In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Afloat.”
Here is our photo challenge.
This week, show us what afloat means to you.
Clouds float in the sky.
Boats float in the water.
And little ducks float too!
Hope floats from the heart of prayer.
The church floats in eternity.
Not buildings me and you!
Tag Archives: Daily post
The Daily Post: It’s Fresh and Exciting
In response to The Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge: “Fresh.”
The challenge is to find something FRESH today. I thought about bringing out pictures of this year’s fresh fallen snow; But honestly snow is not making me feel very fresh these days, just tired; So I decided to go with a fresh spring motif
Keukenhof Gardens, Lisse , The Netherlands
Fresh GreenOh! I am longing for these days!
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Orange Suits Me
In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Orange you glad it’s photo challenge time?.”
I love Orange!
Doolin, Ireland
Keukenhof Gardens, Lisse , The Netherlands
Botenmakersstraat, Zaandam, The Netherlands
Zaandyke, The Netherlands
King CakeIt’s strange I had to go to Europe to find it!
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His Story
In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Do or Die.”
The Daily Post has told us…
You have three hundred words to justify the existence of your favorite person, place, or thing. Failure to convince will result in it vanishing without a trace. Go!
My first love is Christ. It is for Him I live because He has died for me. So great was His love for me that He gave His life for me while I was still His enemy. I suppose there are some who would say that what needs justifying is not God’s love but His very existence. I think if the reality of God is established then The expression of His love goes without question.
Here’s the thing, I cannot prove the existence of God. I do not need to. He is quite capable of defending His own honor and proving His own reality without me. In fact were I to turn and disparage His existence He would only become more real.
Voltaire declared that within 100 years of his life the gospel and God would fade into the shadowy world of fairytale. His house became a center for Bible distribution. Jesus’ reality and reputation has withstood the onslaught of detractors and dishonorable supporters without becoming tarnished or faded in the least. He is the Alpha and he shall be the Omega. HE has already died and resurrected so nothing anybody says or does will change or remove His place from the history of mankind. It is after all HIS STORY!
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Deep Calls Unto Deep
In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Depth.”
Please click on the word depth to see how others have interpreted the challenge. Here are my thoughts from Psalm 42
My soul is downcast within me;
therefore I will remember you
Oh the deep deep love of Jesus!
from the land of the Jordan,
the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar.
7Deep calls to deep
in the roar of your waterfalls;
And the running of water
all your waves and breakers
have swept over me.
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My Safer Extremities
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.
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Someone Else’s Island
So the Daily Post has me stranding someone else on a desert island today
http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/someone-elses-island/
His name was Bobby. I took him out to the island on a Tuesday and left him there after digging a well for fresh water and tilling a garden and leaving him plenty of seed to sow. I bought him a flock of sheep, after all shepherding while a lonely work is full of spiritual benefit. Bobby desperately needed that. I also left him a fishing pole so he could learn to fish and a Bible so he could learn to fish for men.
I’ll check back with him in a few years on Wednesday. If he isn’t stark raving mad he should be a better person for it. Maybe next time he won’t reject my invitation to church Mwahahaha!
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The Roots in Rocky Soil
This post is written in response to:
http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_writing_challenge/digging-for-roots/
Roots in Rocky Soil
by JE Lillie
I stood by the western wall of Blarney Castle staring at the twisted roots, remnants of the growth that had once encased the castle in its strength. The image took me back to my own family whose roots were not in Ireland but in a place just as rocky, some would say barren.
I grew up just South of the New Hampshire border smack dab in the middle of Massachusetts. I was third generation conservative Republican in one of the most liberal states in the union. My father was a small business man and civically minded citizen in the seventies, fully ensconced in the small business world, strongly favoring the free market economy while standing firmly against every philosophy of the “liberal pinko commies”, as he called them. Both Dad and Gramps served in town leadership throughout their lives choosing to ply their minority political stance wherever they could.
Dad was a hard man and I was his soft son. We were as different in manner as two men could be. He spent his days practicing his shot on ants in the back yard. I collected the little critters in jars trying to save them from my dad’s quick draw.
I began my spiritual journey early in life. At first I was fascinated by witchcraft. As a young teen I studied with the Jehovah’s Witnesses and then followed the bread crumbs God left me into the Pentecostal church my Uncle attended. My father an avowed agnostic (which really just means he refused to make any decision at all) instantly declared me crazy.
Maybe it was just teenage rebellion but I ran rather than walked deep into the church. Dad and I had many arguments over that and over my subsequent decision to become a minister. But when Dad became sick in the early nineties I left Bible College and came home to help in the business. After he died suddenly I launched into an eight year stint in the business world working newspapers and other management positions before finding my way back into the church.
I have served as an assistant pastor in the town I grew up in since 1996 and recently I was appointed to a town board in that same town. Somewhere along the way I seem to have captured my father’s sense of humor (something I didn’t even know he possessed when I was growing up) at least that’s what people tell me. I also captured his politics though I am sure he would probably think I have some “pinko commie” leanings were he still around. Somewhere in my journey I got a little tougher which tells me that maybe somewhere in his journey my father was a little bit softer and maybe he and I weren’t so different after all. Maybe we were just at different points of growth in this rocky New England soil.
Lillie-Put 