I was curious tonight, and I found the church at which my favorite former singles pastor is now senior pastor. The church is located in Phoenix, Arizona. If you live in Phoenix, go to this church! You'll be blessed beyond belief :D
Phoenix Calvary Temple
One of my favorite songs is Testify to Love by Avalon. As I was driving to work this morning it came on K-Love. Usually I have a great time singing along with it, but this morning as I began singing along, I choked up and began to cry.
One of my favorite episodes of Touched By An Angel had Wynona Judd as the guest star. She played the mom of a young boy who was dying of an incurable disease. She'd been a songwriter, and had been in the process of writing a song when her son was diagnosed. She gave that up to do other work in order to provide for her son. The writers had her character writing the song, "Testify to Love".
The character of her son was a very sweet and generous young man, and he knew he was dying and accepted that with grace. His best friend helped him come up with a list of things he wanted to see happen before he died, and one of the things was for his mom to finish writing this song.
His mom didn't want to finish the song, because it seemed she felt that if she finished it her son would finally die. Monica was sent to help her (oh, man! As I'm writing this entry the song just came on the radio on The Fish! :O )
Anyway, Monica was sent to help her face her son's death, and part of her assignment was to help her finish writing this song.
Wynona's character finally realized how much finishing the song meant to her son, and sat down and finished it.
At the end of the show she had a concert for her son, and people from all over the town showed up at her house, along with a gospel choir, and Wynona sang the song.
Her son was beaming during the song, and as the song came to an end, he died :(
Cheesy, I know, but also very touching. It made me cry, and now whenever I hear that song I think of that show.
I'm not sure why the song made me cry this morning...maybe because of the idea of still testifying of God's love even as the mom faced the loss of her son, of staying true even during difficult times and proclaiming the goodness, mercy, grace and love of God no matter what.
As Job said, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him."
May we also trust Him even when times are bad and hope seems a distant thing!
Thanks to a friend, I have a goal for the next 60 days...to read 20 chapters of the Bible each day, until I've read it completely through. There are 1,189 chapters that make up 66 books, and if I read 20 a day I can finish the Bible in 60 days
I made it to chapter 36 during my lunch and finished the last 4 during my afternoon break.
My office moved to a new location last week, and a once 10 minute commute is now about 30 minutes in the morning and 40 minutes in the evening. It's a bit of an adjustment, but it could be worse!
One nice benefit is that a fitness center offers discounts to employees working at my new location, with no registration fee and no contract. I think I'm going to take them up on that and join, and begin working out regularly, starting with using the treadmill for about a month to get back into being used to being active, and then adding other equipment to my routine.
The heater in the building hasn't worked since a water main broke a couple of weeks ago and the boiler broke. The water main is finally fixed and today they've been working on the heat. It was a balmy 59°
inside the buidling this morning, and got up to a warm 64°
It seemed to be fixed as 5pm approached.
Another thing I'm thankful for at the new location of my office is that I finally get reception of a Christian radio station and can listen to it all day. I do wish I got reception of AirOne or K-Love, but The Fish is better than nothing
AirOne would be best, though
Hey, look who has a new entry in her blog!
Thanksgiving was nice and relaxing this year. On Thursday my sister and her two little ones came to my house for the day, and we had a leisurely time of watching a couple of movies (Ella Enchanted and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers) while I cooked dinner. The menu was simple: turkey breast cooked in the crockpot, a New England Apple Nut stuffing, green bean casserole, sweet potato casserole, El Torito corn cake, a zucchini and rice casserole, cranberries, roasted garlic mashed potatos, pumpkin pie and apple bramble crumble
(Email me if you're interested in the recipes)
Ariel turned 4 this year, and it's the first year she's really recognized the holiday season. She was squealing with excitement during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and had a grand time playing with the velvet poster to color in with markers and the Disney Princess stickers and the glow stick jewelry
My sister and the kids left a little after 6pm and I cleaned up the trash (we ate off paper plates with plastic utensils and I cooked in foil pans), took a shower, caught up in
CW Forums, and went to bed a little after 8pm. I was tired!
Friday was a mellow day - I washed most of the dishes left from Thursday and spent the day reading and watching weekday daytime TV - Dr. Phil, People's Court, Judge Judy. Fascinating! I'm not really missing much at work
On Saturday my mom and stepdad were having a small get together for those who wanted to attend. I wanted to sleep in, but woke up around 630am to the sound of rain. It was so nice! I wandered out to the living room and laid down on the couch to enjoy cuddling with R&B and the early morning stillness and the rain
It was nice!
I finally got up, got ready and left for my mom and stepdad's, arriving a little after 10am. We had a very nice day visiting, playing Monopoly and watching Pirates of the Carribean
I got home around 8pm and finally made it to bed a bit after 2am, after enjoying a phone conversation with a favorite person
Sunday was really fun - I headed to my sister's church - Adventure of Natomas - for the dedication of Ariel and Eli, then saw the house she's moving into this week. There's a neat story with that - she needed to move by Dec. 1st, and has been looking diligently for about 2 weeks, with nothing working out yet. On Saturday she stopped to look at this house even though she'd originally planned to not do so, and after looking at the house, the owner offered it to her right then and there! He's a Christian and I guess he was impressed with my sister and felt comfortable with her. It's a great house, near Arco Arena, brand new with a Tuscan feel to the exterior. My sister feels tremendously blessed, and I'm happy for her. She's been going through a difficult time and has needed something like this to happen. God is providing, and I'm thankful
It's hard to believe December is looming on the horizon and Christmas isn't far off. It's time to get out my small 3' fiberoptic artifical tree and do some decorating for Christmas, to get those 50+ Christmas cards done and mailed and to buy gifts for my loved ones
It truly is the most wonderful time of the year!
