Life As I Seize It

My niece is in town visiting from England.   She is one of five children, all are girls, and each and every one of them is completely different from the one before.  Five children, all raised in the same home by the same two parents, yet five totally different personalities with totally different views on politics, religion, love, and life.  How can five children raised under the same influence be so totally different? My sister and I are twins separated at birth by an undisclosed number of years.  We would tell you but then . . . We are now asking "the girls" to lie about their age.  They are now the age we say we are.  She jokes that the first two are from her husband's first marriage . . .  She and I are in deep denial.  When did we turn the age of our parents?  Whatever happened to don't trust anyone over thirty?  When did we even turn thirty? She and I were raised by the same set of parents and assorted relatives, and somehow we have managed to turn out so

Working on a project for a client, I knew that we needed a breakthrough.  Two years previously this had been one of the client’s best revenue streams, but through a series of events, which included a failing local and national economy, major job loss in the sector that had supplied the majority of customers for this product, last year the clients found themselves with a stalled business entity.  One day recently, we had a little success.  A sale.  The first one in months and months. “How did they come in?” I asked, expecting to hear the source of how they found out about the product. “I prayed them in,” she replied in all seriousness.  I prayed them in. I was expecting to hear newspaper or internet but instead I got God.  “Awesome,” I replied.  “You keep praying them in and I will too!” In a roundabout way, God put the idea for the way to the breakthrough into my head, so I called up my associate and presented her with the plan. “God is telling me that we need to march around t

There is a direct correlation between our obedience to the Lord God’s faithfulness and the way things will go for us, yet somehow we continue chasing our own desires instead of His.   We will bend and break the rules however we need in order to have our way . . . I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul  . . . Disobedience is one of Satan’s best tools and he is happy to lend it to us.   In fact, that’s a tool he hopes we don’t return as he’d like us to keep trying to do things our way and not God’s in order make us miss the blessings God intends for us.   When I was working seven days a week, day in, day out, occasionally I’d think about skipping that early Sunday morning church service at MPC . . . but then God would whisper in my ear . . . “Miss church and miss the blessing”.   I knew it wasn’t my mother whispering in my ear.   My mother was not the type to whisper, nor was she the type to shout . . . she used a mother’s best tool: guilt . “It’s only an hour a week

Anyone who has ever been behind the wheel of a car knows that in a split second we can lose control of the vehicle.  One minute you’re confidently cruising along, but hit a patch of ice or oil, and suddenly you’re in a tailspin. Round and round we go . . . Highway driving is pretty predictable.  The route is fairly well-marked, fairly well-lit, especially in the congested areas, and as long as you follow the signs you can pretty much stay on course and get where you're going with little difficulty. Driving on back roads and country lanes is a totally different experience, isn’t it?  Half the time the signs are knocked down or hidden by brush, and it’s easy to miss a sign and the next thing you know you are seriously lost. Back road driving also requires a bit more skill, especially out here in Texas where we have a lot of country "farm to market" roads.  Often narrow and twisting, these back roads are filled with chuckholes that seem to lay in wait and rise up in su

When bad things happen to us, our first reaction is "why me?" When good things happen to others, often, in our flesh, our initial reaction is "why not me?" Oh, we are happy for the other person, for their good fortune, but inside, in that secret place, we think to ourselves: "Why not me? After all, I'm a good person, aren't I?  I mean, Why not me ?" It's a wail, a plea to 'the universe' because of the 'unfairness of it all'. We might even tell ourselves, I'm a  much  better person that he (or she). Why not me? In our humanness, we want the good, but not the bad. It's only natural.  Who wants to just "get by" when the alternative is wealth?  We see wealthy people who win the lottery, and say, "You have to be kidding!" Someone who didn't need "it" won the big payout, and we ask . . . why not me ?  Why can't we hit the jackpot or be the surprised heir of some distant relative

If good people go to heaven . . . then how good do they need to be? I suppose if you don't believe in God, and think that after you take your last breath that you cease to exist, then for you heaven doesn't matter because it doesn't exist.  For you, this one life is, well, this is all that there is.  Live life and enjoy! Some day your number will be up and that's that . . . that's all there is. It's interesting to me that some people believe in heaven, but not in hell.  In trying to think through why we would have a heaven but no hell the only sound conclusion is that we simply don't like the idea of hell.  " It's not fair!" We whine. Why should some get to go to Heaven, but not others? It's just not fair!"   So what happens to the bad people?  I mean, if there is a place for "good" people . . . shouldn't there also be a place for "bad" people?   There are bad people, aren't there?   Yet most peopl