God's Thank You Card


I wish I could write a letter
Or give God
A Thank You Card
But I know its impossible
For He would know
Just what it would say
From the finish
Back to the start.

Life has not been easy
But it wasn't quite as bad.
Although pains pursued me
It was God who kept me glad.

Life would not have been as easy
If He hadn't done so much for me.
He even opened doors
It was hard for me to believe.

If I could write God a letter
Or give Him
A Thank You Card
I'd feel so much better
Because I love Him
From sincerely deep within
And I Thank Him
With all my heart.



Jan Bagwell 9/15/07

The Sound of God's Love


Soft, listen close, to the whispers of God,
Today they are fluttering near,
Drifting on wings of the angels,
They whisper the sounds o'er the years.

Two little hearts softly beating,
In two little worlds of their own,
God heard the sounds of His wonder,
And made a plan of his own.

The sound of His love ever growing,
It rang in these children at play,
Laughter resounding toward Heaven,
God guided those beautiful days.

Then blessings of grace fell softly,
Heard in their whispers of youth,
The etchings of plans being driven,
Shaped by the ring of God's truth.

For in Heaven the angels were singing,
Rejoicing in God's wonderful plan,
Like His gentle touch with the roses,
It unfolded in the love of His hand.

Like two separate roses growing alone,
Yet, both reaching up toward the sun,
Someday their branches surely will touch,
God's prize-winning work would be done.

Soft, listen close, to the whispers of God,
They are love ringing forth in a song,
Two separate hearts He heard beating,
Now he hears beating as one.



Jan Bagwell 9/14/07

Why Women Cry



A little boy asked his mother, "Why are you crying?" "Because I'm a woman," she told him.

"I don't unders tand," he said. His Mom just hugged him and said, "And you never will."

Later the little boy asked his father, "Why does mother seem to cry for no reason?"

"All women cry for no reason," was all his dad could say.

The little boy grew up and became a man, still wondering why women cry.

Finally he put in a call to God. When God got on the phone, he asked, "God, why do women cry so easily?"

God said:

"When I made the woman she had to be special.

I made her shoulders strong enough to carry the weight of the world,

yet gentle enough to give comfort.

I gave her an inner strength to endure childbirth and the rejection that many times comes from her children.

I gave her a hardness that allows her to keep going when everyone else gives up, and take care of her family through sickness and fatigue without complaining.

I gave her the sensitivity to love her children under any and all circumstances, even when her child has hurt her very badly.

I gave her strength to carry her husband through his faults and fashioned her from his rib to protect his heart.

I gave her wisdom to know that a good husband never hurts his wife, but sometimes tests her strengths and her resolve to stand beside him unfalteringly.

And finally, I gave her a tear to shed. This is hers exclusively to use whenever it is needed."

"You see my son," said God, "the beauty of a woman is not in the clothes she wears, the figure that she carries, or the way she combs her hair

The beauty of a woman must be seen in her eyes, because that is the doorway to her heart - the place where love resides."

Please send this to five beautiful women you know today. You will boost another woman's self-esteem! Send it to every man, so he can understand…

On the Morning of Christ's Nativity

On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity

I

This is the month, and this the happy morn,
Wherein the Son of Heaven’s eternal King,
Of wedded maid and Virgin Mother born,
Our great redemption from above did bring;
For so the holy sages once did sing,
That he our deadly forfeit should release,
And with his Father work us a perpetual peace.

II

That glorious Form, that Light unsufferable,
And that far-beaming blaze of majesty,
Wherewith he wont at Heaven’s high council-table
To sit the midst of Trinal Unity,
He laid aside, and, here with us to be,
Forsook the Courts of everlasting Day,
And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay.

III

Say, Heavenly Muse, shall not thy sacred vein
Afford a present to the Infant God?
Hast thou no verse, no hymn, or solemn strain,
To welcome him to this his new abode,
Now while the heaven, by the Sun’s team untrod,
Hath took no print of the approaching light,
And all the spangled host keep watch in squadrons bright?

IV

See how from far upon the Eastern road
The star-led Wisards haste with odours sweet!
Oh! run; prevent them with thy humble ode,
And lay it lowly at his blessèd feet;
Have thou the honour first thy Lord to greet,
And join thy voice unto the Angel Quire,
From out his secret altar touched with hallowed fire.

The Hymn
I

It was the winter wild,
While the heaven-born child
All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies;
Nature, in awe to him,
Had doffed her gaudy trim,
With her great Master so to sympathize:
It was no season then for her
To wanton with the Sun, her lusty Paramour.

II

Only with speeches fair
She woos the gentle air
To hide her guilty front with innocent snow,
And on her naked shame,
Pollute with sinful blame,
The saintly veil of maiden white to throw;
Confounded, that her Maker’s eyes
Should look so near upon her foul deformities.

III

But he, her fears to cease,
Sent down the meek-eyed Peace:
She, crowned with olive green, came softly sliding
Down through the turning sphere,
His ready Harbinger,
With turtle wing the amorous clouds dividing;
And, waving wide her myrtle wand,
She strikes a universal peace through sea and land.

IV

No war, or battail’s sound,
Was heard the world around;
The idle spear and shield were high uphung;
The hookèd chariot stood,
Unstained with hostile blood;
The trumpet spake not to the armèd throng;
And Kings sat still with awful eye,
As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by.

V

But peaceful was the night
Wherein the Prince of Light
His reign of peace upon the earth began.
The winds, with wonder whist,
Smoothly the waters kissed,
Whispering new joys to the mild Ocean,
Who now hath quite forgot to rave,
While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave.

VI

The stars, with deep amaze,
Stand fixed in steadfast gaze,
Bending one way their precious influence,
And will not take their flight,
For all the morning light,
Or Lucifer that often warned them thence;
But in their glimmering orbs did glow,
Until their Lord himself bespake, and bid them go.

VII

And, though the shady gloom
Had given day her room,
The Sun himself withheld his wonted speed,
And hid his head of shame,
As his inferior flame
The new-enlightened world no more should need:
He saw a greater Sun appear
Than his bright Throne or burning axletree could bear.

VIII

The Shepherds on the lawn,
Or ere the point of dawn,
Sat simply chatting in a rustic row;
Full little thought they than
That the mighty Pan
Was kindly come to live with them below:
Perhaps their loves, or else their sheep,
Was all that did their silly thoughts so busy keep.

IX

When such music sweet
Their hearts and ears did greet
As never was by mortal finger strook,
Divinely-warbled voice
Answering the stringèd noise,
As all their souls in blissful rapture took:
The air, such pleasure loth to lose,
With thousand echoes still prolongs each heavenly close.

X

Nature, that heard such sound
Beneath the hollow round
Of Cynthia’s seat the airy Region thrilling,
Now was almost won
To think her part was done,
And that her reign had here its last fulfilling:
She knew such harmony alone
Could hold all Heaven and Earth in happier union.

XI

At last surrounds their sight
A globe of circular light,
That with long beams the shamefaced Night arrayed;
The helmèd Cherubim
And sworded Seraphim
Are seen in glittering ranks with wings displayed,
Harping in loud and solemn quire,
With unexpressive notes, to Heaven’s newborn Heir.

XII

Such music (as ’tis said)
Before was never made,
But when of old the Sons of Morning sung,
While the Creator great
His constellations set,
And the well-balanced World on hinges hung,
And cast the dark foundations deep,
And bid the weltering waves their oozy channel keep.

XIII

Ring out, ye crystal spheres!
Once bless our human ears,
If ye have power to touch our senses so;
And let your silver chime
Move in melodious time;
And let the bass of heaven’s deep organ blow;
And with your ninefold harmony
Make up full consort of the angelic symphony.

XIV

For, if such holy song
Enwrap our fancy long,
Time will run back and fetch the Age of Gold;
And speckled Vanity
Will sicken soon and die,
And leprous Sin will melt from earthly mould;
And Hell itself will pass away,
And leave her dolorous mansions of the peering day.

XV

Yes, Truth and Justice then
Will down return to men,
The enamelled arras of the rainbow wearing;
And Mercy set between,
Throned in celestial sheen,
With radiant feet the tissued clouds down steering;
And Heaven, as at some festival,
Will open wide the gates of her high palace-hall.

XVI

But wisest Fate says No,
This must not yet be so;
The Babe lies yet in smiling infancy
That on the bitter cross
Must redeem our loss,
So both himself and us to glorify:
Yet first, to those chained in sleep,
The wakeful trump of doom must thunder through the deep,

XVII

With such a horrid clang
As on Mount Sinai rang,
While the red fire and smouldering clouds outbrake:
The aged Earth, aghast
With terror of that blast,
Shall from the surface to the centre shake,
When, at the world’s last sessiön,
The dreadful Judge in middle air shall spread his throne.

XVIII

And then at last our bliss
Full and perfect is,
But now begins; for from this happy day
The Old Dragon under ground,
In straiter limits bound,
Not half so far casts his usurpèd sway,
And, wroth to see his Kingdom fail,
Swindges the scaly horror of his folded tail.

XIX

The Oracles are dumb;
No voice or hideous hum
Runs through the archèd roof in words deceiving.
Apollo from his shrine
Can no more divine,
Will hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving.
No nightly trance, or breathèd spell,
Inspires the pale-eyed Priest from the prophetic cell.

XX

The lonely mountains o’er,
And the resounding shore,
A voice of weeping heard and loud lament;
Edgèd with poplar pale,
From haunted spring, and dale
The parting Genius is with sighing sent;
With flower-inwoven tresses torn
The Nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.

XXI

In consecrated earth,
And on the holy hearth,
The Lars and Lemures moan with midnight plaint;
In urns, and altars round,
A drear and dying sound
Affrights the Flamens at their service quaint;
And the chill marble seems to sweat,
While each peculiar power forgoes his wonted seat.

XXII

Peor and Baälim
Forsake their temples dim,
With that twice-battered god of Palestine;
And moonèd Ashtaroth,
Heaven’s Queen and Mother both,
Now sits not girt with tapers’ holy shine:
The Libyc Hammon shrinks his horn;
In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammuz mourn.

XXIII

And sullen Moloch, fled,
Hath left in shadows dread
His burning idol all of blackest hue;
In vain with cymbals’ ring
They call the grisly king,
In dismal dance about the furnace blue;
The brutish gods of Nile as fast,
Isis, and Orus, and the dog Anubis, haste.

XXIV

Nor is Osiris seen
In Memphian grove or green,
Trampling the unshowered grass with lowings loud;
Nor can he be at rest
Within his sacred chest;
Nought but profoundest Hell can be his shroud;
In vain, with timbreled anthems dark,
The sable-stolèd Sorcerers bear his worshiped ark.

XXV

He feels from Juda’s land
The dreaded Infant’s hand;
The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn;
Nor all the gods beside
Longer dare abide,
Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine:
Our Babe, to show his Godhead true,
Can in his swaddling bands control the damnèd crew.

XXVI

So, when the Sun in bed,
Curtained with cloudy red,
Pillows his chin upon an orient wave,
The flocking shadows pale
Troop to the infernal jail,
Each fettered ghost slips to his several grave,
And the yellow-skirted Fays
Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-loved maze.

XXVII

But see! the Virgin blest
Hath laid her Babe to rest,
Time is our tedious song should here have ending:
Heaven’s youngest-teemèd star
Hath fixed her polished car,
Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp attending;
And all about the courtly stable
Bright-harnessed Angels sit in order serviceable.

Obedience to Christ

" . . . and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ." 2 Corinthians 10:5

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Satan is waging a battle to control the thought life of America's teenagers. The typical teenager listens to an average of 10,500 hours of rock music from the seventh to the tenth grade. That's only 500 hours shy of all the time he/she spends in school from first through twelfth grade! Do you have any idea of the fatalism that is bombarding the airwaves everyday into young people's heads? The National Education Association estimates that a percentage of the 5,000 teenage suicides we have in America every year are caused by the fatalistic music of today's youth. Somebody has said, "You let me write the songs that a nation sings, and I don't care who makes its laws."

Is there a teen in your life? If so, spend some time this week talking with them about the music they listen to and the healthy choices they need to make to take back the ground that Satan is trying to conquer with his onslaught of fatalistic music.

Two Thousand one , Nine Eleven [2001-911]

TWO THOUSAND ONE, NINE ELEVEN (2001-911)

Two thousand one, nine eleven
Three thousand plus arrive in heaven
As they pass through the gate,
Thousands more appear in wait
A bearded man with stovepipe hat
Steps forward saying, "Lets sit, lets chat"

They settle down in seats of clouds
A man named Martin shouts out proud
"I have a dream!" and once he did
The Newcomer said, "Your dream still lives."

Groups of soldiers in blue and gray
Others in khaki, and green then say
"We're from Bull Run, Yorktown, the Maine "
The Newcomer said, "You died not in vain."

From a man on sticks one could hear
"The only thing we have to fear.
The Newcomer said, "We know the rest,
Trust us sir, we've passed that test."

"Courage doesn't hide in caves
You can't bury freedom, in a grave,"
The Newcomers had heard this voice before
A distinct Yankees twang from Hyannisport shores

A silence fell within the mist
Somehow the Newcomer knew that this
Meant time had come for her to say
What was in the hearts of the five thousand plus that day

"Back on Earth, we wrote reports,
Watched our children play in sports
Worked our gardens, sang our songs
Went to church and clipped coupons
We smiled, we laughed, we cried, we fought
Unlike you, great we're not"

The tall man in the stovepipe hat
Stood and said, "Don't talk like that!
Look at your country, look and see
You died for freedom, just like me"

Then, before them all appeared a scene
Of rubbled streets and twisted beams
Death, destruction, smoke and dust
And people working just 'cause they must

Hauling ash, lifting stones,
Knee deep in hell, but not alone
"Look! Blackman, Whiteman, Brownman, Yellowman
Side by side helping their fellow man!"

So said Martin, as he watched the scene
"Even from nightmares, can be born a dream."

Down below three firemen raised
The colors high into ashen haze
The soldiers above had seen it before
On Iwo Jimaback in '45


The man on sticks studied everything closely
Then shared his perceptions on what he saw mostly
"I see pain, I see tears,
I see sorrow -- but I don't see fear."

"You left behind husbands and wives
Daughters and sons and so many lives
Are suffering now because of this wrong
But look very closely. You're not really gone.

All of those people, even those who've never met you
All of their lives, they'll never forget you
Don't you see what has happened?
Don't you see what you've done?
You've brought them together, together as one.

With that the man in the stovepipe hat said
"Take my hand," and from there he led
Three thousand plus heroes, Newcomers to heaven
On this day, two thousand one, nine eleven

Jan Bagwell 9/11/07
DON'T KEEP SUCH MEANINGFUL WORDS AND FEELINGS TO YOURSELF. PLEASE PASS THIS ONE ALONG.

On this day, please wear Red, white and blue to work or school to show your support for those who lost their lives on 9~11~01 and to honor the heroes who worked to save themAnd the families left behind. At noon your time on September 11, 2007, no
Matter where you are or what you are doing, stop, put your hand on your
Heart, and say the Pledge of Allegiance out loud or to yourself and say a
Prayer for our nation.

In addition, for those of us who drive to work, please drive with your
Headlights on to also give honor and remembrance to those who perished on
September 11th.

If all of us do this together in every time zone round the world, we will
Have a powerful chain of thoughts surrounding us. Please keep this going to
Your friends and family.

Join together in unity.

Give Thanks

Read 1 Chronicles 16:8-13
Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
-1 Thessalonians 5:18 (NRSV)
A few years ago I started a gratitude journal. Each morning as I begin my quiet time with the Lord, I write down what I am thankful for. I usually choose something from the previous day. Sometimes my thought comes immediately. Sometimes I have to think a while. Sometimes I see many things to give thanks for, and sometimes I struggle to find even one. From time to time I look back through the journal and notice that a blessing can be as small as seeing daffodils popping out of the cold, barren ground in February or as large as successful heart surgery on a tiny newborn.
God's blessings come in all sizes. Some are obvious, and some come to us in a quiet way. But what is most important is that we not forget to thank God for those blessings, no matter how small or how large, no matter how simple or how miraculous. Those blessings show us God is always near and always caring for us.

Giver of all good things, help us to remember to thank you for all of our blessings and to be grateful each day. Amen.
Today I will look for blessings of all sizes and be grateful.

GOD'S UNDYING LOVE AND HIS MERCY

Reflecting on the past today, and my tomorrows, this I know . . .
God's love and mercy will be with me wherever I go.

In times past my knowledge of Jesus was so very dim,
In God's love and mercy, he sent someone to lead me to Him.

Convicted by the Spirit, responding in faith to believe,
Becoming a child of God, eternal life I received.

Now I too must have love and mercy for the lost and condemned,
Live in Jesus' light, go and tell, and lead them to Him.

God has not promised a rose-strewed pathway that will always be,
But He has promised His undying love and mercy will be there for you and me.

Jan Bagwell 9/10/07

Turning Aside

DEVOTIONS:
Turning Aside

Read Mark 6:30-32

Jesus said to the apostles, "Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest."
-Mark 6:31 (NIV)

WHILE strolling on the grounds of a Christian college I could see but barely hear the traffic moving along the main street just outside the school and through the town. The tranquility of centuries of worship enfolded me, completely wiping out the oppressive heaviness I had felt a few minutes earlier as I passed shop after shop strung with emblems of the occult. In the peace and beauty of the school, it was as if I had entered another world.

My thoughts focused on Jesus' invitation to the apostles while they were surrounded by crowds clamoring for his attention. Jesus understood the apostles' frustration; they were hungry, tired, and wanted to talk about all their recent experiences with him. The respite lasted only as long as the boat ride, but it was sufficient. Then they could again cope with the pressures of the crowds.

Our Lord knows how we feel and what we need at any given time and provides special moments for us to recuperate. It is not always possible to retreat to some quiet place. But wherever we are, by turning our attention to Christ's presence with us, we can find peace.


Prayer
Lord Jesus Christ, thank you for drawing us aside from the pressures around us and providing us with moments of quiet in your presence. Amen.

Thought for the Day
Christ says to each of us, "Come aside; rest in my presence."





Whatever your cross,

whatever your pain,

there will always be sunshine,

after the rain ....

Perhaps you may stumble,

perhaps even fall,

But God's always ready,

To answer your call ...

He knows every heartache,

sees every tear,

A word from His lips,

can calm every fear ...

Your sorrows may linger,

throughout the night,

But suddenly vanish,

in dawn's early light ...

The Savior is waiting,

somewhere above,

To give you His grace,

and send you His love ..

Whatever your cross,

whatever your pain,

"God always sends rainbows ....

after the rain ... "

To get out of difficulty, one must usually go through it !