Gateways to Joy

I ask you to please take just a few minutes to listen and watch the YouTube video below!  It is so contagious and such a blessing.  I promise you won't regret taking a few  minutes out of your schedule to watch.  I wanted to share this with you this weekend, but decided that the Gratitude Community would be the best place to share it.  After all if anyone knows about   SMILES it is those of us who search for and count gifts.  Joy, gratitude... even anger are all an outward expression of something deeper taking place within. Right? Here's my story: The other day on my way home I heard this song by Kirk Franklin, and have not been able to stop smiling, singing, and humming the words.  I experience pure joy every time this song is played.  My being becomes extremely soothed and my heart is at ease.   I've danced a step or two while s...

I count blessings.  Gifts.  Each day I wake spying out in wonderment what gift the Lord will reveal to me today.  This ... the looking—the longing, the wondering, is how I stay satisfied.  Content.  Happy. It is through the looking ...  the changing of the lenses on my perspective of life that  I am able to see the heavenly Fathers most ordinary and unexpected gifts.  His ways.  In this way of living I learn to find His joy.  My passions.  Gratitude.  Gratitude even for my very existence in life, and for having the sort of relationship with the Almight Creator that teaches me truth ... truth about life & living.     I wish I could tell you that the searching and penning of blessings {gifts} originated with me, but it didn't.  Another soul—a mother, who has just as many children as I {she has half-a-dozen} is teacher.  She's my Canadian friend ... wife to Farm...

I n January 1956 the world was shocked when learning that five American missionaries had been speared to death in the Equardorian jungles by the Auca Indians who were reported, at that time, to be the most savage tribe on earth.  "What seemed to all the world like a tragic ending of the missionaries' dream to reach this isolated tribe was only the first chapter of one of the most breathtaking missionary stories of the twentieth century" In the video below the wives of the five men speak of their husbands. Below are some pictures of Jim & Elisabeth Elliot's daughter Valerie Elliot Shepard and her family.  For any of you who have Elisabeth's book The Savage My Kinsman , she's the little blond haired darling who is all grown up now with not only children of her own, but grandchildren too.  Valerie gave me access to these pictures to share about a year and a half-ago now.  I had them up on one of my blogs, but took them down because folks were dow...

I n reading the accounts of Jesus' death in Chuck Swindoll's, "The Darkness and the dawn."   I'm horrified at the barbaric way the Romans chose death for their convicted criminals. "How could a soul drive nails in the wrist of another, especially an innocent man, and not be mortified?"  Here God's Son stood in their very midst and they (the many people) missed Him.  Even most of the highly religious leaders missed Him.  How could such a travesty be? In pondering on this I am led to read my bible and open the pages to read these words, "The woman said to the serpent, 'From the fruit of the tress of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.' The serpent said to the woman, 'You surely will not die!  For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing ...

I t's early morning hours, 3 am.  The house is still.  I rare back on the couch with Bible, blanket, yellow note-pad, and pen.  Penning words from today's reflections.  Gift recordings were hard today.  So much is going on in the heart & mind.  Seems like the day was a continueous bending of the knee-heart crying out. "All is grace," right?   That's what I think to myself.  Then I answer, "Yeah...yeah.  It is.  It's all grace.   God grace, no matter what." I saw God's grace filled hands, today, felt their touch.  Accepting what my heavenly Father hands offer today is bitter—sour even.  I had to grimace just to get a little of what He offered down...deep down.  This: the accepting what His hand dishes out.   This isn't the cup I wanted to drink from.  I know, though hard, that this is the cup much needed.  I must drink and learn.  He and I have been...

`A Christian is spiritual {mature} when he sees everything from God's viewpoint.  The ability to weigh all things in the divine scale and place the same value upon them as God does is the mark of a Spirit-filled life. God looks at and through at the same time.  His gaze does not rest on the surface but penetrates to the true meaning of things. The carnal {immature} Christian looks at an object or a situation, but because he does not see through it he is elated or cast down by what he sees.  The spiritual man is able to look through things as God looks and think of them as God thinks.  He insists on seeing all things as God sees them even if it humbles him and exposes his ignorance to the point of real pain." ~ A.W. Tozer How do you look? Prepare for Easter: "I AM Passover Collection."  Get yourself & family ready in heart for Easter: some good reading on 'how to.'

'M y soul is satisfied as marrow and fatness."  Because of this Lord... because of the satisfaction You bring me, the comfort You give to me, the love You express toward me... You loving me when I walk with You, Your love for me when I talk with you... when You and I sit late night—early morning communing.  When I'm so wrapped up in me, my life and what I'm doing that I don't walk with You or talk with You. In spite of this...my falls and my short-comings.  You , O' Lord and only You wait for me, even still.  You wait for me  with outstretch hands in the fullness of Your Love and the fullness of Your grace.  You wait.   You help.  You love. So shall my mouth, dear Father—as long as it holds the breath You have given...so shall my breath offer praises with the utmost lips of joy to you. Thank You O' God my Father.

H ere are a few things you can do if you are interested in waking up to your blessings...awaken from your daily slumber.  Starting your One thousand gift lists.  Awakening...really waking up to your senses helps you experience beauty...His beauty all around you. Interested in getting started counting gifts? 1.  Ask God to open your eyes and make your heart sensitive to your surroundings, your world so that you begin to see your gifts—your life, through a new perspective. 2.  Thank Him for what He shows you and write it down. Gift Lists # 86-99 Letting God lead my blog and do what He wants with it.  Follow His lead. Rubbing & massaging husbands aching back The writing down of poems audio Bible preparing to juice fruit for family in the mornings.  Peeling oranges. sun shining...glare so bright listening to birds listening to chattering children quaint coffee shops cooking, listening to Bible reading while kids play outside ...

Y ou might call it ugly.  Unattractive, but to us it's where the laughter, the talks and the love takes place.   The training of the next generation.   Husband and wife lovingly loving.  It's our home.  Once we called it "beautiful," but then my husband hired someone who really wasn't worthy of the work.  The door-to-door salesman understands how hard it is to provide for family on commissions.  Some day's, he knows, you make zero.  Nothing.  So when he met a guy who said he would transform our home —a guy who was out of work, down on his luck, he hired him wanting to help him out. Well, our tile got pulled up before we had new tile to put down.   The door with the oval glass that I loved so much got taken down and replaced.  The glass screen that I'd wanted for so long is put in incorrectly .  The painting of the walls...fireplace was started on, but was never completed....