Monday Quiz About Me

Here are FOUR QUESTIONS that everyone can answer and then you have the option to add a fifth question of your own for those who are visiting your blog to answer in the comment section, along with commenting on the four standard questions you answered! 

Here are the Questions:

1. December 5th is Bathtub Party Day - how will you celebrate? 

Probably take a shower, if I had a hot tub I would soak for awhile in that.

2. Apparently it's also the week to get your letters to Santa done and mailed - will you be writing to Santa and will you be on the naughty or nice list this year?

I won't be writing to Santa, but the little folk must think that I have a direct line, 'cause they all told me what they want.  Me I've been very nice!

3. Do you think that people have unlimited potential?

No.  However, I do think that everyone has potential, and that many do not reach it.

4. How many holiday parties/events will you be attending this month?

I probably will attend three or four parties this month.

And now one for you:

5. Do you have your Christmas tree up?

Me--Just finished it Sunday evening.

First Sunday of Advent-Worship Fully

This year we are part of the Advent Conspiracy. We all want our Christmas to be a lot of things. Full of joy. Memories. Happiness. Above all, we want it to be about Jesus. What we don't want is stress. Or debt. Or feeling like we "missed the moment". Advent Conspiracy is a movement designed to help us all slow down and experience a Christmas worth remembering. But doing this means doing things a little differently. A little creatively.

It means turning Christmas upside down.

WORSHIP FULLY
Christmas marks the moment where God's promise was fulfilled and love took form, tiny fingers and all. It is a moment that deserves our full attention and praise. Worship Fully is the first tenet because we believe the level of our involvement at Christmas is based entirely on how much we are celebrating Christ's birth. He deserves celebration; one that is creative, loud and directs every heart His way.
Psa 29:2
Give unto the LORD the glory due unto his name; worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness.

The Heart Mender

In the classic storytelling style of The Noticer and The Traveler’s Gift, New York Times best-selling author Andy Andrews now delivers an adventure set sharply against the warm waters and white sands of the Gulf of Mexico in WWII America.

He takes a true story that he experienced, and shows how anger can destroy a life and how forgiveness can set that life free.

Saddened and unable to abandon her resentment toward the Nazi war machine that took her husband’s life, the young and attractive Helen Mason is living a bitter, lonely existence. Betrayed and left for dead, German U-boat officer Lt. Josef Landermann washes ashore in a sleepy town along the northern gulf coast, looking to Helen for survival.

The Heart Mender is a story of life, loss, and reconciliation, reminding us of the power of forgiveness and the universal healing experience of letting go.

Black Friday

"Black Friday" as a term has been used in multiple contexts, going back to the 19th century, where in the United States it was associated with a financial crisis of 1869. The earliest known invocation of "Black Friday" to refer to shopping on the day after Thanksgiving was made in a public relations newsletter from 1961 that is clear on the negative implications of the name and its origin in Philadelphia:

For downtown merchants throughout the nation, the biggest shopping days normally are the two following Thanksgiving Day. Resulting traffic jams are an irksome problem to the police and, in Philadelphia, it became customary for officers to refer to the post-Thanksgiving days as Black Friday and Black Saturday. Hardly a stimulus for good business, the problem was discussed by the merchants with their Deputy City Representative, Abe S. Rosen, one of the country's most experienced municipal PR executives. He recommended adoption of a positive approach which would convert Black Friday and Black Saturday to Big Friday and Big Saturday with exceptional sales.

Do I shop on Black Friday?  NO WAY!  I may sit down at my computer and order something, but there is no way that I will fight the crowds and traffic trying to find and item on sale only to find it sold out. How about you? Did you shop and did you find what you were looking for?

Thankful Thoughts--Our First Thanksgiving

"The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth" (1914) By Jennie A. Brownscombe

The 1621 Plymouth feast and thanksgiving was prompted by a good harvest. Pilgrims and Puritans who began emigrating from England in the 1620s and 1630s carried the tradition of Days of Fasting and Days of Thanksgiving with them to New England. Several days of Thanksgiving were held in early New England history that have been identified as the "First Thanksgiving", including Pilgrim holidays in Plymouth in 1621 and 1623,

George Washington proclaimed the first nation-wide thanksgiving celebration in America marking November 26, 1789, "as a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favours of Almighty God"

I have much to be thankful for--parents, family and friends, living in America, the technology that has made life easier, and most of all the love of God that sustains even in times of trials.