Summertime remembered.....

Doxology - Awake My Soul......

Awake my soul, and with the sun

Thy daily stage of duty run

Shake of dull sloth and joyfully rise

To pay thy morning sacrifice

Lord, I my vows to thee renew

disperse my sins as morning dew

guard my first springs of thought and will

and with thyself, thy spirit fill

Direct, control, suggest this day

All I design or do or say

that all my powers with all their might

in thy soul glory may unite

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow

Praise Him, all creatures here below

Praise Him above, ye heavenly host

Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost

Then it doesn't matter which way you go, said the cat.................

God's grace......

We can believe that somehow the cry of the human soul is never unheard by God.  It may be that God hears the cry, even if we fail to notice God's response to it.  The human cry is for help must always evoke a response of some sort from God.  I may be that our failure to discern properly keeps us unaware of the response.  But one thing we can believe is that the grace of God is always available for every human being who sincerely calls for help.  Many changed lives are living proof of this fact.

Ode on Imitations of Immortality From Recollections of Early Childhood

To me there came a thought of grief;

A timely utterance gave that thought relief,

And I am again strong.

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The soul that rises with us, our life's star,

Hath had elsewhere it s setting, and cometh from afar:

Not in utter forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God who is our home.

Though nothing can bring back the hour

of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower;

We will grieve not, but rather find

strength in what remains behind.

In the primal sympathy which having been must ever be;

In the soothing thoughts that spring out of human suffering.

In the faith that looks through death.

Thanks to the human heart by which we live,

thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, 

To me the meanest flower that blows can give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

~William Wordsworth

O, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil. (Prayer of Jabez)

Jonah's Prayer

In my distress I called to the Lord,

and he answered me.

From the depths of the grace I called for help.

and you listened to my cry.

You hurled me into the deep, 

into the very heart of the seas,

and the currents swirled about me;

all your waves and breakers swept over me.

I said, I have been banished from your sight;

Yet I will look again to your holy temple.

The engulfing waters threatened me, 

the deep surrounded me;

seaweed was wrapped around my head.

To the roots of the mountains I sunk down;

the earth beneath barred me in forever.

But you brought my life up from the pit, O Lord my God.

When my life was ebbed away, I remembered you, Lord.

and my prayer rose to you holy temple.

Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit

the grace that could be theirs.

But I, with a song of thanksgiving will sacrifice for you.

What I have vowed, I will make good.

Salvation comes from the Lord.  

~Jonah 2:1-9

Tough questions from kids

The main reason to pray for our enemies is because God tells us to. In fact, He tells us to love our enemies.  Praying for our enemies and loving them is God's way.

 Another reason is that people, especially bad people, need prayer.  There is no better way to change them.  If we want bad people to stop being bad, we need to ask God to do it..

Colossians 2:2......My purpose to:

My purpose is that we may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that we may know the mystery of God, and that is Christ..

For this reason

For this reason, since the day we first heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of His will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding.  And we pray this for that you may live life worthy of the Lord and may please Him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of the light.  For He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins...~Colossians 1:9-14

Prayer for abundance in everything spiritual

Therefore ye shall lay up the Word; my words on your heart and in your soul, to bind them for a sign that is on your hand, that they may be as a frontspiece between your eyes. 

And you shall teach them to your children, speaking of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up;

And you shall write the word on the doorposts of your house, and upon the gates, that your days may be multiplied, the days of your children, in the land which the Lord sware unto the Father to give them as the days of heaven upon the earth..

~Deut 11:18-22

God displayed in his life....

As Jesus went along he saw a blind man from birth..His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned this man or his parents so that he was born blind?" Jesus answered, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the work of God can be displayed in his work...~John 9:2-3