Category: God

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Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts

You know you want it, so don’t let me be the one to deny it:

1.  On this dark and stormy Tuesday afternoon in Homestead I actually heard the following overused phrase from a coworker – ‘I think this is gonna be a really bad hurricane season. This could be the worst one yet !’ Remember when Hurricane Andrew destroyed Homestead 16 years ago this August ?  That was one of the quietest Atlantic hurricane seasons in modern history. It only takes one powerful hurricane to wreck havoc with your life as you know it. If we have an all-time record 30 named storms this season, yet none of them strike land anywhere near you then what kind of hurricane season is that ?

2.  We’re getting a lot of much-needed rain today here in Homestead. I totally dig that. We need every last drop of it and then some to pull us out of this extended drought that we’re in. We could really use at least three FEET of rain (that’s right – 36 inches) over the next three months !

3.  If you think that you haven’t seen that many mosquitoes out and about thus far this Summer then check again by this weekend. Let me know if you can feel them biting you in a few days.

4.  Last Thursday I celebrated the 23RD anniversary of my United States Air Force / Department Of Defense career. Time flies when I’m having fun !

5.  Last Friday I celebrated the 13TH anniversary of me living here in my current home here in Homestead. This is by far the best place that I have ever lived in my entire life / Life.

6.  For those of you who are new to my blog let me explain. When I refer to the last 22 months of my Life the word ‘Life’ is always capitalized. When I refer to the 39 years before that the word ‘life’ begins with a lower-case ‘l’. When I write about my ‘life / Life’ I’m referring to my previous sad, miserable, and directionless life, as well as my current Life – full of glory, joy, and purpose for I have been saved and reborn again by the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s all symbolic, but it also keeps it all in perspective.

7.  My next laptop will have at least 2 gigabytes of memory in it. My current laptop has exactly one-fourth that amount. I think that I will finally buy a brand new laptop sometime between now and the end of the year. I’m actually not looking forward to it. Once I buy that new laptop this blog may suddenly go inactive for about 3 to 5 days because it will probably take that long to transfer all of my files over from this laptop to that laptop and also install and configure various programs. There’s a lot of work involved there. If I knew that it would be really easy then I would probably already have a new laptop by now.

8.  Ela O. called me on the telephone this afternoon, and we talked for exactly 7 minutes and 29 seconds. She made me laugh hysterically, and I returned the flavour. The telephone is my least favourite electronic device that I could easily live without; however, when I see that it’s Ela on the other end (via my Caller-I.D.) I know that I should be prepared to laugh up a storm with her. She has every reason in the world to be sad and miserable, yet she is one of the happiest and most joyful women I know in my current Life. She’s got a whole lot of purpose remaining in her Life here on Earth on God’s fantastic journey !

9.  Ela tried to pull a fast one on me during that telephone conversation by telling me that I was being assigned to make coffee this Sunday morning at the Life Pointe Church Café. We have quite a few Medical Doctors and Registered Nurses that are part of our LPC family. They would be put into action and forced to go to work on their fellow brothers and sisters if I were to make coffee on Sunday morning. We would need a couple of shuttle buses to transport the victims from the movie theatre to the hospital. I stopped making coffee for the general public in 1989 – not because I made anyone sick or anything like that – but because I could. Nowadays I actually make my own instant coffee for myself on most mornings. It would probably cause irregular heartbeats for most normal healthy humans.

10.  The Sun is now shining brightly and baking the atmosphere directly above my neighbourhood. That only means one thing. Prepare now for another ferocious thunderstorm with torrential downpours in about an hour.

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God Life People

The Fortune Cookie Message Of The Week Club

‘Place special emphasis on old friendship.’

I’m 41-years-old, and I can count exactly two people in this world who have been my friends for at least half of my entire life / Life.

Marge R. is one of them. I’ve known her for over 20 years now – pretty much my entire life / Life since I’ve been living here in Homestead. She was telling me all about God for much of that time. I just wasn’t listening very carefully. She never gave up on me. If it weren’t for her none of you reading this right now would know me today, and I wouldn’t know you. I wouldn’t be living here in Homestead. I have Lunch with her every few months or so. She’s one of the greatest ladies that I’ve ever met in my entire life / Life. I can write that knowing that she’ll never see this. She doesn’t know what a blog is. She doesn’t know how to go online. That’s fine. I prefer to tell her these things LIVE and in-person. It’s not like she hasn’t heard them all before.

The other person who I’ve actually been friends with longer than Marge R. currently lives near an Air Force Base in Colorado. He was my best (and pretty much only) friend when we were stationed together over in the U.K. about 21 to 22 years ago. I haven’t seen him in person since November 1987, but we’ve been keeping in touch consistently ever since then via Christmas cards, (pre-Internet) letters, and (modern-day) E-Mail.

While a few good lifelong friends came in to my life during the 1980s and 1990s I can sincerely state that I now have hundreds of close personal friends today that are praising, worshiping, living, loving, learning, obeying, and following Jesus Christ alongside with me. They are VIPs within our Life Pointe Church family. I believe that many of these ‘new’ friends will be lifelong friends who I shall live the rest of my Life with forever whether it’s near or far. I am currently living the greatest times of my Life, and you sitting right there reading this are truly part of it all. Hang On !  It just keeps getting better !

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God People Politics Television

Life Pointe Church Sunday Morning Tossed Salad

1.  David Corrado and Richie Nieves arrived at the movie theatre long before anyone else did this morning. They were there long before Pastor Travis, Pastor Paul, Anne J., and myself were there. They wanted to get a head start in transforming a public place of Hollywood movie magic into a public place of praise and worship for God. David and Richie are so assimilated into our living and breathing body that is our Life Pointe Church family. That’s what it’s all about.

2.  There is no ‘summer slump’ in-progress at Life Pointe Church. I think that Flagship Cinemas Corporate Headquarters (up near Boston Mass.) would have been totally ecstatic to have a crowd show up at any one of their movies during the week that showed up for our 9 AM service. It was ‘bumping in to other people room only’ all throughout the main lobby just before the 9 AM service, and then again just before the 10:30 AM service. It was surely our busiest Sunday morning since Easter Sunday morning in March !

3.  Pastor Travis spoke on ‘The Funk Of Suffering’ as part of our summer-long ‘Got Funk ?’ message series. Suffering exists because sin exists. God sees and hears all of the suffering in His world that He created. He is compassionate about it all. He endures it all. He never avoids it. Everyone suffers, but will you suffer in a way that God can do something through you ?  Will your suffering compel you to love Jesus more ?  Will your suffering reprioritize you toward the mission of Jesus ?

Next Sunday morning Pastor Paul will speak on ‘The Funk In Death’. Tim Russert’s death has hit me rather hard. I was a big fan of him. He was an important part of my extended Irish family. I got very interested and knowledgeable in politics and the world around me because of him. I’ve been a 16-year fan of “Meet The Press” on Sunday mornings because of him. I never met him in person, but if I had a TOP 5 list of Americans I’d most want to meet and have dinner with he would have definitely been on that list. He’s up in Heaven now. God needed his Moderator and Managing Editor up there, and He got him. He’s probably staying up late and doing his extended research right now so that he can finally discuss the important issues of the century with Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, John F. Kennedy, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. up there around the big table after all of these years. It’ll be the most intelligent and topical hour of LIVE television that the angels have ever seen. Rest In Peace Tim. Because if it’s Sunday – it is “Meet The Press” – but it will never be the same without you. This is BIG – Heaven’s got you now !

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Blogging Driving Food God Health Life People Shopping Travel Weather

Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts

If it’s Tuesday night then look no further than here for a glimpse into what’s happenin’ in my world:

1.  Earlier this afternoon we surpassed the 13,000 mark in total (cumulative) views since this blog’s inception late last November. We keep shattering brand new daily, weekly, and monthly view records on here. I say ‘We’ because without you (reading this) there would be no exciting statistics to write about. Thank You for blogging with me, and for being a part of my Life !

2.  It’s currently raining just a little bit over the Homestead / Florida City area, but there’s a whole bunch of rain (torrential downpours) just to the west of us in the Everglades. We could use several feet of rain – not all at once, but spread out over the next three months or so. The more rain that we receive here in South Florida the less likely hurricanes are to come our way.

3.  Last week I surpassed the 50,000-mile mark in my car, and I was on Homestead’s Speedway Boulevard southbound approaching Campbell Drive when it all went down. It’s the first time in 15 years that I’ve owned a car for its first 50,000 miles. I previously did so in a 1989 Geo Spectrum (my first car here in Homestead).

4.  I enjoyed a MASSIVE Lunch at the White Lion Café this afternoon. It’s the closest that you’ll ever get to fine dining here in Homestead. Last time I ate there I admired Pastor Paul‘s fried chicken and mashed potatoes from across the table. This time around I got my own ENORMOUS fried chicken breast – no bones about it. I KNOW THAT’S RIGHT !

5.  I ate Lunch at the White Lion with Marge R. I’ve known her for over 20 years – longer than anyone else (who isn’t related to me) in my entire life / Life. She was telling me all about God back in the late-1980s and throughout the entire 1990s when I wasn’t really interested in Him. She never gave up on me though. She kept on bragging on Him. My Christmas 2006 gift to her ? – It’s when I revealed to her (at Applebee’s of all places) that I’ve been saved by Jesus Christ and reborn. A month later I walked through the front doors of Life Pointe Church for the first time ever. It was my first entrance into any church since the late-1970s when I was in grade school.

6.  Anne J. – I just finished eating yet another MASSIVE slice of birthday cake. I figure that if I eat three more MASSIVE slices between now and Friday then it will be all gone. The cake surprisingly tastes as good now as it did last Wednesday night when you and the crew surprised me with it.

7.  I currently weigh 165.5 pounds. That’s my ideal weight. Can you believe that I actually weighed in the mid-180s back when I was in my early-20s ?  I took all of that excess weight off a few years after that, and I’ve been holding steady ever since. Thank You Jenny Craig !  (Just kidding.)

8.  If I had to give up one of the following 5 devices for an entire year – TV(s), VCR(s), Computer, iPod Shuffle(s), or Cell Phone – then the answer couldn’t be more simple and easy – the cell phone. I typically don’t use my cell phone to make or receive calls (even though it works just fine). I pretty much only use it to send and receive the occasional text message. Other than that it gets little to no use at all. The telephone (standard or cell) is my least-favourite electronic device.

9.  I’m experimenting with homeopathic Murine Ear Drops for Ear Wax Relief. I have a recurring ear wax buildup problem inside my right ear. Sometimes it can get real bad. The worst that it’s ever been in my entire Life was last May in the worst place at the worse time – during the week that I was with my family in The Bahamas to attend my little brother’s wedding. I pretty much could not hear out of my right ear during the entire week. It made for a miserable week.

10.  Forget about the little kid in the candy store – check me out anytime I’m inside an Office Depot or an Office Max !  Let me run loose and buy things !