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"January 2, 2019"     [image:1997652-33%} Do you tithe?I tithe and have done so for the past year since becoming a soldier in the Salvation Army. One of the stipulations of my soldier's covenant is that I will tithe. Tithing has become something I look forward to doing. I can also assure you that although my income is quite small I do not regret tithing. I am on disability due to a medical condition that prevents me from holding a full time job. It has been under control for quite some time and I am going to work upon graduating from college. However, anybody who lives on disability can tell you that the amount of money you receive is miserably small. However I tithe what I do receive. Before I tithed my check I had very little spending money and barely covered my bills. Now that I tithe my check the Lord has blessed me. I am never completely broke and I want for nothing. As a result of the Lord blessing me I am able to bless others and contribute even more to the church and to other charitable causes. God tells us that if we are faithful in our tithes He will bless us. Malachi 3: 10 says "Bring all the tithes into the storehouse so there will be enough food in my Temple. If you do so," says the Lord of Heaven's Armies, "I will open the windows of heaven for you. I will pour out a blessing so great you won't have enough room to take it in! Try it! Put me to the test!" I tithe not because I am testing God but because it is part of my covenant with the church and with God. However I have found that tithing really does work! I am not materially rich by any stretch of the imagination but my every need is met and not a day goes by that I am completely broke. Contrast that to before I began tithing and you'll find that though my income is exactly the same, before I began tithing it was everything I could do to pay my rent and most of the time I was flat broke. When I did have money I owed it to somebody else. So I spent the bulk of my time broke. Now it is a rare day that I do not have cash in my wallet, money in the bank, or both. I have three meals per day, a roof over my head, and all the necessities of life. God made good on His promise. He blesses me daily.  "Prompt: My grandmother always said that what you did on New Year's day you would be doing for the rest of the year. What did you accomplish on New Years day? Will you be doing it the rest of the year?"If that is the case I will be sleeping the rest of the year because I spent most of the day yesterday relaxing and cat napping. I was out late New Year's Eve because my church held a New Year's Eve party and I was there until one-thirty AM New Year's Day. When I got home I was awake until about three and then slept until ten. After that I laid in bed cat napping all day. I doubt that I will cat nap all year though because college starts again in two weeks. I will be in college five days a week and won't have time to cat nap unless I sleep during my breaks. I have one day during which my break is five and one-half hours long. Most days I have a two or three hour break between classes. So perhaps I can cat nap then if I find a comfortable place. I doubt that will happen though. More than likely I will spend the five and one-half hour break at the student Christian Center. Different churches come there on Tuesday and serve "lunch for a buck". Students who have it pay one dollar for lunch. I have not eaten there because my schedule last semester had me in class the whole time. This time however I will likely help serve since I am free for five hours each Tuesday and have my food handler's permit. A food handler's permit is a requirement at the Salvation Army because we serve food all the time. So I will serve with whatever church is there on Tuesdays at college as well. I love service. I know it blesses others but it blesses me much more. The greatest cure there is for melancholy and depression is to serve others. It brings me out of any funk I am in and always helps me feel like I am on top of the world. God blesses those who do His will. The will of God is never anything that is contrary to us. If God wants us to do something you can bet it is in our best interest to do so. People look at the Law of Moses and say "Man! God expected a lot out of the Jews!" However God never once asked the Jews to do a thing that would harm them. Even the cleansing and eating laws God enforced were good for them. Today all food has been declared "clean" so as Christians we can eat anything. Yet there are still laws for Christians and like the laws of the Jews the commands God gives Christians are for the Christians benefit. For example God commands us to forgive others. Has anybody ever stopped to consider just how healthy that command is? The most unhealthy thing a human can do is carry a grudge. Carrying a grudge is like dragging a ball and chain with you every where you go. The more grudges you have the heavier the ball becomes. You drag that thing everywhere. Your blood pressure is affected. Your immune system becomes suppressed. The overall effect is devastating. Yet when you forgive others the effects are just the opposite. You can live peacefully in the world. You get along with everybody. Even the most irritating grouch has a difficult time getting under your skin and people begin to speak well of you. God knew all these things were so and He wants what is best for His people. Serving others is just like that. I am blessed when I serve others. So I doubt I will be napping this year but I will likely be doing what I was doing in the very early hours of New Year's Day. I will be serving others and serving my Lord Jesus Christ as the Holy Spirit leads me to do so. "Prompt: "Open a volume and next comes fragrance: fresh, green and inky if it's new or a bit dusty and aged like a grandfather's cozy den" Which do you like better, new books or old books?"When I was young I liked old books because that meant they were more than likely classics and thus very good reads. Now that I am older books that were first published in my childhood are classics. I didn't really care for the stuff being published when I was young and don't care for most of what is published today. Yes I like some science fiction and a lot of poetry but when I read a novel I am reading it so that I can escape reality. If the novel is set in a modern day setting I cannot escape reality so what is the point in reading it? The old classics and novels written in a historical setting are the stuff I like to read. I love history. In fact I have made the decision that if I continue to graduate school, which is likely, I am going to become a historian. A friend has suggested that I apply to the Marshall University Education Department as a grad student, which I am considering. I want to become a therapist and I can use an education degree to do that. So I may apply to the education program even though my love is history. I can always use the education degree to teach history. At any rate I like old books because they are often classics. I don't care for reality anything. I don't like reality television unless it is Pawn Stars, which has a historical slant. My favorite television channel is the History Channel of course, although some of its shows are ridiculous. I hate the show "Ancient Aliens". People, aliens did not plant us here! God created us. If you want to consider God an alien then an alien put us here. However we did not originate on another planet and we were not transplanted here! Aside from Ancient Aliens I like most History Channel shows and anything else discussing history. So the old classic novels are my favorites. My favorite author among the greats is Charles Dickens. My favorite novels are "A Tale of Two Cities" and "Great Expectations." My favorite poet is Robert Frost and my favorite poem by Frost is "Snowy Evening in the Deep Woods." I know Robert Frost sort of conflicts with my statement that I like the classics since he died when I was a child. However it was "Snowy Evening in the Deep Woods" that began my love for poetry. I remember the day I first read it clearly. I was in the fourth grade and the school was introducing a new subject to us. Fourth grade was when we began to study English and our first English lesson was about poetry. Robert Frost was introduced and I fell in love with his writing. I decided that day that I wanted to write and have been writing ever since. My favorite poetry is any type of rhyme and meter. So there again I prefer the older books because they often have Renaissance authors, who were the masters at rhyme and meter. So in answer to the question I would have to say that I prefer the older ones and my grandfather's den. (Neither of my grandfathers had dens though my maternal grandfather had a workshop where you usually found him repairing something.) I did not hang out there a lot as I was more interested in books than I was in fixing things.    |
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