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| Fat Quarters Fabric August received (Photo credit: Follow the White Bunny) |
"Behold, what I have seen to be good and fitting
is to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils
under the sun the few days of his life that God has given him, for this is his
lot" (Ecc. 5:18).
I used to love to sew. That is after I
pinned the pattern and before I had to rip out seams. Picking the
pattern, the material and seeing the dress form under my hands delighted me.
Oh, I could also do without the finishing.
Then one day it hit me. Why did I like
sewing? Half of it I despised. I made the decision--to find joy in the minutiae
of it. I strove to
lay it out perfectly. I sang as I ripped
stitches and strove to make my finish work as fine as the broad strokes. Thus
today's Scripture.
To enjoy life, we must:
- Find joy in the little things. Is it too cold? Look at the glittering frost, note it's beauty.
- Love our job. Some of us do "traditionally" great things--teach, nurse, police, protect. Others pull a lever, drive a truck, cash out customers. What's good in our job? It pays the rent or we get to work on the road away from the idiots in the office or we can chat with a wide variety of weirdos. Each job brings us joy.
- Enjoy our sustenance. We have homes. Maybe not million dollar ones with hardwood floors. But they keep us warmer than the elements. We have food. Steak may be too pricey, but who doesn't love pasta?
- Be grateful. We live. We feel the warmth of carpet on our toes, the embrace of a child, the fellowship of believers, the taste of olives, the kiss of a spouse, the sight of a sunrise, the touch of a breeze. We have electric, heat, water from a tap, vehicles, shelter.
- Fellowship is our Maker. Even those of us who know Him, fear our death. But in the end, eternity will wipe away all our tears--and if we truly know God, our moments here on earth are finer.
For what are you grateful?
I have two fav characters. Elvis Cole who was an orphan abandoned by a mentally ill mother who everyone called crazy. She told him he had a dad who would come for him, but the truth is she probably didn't know who his dad was. At 17 he once rode the rails to find a man he thought was his dad. He enlisted and became an Army Ranger and when his small patrol came under heavy fire he carried one of his men to safety on his back. He met a spec ops US Marine who had been horribly brutalized by his dad and enlisted to get away. Both of these men are at the top of their game and they open a private detective agency in LA. Elvis is a little boy at heart and the agency is decorated with Mickey Mouse ceramics and a Pinocchio clock. Elvis has a lawyer girlfriend in a few books, but it doesn't work out. In other novels he sorta falls for a beauty who rejects him.
ReplyDeleteMy other fav is LAPD Det Harry Bosch who's birth is also in question. Many times Harry is just this side of the law due to his obsession to obtain justice for murder victims...especially if they were downtrodden and the community really doesn't care if the murder is solved, except to clear it off the books and have a statistical good outcome. Those are the cases Harry gets totally obsessed with...sometimes to the detriment of his own mental health.
Are these your characters? They sound intriguing.
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