The Gift of Age

What does your age really represent? Days and nights spent living your life, coming through a myriad of experiences that sometimes seem mind-numbingly monotonous, only to be interrupted by life-altering surprises and unforeseen tragedies. Your age reflects years of (hopefully) collected wisdom.

Your age also represents mounds of memories. You’ve exchanged some of the energy of youth for them, but the higher the number on your birthday card, the more wealth you have in your little treasure trove of reminiscences.

In our culture, our age is viewed as some kind of disease that, if we just keep treating it, might be defeated or go away altogether. Like we can somehow push back the edges of mortality. The only thing we’re pushing back is the edges of our acceptance of the gifts of time and the physical limitations that make the interior gifts more precious.

So you’ve got a year or two on your friends. So you’ve got a wrinkle or two. So your hair is changing color and your body is giving you fits. No matter. Age is a gift from the hand of God. Any measure of health to enjoy your age is a gift from God. The memories you’ve made along the way are precious and priceless. Thank God for every year he’s given you.

As we end this year and approach a new year let us give thanks for the wrinkles. Yes, I said give thanks for those wrinkles. With each comes a lesson, a love story and perhaps even a blessing. We have earned them. We should not shun them or hide our face from Him. He made us the way we are...and we are beautiful in His sight.

Lord, I thank you for all your gifts and blessings. You are so good to us! Even in our worst times you are there for us. Help us not to look down on our age but to be able to step up and share our wisdom and give you all the glory. Help us to teach the younger women to know that You are our God!

Even to your old age and gray hairs I am He, I am He who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you. —Isaiah 46:4 _NIV

Inner Beauty

Alicia Durden spoke at our Ladies Day yesterday, Sept 21st on Inner Beauty and it was a truly wonderful time to be together for women of God. She really touched all who were present with her spiritual look at beauty. God did not create us to be timid or shy...He made each of us beautiful!

“No matter how plain a woman may be, if truth and honesty are written across her face, she will be beautiful.” 

― Eleanor Roosevelt

Worship the Lord

Worship is an act of religious devotion usually directed towards a deity. The word is derived from the Old English worthscipe, meaning worthiness or worth-ship—to give, at its simplest, worth to something.[1]

Evelyn Underhill (1946) defines worship thus: "The absolute acknowledgment of all that lies beyond us—the glory that fills heaven and earth. It is the response that conscious beings make to their Creator, to the Eternal Reality from which they came forth; to God, however they may think of Him or recognize Him, and whether He be realized through religion, through nature, through history, through science, art, or human life and character."[2] Worship asserts the reality of its object and defines its meaning by reference to it.[3]

An act of worship may be performed individually, in an informal or formal group, or by a designated leader.

Matthew 4:10
Jesus said to him, "Away from me, Satan! For it is written: 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.'"

Here I am Lord, Send Me...Isaiah 6:8

Softly and Tenderly-Music Video

Click on the title and go to see a beautiful video of a mission in Africa.

Labor Day - A History Lesson

Labor Day: How it Came About; What it Means

Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.

Founder of Labor Day

More than 100 years after the first Labor Day observance, there is still some doubt as to who first proposed the holiday for workers.

Some records show that Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a cofounder of the American Federation of Labor, was first in suggesting a day to honor those "who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold."

But Peter McGuire's place in Labor Day history has not gone unchallenged. Many believe that Matthew Maguire, a machinist, not Peter McGuire, founded the holiday. Recent research seems to support the contention that Matthew Maguire, later the secretary of Local 344 of the International Association of Machinists in Paterson, N.J., proposed the holiday in 1882 while serving as secretary of the Central Labor Union in New York. What is clear is that the Central Labor Union adopted a Labor Day proposal and appointed a committee to plan a demonstration and picnic.

The First Labor Day

The first Labor Day holiday was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City, in accordance with the plans of the Central Labor Union. The Central Labor Union held its second Labor Day holiday just a year later, on September 5, 1883.

In 1884 the first Monday in September was selected as the holiday, as originally proposed, and the Central Labor Union urged similar organizations in other cities to follow the example of New York and celebrate a "workingmen's holiday" on that date. The idea spread with the growth of labor organizations, and in 1885 Labor Day was celebrated in many industrial centers of the country.

Enjoy your Labor Day Weekend! Hope to see you at church.