PLEASE KEEP PRAYING FOR ALAN – UPDATE

Greetings friends!  I thank you so much for your faith, your continued prayer support for Mom, Me, and for others I’ve seeked your support for.  The update on Alan reflects some encouragement yet we need to keep those prayers heading up.  This wonderful man of God is suffering from pain in his back, his hip, and his knees daily, often in tummy as well.  A recent blood test and physical find him in good health, yet there seems to be little the medical profession can do to relieve him of the pain which prevents him from leading the life he was anointed to live for Jesus. 

Please pray for his total healing and for him to be placed, if the Lord desires it, in the correct hands for healing should the Lord choose to use medical professionals for His purposes.  Please pray as well for Alan to know the Lord’s hand in this and to feel the Lord’s joy and peace.  Please pray, as well, for his wife Erica since we all know how the struggles of one we love can weigh heavily on us. 

Please pray as well that during this time of healing Alan will continue to be able to serve the Lord in ministry in the ways of the Lord’s own choosing and that Alan will know His hand is upon him. 

Thanks everyone!

Sonshine . . . Dear Friends . . . Pot Roast Cooking!

Today is a totally delightful day.  Not saying everything is life is perfect for we know that this side of heaven can’t be exactly that, but my smile is as bright as the sunshine would be if I weren’t wearing dark glasses! 

A very dear friend who I have not seen in 7 years has flown in to visit me and be my houseguest for a week!  He is a wonderful man who is full of life, full of the love of Christ, is eternally young, and is a retired Episcopal priest.  I am smiling as I say retired priest because I don’t know any priests who’ve pulled off retirement . . . I think they just live on and one day they say “go in peace to love and serve the Lord” and find themselves face to face with Him.  Vocation . . . . it’s so much more than work.

Many of you are aware that I’ve been seeking a “job” or more correctly financial provision since relocating to SC 4 plus years ago and a permanent answer hasn’t yet come, but spiritually life is AMAZING so no complaints.  That being said the Lord has planted a seed in me which can only be described as a passion for a vocation and not just a job.  I am beginning to know what that is, only just beginning. 

I ask you to pray with me that I will continue to hear His voice and follow Him faithfully in the path and plan He has for me and kn0w that though He asks me to do things that make me gasp sometimes, I have never known more joy in my life than when I follow Him NO MATTER WHAT HE ASKS OF ME.  He is always there with me.

This will be a delightful week for me and I am sorry if I am a bit off schedule on sharing with all of you but fear not, I will have lots to share when time permits.  Meanwhile, having an extra person in the house and it being a man with a healthy appetite literally, spiritually and otherwise, I’ve got an excuse to do a lot more fussy things in the kitchen than what I usually do as this house usually is home to just my elderly Mom who is on a restricted diet, and me.  I   enjoying having someone to spoil lavishly.  Just now I have a pot roast with all the expected accompaniments cooking and can I tell you my house smells great?  There will be home-made bread in the house, home-made corn chowder, and all sorts of scones, muffins, other elaborate things to feed the body with as we share at table and feed our hearts and souls. 

Time to check my roast!  Can you smell it?

Prayer For Healing Needed!

Someone I care about has just been diagnosed with bone cancer.  We know that our loving Lord’s promises to us include healing.  We have seen evidence of this in our midst just recently  in the way He miraculously healed our dear brother Bob’s beloved Wendy.  It is with the firm conviction of this promise and the unquestionable belief in His love and mercy that I bring to you this new prayer request.  As the body of Christ we are called to pray and work together for Him and He promises to be with us. 

I bring to you a friend and Episcopal priest, Robert Horn who has been diagnosed with bone cancer.  His wife Martha provided the following information which I share with you my prayer warriors:

Dear Friends,
We got the results from Robert’s test and it is bone cancer. The blessing is that it is a neoplasm that is not active as far as they can tell right now, so no treatment is needed just watch him with testing on a regular basis. He got a bone scan today and they are looking for lesions. If no lesions that is excellent. If the cancer gets active, he will have treatment and it could be a bone marrow transplant. We are sorta shocked right now, but praise God that it is not active. We are praying for NO Bone lesions. Thank you for your prayers , keep them going.
We love you!
Martha and Robert

Thank you for praying for my friends.  I will update you as I receive new information from them. 

 

Saint of the Day – January 24th

Today’s saint is:  St Francis de Sales!

Son of a senator from Savoy France and born 8-21-1567, he attended law school only to later shock his family by answering the call to the priesthood instead of following in his Dad’s footsteps as had been expected.  Francis had a gentle spirit and this enabled him to win many souls for the Lord.  He became bishop of Geneva by the age of only 35! 

He was actively involved in establishing the Sisters of the Visitation, was the author of many books and pamphlets, and all the while continued in his work as bishop as well as preaching, and teaching.  He died young. 

 “The person who possesses Christian meekness is affectionate and tender towards everyone: he is disposed to forgive and excuse the frailties of others; the goodness of his heart appears in a sweet affability that influences his words and actions, presents every object to his view in the most charitable and pleasing light.”   – Francis de Sales

John Wycliffe, Priest, Shepherd, Minister of Change

On this day, December 30, 1384, John Wycliffe was in his deathbed yet still shaking things up in the Christian church.  Wycliffe, a priest, an Oxford Scholar, and chaplain to the King of England, was not only incredibly intelligent but also outspoken in his beliefs and did not hesitate to vocalize what he viewed as corruption in the church and among his fellow clergy.  These very clergy flocked to his bedside as he breathed his last fearing what his last words would be.  He spoke not a word.  He was instrumental in the very first England language translation of the Bible, believing that the people of God needed the Lord’s Word and needed to understand it.  His work was instrumental in later work to make available English translations of the Scripture.  Church leaders feared him because he spoke harshly against their theology and their leadership.  He urged clerics and church leaders of his day to live lives of simplicity and holiness and to shepherd their people rather than “plunder” them.  He died of a stroke.