Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind.   Matt 22:37 NIV

God said NO!

I asked God to take away my habit.

God said, “No, it is nto for me to take away, but for you to give it up.”

I asked God to make my handicapped child whole.

God said, “No, his spirit is whole, his body is only temporary.”

I asked God to grant me patience.

God said, “No, patience is a byproduct of tribulations; it isn’t granted, it is learned.”

I asked God to give me happiness.

God said, “No, I give you blessings; happiness is up to you.”

I asked God to spare me pain.

God said, “No, suffering draws you apart from worldly cares and brings you closer to Me.”

I asked God to make my spirit grow.

God said, “No, you must first grow on your own, but I will prune you to make you fruitful.”

I asked God for all things that I might enjoy life.

God said, “No. I will give you life, so that you may enjoy all things.”

I asked God to help me LOVE others as much as He loves me.

God said…..”Ahhhhh, finally you have the idea!”

Sir Andrew and Bearnabas are now available for purchase at the new Bear Witness Online Store.  Be the first in your pew to share in the comfort and encouragement offered by these adorable plush bears.

Other items will be added daily.  Click here to look around the store.

Each sells for $15.00.  FREE SHIPPING through December 15.

Be joyful always.     1 Thes 5:16

John is the kind of guy you love to hate. He is always in a good mood and always has something positive to say. When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would reply, “If I were any better, I would be twins!”

He was a natural motivator.

If an employee was having a bad day, John was there telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the situation.

Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up and asked him, “I don’t get it! You can’t be a positive person all of the time. How do you do it?”

He replied, “Each morning I wake up and say to myself, you have two choices today. You can choose to be in a good mood or .. you can choose to be in a bad mood.

I choose to be in a good mood.”

Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or…I can choose to learn from it. I choose to learn from it.

Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or… I can point out the positive side of life!   I choose the positive side of life.

“Yeah, right, it’s not that easy,” I protested.

“Yes, it is,” he said. “Life is all about choices.

When you cut away all the junk, every situation is a choice. You choose how you react to situations. You choose how people affect your mood.

You choose to be in a good mood or bad mood. The bottom line: It’s your choice how you live your life.”

I reflected on what he said. Soon hereafter, I left the Tower Industry to start my own business.  We lost touch, but I often thought about him when I made a choice about life instead of reacting to it.

Several years later, I heard that he was involved in a serious accident, falling some 60 feet from a communications tower.

After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, he was released from the hospital with rods placed in his back.

I saw him about six months after the accident. When I asked him how he was, he replied, “If I were any better, I’d be twins…Wanna see my scars?”

I declined to see his wounds, but I did ask him what had gone through his mind as the accident took place.

“The first thing that went through my mind was the well-being of my soon-to-be born daughter,” he replied. “Then, as I lay on the ground, I remembered that I had two choices: I could choose to live or…I could choose to die. I chose to live.”

“Weren’t you scared? Did you lose consciousness?” I asked.

He continued, “..the paramedics were great. They kept telling me I was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the ER and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared.  In their eyes, I read ‘he’s a dead man’. I knew I needed to take action.”

“What did you do?” I asked.

“Well, there was a big burly nurse shouting questions at me,” said John. “She asked if I was allergic to anything. ‘Yes, I replied.’ The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply.  I took a deep breath and yelled, ‘Gravity’.”

Over their laughter, I told them, “I am choosing to live.  Operate on me as if I am alive, not dead.”

He lived, thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of his amazing attitude… I learned from him that every day we have the choice to live fully.

Attitude, after all, is everything.

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself .Each day has enough trouble of its own. After all today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.

The embers glowed softly, and in their dim light,
I gazed round the room and I cherished the sight.
My wife was asleep, her head on my chest,
My daughter beside me, angelic in rest.
Outside the snow fell, a blanket of white,
Transforming the yard to a winter delight.
The sparkling lights in the tree I believe,
Completed the magic that was Christmas Eve.
My eyelids were heavy, my breathing was deep,
Secure and surrounded by love I would sleep.
In perfect contentment, or so it would seem,
So I slumbered, perhaps I started to dream.
The sound wasn’t loud, and it wasn’t too near,
But I opened my eyes when it tickled my ear.
Perhaps just a cough, I didn’t quite know, Then the
sure sound of footsteps outside in the snow.
My soul gave a tremble, I struggled to hear,
And I crept to the door just to see who was near.
Standing out in the cold and the dark of the night,
A lone figure stood, his face weary and tight.
A soldier, I puzzled, some twenty years old,
Perhaps a Marine, huddled here in the cold.
Alone in the dark, he looked up and smiled,
Standing watch over me, and my wife and my child.
“What are you doing?” I asked without fear,
“Come in this moment, it’s freezing out here!
Put down your pack, brush the snow from your sleeve,
You should be at home on a cold Christmas Eve!”
For barely a moment I saw his eyes shift,
Away from the cold and the snow blown in drifts..
To the window that danced with a warm fire’s light
Then he sighed and he said “Its really all right,
I’m out here by choice. I’m here every night.” “It’s my duty to stand
at the front of the line,
That separates you from the darkest of times.
No one had to ask or beg or implore me,
I’m proud to stand here like my fathers before me.
My Gramps died at ‘ Pearl on a day in December,”
Then he sighed, “That’s a Christmas ‘Gram always remembers.”
My dad stood his watch in the jungles of ‘ Nam ‘,
And now it is my turn and so, here I am.
I’ve not seen my own son in more than a while,
But my wife sends me pictures, he’s sure got her smile.
Then he bent and he carefully pulled from his bag,
The red, white, and blue… an American flag.
I can live through the cold and the being alone,
Away from my family, my house and my home.
I can stand at my post through the rain and the sleet,
I can sleep in a foxhole with little to eat.
I can carry the weight of killing another,
Or lay down my life with my sister and brother..
Who stand at the front against any and all,
To ensure for all time that this flag will not fall.”
“So go back inside,” he said, “harbor no fright,
Your family is waiting and I’ll be all right.”
“But isn’t there something I can do, at the least,
“Give you money,” I asked, “or prepare you a feast?
It seems all too little for all that you’ve done,
For being away from your wife and your son.”
Then his eye welled a tear that held no regret,
“Just tell us you love us, and never forget.
To fight for our rights back at home while we’re gone,
To stand your own watch, no matter how long.
For when we come home, either standing or dead,
To know you remember we fought and we bled.
Is payment enough, and with that we will trust,
That we mattered to you as you mattered to us.”

Christmas will be coming soon and some credit is due to our U.S.service men and women for our being able to celebrate these festivities. Let’s try in this small way to pay a tiny bit of what we owe. Make people stop and think of our heroes, living and dead, who sacrificed themselves for us.
LCDR Jeff Giles, SC, USN
30th Naval Construction Regiment
OIC, Logistics Cell One
Al Taqqadum, Iraq

 And in the same way, you  (employers) must treat your  (employees) right. Don’t threaten them; remember, you both have the same Master in heaven, and he has no favorites.  Eph 6:9

I just received an email praising Sears for the support they are giving their reservist employees who are called up. They are voluntarily paying the difference in salaries and maintaining all benefits, including medical insurance and bonus programs for up to two years.

Not being one who believes every “pass this on it is true” email I checked it out and found other companies offering similar benefits to their employees who have bravely and willingly stepped out to serve our country.  Click here for more on this amazing act of patriotism.

Thank you to each of these companies for your dedication to your employees and our country.

..that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on earth.  Eph. 6:3 NIV

Though not yet 50 himself, Mary Lowry has teamed up with some wonderful performers to offer special events and trips for folks 50 and over.  I just found the link to what looks to be an exciting 3 days in Asheville North Carolina December 10-12.  If you are young at heart and over 50 would you check it out and let me know how it was.  I am marking my calendar until I can attend. HubbyBear will be too young so I may have to put it off even further.

I remember a time when I thought 50 was old. Now, it looks like the beginning of life!!  There is so much we can learn from our elders but we don’t realize that until we become the elder.  Wouldn’t it be great if we start life at retirement, then go to work, then to college, on to high school, elementary school, preschool, and then be a baby?

Life started out on a canvas,
With Christ making a painting of me;
But I took the paint brush from Jesus,
And painted what I wished to see.

The colors I painted kept running,
And the objects grew all out of size
Till the mess I made on the canvas
Seemed now so completely unwise.

Then I brought back the canvas to Jesus
With the colors and figures so wrong,
In the market it simply was worthless,
Yet His blood made my painting belong.

He stood there with no condemnation,
Never mentioned the mess I had made;
He just started the painting all over,
For the price had already been paid.

As He dipped His brush in the rainbow,
The colors grew brighter in hue;
And in the Glory of Heaven’s Salvation
Brought the forms in perspective anew.

Since I took the brush back to Jesus,
And let Him do the picture for me;
I’ve found that the painting by Jesus,
Is the one that I first hoped to see.
~Author Unknown~

For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus…..  Eph 2:10

Dan Erickson of People Matter Ministries translates this verse as “YOU ARE GOD’S MASTERPIECE”.  You are a rare work of art, You are of great value.

I ran across an article today detailing the sale of a rare teddy bear at auction.. It sold for over $48,000!!!  That’s a lot of money for a teddy bear.

If this man made teddy bear has a value like this, imagine the value you have in God’s eyes. You are His creation, His masterpiece. Even the number of hairs on your head are counted. He knows even when a sparrow falls. You are worth far more than a sparrow. You are worth much more than a teddy bear. You are worth the blood of His Son, Jesus Christ, shed so that you may join God in heaven.  Now that is a large price to pay for such a valuable masterpiece. And God says, you are worth it.

Finally, all of you, live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble.  1 Peter 3:8 NIV

The children’s church song goes “red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight……”  God sees man’s heart, He does not look at the color of his skin. Unfortunately many time we as people do look at that skin color and use it to judge that life.

Pastors in Danville, Kentucky are unhappy with the way their churches have become segregated and are setting out to tear down those walls by preaching in others churches. Five white pastors will preach in predominately black churches and five black pastors in predominately white churches this week. The Rev. Jerry Shepard of First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), said unity is an “important mission for Christians because God’s plans are for peace and unity.”

You can read the full story here.