What’s on the other side?
The other side of what?
Death? Heaven?
What fills in your — to make you happy?
You lose weight and you expect… to be more loved, more beautiful, more popular?
Realistically people get used to your changing figure gradually and don’t pay it much attention. As it turns out, your personality is what attracts people to you (within reason, just sayin’), and if you aren’t happy with yourself when you are chubby, you won’t be happy with yourself thin either!
I’ve been both, a lot of times and nothing really changes, except my bra size!
You earn a Degree and you expect to be respected, richer, higher on the corporate ladder? The way the job market is right now, be happy if you get a job earning a decent wage and decide to impress your peer group with how punctual you can be… learn something new every day…be kind and considerate! That will earn you more respect and admiration than your degree (I am not downing education, just realistic).
Young girls graduate (now maybe not all of you, but I have lived with and around some young ladies) from high school and sometimes go on toward college. To hear some of them talk, the degree they are most interested in is their MRS… and the goal is to be standing at the altar with Prince Charming, in the dress of their dreams with all their friends telling them how beautiful they are, and that is the end of the fantasy. They aren’t really seeing getting up and making breakfast, helping to “bring home the bacon” and still having to do housework when you get home, having to be careful what you spend and not being able to get your weekly mani or pedi. They don’t realize that all that love making in the bedroom doesn’t just yield someone putting roses in your bath, it could end up with your being pregnant and seeing the inside of the porcelain toilet!
I hope I’m not coming across cynical, just telling it like I’ve seen it.
So, what is the Promised Land and how do you get there?
In the desert, the Children of Israel wandered for forty years to find it. Their own disbelief and obstinate behavior kept them wandering around the same mountain! It took a whole generation of people dying before they could finally find their way into those gates! There was discouragement from the spies that were sent in to spy out the land. Ten out of twelve men brought back horror stories of giants, someone had to keep the Vision of living in a land where the milk and honey flowed!
To reach your goal, you must be willing to work at it!
We all want to make Heaven our home, we try to live right, some have suffered for the cause, will it be worth it?
2Thessalonians 1:5-10 “All this trouble is a clear sign that God has decided to make you fit for the kingdom. You’re suffering now, but justice is on the way. When the Master Jesus appears out of heaven in a blaze of fire with his strong angels, he’ll even up the score by settling accounts with those who gave you such a bad time. His coming will be the break we’ve been waiting for. Those who refuse to know God and refuse to obey the Message will pay for what they’ve done. Eternal exile from the presence of the Master and his splendid power is their sentence. But on that very same day when he comes, he will be exalted by his followers and celebrated by all who believe—and all because you believed what we told you.
Matthew 5: “You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.” You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.” You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.” You’re blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.”
What fills in your —-? Don’t look to others to validate you, look within yourself, and know this:
Philippians 4:13 For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength.
Harolene.com 
The spirit of God 🙏
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Church.
I know, I know… it’s just a fantasy of mine, but I keep hoping I meet the Body of Christ in this old world, and church is supposed to be it.
Thanx for your post.
You don’t know this, because we just don’t hardly talk anymore… but I put in a whole chapter, almost two (in a new book I am currently writing), about Shiphrah and Puah. (Call me crazy, but I would just about bet money I ain’t got that YOU know who I am talking about without looking them up – but keep in mind, by far, most folx don’t. (Even I had to look them up because I forgot their names!))
Anyway, Shiphrah and Puah. They are barely a footnote in the Book of God’s Word, barely a passing mention. But their daring work was the tip of the spear of God’s salvation in the Great Exodus story, a salvation story so big, it’s rivaled in importance only by Jesus who also paid it homage.
You write of young ladies getting educated and looking for that MRS degree plan about how we are blessed if we just have a good job with decent pay intoday’s world, and should re-evaluate our perspective on these things.
I’m just assuming Shiphrah and Puah wanted to be baby nurses in college. Except for the lack of college in their day, it’s a worthwhile speculation. But their humble woman’s work suddenly had a political edge to it, an edge that defied the evil king! They poked a finger in the eye of empire! And working for slaves who didn’t get any Christmas bonuses or even a raise in the last 400 years, I don’t expect Shiphrah and Puah were well paid. In fact, I bet they suffered just to do the work.
No doubt, we must praise them for their bravery and their tenacity. But the feature about them that stands out most, if you really think about it, is their humility, their unlikelihood at being heroes at all.
They were WOMEN – women in an age when women were of far less value than men. A very distant second – second class. Even if you were a rich and powerful woman, you were a distant second to the rich and powerful men in any decision making processes.
They were slaves too. Slave women. And even more humbly, they were servants of slave women.
To eat with Hebrews was abomination!
You gotta just about crawl under a rock to uncover these heroes of the faith, and even the Bible only affords them a footnote (though an important one). We know next to nothing about them personally, and they get no holiday. No one dresses up as Shiphrah and Puah for Halloween!
But God Almighty makes his first salvation move through them. They are the tip of heaven’s spear inaugurating salvation even before we know Moses.
Turns out, God was doing his thing in those humble people which Israel hardly notices until with hindsight, the story is recited much later. But the most important feature in this most important feature is, of course, God! We see God in Shiphrah and Puah.
I am thinking about how tough it is to make a go in today’s world. Even in America, our lives are getting harder and more precarious. We are the richest nation on earth, but homelessness is overrunning the west coast and cropping up everywhere. Our future looks and feels grim! Precarious. Difficult. Even scary.
I look around for what God is doing, and I think I need to find Shiphrah and Puah, the humblest servants in salvation at the razor sharp tip of God’s salvation spear.
The Great Depression brought great suffering and humility to this same land almost 100 years ago. My grandparents were born into it. They might have died “the greatest generation,” but they never forgot their feet of clay.
They had the advantage of far less anonymity than we do today, but I expect we will begin to find the “real church” of God emerge in the humble and needy learning to share what we have…. learning to compliment one another in love with the needed things of life.
The money is printed on paper, not even backed by gold. But if I have a cup of sugar and my neighbor has the makings of a birthday cake lacking only my cup of sugar, we can ditch our anonymity and celebrate life together in humility the way God always intended.
I think a day may come when we need a Shiphrah and Puah to save the male baby boys being born, but until that time, I think Shiphrah and Puah already knew how to share a cup of sugar with a neighbor. I think God works with that.
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Exodus 1:15–21
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That is wonderful and as I already read that you had decided to delete these young ladies… I’m wondering why? I have missed our wonderful conversations, I value your work and your opinion. Thanks for being there. 🙏♥️ God bless you and your family. My life has been a little upside down but hopefully it will settle down … 😇😂
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PS
As I edit my NEW book, I have cut the parts about Shiphrah and Puah, completely out. I left them in bits on the editing room floor. REally sad about that, but they aren’t going to be footnote in my book after all.
Will save those bits though. Perhaps in another project….
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I needed to hear this tonight. Thank you.
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🙏♥️
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