Author: Anna Lee

Monday Addition

I had an appointment with the eye doctor concerning possible glaucoma because Momma was almost blind from glaucoma and Daddy is on the borderline of having it.  My last test had some inconsistencies, but today I did very well on everything.  Join me in thanking God for a good report today!!!

 

Leo Edward Givens was born October 7, 1933 and passed away at 10:50 a.m., Sunday, November 27, 2011 at Kentwood Manor Nursing Home, Kentwood, LA. He was 78, a native of Stoney Point, LA and a resident of Kentwood.

Leo is survived by 2 sons, Jerry Givens, Kentwood & Kenneth Givens, California; brother, Marvin Givens, Franklinton; sister, Della Zachary, Stoney Point; also survived by his grandchildren, great-grandchildren and extended family.

Preceded in death by his parents, Edwin D. and Piccola Jenkins Givens; a brother and 5 sisters.

Visitation at McKneely and Vaughn Funeral Home, Amite, on Wednesday, November 30, 2011 from 10:00 a.m. until Celebration of Life Services at 12:00 noon in the funeral home Chapel with Russell Zachary officiating. Interment in Stoney Point Baptist Church Cemetery, Stoney Point, LA.

An on-line Guestbook is available at www.mckneelyvaughnfh.com

McKneely and Vaughn Funeral Home is located at I-55(Exit#46) and Hwy. 16W. next to Hood Chevrolet and behind Mr. Tom’s Car Wash, Bond Eye Clinic & Holiday Inn Express.

Monday

“Dear children, let’s not merely say that we love each other;

let us show the truth by our actions.”

~1 John 3:18 NLT~

 

 

Jason Dean has improved enough that he was in Sunday School yesterday.  He is still unable to do some things such as driving, but is working to be 100%.

 

Continue to pray for Mrs. Ruby Dillon as she sees a specialist about her hip.

 

 

Continue to pray for Joan Bethel Hagan and her family.  She is still in ICU at Baton Rouge General.

 

 

My mother, Jewell Rymer, died this afternoon at UAB Medical Center in Birmingham, Alabama. Funeral arrangements have not been made at this time. Please pray for the family as we make those arrangements and work out details and for our safe travels from North Alabama. McKneeley Funeral Home will be in charge of the services and should be posting information on their website when things are finalized.
Thanks, Emma Dean Rymer Ricks

 

The annual Lottie Moon Tea will be Saturday at First Baptist Church, Greensburg.  All ladies and girls from area churches  are invited to attend.  See you there at 2 P.M.

 

If you are contributing Toys for Migrant Kids or Stamped Christmas Card for Parish Inmates, you only have a couple more days to get them to your local church or First Baptist Church, Kentwood.

The Christmas spirit is found in giving!

Anna Lee

Sunday

“That you may love the Lord your God,

listen to his voice, and hold fast to him.

For the Lord is your life,

and he will give you many years in the land

he swore to give to your fathers,

Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”

~Deuteronomy 30:20 NIV~

Today is Sunday, the Lord’s Day!  Don’t make plans to leave Him out of the day.

Thought for the Day:  Can’t just sit around

You may have heard the story of Larry Waters of Los Angeles. Larry’s boyhood dream was to fly. When he graduated from high school, he joined the Air Force in hopes of becoming a pilot. Unfortunately, poor eyesight disqualified him. When he was finally discharged, he had to satisfy himself with watching jets fly over his backyard.

One day, Larry, had a bright idea. He decided to fly. He went to the local Army-Navy surplus store and purchased 45 weather balloons and several tanks of helium. The weather balloons, when fully inflated, would measure more than four feet across.

Back home, Larry securely strapped the balloons to his sturdy lawn chair. He anchored the chair to the bumper of his jeep and inflated the balloons with the helium. He climbed on for a test while it was still only a few feet above the ground.

Satisfied it would work, Larry packed several sandwiches and loaded his pellet gun — figuring he could pop a few balloons when it was time to descend — and went back to the floating lawn chair.

He tied himself in along with his pellet gun and provisions. Larry’s plan was to lazily float up to a height of about 30 feet above his back yard after severing the anchor and in a few hours come back down.

Things didn’t quite work out that way. When he cut the cord anchoring the lawn chair to his jeep, he didn’t float lazily up to 30 or so feet. Instead he streaked into the LA sky as if shot from a cannon. He didn’t level off at 30 feet, nor did he level off at 100 feet. After climbing and climbing, he leveled off at 11,000 feet.

At that height he couldn’t risk shooting any of the balloons, lest he unbalance the load and really find himself in trouble. So he stayed there, drifting, cold and frightened, for more than 14 hours.

Then he really got in trouble. He found himself drifting into the primary approach corridor of Los Angeles International Airport. A United pilot first spotted Larry. He radioed the tower and described passing a guy in a lawn chair with a gun. Radar confirmed the existence of an object floating 11,000 feet above the airport. LAX emergency procedures swung into full alert and a helicopter was dispatched to investigate. LAX is right on the ocean. Night was falling and the offshore breeze began to flow. It carried Larry out to sea with the helicopter in hot pursuit. Several miles out, the helicopter caught up with Larry. Once the crew determined that Larry was not dangerous, they attempted to close in for a rescue but the draft from the blades would push Larry away whenever they neared.

Finally, the helicopter ascended to a position several hundred feet above Larry and lowered a rescue line. Larry snagged the line and was hauled back to shore. The difficult maneuver was flawlessly executed by the helicopter crew. As soon as Larry was hauled to earth, he was arrested by waiting members of the LAPD for violating LAX airspace. As he was led away in handcuffs, a reporter dispatched to cover the daring rescue asked why he had done it. Larry stopped, turned and replied nonchalantly, “A man can’t just sit around.”

While there are certainly more productive (and less dangerous) things that a man can do with his time, Larry was right. God doesn’t want us to just sit around doing nothing. Far too often, we are content with our spiritual lives because “I haven’t done this” and “I haven’t done that.” Of course, the truth of the matter is, we haven’t done much of anything. God is not content just to know what sins we stayed away from. He wants to know what positive things we have done as well.

“Then they also will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?’ Then He will answer them, saying, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.'” (Matthew 25:44-45)

“If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.” (John 13:17)

A man can’t just sit around — go do something! (but stay away from the balloons!)

Have a great day!

Alan Smith
White House Church of Christ
White House, Tennessee

Have a great Lord’s Day!

Anna Lee

Saturday

“We love because he first loved us.”

~1 John 4:19 NIV~

Knetexas_charging_bullEmail
“At the name of Jesus every knee should bow…” Philippians 2:10
Mike Benson, Editor

TWO MEN WERE walking through a field one day when they spotted an enraged bull… 

Instantly they darted toward the nearest fence.  The storming bull followed in hot pursuit, and it was soon apparent they wouldn’t make it.  Terrified, the one shouted to the other, “Put up a prayer, John. We’re in for it!”  John answered, “I can’t. I’ve never made a public prayer in my life.”  “But you must!” implored his companion.  “The bull is catching up to us.”  “All right,” panted John, “I’ll say the only prayer I know, the one my father used to repeat at the table: ’O Lord, for what we are about to receive, make us truly thankful…’” 

If there is one sin that most prevalent today, it is the sin of ingratitude.  God does so much for us.  Our indebtedness to him is enormous and yet we rarely or at least infrequently offer thanks for what he has done.  In fact, many Christians fail offer thanks over their meals much less offer thanks over all that God does in their lives.  We are much like the little boy who was given an orange by a man. The boy’s mother asked, “What do you say to the nice man?”  The little boy thought and handed the orange back and said, “Peel it.” 

For a child of God thankfulness is not confined to a day or a season, it is an attitude that we should have everyday and every hour.  Michael Belcher 

11 Now it happened as He went to Jerusalem that He passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee. 12 Then as He entered a certain village, there met Him ten men who were lepers, who stood afar off. 13 And they lifted up their voices and said, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” 14 So when He saw them, He said to them, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” And so it was that as they went, they were cleansed. 15 And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, returned, and with a loud voice glorified God, 16 and fell down on hisface at His feet, giving Him thanks. And he was a Samaritan. 17 So Jesus answered and said, “Were there not ten cleansed? But where are the nine? 18 Were there not any found who returned to give glory to God except this foreigner?” 19 And He said to him, “Arise, go your way. Your faith has made you well.”  Luke 17:11-19

 

I’m guilty of not expressing my thanks to God enough.  What about you?

Anna Lee

Friday

“Always be full of joy in the Lord.

I say it again—rejoice!”

~Philippians 4:4 NLT~

Please pray for Joanie Scarle’s brother, Bud.  He will have surgery for two aneurysums Debember 1st.  Your prayers will be appreciated.

Kneweep2Email
“At the name of Jesus every knee should bow…” Philippians 2:10
Mike Benson, Editor

JOB TORE HIS robe and shaved his head… 

These were expressions of deep sorry in his ancient culture.  Reeling under the impact of these great losses, Job was too crushed in heart to put up any false front of cheerful courage.  He wept openly with boundless grief. 

Emotionally, he was allowing the natural grief process to occur.  Some people think that to be spiritual, they cannot cry or let anyone else see their crushed heart.  Some believe it is unspiritual to let their broken spirit to show. 

Not so.  It is unhealthy not to allow the grief process to occur.  If all that emotion remains pent up on the inside, we become like a teakettle on a stove — ready to explode!  It is emotionally healthy and therapeutic for our souls to cry.  Didn’t Jesus weep over the death of Lazarus? 

One author writes to this very point:  “I am disappointed that someone, somewhere, many years ago, introduced the ridiculous idea that if you know the Lord, you don’t grieve.  That even if you lose something or someone significant, you shouldn’t weep.  With my whole heart, I disagree!  Granted, we don’t grieve “as those who have no hope.”  But, no tears?  No grief?  I find that unthinkable.  Since when does becoming a Christian make a person less than human. . . .or more than human?”  Steven J. Lawson, “The Invisible War,” When All Hell Breaks Loose, 41 

 “Jesus wept.”  John 11:35

I hope you have had and still have some family around during this holiday season.

Anna Lee

Thanksgiving

Oh give thanks to the LORD, call upon His name;

Make known His deeds among the peoples.  

1 Chronicles 16:8 –

                    THE PROBLEM WITH THANKSGIVING

You know the story of that very first Thanksgiving Day in the English colonies, right? You know, the one where Captain John Woodlief and those 38 colonists who had just had arrived in the Virginia colonies from Berkeley, England and set aside a day of giving thanks to God at the Berekley Hundred (later renamed Berkley Plantation) on December 4, 1619 where Woodlief proclaimed–

“Wee ordaine that the day of our ships arrivall at the place assigned for plantacon in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually keept holy as a day of Thanksgiving to Almighty God.”

Oh, you haven’t heard that story? That because those Johnny-come-lately Pilgrims from Massachusetts arrived at Plymouth Rock with a publicist, so that now everyone just “knows’ that the first Thanksgiving was in Massachusetts with the Pilgrims after the whole colony almost froze to death following that first bitter winter in 1622. But the very FIRST Thanksgiving Day was in Virginia. OK, so actually the first Thanksgiving in the New World was one led by Spanish explorer Juan de Onate held one near El Paso, Texas in 1598, but that one doesn’t count because it was in Texas! They probably had chili and burritos and guacamole or something (actually, that sounds pretty good).

At any rate, the idea of a Thanksgiving Day was not held as a “perpetual” celebration in either Massachusetts or Virginia.  Thanksgiving Day was never more than a local and sporadic event until until Abraham Lincoln made it an annual national holiday observance in 1863. Which means that “first” thanksgiving in Massachusetts took place after a bitter winter almost destroyed a whole colony and the first national Thanksgiving Day was observed DURING the tragedy of the Civil War that almost destroyed our nation. We still observe Thanksgiving Day, but it has little to do with struggle and more to do with eating ourselves silly and then complaining about how stuffed we feel!

But that’s not the real problem with Thanksgiving. The real problem is that we set aside this one day to reflect on and give thanks for our blessings (in which we overindulge) and then ONE DAY later…  we rush out for  “Black Friday,” the biggest shopping day of the year.  We forget all about Thanksgiving Day in our rush to run out and get more stuff. The idea of Thanksgiving was born from struggle and the awareness of God’s goodness despite our difficulty and hardship. Now we seem to believe that we deserve all the good things we have, and we can’t even have of day of reflection on Thanksgiving without turning it into an excuse to shop until we drop getting more, more, more. Will Rogers drew this contrast between Thanksgiving Day then and now:

“In the days of our founders, people were willing to give thanks for mighty little, for mighty little was all that they expected. But now neither government nor nature can give enough but what we think is too little. In the fall of the year, if the founders could gather in a few pumpkins, some potatoes, and some corn for the winter, they were in a thanking mood. But if we can’t gather in a new car, a new radio…and some government relief, why we feel that the world is against us.”

It’s ironic that the more and more we have for which to be thankful, the harder and harder it is seems to get to be truly thankful. As the late Andy Rooney would say, “Why is that?”

–Charles Tucker, Jr.

Have a great day! ( and a great Thanksgiving!)

Alan Smith
Helen Street Church of Christ
Fayetteville, North Carolina

Count your blessings all day long today!

Blesses, very blessed!

Anna Lee