March 11, 2010

Verse of the Day
"Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your life-span?" Matthew 6:27

Song of the Day
Hold On To Jesus by Steven Curtis Chapman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzi_JwTuXds

Food
Curly's godfather stopped over to teach the kids a mini-lesson on Spanish. He happened to bring 4 chocolate chip cookies with him for the kids. There was excitement, but no fight. They just wanted to know if they could freeze them for later, which of course we did.

Also, at dinner when I pulled out the canned peaches and pears (getting low on fresh fruit and need to go to the store), the kids were so excited you would have thought I pulled out vanilla cupcakes. So, that's a good sign. They never were excited about it before.

"Stuff" Detachment
Hit the glasses cabinet today. Put all the crummy plastic glasses on the counter and told the kids each to pick two. So, I threw away 4 plastic glasses that did nothing, but make my trip into the cabinet all the more treacherous because it was so jam packed.

Just a side note for anyone out there who loves to find great deals on things and then donate them. JcPenney's at Rosedale had girls purple gloves by the checkout in the kids department, decent nice thick gloves that go high up on the wrist, normally $14.99, now clearanced to $.97. I picked up a few to donate, but they had a whole rack, probably about 50-100. I wish I could have got them all and brought them down to Sharing and Caring Hands. Winter will come again and there will be people who need gloves down there. So, I just thought I would mention it, in case the Holy Spirit wanted to inspire anyone out there.

Spiritual Growth
In Searching for and Maintaining Peace, Fr. Jacques Philippe goes on "The most common reason for which we could lose our sense of peace is a fear caused by certain situations which touch us personally and in which we feel threatened, apprehensions in the face of present or future difficulties, fear of lacking something important, of not succeeding in such and such a project, and so forth. The examples are infinite and touch all sectors of our lives: health, family and professional life, moral life and the spiritual life itself. . . And the restlessness generated by this lack, or the fear of lacking, causes us to lose our peace. Faced with such a situation, what, then, could allow us to remain always at peace?"

He goes on to remind us that we are never assured of obtaining anything and everything which we hold can easily slip away. The surest way to lose peace is to rely solely on oneself. The solution is simple but difficult. We must rely on God alone, with total trust in Him.

"Man does not have confidence in God. Hence he looks in every possible place to extricate himself by his own resources and renders himself terribly unhappy in the process rather than abandon himself into the tender and saving hands of his Father in heaven. Yet, how unjustified this lack of confidence is! Isn't it absurd that a child would thus doubt his Father, when this Father is the best and most powerful Who could exist, when He is the Father in heaven? In spite of that, it is in this absurdity that we most frequently live."

"How many young people, for example, hesitate to give their lives entirely to God because they do not have confidence that God is capable of making them completely happy. And they seek to assure their own happiness by themselves and they make themselves sad and unhappy in the process."

Fr. Philippe ends this section explaining that this is precisely the great victory of the Father of Lies, of the Accuser; to succeed in putting into the heart of a child of God distrust of his Father.

Tomorrow (or soon there after): Our Difficulty in Believing in Providence

Today's Menu
Breakfast: Flour tortillas filled with scrambled eggs and melted cheese, applesauce

Lunch: Frozen cheese pizza, apples with natural peanut butter

Snack: More apples some with natural peanut butter

Dinner: Hamburgers with buns, french fries, green beans, canned peaches and pears in their own juice