Monthly Archives: December 2014

Wicked Sorry! But I Know How Tough You Are

Posted on by under For Family & Fun

The Daily Post has asked, “If your furniture, appliances, and other inanimate objects at home had feelings and emotions, to which item would you owe the biggest apology?”

See who else has been offended at

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/wronged-objects/

Now on to my written apology:

Dear Mr. Floor,

I wish to apologize for my behavior over these last several months. Please know what was done was not done with premeditation or malice  of forethought in any way shape or form.

Really I didn’t know that dog urine stripped varnish and he really is just a puppy and the other two were just following suit. And to be fair I did thoroughly clean up the mess using lots of that pet spray. What’s that you say? Oh that strips varnish too? Who knew?

Please know that I had only your best interests at heart when I sealed the hole the squirrels had gnawed through the shingling. I certainly didn’t want them chewing through your fine wooden outfits anywhere else in the house. I did try to make sure they were all out before I sealed the hole. How was I to know Mrs. Squirrel was stuck inside? I am sure you won’t smell like this forever, and really everyone blames me anyway. You are in the clear on this one even if you do stink.

As to the carpets I know they are old and perhaps I do not vacuum them enough but did you really have to cause my vacuum cleaner to burst into flames on Thanksgiving weekend?

I hope this letter will go the distance of restoring peace between us Mr. Floor. Let’s just say I won’t be putting together the new vacuum I bought until I have a satisfactory reply from you.

 

Sincerely,

JE Lillie

P.S. I know it has been my habit to walk all over you. In the future this will probably not change. I hope that does not offend too much.

Cee’s B&W Challenge: Lights

Posted on by under Photography

This week’s black & white challenge from Cee is all about: LIGHTS

When you have finished here go to:

http://ceenphotography.com/2014/12/04/cees-black-white-photo-challenge-lights/

I wanted to take a little bit of a philosophical tac with this challenge.

‘We do not truly see light, we only see slower things lit by it, so that for us light is on the edge–the last thing we know before things become too swift for us.’

    Author: C.S. Lewis

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In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don’t.

    Author: Blaise Pascal

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Just For Me Not For Thee

Posted on by under For Family & Fun

The Daily Post has asked, “What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received that you wouldn’t give to anyone else? Why don’t you think it would apply to others?”

You can find out how others responded by going to
http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/not-for-thee/

I suppose it is not JUST for me but I definitely know it’s not for everyone. The best piece of advice I ever received came directly from God and it was the call from Him to become a full-time minister of the gospel.

Ministry is not just a job. It’s a calling, which is to say it is not what I do but what I am. The line between working in ministry and being a full-time minister is drawn when ministry stops being something you do and becomes something you are. I could no more stop being a minister than I could stop being a white guy. At this point in my life it has less to do with my particular job than it does with how I go about my particular job. It ain’t for everyone because it ain’t who everyone is.
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The Season Of Rest and Listening

Posted on by under Pastor Wrinkles
Me reclining after walking up the "Rocky" stairs at the Philadelphia Art Museum.

Me reclining after walking up the “Rocky” stairs at the Philadelphia Art Museum.

Anybody who has been reading Lillie-Put for any length of time knows I have just come through one of the busiest autumns I have ever clocked. Now I am in a season of rest and recuperation.

God has been speaking to me about several things I am to pursue during this season. One of the items on that list is a deeper level of faith. I spoke about this a bit in my series, “Laboring to Rest.”

Pastor Wrinkles: Laboring To Rest Pt. 3

As I was meditating this morning, God spoke to me about another item to be added to that list, listening.

One of the issues I am dealing with coming off of the fall harvest is a feeling of both physical and mental exhaustion. My brain feels like it has been sand-blasted and as if all the ideas in it have been turned to dust.

Of course, I realize that is just a feeling and a misconception mixed together. The truth is the ideas are still there because they were not inspired by me in the first place. Any of my really good ideas started out as God’s ideas and since He never grows weary, His ideas can’t be blasted away by my busyness. What has changed is not His ability to create through me but my ability to connect to Him so the creativity can flow. Restoring the creative connection is going to require intentional active listening.

I remind myself every morning: Nothing I say this day will teach me anything. So if I’m going to learn, I must do it by listening.

Larry King

 

Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you’d have preferred to talk.

Doug Larson

So now I am dedicating a large chunk of my prayer time to reading the Word and just sitting quietly before God and practicing the art of what the Quakers called centering down.

How do you practice the discipline of listening to God?

My Safer Extremities

Posted on by under For Family & Fun, Uncategorized

The Daily Post has asked us to describe the last time our lives mimicked the quote, “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” Charles Dickens

If you would like to see how others have answered that question go to:
http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/an-extreme-tale/

It is amazing to me that I can think of the worst times of my life so easily and it seems more than a little bit odd that I have a hard time remembering the best times. I am not sure what that says about me and perhaps it cues a desire to change my inner thought processes.

The mixing of those moments though is indeed hard to whittle out of the block of wood that has become my past.Maybe I am still too stunned by some of my recent worst times to see much good in them, though God knows I have tried. Maybe too, it seems almost inappropriate to say that certain of my worst moments could have any redeeming qualities at all; So maybe the difficulty is not so much in finding a moment that holds the best and the worst but in finding one that feels safe enough to speak openly about.

I am reaching for a moment in my distant past now (25 years or better). I was a newlywed. How could it get any better? We had married and moved in with my parents for a two month stint before our apartment opened up in Phoenixville PA.

It was the weekend before the New Year, 1988. The Uhaul was rented and loaded with all of our earthly belongings. My Father-in-law drove the van and Tina and I drove our car. What should have been a six-hour drive turned into twelve hours when we got lost on the NJ Turnpike and overshot our exit.

I noticed as we came down the I76 out of Philadelphia that the lock had come undone to the moving van and the back doors were threatening to spill open. Anybody who has ever tried to pull over on that particular road heading out of Philly will understand my pain; But pull over we did. We managed to fix the door only to become separated from each other as we made our way past the Allen Town Extension. These were the days before Mapquest or GPS systems.My father-in-law had never been to the campus. But we serve a God of miracles. We somehow found each other at the light before the turnoff to the college and upon arrival my father-in-law did not insist his daughter get back in the van to take her away from her new whackadoo husband.

We walked into our new apartment. The walls were a neon blue. The rug was a thick shag in the brightest of oranges. Someone else’s couch lined our wall. A window pane had been knocked out of the bedroom and someone had stolen the shower head right out of the shower. Then my wife noticed we had no oven and what amounted to a hot plate to cook off of.

My mother-in-law gripped her daughter’s hand as she looked up dubiously at the walls and said, “It’s amazing what soap and water can do Honey.”

By the following day we had a new shower head and the window had been fixed. The tenant who had stored his couch in our apartment came to get it and we were completely settled into our new place (well as settled as you can get when your walls are blue and your carpet is orange). My in-laws had said a tearful good-bye and Tina and I had begun the first chapter of our lives together. The best of times and the worst of times.