Thought for the day...

"When you cannot make pure goods and full weight, go to something that is honest, even if it is breaking stone." James Gamble

"Talk happiness. The world is sad enough without your woe." Orison Sweet Marden

"You cannot run away from a weakness. You must sometimes fight it out or perish; and if it be so, why not now, and where you stand?" Robert Louis Stevenson

"There is little that can withstand a man who can conquer himself." Louis XIV

"Every man should make up his mind that if he expects to succeed, he must give an honest return for the other man's dollar." E. H. Harriman

"Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it." Leonardo

"Behind an able man there are always other able men." Chinese Proverb

 

"We are born for co-operation, as are the feet, the hands, the eyelids and the upper and lower jaws." Marcus Aurelius

"He who has injured thee was either stronger or weaker than thee. If weaker, spare him; if stronger, spare thyself." Seneca

"Fear is an acid which is pumped into one's atmosphere. It causes mental, moral and spiritual asphyxiation, and sometimes death; death to energy and all growth." Horace Fletcher

"Activity back of a very small idea will produce more than inactivity and the planning of genius." James A. Worsham

Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact. William James

"The successful people are the ones who can think up stuff for the rest of the world to keep busy at." Don Marquis

"Confidence is a plant of slow growth in an aged bosom." William Pitt

 

"We cannot all be masters." Shakespeare

"Morale is faith in the man at the top." Albert S. Johnstone

"No one grows old by living -- only be losing interest in living." Marie Ray

"Successful salesmanship is 90% preparation and 10% presentation." Bertrand R. Canfield

"In making living today, many no longer leave room for life." Joseph Sizoo, D.D.

He who sacrifices his conscience to ambition burns a picture to obtain the ashes.
Chinese Proverb

"The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than money." Thomas Jefferson

 

"Life is too short to be little." Disraeli

"The man who trusts men will make fewer mistakes than he who distrusts them." Cavour

"There is one rule for industrialists and that is: Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible." Henry Ford


A leaf on a tree or a rose in a vase.
I’ve never seen God
I've never seen God, but I know how I feel.
It's people like you who make Him so real.
It seems that I pass Him so often each day,
in the faces of people I meet on the way.

He's the stars in the heavens, a smile on some face,
a leaf on a tree or a rose in a vase.
He's winter and autumn and summer and spring,
...in short, God is every real, wonderful thing.
I wish I might meet Him more often than I do,
I would if there were more people like you.

He's winter and autumn and summer and spring,
...in short, God is every real, wonderful thing.
I wish I might meet Him more often than I do,
I would if there were more people like you.

He's the stars in the heavens, a smile on some face,
a leaf on a tree or a rose in a vase.
He's winter and autumn and summer and spring,
...in short, God is every real, wonderful thing
I wish I might meet Him more often than I do,
I would if there were more people like you.

 

(The letter below is from the humor page of Modern Maturity magazine, written by EILEEN HERBERT JORDAN.)

TUNED IN, TURNED OFF

I have never known a cross-dresser. I have never, as a fond wife, helped a husband pick out a wardrobe for it or, as a less-enlightened one, found piles of satin teddies in a corner of the master closet.

There is so much I have never done, never known, never imagined. Perhaps I have lived a life of numbing dullness. I have never, for example, seduced my husband's best friend; I have never seduced my best friend's husband. I have never dated one of my daughter's boyfriends - nor have I ever craved one. I've been daunted by my children from time to time as every mother has, but I've never tried to sell them to anybody (for the price of a motorcycle, in one case). I've never tried prostitution as a part-time job to help pay for the new patio or the vacation in the Caribbean.

The fact is, I must never have lived in the same neighborhood as the people who appear regularly on daytime television talk shows. On Sassy, Donahue, Oprah, Geraldo, they are all there, chatting away, about worlds I never knew. I imagine two couples waving merrily across the fence at each other and saying, "Hi! Let's get together in the sauna tonight and swap mates!" Nobody like that ever lived next door to me.

As for the visiting repairmen; the plumbers, the electricians, the gardeners; who arrive, strip to the waist and come on strong; If mine fixed the washing machine, repaired the faulty wiring, controlled the crabgrass and remained fully clothed while doing so, I asked no more of them. Possible that is because one trend escaped me entirely; doing one's housework in the nude.

I will not even go into the long, sad paths followed by so many people who come and sit in guest chairs on talk shows; and talk and talk and talk. The women who've had batteries of operations to become men; the men who've become women (including the one who posed for Playboy to prove it). The mothers who aren't sure whose children they've borne; the children having children.

There are, almost always, experts present on these programs. They are psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, clergymen, doctors and/or writers. The latter, no matter what other professions they claim, seem to have spent most of their time amassing aberrations, often at the expense of syntax. Now they are there to sell books. They are all supposed to be there to help. Heaven knows, the people being interviewed could use it. But I'll bet a later visit with the victims would find them abandoned by their counselors, who have long since moved on to, shall we say, greener fields. Maybe weaving a message of hope around a television commercial inherently lacks something.

So they talk (having fought, I'm told, to get on) - but why do we listen? There is, they say, a three-to-five-month wait to get into the audience for Donahue, to name just one. We've always understood that misery loves company; but do many of us understand this kind of misery? I realize that college students do not major in English anymore, they major in Communications; perhaps Thou shalt not fail to communicate is the Eleventh Commandment. But are these people communicating? Not with me, they're not.

As a child I was never allowed to attend the freak show that came to town with the circus. It is not polite to stare at people, my mother said. It is not nice to single people out because they may be different from you. When did that philosophy disappear? When did we turn into a nation of Peeping Toms? Did it happen a long time ago when no one was - how shall we put it - looking? And I wonder what it's doing to us, too. I wonder that a lot.

Once when I owned two cats someone recommended a wonderful bargain in cat food; the catch was, you had to buy at least a case of it. In a wild moment of penny-pinching I bought two cases - one for each cat. By the time I had neatly stacked the cans on my kitchen shelves there was no room for anything else. A search for the coffee or the soup or the cereal invariably turned up another shelf of cat food. That's the way I feel about my head these days. It is filling so fast with the disconnected, the despairing and the downright weird that I must do something.

And I know what. I can't push the Off buttons all over the country, but I sure can push mine. I have to. It's getting so I have no room for sunsets.

 

The following is copied from an article called: "Right Values: Light in an age of Confusion," by Jerold Aust, written in The Good News Magazine, November/December 1996 issue.

They'll probably never again invite Joe Wright, pastor of a church in Wichita, Kansas, to open a session of the Kansas Legislature with prayer. Mr. Wright feels strongly about issues of right and wrong and isn't shy about expressing himself in no uncertain terms. After his recent invocation a few of the legislators took loud exception to his prayer. "It was gross, divisive, sanctimonious, overbearing," one said. Others called it "blasphemous and ignorant." What had this minister said that so stirred the wrath of these state representatives? Here is that prayer, as widely quoted in the print and electronic news media:

"Heavenly Father, we come before You today to ask your forgiveness and to seek Your direction and guidance. We know Your Word says woe to those who call evil good, but that's exactly what we have done. We've lost our spiritual equilibrium and inverted our values.

"We confess that we have ridiculed the absolute truth of Your Word in the name of moral pluralism. We have worshipped other gods and called it multiculturalism.

"We have endorsed perversion and called it an alternative lifestyle. We have exploited the poor and called it a lottery. We have neglected the needy and called it self-preservation. We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare.

"In the name of choice we have killed our unborn. In the name of right to life we have killed abortionists.

"We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building esteem. We have abused power and called it political savvy. We have coveted our neighbor's possessions and called it taxes. We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression. We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment.

"Search us, O God, and know our hearts today. Try us and show us any wickedness in us. Cleanse us from every sin, and set us free. Guide and bless these men and women who have been sent here by the people of Kansas and who have been ordained by You to govern this great state. Grant them Your wisdom to rule, and may their decisions direct us to the center of Your will. I ask it in the name of your Son, the living Savior, Jesus Christ, Amen."

 

Values are like a lighthouse. They send out a constant message of reassurance and warning: As you make your way through the murkiness and confusion of life, keep values in view, or risk disaster. A lighthouse marks a point from which ships can judge their positions to maintain their safety and security. It serves as a consistent, unswerving guide.

Values are like that. They are like beacons, allowing people to navigate safely the ocean of life. Where in the world are we relative to traditional Christian values? Let's take a look: Two decades ago television network situation comedies were talking about people's posteriors; now they show them.

Today a woman can contract with a physician to terminate her unborn child, yet she can be charged with child abuse if she takes drugs while pregnant. In some states, a child cannot legally be given an aspirin without parental permission, yet a pregnant girl can undergo an abortion without informing her parents!


The hummingbird is one of the few birds that have legs, but cannot walk! They also are the only ones with a reverse gear. Incidentally, the loon is another bird that cannot walk.

The man who cannot wonder is like a pair of eyeglasses behind which there is no eye.

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see. Winston Churchill