"Friday Funnies"

I've been keeping up with a blog called "Girl Talk." It's 4 Christian women who write this blog. Anyways, they like to post funny things on Fridays, and they call it "Friday Funnies." I thought today's was pretty funny! Check it out at "How does this thing work?"

Psalm 102

4. "My heart is smitten, and withered like grass..."
17. "He will regard the prayer of the destitute, and not despise their prayer."

Several different difficult situations have come up in the last few weeks in the youth group at church. I'm not going to go into details about it, but verse 4 describes me a bit since these situations. My heart is heavy. Teenagers make so many decisions. Many of them can be very life-changing, sometimes for the good, sometimes not. A fork in the path can change the direction in a person's life, but it seems to be even more prominent in teens' lives. The teenage years are often when people figure out who they are and what they plan to do with the rest of their lives. I've seen a few decisions lately that seem to be the wrong path to take. Maybe it's actually God trying to get a hold of these teens and bring them closer to Him. I don't know. But I know verse 17...God loves to hear our prayers. I wish that I could make the decisions for these teens, but I can't. In a sense, I am destitute because I cannot change their actions. But God will hear my prayers! He knows what is best for them! He knows that I can only pray for them at this point! He knows them, and loves them! He hears my prayers for them and sees my heart! What a comfort it is to know, even when I can't do anything else for them, that He hears my prayers for them!

St. Patrick's Day

Today is the famous St. Patrick's Day. I hope you all remembered to wear green today! I've already seen 2 people who didn't wear green....but I've been nice enough NOT to pinch them!

Did you know that there is a similar day in Wales? It's St. David's Day. All the girls dress up in the traditional Welsh garb, and everyone eats leeks and wears leeks or daffodils on their lapels. The Welsh are known for their singing, so of course, they have a lot of singing festivals on the day. Sadly, though, this day was 16 days ago...March 1. I'll have to warn you all next year so you can prepare ahead of time. Too bad they don't have any traditions such as pinching anyone who isn't wearing a daffodil or a leek...

Here's me in my own version of the traditional Welsh woman's costume.

Not exactly what they wore, but as close as I could come up with!

Spring!!!

I think spring is coming! Today the weather was SOOOOOOOO nice! I walked outside today, wearing my nice warm down coat, and I realized that I didn't need it at all! I had a long-sleeved shirt on, so I kept warm enough, even though it was (I am told) only 44 degrees. It felt really warm, compared to the blistery coldness that we've had the last few months! Of course, it doesn't look like the picture above. Not yet. There is still a good amount of snow that hasn't melted yet, and it's raining. But I definitely think that spring is coming soon! I'm definitely ready!

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 6,746 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

I knew my name was boring, but I didn't know it was THIS boring! Thanks for the link, Nikki!

Psalm 97:10

"Ye that love the LORD, hate evil..."

This phrase stood out to me when I read it yesterday. Yes, we know that we are supposed to love God. We know that we are to abstain from evil. But how much do we HATE evil?

We are to love the Lord. The more we get to know Him, the more we see His perfection, His hatred of evil, His love for righteousness. As we get to know Him, we should want to KNOW more about Him, which naturally means that we would want to know more of His righteousness. As a relationship with Him develops, we begin to BECOME more like Him. It is like the illustration of married couples...when they get older, they start looking more and more like each other. I wonder, sometimes, if this happens because they are each trying to please each other, and they know what the other person likes, so the adjust the things they do to themselves (they way they do their hair, their facial expressions, etc.) so that they look more like what the other person wants them to look. This is what God wants for us to do: for us to find out what God likes and then adjust our thinking and habits to reflect what He wants in our lives. Included in that is loving what He loves (perfection, peace, righteousness) and hating what He hates (evil).

Most of the time, I think we Christians have a distorted view of evil. We know that we are supposed to stay away from it, but we don't think of it as being as bad as it really is...we don't HATE it. We put up with it, maybe even a little in our own lives. We justify it by saying that we aren't "as bad as..." someone else, that our sin is not as evil as someone else's sin. But how does God see sin? Well, the verse says here that we are supposed to HATE evil, to despise it. When He forgives us, "As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us." Psalm 103:12. And since we are supposed to be like Him, should not we also remove sin as far from our hearts? God hates evil, and it is His desire for us that we should hate evil just as much.