After putting her grandchildren to bed, a grandmother changed into old slacks and a droopy blouse and proceeded to wash her hair. As she heard the children getting more and more rambunctious, her patience grew thin. Finally, she threw a towel around her head and stormed into their room, putting them back to bed with stern warnings. As she left the room, she heard the three-year-old say with a trembling voice, ‘Who was THAT?’
My young grandson called the other day to wish me Happy Birthday. He asked me how old I was, and I told him, ‘62.’ He was quiet for a moment, and then he asked, ‘Did you start at 1 ?’
She was in the bathroom, putting on her makeup, under the watchful eyes of her young granddaughter, as she’d done many times before. After she applied her lipstick and started to leave, the little one said, ‘But Gramma, you forgot tq kiss the toilet paper good-bye!’ I will probably never put lipstick on again without thinking about kissing the toilet paper good-bye!!
Visit us tomorrow for more Grandparent stories…….
Heavenly Father, most gracious and loving God, I pray to you that you abundantly bless my family and me. I know that you recognize, that a family is more than just a mother, father, sister, brother, husband and wife, but all who believe and trust in you.
GOD, I send up a prayer request for financial blessing for not only the Person who sent this to me, but for me and all that I have forwarded this message on to. And that the power of joined prayer by those who believe and trust in you is more powerful than anything. I thank you in advance for your blessings. God, deliver the person reading this right now from debt and debt burdens.
Release your Godly wisdom that I may be a good steward over all that you have given me, GOD, for I know how wonderful and mighty you are and how, if we just obey you and walk in your word and have the faith of a mustard seed, that you will pour out blessings. I thank you now Lord for the recent blessings I have received and for the blessings yet to come, because I know you are not done with me yet. In Jesus’ name I ask. Amen
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TAKE 60 SECONDS and send this on quickly and within hours, you will have caused a multitude of people to pray to God for each other. Then sit back and watch the power of God work in your life for doing the thing that you know he loves. Peace and Blessings …. Ask the Lord to give you, day by day, more and more faith.
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The third-century bishop and martyr, St. Felix of Nola, trying to escape his persecutors, hid in a cave. Immediately a spider wove its gossamer web across the small opening, giving the appearance to his prying pursuers that the cave had not been recently occupied. When the saintly bishop later stepped out into the sunlight, he exclaimed insightfully, “Where God is, a spider’s web is a wall; where he is not, a wall is but a spider’s web.”
Where does a fragile butterfly stay during stormy days and tempestuous nights? While rivers are surging and mountain oaks are torn from their roots, the dainty butterfly can be found clinging to the underside of a broad leaf, safe and dry. That’s reminiscent of Psalm 57:1: “Be merciful to me, 0 God, be merciful to me, for in you my soul takes refuge; in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge, until the destroying storms pass by.” That’s a good prayer for insecure souls.
Animal experts who specialize in hibernation studies have found that the safer the den, the sounder the sleep. (Burglar alarm companies might find that principle useful as a sales blurb.) This bit of trivia is reminiscent of the words from Job 5:24: “You shall know that your tent is safe,” or perhaps the words of David in Psalm 4:8 “I will both lie down and sleep in peace; for you alone, 0 LORD, make me lie down in safety.” For the insecure person, in dread of terrorism, disease, accidents, and a host of other things, a good prayer for cultivating trust in God is Psalm 56:3-4: “When I am afraid, I put my trust in you …. What can flesh do to me?”
All of us, especially insecure souls, need to remind ourselves to reactivate frequently our trust in the loving God who is watching over us day and night. Any time you need a scriptural meditation on this great reality, open your Bible to Psalm 139 and read it prayerfully. You’ll breathe a lot easier, I assure you.
Fr. John Hampsch, “Pathways of Trust”
A telephone was installed in the White House in 1870, but not on the president’s desk. For fifty-one years, the presidents of the most advanced country in the world had to go out into the hall to use the single White House phone. The can opener was invented half a century after the tin can was invented. The neon sign was invented in France in 1910, but it wasn’t known in America until 1923, when its first appearance stopped traffic in Los Angeles. Modern technology may be amazing, but at times its progress has been glacially slow.
We marvel at our awesomely rapid technological progress today, as we take for granted the availability of even handheld global-reaching mobile videophones that operate via satellite and were undreamed of only a few years ago. However, progress hasn’t always been that brisk.
Like technology, our lives in general, and our spiritual growth in particular, may have spurts of progress with periods of stagnation, like sporadically congested freeway traffic. Yet we always expect to reach our destination, regardless of long or short periods of retardation in our progress.
Sometimes our progress seems to be retarded because our visibility is limited, when the Lord hides from us his long-range plans. It is especially at these interludes of confusion that our trust in his guidance is challenged. In air travel we trust the pilot or navigator to get us to our destination, even while we fly through blinding clouds or through the darkness of night. God is a very experienced pilot, and we have no choice but to trust him to make our progress sure, even if we have to fly through air turbulence while progressing.
At times, we ourselves are forced to navigate through unnerving situations, as when we drive a car through a fog bank. Our trust is even more challenged as a motorist in such a situation than as a passenger in a plane. The road signs are there, but can’t be seen easily. When life’s road signs are not easily visible in the fog, we must trust that the Lord will lift the fog in time for us to see the road signs that will direct us to what he wants us to do with our lives. As we keep moving forward, the signs will be seen more clearly, and we can then peer through the fog bank for the next road sign without anxiety.
Trust enables us to be lovingly and actively open to God in his constant, ever-loving desire to improve us, in and through all of life’s vicissitudes. When we learn to trust we learn to accept ourselves as small acorns, knowing that we will grow. We must keep in mind that spiritual growth, even when it is slow, is still progress. We are tiny acorns that are designed by the Creator to survive drought and battering storms until we reach the full status of mighty oaks; in order to do so, all that is required is that we keep our ground-that is, stay rooted in Christ.
Fr. John Hampsch, “Pathways of Trust“
