self explanatory... right?

Longoria

Here's how good Evan Longoria is:

The Rays have a pitching machine that shoots out tennis balls up to 120 mph. Some of the balls have a black mark on them, some have a red mark. Longo can crank the machine up to 100 mph, then can call out what color is coming to the plate.

When he sees a black ball, he pulls it.

When he sees a red ball, he hits it to the opposite field.

When teammate Carlos Pena was asked him how he did that, Longo smiled in amazement and said, "I have no idea."

Planned Parenthood: "Every child, a wanted child."

Today I learned that Planned Parenthood uses the slogan: "Every child, a wanted child."

Under normal circumstances, I could agree with that. Every child is wanted when you consider the millions of families lined up for adoption, and are caught up in the waiting line.

According to PP, the phrase originated in 1928 Massachusetts, from proponents of birth control. Advocates claimed preventing conception through the available technology was acting responsibly (to which I agree). Eventually, married couples would be granted birth control methods to reduce the number of accidental pregnancies in marriages. And that is where their article ends. (http://ow.ly/2qi1N)

But what do they mean today?

By still using that slogan to include abortion, PP is saying, "every child, a wanted child - so let's identify unwanted children and kill them before they are born."

This. is. infuriating. Can we turn that slogan around?

"every unwanted child, a dead child"

How can anyone try to take the moral high ground on killing children?

According to America's Pregnancy Helpline, "In the USA, there are approximately two million infertile couples waiting to adopt, many times regardless of the child's medical problems such as Down Syndrome, Spina Bifida, HIV infection or terminally ill" and only 1 baby for every 36 desiring couples are available.

Every child is a wanted child, and PP's use of that slogan is shameful.

U2 - North Star

Forty-five light years from home
is where you are & where I wanna be
Beside you

I'm looking for direction
the stars are your reflection
to the space between you and me

I can’t wait any longer for your love

The birds still singing for their rent
They fly above the government
It’s not a song of discontent
Our money now its nearly spent

Here I am, a space cowboy
Looking out for love and logic in the universe
yeah yeah

I can’t wait any longer for your love

& The day packs it in
& You watch as the sun goes down
& Pray that the night will come quickly

You hope - You pray
that the clouds leave the sky alone
There’s only one light that can guide you
Guide you home

(say!)
I can’t wait any longer for your love

It’s like the silence and the shock
While the lights are barely shining
You want it - You got it
You take a lot of love inside...

(video)

Clouds

We tend to think that if Jesus Christ compels us to do something and we are obedient to Him, He will lead us to great success... The question of whether or not we arrive at a particular goal is of little importance, and reaching it becomes merely an episode along the way. What we see as only the process of reaching a particular end, God sees as the goal itself.

His purpose is the process itself. What He desires for me is that I see “Him walking on the sea” with no shore, no success, nor goal in sight, but simply having the absolute certainty that everything is all right because I see Him. (Mark 6:45-51)

... if we realize that moment-by-moment obedience is the goal, then each moment as it comes is precious.

In the Bible clouds are always associated with God. Clouds are the sorrows, sufferings, or providential circumstances, within or without our personal lives, which actually seem to contradict the sovereignty of God. Yet it is through these very clouds that the Spirit of God is teaching us how to walk by faith. If there were never any clouds in our lives, we would have no faith. “The clouds are the dust of His feet” (Nahum 1:3).

Through every cloud He brings our way, He wants us to unlearn something. His purpose in using the cloud is to simplify our beliefs until our relationship with Him is exactly like that of a child— a relationship simply between God and our own souls, and where other people are but shadows.

If we are in fellowship and oneness with God and recognize that He is taking us into His purposes, then we will no longer strive to find out what His purposes are… A Christian is someone who trusts in the knowledge and the wisdom of God, not in his own abilities. If we have a purpose of our own, it destroys the simplicity and the calm, relaxed pace which should be characteristic of the children of God.

- Oswald Chambers, excerpts from My Utmost for His Highest
(July 28 - August 5)

"nobody, not even the rain," by e. e. cummings

somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

e. e. cummings

The Price of Vision

by Oswald Chambers...
"In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw also the Lord." Isaiah 6:1 Our soul's history with God is frequently the history of the "passing of the hero." Over and over again God has to remove our friends in order to bring Himself in their place, and that is where we faint and fail and get discouraged. Take it personally: In the year that the one who stood to me for all that God was, died - I gave up everything? I became ill? I got disheartened? or - I saw the Lord? My vision of God depends upon the state of my character. Character determines revelation. Before I can say "I saw also the Lord," there must be something corresponding to God in my character. Until I am born again and begin to see the Kingdom of God, I see along the line of my prejudices only; I need the surgical operation of external events and an internal purification. It must be God first, God second, and God third, until the life is faced steadily with God and no one else is of any account whatever. "In all the world there is none but thee, my God, there is none but thee." Keep paying the price. Let God see that you are willing to live up to the vision.