I've been tagged...

     Okay, so I just figured out what it means to be "tagged." My friend Amy, at Together for a Reason, tagged me in her post about her favorite 5 devotions, so now I think I'm supposed to say my favorite 5 devotions, too.
     As Funny Guy Friday says, "Easy-peasy-mcsqueasy." 
1. Morning Offering... a great way to start our day...
Father in Heaven, I give You this day...
All that I think, and do, and say...
I give You the good times, as well as the bad...
Times when I'm happy, times when I'm sad...
Fill me with Grace and keep me strong...
With You at my side, I won't go wrong. Amen.
2. Daily Readings... You can find the link in my sidebar, under Food for the Soul.
3. Chaplet of Divine Mercy... Ideally prayed at 3 in the afternoon.
4. Anything Mary... Needless to say, the Hail Mary... asking Her to help me with my mothering. Also, this prayer...
Our Lady, Queen of the Angels...
August Queen of Heaven, sovereign queen of Angels, you who at the beginning received from God the power and the mission to crush the head of Satan, we beseech you humbly... Send your holy legions so that, on your orders and by your power, they will track down demons, fight them everywhere, curb their audacity and plunge them into the abyss. Who can be compared to God? Oh good and tender Mother, you will always be our love and our hope. Oh divine Mother, send the Holy Angels and Archangels to defend me and to keep the cruel enemy far from me. Holy Angels and Archangels defend us, protect us. Amen.  
5. Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel... We end our day with this one, for protection and peace.
     So there you have it. Five of my faves. 
     But I must say, if I could do only one, it would be the Daily Readings.
     May the peace of Christ be always in your hearts and in your homes.

Favorite Devotions...

     Check out my friend Amy's post, over at Together for a Reason. Well worth the time...
     My morning blessing is different... and easy for the kids to memorize...
     Father in Heaven, I give You this day...
     All that I think, and do, and say...
     I give You the good times, as well as the bad...
     Times when I'm happy, times when I'm sad...
     Fill me with Grace and keep me strong...
     With You at my side, I won't go wrong. Amen.

Beware: "The Livable Communities Act"...

     A worthy read, from the American Thinker. Here is an excerpt...
     While cap-and-trade grabs the most attention, equally threatening is the euphemistically clever "Livable Communities Act." Masked with feel-good rhetoric and lofty concepts like "smart growth" and "sustainable development," the Livable Communities Act is top-down central planning aimed at changing where we live and work and how we travel. It will be overseen by bureaucrats in the Environmental Protection Agency, Housing and Urban Development, and the Department of Transportation and implemented through local governments.

     The Livable Communities Act exemplifies the progressive idea of strategic diminishment -- success is measured by the reduction of certain outcomes from today's standard. This is different from reducing outputs such as carbon emissions and pollutants, which are already declining and can be better addressed with affordable technologies rather than social engineering.

     But social engineering is at the heart of the Livable Communities Act, where federal planners hope to reduce personal mobility as measured in vehicle miles traveled and shift housing patterns from single-family homes in the suburbs to small apartments in cramped central cities.
     In a country as large and diverse as ours, some people will prefer the live-work-travel arrangements prescribed for in the Livable Communities Act, which is based on the Smart Growth planning doctrine. However, the vast majority of Americans in red and blue states alike have long aspired to live in suburban homes with a car in the garage.
     This quintessentially middle-class version of the American Dream has long been derided by elites and environmentalists, who recast suburbs as a wasteful sprawl and liken automobile use to a destructive addiction. They want to delegitimize this land use pattern, restrict automobile use, and make suburban housing less affordable. The Livable Communities Act is thus a hammer in the progressive toolbox.
     Absent from their advocacy is any acknowledgment that cars and suburbia are not just expressions of freedom, but indispensable contributors to our prosperity. For example, automobiles enable us to access more goods and services, forcing businesses to compete by offering higher quality and lower costs.

     Economic prosperity is only one measure in which cars provide a superior service over the Livable Community Act's preferred alternatives. Every car trip results in a transaction that is important to the user, and those transactions can be recreational, educational, cultural, social, political, financial, or religious. People often accomplish multiple tasks on trips in ways that central planners simply cannot anticipate, much less accommodate with fixed routes and scheduling.

     Progressives. Enough already.
     I'd rather be free.

Noah built the ark, and the wise got in... Our Hope is in the Lord...

See this episode of the Vortex, from Real Catholic TV...

Big Family... Brian Regan

Saw this over at Creative Minority Report. Very funny.

When things seem bad...

     Thanks to my friend Joanne for sharing this with me...
     The only survivor of a shipwreck was washed up on a small, uninhabited island. He prayed feverishly for God to rescue him. Every day he scanned the horizon for help, but none seemed forthcoming.  
     Exhausted, he eventually managed to build a little hut out of driftwood to protect himself from the elements, and to store his few possessions. 
     One day, after scavenging for food, he arrived home to find his little hut in flames, with smoke rolling up to the sky. He felt the worst had happened, and everything was lost. He was stunned with disbelief, grief, and anger. He cried out, 'God! How could you do this to me?'  
     Early the next day, he was awakened by the sound of a ship approaching the island! It had come to rescue him! 'How did you know I was here?' asked the weary man of his rescuers.  'We saw your smoke signal,' they replied. 
     The Moral of This Story... It's easy to get discouraged when things are going bad, but we shouldn't lose heart, because God is at work in our lives, even in the midst of our pain and suffering.  Remember that the next time your little hut seems to be burning to the ground. It just may be a smoke signal that summons the Grace of God.

Funny Guy Friday... Coming to America!

     We have agreed to host a young student from Spain for three weeks starting in September.  We anticipate this being a great experience for our family... and we hope we don't ruin the poor kid.
     This whole thing started when our 8th grade daughter volunteered us in her Spanish class. No discussions... no warning... no problema.
     I got the call, and did what I always do when someone calls about something I know nothing about. "CHERYL, its for you!"
     After listening to half the conversation... Cheryl's half... I could glean that whatever Grace had volunteered for was going to be time consuming, and we were going to go along with it. This, despite my flailing arms saying no we can't... no we shouldn't... no we won't. We are!
     It will be a great experience Cheryl assures me.
     The woman who runs the program came for a house visit. Her visit coincided with Steven Strasburg's pitching debut with the Nationals. Already, this was not a great experience. I wanted to watch the game, and she wanted to tell me what I can and can't do with this Spaniard.
     After about five minutes, she told me that I speak very fast for an English speaking person, and the kid will not get my "sarcasm."
     When did I become sarcastic? I am now going to type real slow so every non-English speaking person can understand.  S o...  f a r...  I...  d o n' t...  l i k e...  t h i s...
e x c h a n g e...   p r o g r a m.
     During the visit, we discussed the young lady that will be spending time with our young daughter. Things started to get a bit dicey because the young lady staying with us... will probably be a young man.
     Cheryl gives the very nice, "Oh, I am sure that God will give us the person that we are supposed to have." Oh, and I am sure that I will tell this "child that God gives us" the things that he is supposed to know. I will talk real slow, in a very non-sarcastic tone, so there is no misunderstanding about how I feel about my daughter.
     I suppose the upside to having an older boy around the house is that I will have someone that can help me mow the yard for the three weeks that he is here.
     So, the program director assured us that she would place each student with a "family with children that have some of his same interests." Great. Now, instead of three kids that sit on their rears all day and watch reruns of the Jonas Brothers and Hannah Montana, I will have four. And another thing, I have lived with my kids every day of their lives, and I couldn't tell you what their interests are... So I wonder... what crystal ball is this lady going to look into to see what interests they have?
     Anyway, yesterday we received the young man's profile and wouldn't you know he is allergic to gramineas. For those of you that do not speak Spanish, that would be grass.  Let me see if I can use that in a sentence... So sorry, Senor Palumbo, I cannot mow your gramineas. By the way, do you know what time the next Jonas Brothers rerun starts? Great!
     Some good news though... he loves football, so we can talk about the Redskins and the upcoming NFL season. What's that? Football in Spain is soccer? I hate soccer.
     This just gets better and better.
     When he does arrive, Grace will be responsible for showing him around the high school.  Let me get this straight. She starts at her new high school on August 23rd, and on September 1st, after a whole week in her new school, she is charged with showing some kid who barely speaks English, where the cafateria is located. Terrific... the poor kid is going to go back weighing ten pounds less than he did when he came. His parents are going to think that things in America are worse than they imagined.
     Oh well... my wife is always right about these things, so I am sure it will be a great experience. In his profile, he mentioned that coming to America has always been a dream for him. We will do our best to make sure that his dream is a good one.
     Hopefully, when his visit comes to an end, the best thing he remembers about America is the crazy family that he lived with for three weeks.

Meditation... A humble heart full of the love of Christ

Jer 31:31-34

The days are coming, says the LORD,
when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel
and the house of Judah.
It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers:
the day I took them by the hand
to lead them forth from the land of Egypt;
for they broke my covenant,
and I had to show myself their master, says the LORD.
But this is the covenant that I will make
with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD.
I will place my law within them, and write it upon their hearts;
I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
No longer will they have need to teach their friends and relatives
how to know the LORD.
All, from least to greatest, shall know me, says the LORD,
for I will forgive their evildoing and remember their sin no more.

     Do you ever sense that God has just taken his finger, and pulled back a veil of understanding from your heart or your mind. He does that when He shares his Wisdom with us. Read his Word and you will see.

     This happened to me today, when I read the above passage from Jeremiah. 

     I used to read this and wonder what sort of secret message God would write upon my heart. How would I know what it was? Did this mean that I didn't have to share the Gospel of hope with my friends and neighbors anymore, because they too would have it written on their hearts? And they would just know? What would they know? And why would He write it on their hearts, and not their minds? 

     The old covenant was the Law of Moses... All the rules to live by to know God and be right with God. How to wash... What kind of offering to give... What utensils to use... and on and on. No one could possibly do them all perfectly every moment. No one could ever measure up. No one, but Jesus. For he was the fulfillment of the Law. He was perfect.
     We are not perfect.

     But we are not called to be perfect. We are called to Love. To Love with the humble, forgiving heart of Christ. For He is perfect. And through Him, we are made right.

     That was what God would write on our hearts. No magic message. No code to crack. No complex instructions.
     Simply Love. Love God. Love our neighbor.

     With Humility and Mercy. With the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
     Love.

     And they'll know we are Christians by our Love.

Knock and the door will be opened...

     "Knock and the door will be opened" typically refers to Jesus's simple offering. However, lately, it seems to be the motto around our house, as we have had various house guests staying with us these past couple of weeks.
     So with all of the activity, I haven't had much time to post. I miss it.
     Still, there's lots to click around on and read anyway. See my sidebar.
     I am also going to be away off and on until school starts... I'll still try to post, but if you think it's light, you'll know why.
     May God bless you, and may the peace of Christ be always in your heart and in your home.

August 3...Happy Birthday, Noah...

Happy Birthday, Noah!

You are a blessing to anyone who has ever met you.

God has great plans for you.

I love you.