God
who brings Adam into her life to love her.
I
highly recommend this novel for anyone who loves
intriguing stories, love stories, stories with depth
and stories that keep you reading late at night when
you should be in bed!
A warning: if you get too engrossed in books,
don't read this around dinner time or your family
might go hungry!
DESKTOP
CALENDARS
From Becky
“This was
included in one of the devotions I get online.
These calendars are great!
Some beautiful Christian calendars also.
I have the January set up as a wallpaper on my desktop
computer. It's so
convenient to have a calendar right there on the screen when
planning something. I
used the smaller screen fitting so I can see the dates better.
If you use the 600x800, it will cover the screen and the
icons will be over this. The
640x480 works better for me. They
have one for every month. Enjoy!”
Go to: http://www.crosswinds.net/~buds/index.html
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Many
thanks to Pattie Reitz and Jane Pierpont for donating
prizes!
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Joy in The Kitchen Volume
5 Issue 1
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