Years ago I was giving a professional presentation. It was a proud moment – to have the attention of my industry peers, to be the expert in my field. The room had a mirrored wall in the back, and several people had laptops open in front of them. As I was presenting, I noticed through the reflection of the mirror that one of the attendees was playing solitaire on his computer! I guess what I was saying wasn’t as important as I thought.
Pride creeps into almost everything we do, yet in Psalm 131 the Psalmist gives us a beautiful image of humility starting with “O Lord, my heart is not proud.” The doe and fawn in the picture convey a beautiful and quiet humility.
What could be more content than the weaned child resting against its mother?
Dear Lord, help me to compose and quiet my soul. Let my heart not be proud. Help me to hope in you from this time and forever.
I hope you have been blessed by Psalm 131 and the accompanying image taken from the Psalm Daily Quotes NASB iPhone app.Please visit our blog, twitter, or Facebook page regularly and pass these posts on to friends that need an encouraging word.
The image matched with this quote certainly shows what look like “giant walls” which fits nicely with Spurgeon’s quote. The word munitions normally implies materials used in war, but a second more general meaning is “material or equipment for carrying on any undertaking.” Lord, help us to be secure in whatever task you have planned for us.
I hope you have been blessed by this quote and the accompanying image taken from the Spurgeon Daily Quotes iPhone app. Please visit our blog, twitter, or Facebook page regularly and pass these posts on to friends that need an encouraging word.
Maybe it’s just a “guy thing,” but have you ever witnessed a sporting event where the winner shouts in triumph, waving fists in the air? Game winning touchdowns are one example that comes to mind.
Meanwhile, the defensive players shake their heads in disbelief and pitifully walk off the field, heads down and shoulders slouched. This is about the best I can do with Psalm 41 for a cultural analogy.
In ancient days, if your enemy was shouting in triumph over you, it was because you were dead! The battle was lost, it was over. At least in football, you live to play another day.
What about integrity? Can I stand before God and man with a clear conscience? Did I play a fair game? Are my business dealings honest? Can I praise the Lord, no matter what happens? This is what God desires.
I don’t think that God promises that I will “triumph” in everything according to my desires. I won’t win every game, or make millions on every business deal. But I can say that God’s purposes will be accomplished and that God will triumph.
Through it all have I walked in integrity, and can I praise God in all things? Do I depend on the Lord and look to Him, as the baby seal in the picture depends on it’s mother?
Dear Lord, Many times I have fallen short, and have not walked in integrity. I look to you for help and strength, and I praise you in all things. I especially thank you that Jesus walked in integrity, and can offer forgiveness and salvation, which I now accept. Amen.
I hope you have been blessed by Psalm 41 and the accompanying image taken from the Psalm Daily Quotes ESV iPhone app. Please visit our blog, twitter, or Facebook page regularly and pass these posts on to friends that need an encouraging word.
Gentle Reader,
I have a special treat for you today. Below is an article from the Will Rogers Memorial Museum website about Will Rogers and his passion for Christmas.
Here is the original link for the article: Will Rogers Christmas. Enjoy!
CLAREMORE — Will Rogers never outgrew the child’s passion for the Christmas holiday. Traveling the world as an actor or cowboy or at home in California with his children, the season took on a special sense, one of joy and sharing with family and friends.
It’s been 80 years, but one Christmas remains vivid for Coke Meyer of Bartlesville, Will’s great-niece. One of Coke’s earliest memories of Christmas was made special by her Uncle Will. She was six and living with her ailing grandmother Maude Rogers Lane in Chelsea.
“I’ll never forget he sent electric lights from New York … No one in Chelsea had ever even heard of lights on trees, except candles and then with care,” she said.
Her father, Chelsea pharmacist Cap Lane, and Monday, a preacher for a black church and the man “who helped Granny in her dairy,” decorated a tree at the end of the lane at the gracious Lane home on Chelsea’s east side.
Coke remembers spending two days moving the mechanical hospital bed Will had sent for Mrs. Lane, relocating her to the “tower room” where she could see the tree. The grandchildren helped fill sacks with and an orange and candy to be distributed to those who stood beneath the window and sang Christmas carols. Mrs. Lane died five months later.
While Will never came home for the holiday after she was born, Coke and her cousin Tim Milam remember his generous Christmas checks. Checks were made personally to the older ones. “He could never remember the last name of cousin Lasca, so he just wrote Lasca on a check and sent it to Dad, who would forward it,” Coke reminisced.
“We always took our money and bought a new pair of shoes, then pooled the rest for a summer vacation.”
Like many men, Will was a last minute shopper. In a book written by his wife, Betty, she tells how he did his own shopping, “usually the day before Christmas.” Remembering everyone who worked for or with him, he would come home with “mountains of toys and clothing” and spend Christmas Eve wrapping gifts.
Often on Christmas Day, the family would retreat to a little log cabin on their property, where they could spend the day in seclusion. The children took turns at being Santa. Once when it was Mary’s turn, she fixed her pony with Christmas trappings, packed a sack and rode the pony into the house.
Only once after his marriage was Will away from home. He sent gifts home in 1931, then spent a lonely Christmas in Shanghai.
His first Christmas gift to Betty was a “little lace handkerchief” sent the winter after he had taken her to Chelsea to meet his family. He was away from home, but sent her the gift he had carried with him since purchasing it in Africa years before while buying lace and needlework for his sisters.
He had been saving it for a special time. The old Indian lady he bought the lace from gave him the handkerchief and asked if he was married. When he said no, she told him to give it to his wife when he married.
He carried it with him through Africa, through Australia, and then home, always intending to do as the old woman said. That year, just a few years before he and Betty were married in 1908, he decided it was for her.
I hope you have enjoyed this article from the Will Rogers Memorial Museum website. Please visit the Systems of Merritt blog, twitter, or Facebook page regularly and pass these posts on to friends that might enjoy a bit of wisdom from Will Rogers.
This is one of Will Rogers’ most famous quotes, and it’s probably just as true today as in 1930.
I hope you have enjoyed this quote from Will Rogers and the accompanying image taken from the Will Rogers iPhone app. Please visit our blog, twitter, or Facebook page regularly and pass these posts on to friends that might enjoy a bit of wisdom from Will Rogers.
Will Rogers delivers another zinger with this quote. He had a genius for teasing politicians without offending. We also find Rogers’ quotes as relevant today as they were in the 1930s. I don’t like to fish myself, but I’m sure that if I did it would keep me out of trouble!
I took this picture at the Will Rogers Memorial Museum in Claremore, OK this spring. It was a beautiful sunrise behind the statue of Will Rogers.
The museum is a great family destination. The exhibits are great. I couldn’t walk by one of the video exhibits without stopping to watch for a few minutes. It featured a movie showing some of Will Rogers’ roping tricks. Some of his tricks have never been duplicated.
I spent three days in the archives collecting images for the iPhone app. The staff was great and without their help the project wouldn’t have been possible.
I hope you have enjoyed this quote from Will Rogers and the accompanying image taken from the Will Rogers iPhone app. Please visit our blog, twitter, or Facebook page regularly and pass these posts on to friends that might enjoy a bit of wisdom from Will Rogers.
We don’t think much about the importance of rivers today, as we drive comfortably across bridges in air conditioned cars sipping from a bottle of clean water. To folks in the 19th century and earlier, rivers were their source of life-giving water.
To have convenient access to a clean, clear, abundant supply of river water was a great blessing to ancient people. The psalmist tells us that in heaven there will be a “river whose streams will make glad the city of God.”
As a fallen person in a fallen world, I don’t deserve such a blessing as a place beside life-giving waters. I will never find such a place under my own strength or efforts. What can I do?
It is God’s undeserved saving grace through the work and sacrifice of his son Jesus that makes such blessings possible. Come to the river and enjoy the blessings of the water.
Dear Lord, I am thirsty for your water. I need your grace. Lead me, Jesus, to the river that gives life, both in this world and in heaven. Amen.
I hope you have been blessed by Psalm 46 and the accompanying image taken from the Psalm Daily Quotes ESV iPhone app. Please visit our blog, twitter, or Facebook page regularly and pass these posts on to friends that need an encouraging word.
Folks, you just gotta love Will Rogers! Here’s a classic quote about war and the Federal Reserve from 1929 that still rings true today.
The Federal Reserve (The Fed) is responsible for conducting the nation’s monetary policy to help maintain employment, keep prices stable, and keep interest rates relatively low. The poor folks running The Fed have their hands full, with the prices of corn, grits and gas going up, unemployment going up, and who knows what’s going to happen with inflation and interest rates.
The Fed has to react to an administrations that is trying to run the economy by stimulatin’, regulatin’, legislatin’, and bloviatin’. Businesses don’t know where the administration will strike next.
They tried to stimulate the economy with “shovel-ready jobs,” but the president just admitted that they weren’t quite as “shovel-ready as we expected.” The EPA is going bonkers with new regulations to eliminate the threat of “global warming” by shutting down the coal and oil industry. Congress passed unconstitutional health care legislation which threatens to destroy the best health care system in the world. The bloviator-in-chief keeps proclaiming “recovery” while the vice-bloviator famously proclaimed: “Just because the stimulus was a monumental failure, doesn’t mean it’s not working.”
And what about war, or wars? This gets a bit confusing these days. Depending on how you define “hostilities” we might be in two, three or four wars. Our Nobel-Peace-Prize-Winner-in-Chief wants us to refrain from “torturing” captured enemy terrorists with water-boarding, but putting a bullet in the brain of a Osama bin Laden is ok. What’s a business to do? If you manufacture water-boards, you are going out of business, but if you make bullets you will survive.
Will Rogers is right, again! Businesses are on a wild roller coaster ride, just tryin’ to stay on the tracks. They’re watching The Fed closely and hoping we don’t get into yet another war, or even another “hostility.”
In this image, Will Rogers is holding his son and spinning his lasso at the same time.
The image was taken directly from pictures at the Will Rogers Memorial Museum archive. I apologize for the quality of the image, but this is exactly what the 1920s photo looked like when I scanned it. In the hundreds of images contained in this iPhone application, I wanted to share as many different Will Rogers photos as possible from as wide a variety of times and situations – movies, cowboy, vaudeville, with famous people, and family scenes.
Will Rogers is a man worth remembering, and quoting. His wit, humor and insight into life will amaze and astonish you. His life will inspire you. Watch for new blog posts from my Will Rogers quotes collection.
I hope you have enjoyed this quote from Will Rogers and the accompanying image taken from the Will Rogers Daily Quotes iPhone app. Please visit our blog, twitter, or Facebook page regularly and pass these posts on to friends that might enjoy a bit of wisdom from Will Rogers.
Why would God not delight in sacrifice and offerings? After all, He had set up the sacrificial system to provide His people with a means of dealing with their sins.
The Psalmist makes it clear that our delight should be to do God’s will, and that it should be written on our hearts. Going through the motions of obedience is not enough, it must be from sincere motives and delight in God’s law.
You’ve probably heard the story about the child that was disciplined by his parents, and told to go sit in the corner. His response was: “I may be sitting down on the outside, but I’m standing on the inside.” I can remember a few of those occasions, can you?
Jesus always seemed to deal with people in a way that touched them right at the heart of their motives and needs. We can think of the “Rich Young Ruler,” “The Prodigal Son,” and many other parables and miracles. Jesus’ dealings with people in the Bible were so intimate that no miracle or healing is ever duplicated exactly.
So it is that Jesus touches me, right at the heart of my motivations, so that I may know how much he loves me. As he teaches me to delight in His will, I can only respond with my obedience.
Dear Lord, In your mercy, help me to delight more and more in your will. As I read the Scriptures, let your law become written on my heart. Jesus, please work in my heart, that I may understand your great salvation. Amen.
I hope you have been blessed by Psalm 40 and the accompanying image taken from the Psalm Daily Quotes ESV iPhone app. Please visit our blog, twitter, or Facebook page regularly and pass these posts on to friends that need an encouraging word.
Will RogersIn 1932 Will Rogers predicted that it would take taxpayers 50 years to pay for all the massive appropriations of his day. How could he have been so wrong? It’s 75 years later now and we are still paying for massive social programs put into place during the Roosevelt years.
Not only that, but new programs and mandates have been put into place since then. We’re still fighting the “War on Poverty,” and it doesn’t appear that, after all the money invested, that we are winning.
Year after year, the programs grow bigger and bigger, the benefits grow more numerous, more participants qualify, and the scale of related fraudulent activity is staggering.
Nobody ever questions if the programs are successful in meeting their stated goals and reform is regularly voted down. The only measurement seems to be the amount of new money appropriated each year and the good intentions of the supporting sponsors.
Well, we’re the kids that are paying for the “great ideas” and good intentions of the 1930’s and it looks like our kids will be paying for the good intentions of the current administration. Seems like Will Rogers was right. The votes are getting more and more expensive.
Will Rogers is a man worth remembering, and quoting. His wit, humor and insight into life will amaze and astonish you. His life will inspire you. Watch for new blog posts from my Will Rogers quotes collection.
I hope you have enjoyed this quote from Will Rogers and the accompanying image taken from the Will Rogers iPhone app. Please visit our blog, twitter, or Facebook page regularly and pass these posts on to friends that might enjoy a bit of wisdom from Will Rogers.
Will RogersCongressmen used to carry home suitcases stuffed with cash, but today it’s all done electronically. So much money is flowing out of Washington, it like a dam burst and flooded the entire valley.
There’s a $700 billion wall of money roaring down the valley covering the countryside with cash. The original allocation was designed to rescue the banking industry. About 3 months after passage, almost $300 billion of TARP funds had been spent.
There’s a tiny little problem with the program – nobody actually knows how the program is being run and where the money is going. Of over 300 banks receiving funds only two were required to detail how the money was to be spent.
Another tiny little problem is that instead of banks lending the money (the original intent), banks are hoarding cash and tightening lending because of market uncertainty.
It turns out that to run a program that massive, you need to hire more accountants, financial analysts, managers and hog callers by numbers greater than all the head of cattle in Oklahoma.
Let’s summarize. We don’t know where most of the money went. The money we do know about isn’t being used for the purpose intended, and oh yes, there is concern about fraud.
Well I guess we just need to trust these great statesmen on the banking committee and at the treasury. They are smart people and I just know they are putting all that taxpayer money to good use. As a statesman, it’s all about good intentions.
Well, the dam has burst and there’s no money left in reserve. It’s all gone, but we sure have a bunch of statesmen, by Will Rogers definition.
Reference: Where’s all the TARP Money? Forbs.com
Will Rogers is a man worth remembering, and quoting. His wit, humor and insight into life will amaze and astonish you. His life will inspire you. Watch for new blog posts from my Will Rogers quotes collection.
I hope you have enjoyed this quote from Will Rogers and the accompanying image taken from the Will Rogers iPhone app. Please visit our blog, twitter, or Facebook page regularly and pass these posts on to friends that might enjoy a bit of wisdom from Will Rogers.
It constantly amazes me that the Psalmist can capture our deepest emotions in words across the ages. “Out of the depths” describes so many situations in my life – financial problems, relationship issues, dangerous situations, etc. “Lord, hear my voice!”
But, I also know that God is a holy God. I don’t want to approach Him when I am ashamed of the sin in my life. It takes faith to believe that “there is forgiveness with You,” as the Psalmist says. We know that forgiveness before God comes from the work of Jesus on the cross.
It’s hard to have faith from the depths, but God hasn’t left us alone. The Holy Spirit can help us and comfort us – he can even give us the faith we need. The image on the left is from a deep canyon filled with broken rocks. Let’s ask the Lord to help lift us up and set things right.
Dear Lord, out of the depths I call upon you! Give me the faith to believe you have provided forgiveness through Christ. Help me through these difficult situations. Amen.
I hope you have been blessed by Psalm 130 and the accompanying image taken from the Psalm Daily Quotes NASB iPhone app. Please visit our blog, twitter, or Facebook page regularly and pass these posts on to friends that need an encouraging word.
Psalm 3 8Salvation belongeth unto the LORD: thy blessing is upon thy people.
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Affliction is a relative thing. For some believers it means giving up their lives under severe persecutions. For others, they may loose all their possessions or be thrown in jail. For me, it may be a more trivial affliction, such as a temporary financial problem, relationship difficulty, or health problem.
Whether the affliction is great or small, whether the faith is little or great, God grants “sufficient grace” to carry us through. The result is we find new strength to endure, and a growing faith.
One thing to realize is that this growing strength isn’t like lifting weights, it’s not the result of our own work. Our sin-stained efforts are only effective because of the work of the Holy Spirit in us. It makes grace all the more precious and gives us more reason to praise God for his mercy.
I am always drawn to he cross of Christ as an example. Here was the most extreme affliction of physical suffering a human could be subjected to. In addition to the physical affliction, Christ bore my sins as well. If Jesus did that for me, then he understands my afflictions, and can bring me aid.
Dear Lord, When I am afflicted, help me to understand that you provide sufficient grace to help increase my strength. No matter the circumstance, there is always reason to praise you. Amen
I hope you have been blessed by this quote and the accompanying image taken from the Spurgeon Daily Quotes iPhone app. Please visit our blog, twitter, or Facebook page regularly and pass these posts on to friends that need an encouraging word.
Will RogersPoliticians calling each other names isn’t anything new, especially during elections. This season the women were hit pretty hard, being called witch and prostitute. According to Will Rogers, you can sling mud and call names all day long, but you better beware of slandering wild jackasses. Can you imagine the Senate chamber full of …
In the midst of a difficult trial or physical sickness, I ask the question, along with the Psalmist: “Where is my God.” Unbelievers love to press that same question since they know that God doesn’t exist in this physical realm, in the sense that we don’t see him with our eyes or hear him with …
I was at a conference earlier this year near Rochester, NY, and during one of the morning sessions we felt the room start moving. It took a minute for it to register, but we had just felt the effects of an earthquake. There was no damage, but the moving and rolling feelings were unmistakable and …
There’s a lot of gloom these days. Uncertainty over the future of our country in a dangerous world. We are concerned about crime. Leaders don’t seems to have common sense answers. Psalm 99 helps us to put things in perspective: “The Lord reigns!” It seems so simple – but it’s true. All through the Scriptures …
Will RogersYou’re not going to believe this, but my birthday is October 31. When I was a kid I remember getting dressed up for trick-or-treat. Actually, the costume was important for one thing, access to candy. When it was all over, the costume came off and I enjoyed the fruit of my labor. I think …
My grandmother was well into her 90s when we gathered around her. It would be the last time I would see her in this life. She looked up at me, smiling, her blue eyes twinkling, and said: “I’m ready to go.” I’ll never forget that moment. My uncle told me that the short time she …
The mules were hee-hawing the other day in the lower chamber – I mean lower stall. They were kicking and bucking something terrible. There was so much commotion and noise that there wasn’t even a need for microphones – you could hear ’em clear across town. They was all bunched up in groups, trading oats …
Will RogersThose poor Democrats just couldn’t get their message out. They raided the National Treasury for enough “stimulus” loot to build a highway to the moon and back, and borrowed enough money for Amtrack rails and trains to Mars. Did the voters appreciate being showered with all those billions? Apparently not. I think that the …
Sons of Korah Psalms Those of you that follow this blog know how special the Psalms are and the blessing they can have on your life. Recently, the Sons of Korah held a concert at our church here in Upland, Indiana. They have put the Psalms to music, which adds a new dimension to the …
Will RogersLame ducks have been seen waddling down the halls of Congress lately. Unfortunately for these birds, there isn’t any more loot left in the National Treasury. There’s not even enough for a bridge to nowhere or a new post office building with their name on it. All the quacking and flapping around to raise …
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