"Builds Character"

If I had a dollar for every time my dad said that to me I would be rich. Filthy stinking rich. That and "write your Congrssman" (which I never really started doing until recently!) Americans like to complain. We have it so good (and I am SO including myself in this!) and yet we want more. We want everything easy, and perfect, and "right now." If only I were thinner. If only I had a better job. If only I had a husband and/or child. Then I'd be complete. If only I would be cured....

I was reading a devotional this morning form a book called Strength For Today by Sharon Broyles. She was talking about Paul and Silas, and how they were in prison, in chains, and standing in sewage up to their knees. And yet they didn't complain. They sang. They praised God. What if we did that? What if we decided to live IN our circumstances instead of always trying to find a way out of them. What if we decided to really live?

A woman named Carol, fighting an incurable chronic illness said this, "We desperately want to be able to soar above our problems, when what God may want is for me to learn how to live within them."

How we live with our illness, with our circumstances, with our issues and problems, can reflect God to someone who may not know Him. By asking for and accepting God's grace for the moment...his new mercies every morning...By praising instead of complaining....By singing instead of sobbing...You could make the difference in someone else's eternity.

And isnt' that all that really matters?

Update: Isn't it ironic that when you go on a limb and post something like this, satan starts messing around?? Jacob has been sick all day, and I am exhausted. Just shows what a low-life, sneaky, lying, conniving, insolent little ba$ta&* he is.