Turn your eyes upon Jesus Look full in His wonderful face And the things of earth will grow strangely dim In the light of His glory and grace.
O soul, are you weary and troubled? No light at the darkness you see? There’s light for a look at the savior, And life more abundant and free…
Dear Lord,
Go to this world that is dying. Come to us who are sad and sighing. Come to us who are weary and worried. Just calm all of us who are hurried.
We come as we are to your alter, Knowing without You, we falter. Take what is broken and mend it. Take was is wounded. heal and tend it.
Hold those who are desperate; rescue us. Fill those who are empty; You treasure us. We know we are guilty, so pardon us. Help us to grow love as You garden us.
Help us grow the fruit of compassion. Where you find hate, please refashion. Take what you see and improve us, Let your Holy Spirit truly move us.
Move us to love unity and justice. Don’t let divisions and rhetoric bust us. Make us strong, wise and actively trying To restore peace to earth. We are crying.
Crying for healing and restoration. Crying for prejudice’s elimination. Crying for every adult and child To adopt Christ’s ways, which are mild.
Turn your eyes upon Jesus Look full in His wonderful face And the things of earth will grow strangely dim In the light of His glory and grace.
My 2020 resolution is to “Walk the Talk.” It is a daily commitment. What was your 2020 resolution?
Try to “Walk the Talk.” Try to live your commitments. Express them daily.
Today I walked with my TOPS friends. Here are two of them with me: Cherrie & Jeannie. We walked in our Lion’s Club Park. Did a lot of talking as we walked. Tried to solve all the world’s problems!
Valais, Switzerland
No, this isn’t my walking path… it’s my daughter, DeAna’s, in Sierre, Switzerland. She walks this trail up into the Alps – often joined by one or two of her three sons. Yesterday she sent this photo. Our grandson, Chris, was her walking partner.
DeAna “walked the talk” with Chrissy as they navigated the trail on the terraced mountainsides and enjoyed the outdoor time together.
Here is DeAna, our daughter, with her new haircut. No, she’s not in Paris. That’s just her “photo op!”
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And before that haircut:
She says she’d like to be on a tropical island! I’d say being in Switzerland is not a bad option!
Today De’s walk was with Christine, a friend who was one of their waitresses for almost 20 years in the restaurant they once owned on main street in Sierre.
Christine – on the balcony overlooking the Swiss valley
Half way up the Alps from their city is a beautiful little place called Vissoie, De and Andre’ have purchased a new restaurant… new to them, but with a long history in this Alpine village.
It has that typical Swiss chalet appearance with a hotel attached above and on the right. They take possession in October, I think.
Isn’t this an inviting spot? As they plan for this new venture, they get to “Walk the Talk” of trust. Trust that this pandemic world will not always keep people sequestered and afraid to go out and dine together. Trust that the people of Vissoie and the surrounding communities will accept them and frequent their dining hall. Trust that visitors will stay in their hotel.
My prayers are with them, of course, as I encourage them in this exciting new time on their lives.
Lion’s Club Park, Ennis, Montana
As my lady friends and I walked the trail in our beautiful park, we talked about family, commitments, future events, the racial injustice that is sparking protests all over the USA, and the COVID-19 situation that is far from over.
My goal is encouragement and positivity. I share my faith here on WordPress, and I share the Source of my Joy with my walking friends.
Each man as my brother, Each woman as my sister Each one as my friend We need one another…
When I was in college back in the late 50s and early 60s, we sang this song in the A Cappella choir at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. I loved it then. I love it even more now. We need it!!
We need one another So I will defend Each man as my brother, Each man as my friend.
Each woman as my sister, Each one as my friend.
Lord, heal our nation. Almighty God, step in and heal our divisions. Help us understand our Oneness. Help us just LOVE ONE ANOTHER!!
Lie down, my friends. Put your feet up. Fold your hands. Click that arrow up there – And pray this as a prayer with me As we sing that song together,
“No man is an island… No man stands alone, Each man’s joy is joy to me Each man’s grief is my own. We need one another, So I will defend Each man as my brother, Each man as my friend.” Each woman as my sister, With love that knows no end.
Beth Guckenberger, from her book, Reckless Faith: Let Go and Be Led,
“Hope is reborn in the form of faith, faith that God will take over, even if you can’t see how.”
Rest in that thought!!
You are in my thoughts, in my prayers, in my heart. Bee well. Just love!
For the beauty of the earth, For the glory of the skies, For the love which from our birth Over and around us lies:
CHORUS: Lord of all, to Thee we raise This our hymn of grateful praise
Pray with me:
Lord of all, to Thee we raise This our voice of righteous rage. Hear our anguish, hear our pleas. See us down on bended knees.
We are angered and hurting now By the lack of love that somehow Has made life unfair for our brothers, Made life a nightmare for too many mothers.
The hymn says we are supposed to have Love “from our birth.” We need a salve To spread that love to ALL our kin. We all are one – and we all live in sin.
It is the sin of overlooking The hatred and the needless booking, The deaths and harassment many face, The fear and hatred in this place.
Take away our bent toward sinning. Take away our need to be winning An upperhand when we all are ONE, ONE in Christ, Your Saving Son.
Check out this heart-wrenching account of what it means to be a black man in today’s divided, prejudice-filled society. God bless R. Eric Thomas and all those who feel the injustice he experiences:
It Does Not Matter If You Are Good
On Omar Jimenez, George Floyd, Christian Cooper and the myth of being non-threatening by R. Eric Thomas
R Eric Thomas is a Senior Staff Writer at ELLE.com,
Love is power within us all – Do not let it be silent!
For the beauty of each hour, Of the day and of the night, Hill and vale and tree and flower, Sun and moon and stars of light:
Lord of all, to Thee we raise This our voice of grateful praise.
For the joy of ear and eye, For the heart and mind’s delight, For the mystic harmony Linking sense to to sound and sight:
Lord of all to Thee we raise This our song of grateful praise.
Look at the earth and all our blessings. Let us thank God:
“All things come of Thee… Help us, Lord, to be grateful And to share our love and joy freely With ALL God’s children.”
This rampant racism and blatant injustice must stop!
Pray for “Giant George” (nicknamed “Big Floyd”) and his family.
Reread MLK’s “I Have a Dream.”
It’s well overdue.
I Have a Dream
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his iconic speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28th, 1963. Fifty-seven years later, it is time to revisit this unfulfilled dream. LET’S MAKE THIS DREAM COME TRUE!! Be a catalyst for long overdue change and racial equality. Let’s reach out, dissolve all divides, and just love one another!!!!
Time to revisit Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s dream, hear his peaceful pursuit of racial equality, and time to MAKE THIS DREAM A REALITY!
(The bold print in this speech are my emphasis. I feel those statements are so appropriate to the injustice and the reactions seen today – May 29, 2020… a sad time in America’s history amidst this George Floyd travesty and the COVID-19 that sees not color or class, but preys on areas of density and poverty).
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“Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
But 100 years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land.
And so we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men – yes, black men as well as white men – would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds.
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
We have also come to his hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice.
Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. 1963 is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual…
But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence.
Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom…
There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, when will you be satisfied? We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality…
We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote.
No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream. …
So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day down in Alabama … little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.
With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning: My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrims’ pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. But not only that, let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when we see this happen, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last.”
Here is American civil rights leader Martin Luther King (1929 – 1968) as he addressed crowds during the March On Washington at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington DC, in 1963 where he gave his ‘I Have A Dream’ speech.
Do not let Martin Luther King Jr’s dream die. Do not let George Floyd’s death be in vain. Let your righteous anger spur you to action. Pray that God will show us what He wants us to do next in the memory and honor of MLK,Jr. and “Big Floyd.” Make their lives count. Make the dream a reality!
Let God tell you, “You are not alone.” Let God gently hold you. Let God listen to your pain and sing your worries away. Let God remove the darkness. Remember, He accepts you as you are. God is nature. He created the earth and you. You are never alone.
God bless you, dear friends. Listen to His healing words of love and let Him hold you. Have a beautiful Sunday evening/night. I’ll see you tomorrow.
