A Thanksgiving Blog in July? “If I Were The Devil”. Update.

For Scripture Sunday”:

A Thanksgiving Blog in June?  Yes, I am a few days late.

“Should you be thankful only at Thanksgiving?

Thanksgiving Day for the U.S. is still months away, which means almost no one is thinking about turkeys or pilgrims. But is thankfulness still on our radar?

Maybe, Here’s how to write a Thanksgiving blog:

1. Wait until a few days before Thanksgiving.
2. Write about how being thankful is important all year long.
3. Never write about thankfulness again until the same time next year.

At least, that’s how I usually handle it. It’s something of a tradition here in America to spend the time leading up to Thanksgiving talking about how important it is to be thankful every day of the year—and then almost immediately forget about it after the fourth Thursday in November.

So here we are. It’s June. Thanksgiving for the U.S. is a little under half a year away. Let’s throw tradition out the window and do what we don’t normally do this time of the year.

Let’s talk about thankfulness.

Intentionally thankful

The thing about thankfulness is that it’s much like a muscle. Sure, you might use it reflexively or instinctively from time to time, but if you really want to strengthen it, it’s going to take exercise.

A long-distance runner doesn’t increase his stamina just by deciding to have more stamina. He trains. He has a plan. He pushes his body through a difficult training regimen with the goal of building his endurance.

Thankfulness isn’t all that different. We don’t get better at thankfulness by just deciding to be better at it. We have to train too. We have to have a plan. We have to push ourselves to be thankful in situations where it doesn’t come naturally.

An exercise routine

Here’s a simple exercise to get you started:

Grab a piece of paper and list five things you’re thankful for.

No, seriously—try it. Complaining is easy, and it’s what a lot of us default to. Listing—physically writing down—the things we’re grateful for forces us to shift our focus to the positives instead of the negatives.

It’s more important than ever that Christians practice being thankful year-round—even during the difficult times when it doesn’t feel like we have much to be thankful for.Got your five? Great. Now list five things you take for granted.

That’s a little more difficult, isn’t it? It means taking a minute to figure out what blessings in our lives we might be overlooking or underappreciating. Some of those underappreciated blessings might even be sitting there on your first list—or maybe you’ll have to dig a little deeper to uncover them.”  Continued at:

https://lifehopeandtruth.com/life/blog/a-thanksgiving-blog-in-june/?

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Update.

Zack and I rolled the new canvas roof on the 10 x 20’ garage/storage tent, but it didn’t fit quite right. I had made sure that I had bought the one that is for a MAX Shelterlogic which has the 2” posts and is very sturdy.  I’ll have to talk to the company.

One day it was raining and miserable all day so we spent the morning measuring, cutting and cementing the Formica banding on the other two countertops in the mini-house.  The main counters, the ones with the sink and stove are already done.  The other two are the counter at the back of the kitchen where all the outlets are, for coffee-maker, juicer, crock pots, etc, and the counter that is under the pass-thru.  We didn’t get it finished though, so the Formica tops and back splashes will be done another day. 

As she hasn’t got her license yet, I took Lauri shopping in Conroe to the health food store where she buys those green hockey pucks that she lives on, if you can call that living!  It would be alright if she would eat some live food too, but she won’t.  I have offered her fresh organic food, but she won’t eat it.  It is a shame when a young woman is so weak that she has to ride an electric cart at the grocery store and thinks that she is OK.  I look forward to the extra exercise of walking all around the store in the air conditioning!

On Friday, getting ready to go to a different, larger church this week, as I still had a lot of the Yukon Gold potatoes, I made another big batch of the smashed ones for the monthly potluck at the Church of God in Conroe.  This time I doused them with Parmesan, and also cooked some cabbage with tomato and onion.  When I arrived on Saturday morning I found out that they weren’t going to have the potluck this week, it was postponed until next Sabbath due to a wedding. So my crockpots were put in one of their lovely big stainless fridges in the beautiful enormous fancy kitchen. I haven’t been to that church for ages, and it was so good to see familiar faces who remembered me, too.

Diane often goes there, and sometimes comes to my regular church on FM 1097 was there so we went to Bible Study together.  It was out of a study book by Beth Moore.  Diane’s grandchildren went to the children’s Bible study.   The message was “Father Abraham Has Many Sons..” given by the pastor.  This church has a lot of seniors, people more my age, and I felt at home there.  The husband of a lady with whom I used to chat has passed on, so she is now living with her son, and the lady who I used to sit next to, has passed, so I left her space empty in respect.  Her daughter has a beautiful voice that can be heard all over the church.  They have different praise (music) teams taking turns each week, and this time a man was playing a zither.

But what to do with all the food?  If I took the crock pots to my regular church on FM 1097 they wouldn’t get hot enough in time as it is a morning service.  So I went straight to the Church of God, Willis on FM 830, as they have their service and weekly potluck in the afternoon.  When I got there I plugged in my pots in another lovely kitchen and was in time for part of their Bible study.  Then the service and the Message which was “Standing Firm” and it was about Paul Harvey’s video “If I were The Devil….”  The sermon was quite interesting.

If I were the devil . . .

“I would gain control of the most powerful nation in the world;

“I would delude their minds into thinking that they had come from man’s effort, instead of God’s blessings;

“I would promote an attitude of loving things and using people, instead of the other way around;

“I would dupe entire states into relying on gambling for their state revenue;

“I would convince people that character is not an issue when it comes to leadership;

“I would make it legal to take the life of unborn babies;

“I would make it socially acceptable to take one’s own life, and invent machines to make it convenient;

“I would cheapen human life as much as possible so that the life of animals are valued more than human beings;

“I would take God out of the schools, where even the mention of His name was grounds for a lawsuit;

“I would come up with drugs that sedate the mind and target the young, and I would get sports heroes to advertise them;

“I would get control of the media, so that every night I could pollute the mind of every family member for my agenda;

“I would attack the family, the backbone of any nation.

“I would make divorce acceptable and easy, even fashionable. If the family crumbles, so does the nation;

“I would compel people to express their most depraved fantasies on canvas and movie screens, and I would call it art;

“I would convince the world that people are born homosexuals, and that their lifestyles should be accepted and marveled;

“I would convince the people that right and wrong are determined by a few who call themselves authorities and refer to their agenda as politically correct;

“I would persuade people that the church is irrelevant and out of date, and the Bible is for the naive;

“I would dull the minds of Christians, and make them believe that prayer is not important, and that faithfulness and obedience are optional;

“I guess I would leave things pretty much the way they are.” 

This has been re-vamped over the years from Paul Harvey’s original one, but it still means the same.   My Cheesy Smashed Yukon Potatoes were a big hit, but no one ate much cabbage.  There were so many tasty dishes to choose from, mostly with a Mexican theme, that it kinda got put in the background.  This congregation in Willis has a lot of children and more on the way, so it isn’t quite so peaceful for talking at the dinner table.  All the children are really quiet during the service, so they ‘let go’ once they are in the dining hall.  Kids will be kids!

I managed to stay dry even with all the driving, on that cooler and rainy Sabbath day.