Inspirations

I have heard this phrase used frequently. Recently, while waiting on a customer, I asked a woman if the baby she was holding was hers.  I meant no harm when I asked and I certainly was insinuating nothing.  I was only curious and I absolutely love children.  Another woman, the baby’s mother, looked me square in the face and told me “in no uncertain terms” that I had no right to judge her daughter.  Wow!!!  I hear it used by others at work and I confess that I have jokingly used it myself. What concerns me is that, in our culture, it seems if I disagree with someone else’s opinion or something they are doing suddenly, I have judged them.  Perhaps we need to redefine or rather get back to what it really means to “judge” someone.  The word judge is a judicial term meaning to pronounce sentence on a guilty party. When we judge, we are pronouncing sentence on a person.  According to the words of Jesus, we are not to judge, sentence anyone. Even with ...

A few days ago, I had the privilege of viewing Mom’s Night Out .   Mom’s Night Out is a delightfully hilarious film produced by Pure Flix’s films. Pure Flix is a Christian film production company, headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona.  If you’re expecting it to be like the old Hollywood TV shows where the mother is practically perfect you will be disappointed.  It paints a very realistic view of motherhood. Therefore, if, like me, you struggle with feeling inadequate as a mother, you will love this movie.  While I do not think it was not the intent of the movie, it also shows the danger of forming opinions of people too quickly.  I have heard that some critics think that it downplays the working mom.  I personally do not think the movie does this at all.  Instead, it encouraged me and said that, as moms, it’s ok not to have it all together every day.  I wish I could have seen this when my children were little.  It was an unmistakably fami...

Today as we were on our way to the movies, I took a side road to bypass some road construction.   I thought that since I knew the road it would be a time saver.  As I turned onto the road that would bring me back on to the road that I had been on, I spotted a huge sign standing boldly, proudly in the middle of the road that said, “Road closed, Bridge out.”  Wonderful!  Now what?  I could turn around, go back, and go through the roadwork or I could stay on the road I was on and try to find another connecting road.   I thought that I could probably find another road since I am usually good in this area.  At this point, if I had been smart, I would have turned on my GPS, just in case I needed it.  I wasn’t smart.  We went on. It wasn’t long before we came to a road that seemed to go in the direction I was hoping for so we turned on the road.  The farther we went, the more concerned I became nothing looked familiar.  ...

You didn’t listen!  I seem to hear this phrase a great deal lately.  I hear it at work, my husband has said it to me and yes, I have said it at times too. In fact, I said it just the other day to my husband as we were running some errands.  Unfortunately, listening seems to be a lost art in our society.  How many of you have ever had someone stop and ask, “Hi, how are you”? And they move on before you can even answer the question.  It seems that everyone is so busy that we don’t really take the time to really talk to people.  We are too busy trying to cram one more thing into an already packed schedule.  Sometimes we just get too distracted.  We ask a question but don’t wait for a response even if we haven’t physically left, we have mentally checked out of the conversation.  I confess I am probably guilty of doing this to my family.  Other times, I am too busy planning what I want to say next to really pay attention to what t...

As I was finishing digging the raspberry bushes out of my yard and lamenting over my laziness in letting them take over my yard, I was still thinking about how similar to sin those raspberry bushes were.  However, my thoughts were now moving in a different direction.  I have heard people say, “Well, everyone has a sin that so easily entangles them.  This is mine.”  I have to confess it makes me sad and as I was digging and cutting down the raspberries, I realized why it makes me sad.  I had the power over the bushes.  I didn’t have to let them stay in the yard, I chose to let them stay in the yard. Then I started getting excited because I realized that I have the same power over sin that I had over the bushes.  Sin is already defeated!!  We no longer have to let it say in our life.  Praise God! We can say no to sin and yes to “God-likeness."  In fact, we are commanded to “throw off the sin that so easily entangles."  There is ...

Ask and it will be given to you;  seek  and you will fin d; knock and the door will be opened to you . I have a horrible habit of losing and or misplacing things. I pick something up and set it down in another place often without realizing that I am doing it, or better yet put it in a safe place so I’ll find it again only to forget the “safe place."  It was safe all right, so safe that I can no longer find it. Sometimes, I will tear the house apart looking for a lost item and other times I will search for a bit, but give up and move on.  Once, I lost my car keys and I searched under cushions, on the bed, and pockets of coats; I looked and scoured the whole house looking for those keys.   I was desperate to find the keys. Sometimes, I lose something as simple as a pen.  I rarely even bother to look for it.  I have other pens so I will get another, it’s not too important to me to find a pen.  We all tend to seek only the things that are ...

Have you ever seen some people that seem to have such strong faith that it amazed you?  I have seen some  and to be honest sometimes I wish I had more faith because my own seem often so fragile and weak.  As I was reading and reflecting on the account of Jesus resurrection on that first Easter morning, my mind went to the women who went to the tomb. As I read, I could just see these women headed to the tomb.  It was early and they carefully carried the spices they would need for Jesus’ body.   The body that was laid in a tomb with a huge rock rolled in front of it AND , guards posted at the tomb.  There were guards to be sure no one got to Jesus body.  Most of us would have probably not even bothered to go to the tomb.  We would see the hopelessness of the situation and write it off as impossible.  Nevertheless, these ladies had enough faith to go to the tomb WITH spices.  They may not have known how, but they knew that they were g...