The color Jennifer has asked us to find this week is: TAUPE
Years ago a friend of mine was accepted on a tour of an international singing group. As part of his wardrobe for the road he had to buy a pair of taupe loafers. He looked everywhere. I guess taupe just wasn’t in that year.
Is this taupe? I’m thinking nope.
How ’bout this?
The days of having little children running around the house are long gone.
A real near miss!
A Cup of beer?
That’s it I fear.
Oh dear!
I am sure you can find some better taupy things at
It’s easy and fun. All you have to do is answer four simple questions and copy and paste to Cee’s post in the comments section. Here are the questions and my answers…
What is your preferred hot drink: coffee, tea, water, hot chocolate, or other?
Everyone who knows Pastor Wrinkles knows how much he likes coffee! But at this season I have also been known to sip a salted caramel hot chocolate.
What was your favorite toy as a child . . . and now?
I remember this dinosaur set I used to play with. I must have really liked it because I remember my grandmother buying one for her house and I am assuming Grams didn’t have that deep an interest in paleontology. Now my favorite toy has to be a toss-up between my tablet and my piano.
Candy factories of the entire world have become one and will now be making only one kind of candy. Which kind, if you were calling the shots?
It’s not even a question. Twix and if you must know it is right Twix.
Would you want $100,000 right now or $120,000 in a year (tax Free)?
In my world 20,000.00 is a lot of money. I’ll wait!
Bonus question: What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?
I am grateful that our Special Touch gathering on Saturday went so well (see pictures in my Special Touch post coming soon). This week I am looking forward to doing a Christmas concert at the Gardner Visiting Nurses Center and going caroling with 60 people from our congregation!
This day marks the first of four seasonal concerts I am privileged to do this Christmas.
Today I am heading out to Special Touch REACH New England’s Christmas party. Our team is partnering with the Women’s Ministry from Bread of Life Church in Westminster MA to host a Christmas dinner for 50 disabled individuals!
Every week at Friday Fictioneers Rochelle challenges us to write a 100 word story from a photo prompt. This week’s prompt along with her contributors stories can be found here
Below is the photo prompt and my attempt at the story
The Unwashed
by JE Lillie
I walk along the shore and sort through the baubles. Papa has sent me to collect what I can for trading at the market. He’s not really my Pa just all I have left since that day.
I find a bar of soap partially dissolved in the goo. I wonder to myself how long it’s been since I took a bath. I bend to pick up the cleaner remembering what a hot shower feels like. I pull hard because the soap sticks and as it comes away from the ground the last finger that held the bar comes with it. Now I recall why I hate the water.
The daily post has given us this instruction today…
As it’s been a while since our last free-write… set a timer for ten minutes. Write without pause (and no edits!) until you’re out of time. Then, publish what you have (it’s your call whether or not to give the post a once-over).
To see how others have spent their ten minutes click on the link above.
Here is what I have been thinking today.
Christ Came To Us So That We Might Go To Him
As it is the Christmas season I am preparing, per usual, a funeral service. It seems that every year about this time I find myself doing at least one or two of these funeral events. I suppose it is all part and parcel of being a pastor, and I suppose some would find that really sad. I don’t. Well let me qualify that I don’t find it sad if the funeral I am doing is like the one I am putting together right now. The man who has gone on before us was a Christian man, Not a perfect man, not a man who had it all figured out but a Christian man. He was one of the men who understood that he had nothing to offer God in himself but that God had everything to offer him. And this man chose to take God up on His offer.
I suppose some might think Christmas is a terrible time to do a funeral (like it would be less terrible at some other time of the year…trust me for those left behind there is no good time for death to happen). I think there is another way to look at death at this particular holiday season, though. You see, one way to understand the incarnation of Christ is to see it as God paving the road from Heaven to Earth through the first advent, Christ’s birth. Death at this season then can be seen as a man or a woman taking the very same road in the opposite direction. Before Christ there was no road into the presence of the Father. The way was shut and those who died had no direct access to the kingdom of Heaven. Today because of Christmas or because of Christ’s coming the way is open and this man this imperfect man who didn’t have it all together but who knew and trusted Jesus has now taken the long road Home! Today that man is singing “Joy To The World” in a different place and while that is sad for those of us who miss him, I find it hard to begrudge him the Christmas gift he has waited for all these many years.
If there is one thing I have learned in all my years of pastoring it is that most extremes of anything are unhealthy and sometimes dangerous.
Wanting nothing is a mindset I am all too familiar with. In my own case it has expressed itself in the thought process, “If I want nothing then I will not be disappointed when I receive it.”
On the surface it can look like a deep-seated contentment and peaceful acceptance of the world but underneath it is fueled by my own spirit of self-protectionism, which crowds out healthy relationships, and a lack of faith which cuts me off from God.
On the other hand is the mindset of wanting everything. Now if the proviso “I want everything…that God wants me to have” is included then what you have is a lifestyle of positive forward-pressing faith. But wanting it all generally precludes any thought of whether or not God wants us to have it. God generally doesn’t want us to have everything because He knows we cannot handle it; So wanting everything often leads us into places of dangerous disobedience to the Divine.
So let’s sum up here: Wanting nothing breeds unbelief. Wanting everything breeds disobedience to God. Both sound pretty dangerous to me. I think I am with Solomon on this one.
give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. 9 Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God. Prov. 30:8,9
Snow is one of the few things that actually slows me down. When it’s impossible to drive you have to say no to activity. I love those mornings when the only sound you can hear in the neighborhood is the sound of snow falling and the slicing of shovels.
These fishermen in Killarney were taking it slow.
“Love has something to do with recognition, We can be fascinated by the unknown, we can be attracted by it, but love is something that grows, slowly, in an atmosphere of trust.” Peter Hoeg
I wonder how slowly this heart was formed and for whom?
