Happy Birthday to Ginger....Happy Birthday to you......
My friend, how I miss you...
If you were still here I would call you and sing "Happy birthday Mr. President" just like Marilyn Monroe,
;0)
then we would go to lunch at....Stone soup cafe in Richland and have their amazing Chicken Enchilada soup and corn bread then it would be off to the garden center where we would pick out seeds for our gardens and, finally, head back and plant them in our pots.
Doesn't that sound divine????
I hope you feel loved and appreciated today by the people close to you because you deserve it!!!!!
Thinking of you on this your special day, Ginger.
Love you.
;0)

The Founders 1st Principle:

"The only reliable basis for sound government and just human relations is Natural Law."


In other words, man shares with his Creator this quality of utilizing a rational approach to solving problems, and the reasoning of the mind will generally lead to common-sense conclusions based on what Jefferson called "the laws of Nature and of Nature's God"

just a little rambling...

As you already guessed I am quite passionate about current events happening and seeing them through spiritual eyes.
I am NOT an alarmist; I am a REALIST, to be sure.
I firmly believe that we can't trust with any confidence the road ahead of us with out truly grasping the what occurred on the road behind us.
God has been interesting lately, He has given me this desire to almost be inside the heads of our Founding Fathers, to truly understand these great men of revolution who resolved to live a better life apart from from tyranny.
I will not bore you with more long ramblings except to explain why these men were "called" to such lofty ambitions.
These men were extraordinarily educated in all things secular as well as religious.
They believed that if you were gifted enough to desire an education and you were "smarter than the average joe" then you were almost obligated to go into public service because they believed that it was a gift from God.
Some of them even refused a salary for their service, namely, George Washington, because they believed that paying high salaries would bring in the "wrong sort" who would seek to gain in public office rather than to serve their fellow man for sake of it.
Did you know that some of them lost everything while in service to their country????
That's how much they believed in the great experiment in liberty known as the US of A.
In honor of and in service to getting back to basics I will post everyday one of the Founders basic principles they considered on the road to The Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights and our Constitution.
Today, however, I will post this quote from Alexis de Tocqueville, a French jurist, while he visited the US in 1831:

"I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers, and it was not there; in her fertile fields and boundless prairies, and it was not there; in her rich mines and her vast world commerce, and it was not there. Not until I went to the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great."

ramblings.......

I love when God speaks to me in themes!
I finally got to dive back into the chronological Bible study that I have so missed. It started out with Moses in the wilderness with the Israelites and it went to Jethro telling Moses that he should have judges to help with the dispensation of justice and so on....
Then I was working for my neighbor, Nicole, and we were talking about the state of the world etc, and she told me about her favorite book, "Atlas Shrugged" by Anne Land? which was written in the early 50's.
She explained that the author was an atheist but she believed God used her story in a very powerful way. It is now being hailed as almost prophetic to what is happening in our country today, in fact, Glenn Beck also spoke of this book and actually had a representative from the author's foundation(she is now deceased) come on his show and talk about how eerily prophetic "Atlas Shrugged" seems in these modern times. Nicole then loaned me another of her favorite books called the 5000 year Leap by W. Cleaon Sloussen-the 28 great ideas that are changing the world.
It talks about the Founding Fathers journey to the Constitution which took over 100 years to frame. It speaks of a time before the Constituion was written when the Founders knew that in order to have a perfect Union/government the people would have to be moral!
They decided that the people were not moral enough to govern themselves which is why they continued to rely on England to govern them and at some point, a catalyst occurred to revive the people's morals, then and only then did the Founders decide that we were moral enough to govern ourselves, hence the Revolutionary War and the subsequent Contintental Congress which led to the writing of a Constitution.
They knew that a government without morals WOULD FAIL!!!!!!!!!
Stay with me....
Last night I was talking with my nephew, Kyle, about current events and he stated that he believed that we didn't need government for anything and so I got to express to him what I had been studying about in history regarding our government.
It was so cool!!!!
We had an awesome dialog and sharing of ideas that in the end I had the priveledge to point out to him how God is the one who instituted government and judges and justice and that our Founders believed that and actually framed the Constituion based on those ideas from the bible.
Then, today, as I got into the "5000 year leap" it talked about all those things that God has been showing me this week, He literally brought in all together in this book.
The Founders noted the similarities between anglo-Saxon common law and the People's law of ancient Israel.
It sited how Connecticut used the priciples recorded by Moses in the 1st Chap. of Deut. and adopted those priciples into their "Fundamental Orders" which became the first constitutional charter of modern times. This system operated so successfully that it was adopted by Rhode Island and eventually the other colonies.
The basic tenet was: "Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof"-Leviticus 25:10
This inscription appears on the Liberty Bell.
The book then went on to explain how the Founders looked at the example of Moses and Jethro in Exodus 18 and saw that the emphasis should be on a strong, local, self-government!!!!!
Don't you see how so very far we have strayed from the original ideas that this great country was based on?????
God gave these great men of history a vision for this country which they instituted and created for us a system of government based on God's idea of government.
And God has blessed us...
The climate of free-market economics allowed science to thrive in an explosion of inventions and technical dicoveries which, in merely 200 years, gave the world the gigantic new power resources of harnessed eletricity, the internal combution engine, jet propulsion, exotic space vehicles, nuclear energy, revolutionary communications, world exploration, space exploration, our lifespan was doubled and the quality of life was tremendously enhanced.
"In 200 years, the human race had made a 500 year leap!"
We need to get back to basics...we need to turn back to God....or dire consequences will befall this great nation.
Around 600 B.C. a divine reprimand was given through Jeremiah: "Ye have not hearkened unto me, in proclaiming liberty every one to his brother, and every man to his neighbor: behold, I proclaim for you, saith the Lord."

just stuff...

Goodness, the week is flying by...
I have been remiss in my bible study/prayer time and I am feeling the effects of it.
I should stop right now and pick up where I left off....but, I have some thoughts.
I was talking with my bro-in-law about the state of the world and we talked about how transparent we are to our neighbors and those we come across on a daily basis. etc.
The question being: do people know that we are passionate Christ followers by the way we speak, or by the way we treat our family, our friends; do we take every opportunity to "love on people" the way Jesus would have????
Especially in this perilous time we live in, are we "living out loud for Jesus"??
I feel so convicted about this and I know that I have let things get in the way of my convictions and all I can say is, "I am flawed..so flawed"
How can God even use me?
I t would be so much easier if God would just ask someone else to do it!
Do you know what I mean?
I think the thing for me to do is to seek Refuge in Him, just rest in the arms of my Redeemer....
It's so easy for me to get caught in the trap of performance-and think that it is enough to serve....instead of worshipping the One who is worthy of all praise and letting our service be a response to that worship time.
I'm still learning.....what a dork!!!!

another prayer request....

We had dinner last night with Con's folks and Carol's mom and brother; Darla and Heath.
It was good to catch up and hear about Carol's continued recovery.
Heath was telling us about the story of Miss Universe from Brazil who contracted the same bacteria that devastated Carol.
Apparently, she lost limbs and her sight as well.
Very sad.
They also told us of numerous people around the country afflicted with this deadly virus and how, sadly, most of them did not survive.
The mortality rate of this "little beast" is very high...Carol should not have survived.
But she did...and we spoke of why God spared her and what will He do through her?
It was...bittersweet, to say the least.
Carol is still experiencing "flashes" in her vision which is inexplicable to her doctors; I say, perhaps her optic nerve is regenerating, which would be a miracle, and that is precisely what we are praying for.
These are people who love the Lord with all their hearts and believe in His divine plan for them.
Guess what?
They are also LDS....and we have a dialog; a place to begin talking about our faith and what it means in our everyday lives.
It is the first since I've known them that we have had meaningful dialog about our beliefs without the differences setting us on edge and it had drawn us closer to one another.
Please continue to pray for this family; Darla, Heath, Carol, Scott, as they try to find rest and peace and normalcy amid all the chaos that they have been through.
Please pray to God that He will restore Carol's sight and for their spiritual healing as well.
Thank you, my friends.
"The fervent prayers of the saints availeth much."

Happy birthday to Lacey....Happy birthday to you....

I cannot believe that I am the mother of a 17 year old!!!!!
Wow.
Her big gift this year is a trip to Florida to see the Brauneis family over spring break.
She is very excited to see Brooke and Derek and to see the beaches over there, however, I don't think she's thought about the whole traveling by herself, switching planes in Houston(which is a huge airport), and all that.
In fact, I am not so keen on that either especially after seeing the movie, "Taken", which depicts the story of a 17 yr. old girl abducted after flying with a friend to Paris.
I keep telling myself that I was only 15 when I flew by myself to visit cousins in CA(of course, it was different world then and I didn't have to change planes).
I'm freaking myself out just thinking about it.
It will be fine...it'll be good for her....
I'll have to fake it to make it.
;0)