THE "SON" ALWAYS SHINESWe speak of the weather everyday. Is it going to be cloudy and overcast, or will the sunshine provide us warmth on this new day?We all love the days when the "sun" shines brightly. Not only does the sun brighten our day, it serves as a beacon of fulfillment and lasting optimism in this constantly changing world.The "SUN" which, by the way is 93 million miles away from earth, is all well and good for our positive outlooks, but it cannot bring us as much joy and contentment as we seriously lack in our lives. The "sun" does invigorate our bodies, but does nothing to stimulate our souls.There is only one "SON" that can revitalize our souls and make us truly contented. That's God's "Son", Jesus Christ. With the "Son" of God in our lives, nothing is impossible. With Jesus in our hearts, His powerful loves radiates through our souls and is magnified through our thoughts, words and deeds. His brightness is shone through in every aspect of our lives.With Jesus, we sense a new beginning each and every day. He can fill all voids we allow Him to fill. Christ is eager and willing to enter our hearts. He will begin to shine his everlasting light of love, hope and grace throughout our future discipleship in His word.Jesus can turn any sadness into gladness, turn doom and despair into hope and reassurance, and more importantly; hate into love.His abundant gifts of mercy and love can transform any lonely den of darkness into a palace of brightly lit possibilities. Ask Jesus to enter your life and transform it into a splendid garden where hope and love spring eternal.The next time we gaze out the window and see clouds forming, let us not forget that the "Son" always shines. As long as we believe and carry Him in our hearts and minds, no day will be gloomy and downcast. God's "Son" shines in our lives everyday!__In Christian Praise, Much
A kind of northing is what I wish to accomplish, a single-minded trek towards that place where any shutter left open to the zenith at night will record the wheeling of all the sky’s stars as a pattern of perfect, concentric circles. I seek a reduction, a shedding, a sloughing off.tAt the seashore you often see a shell, or fragment of a shell, that sharp sands and surf have thinned to a wisp. There is no way you can tell what kind of shell it had been, what creature it had housed; it could have been a whelk or a scallop, a cowrie, limpet, or conch. The animal is long since dissolved, and its blood spread and thinned in the general sea. All you hold in your hand is a cool shred of shell, an inch long, pared so thin that it passes a faint pink light. It is an essence, a smooth condensation of the air, a curve. I long for the North where unimpeded winds would hone me to such a pure slip of bone. But I’ll not go northing this year. I’ll stalk that floating pole and frigid air by waiting here. I wait on bridges; I wait, struck, on forest paths and meadow’s fringes, hilltops and banksides, day in and day out, and I receive a southing as a gift. The North washes down the mountains like a waterfall, like a tidal wave, and pours across the valley; it comes to me. It sweetens the persimmons and numbs the last of the crickets and hornets; it fans the flames of the forest maples, bows the meadow’s seeded grasses and pokes it chilling fingers under the leaf litter, thrusting the springtails and the earthworms deeper into the earth. The sun heaves to the south by day, and at night wild Orion emerges looming like the Specter over Dead Man Mountain. Something is already here, and more is coming.