Everybody Can Do Something!

Last week my husband and I made a trip to Georgia

to be with my youngest sis on her birthday. 

On the way there we encountered some of the damage that was done

by the F4 tornado that had wound its way through several Southern States. 

  

Our 6th grade Sunday School class had been studying the story of the Good Samaritan from Luke chapter 10 in the Bible.  After studying the lesson, I showed them some of the pictures that I had taken of the disaster area that my husband and I had encountered.  

 We called their attention to the poster on the bulletin board that said,

"What Can I Do?"

 

After brainstorming, they came up with several ideas of ways they could help.

 One of their ideas was to have a car wash.   

We have had a cold, rainy spring,

so although they probably would have enjoyed doing this,

for the sake of the teachers involved

the idea was put on hold until warmer days arrived to stay!  

They all agreed that

EVERYBODY CAN DO SOMETHING! 

 The artists in the class got to work and made this poster.

The idea that got the most enthusiastic response was a Toy Drive,

which we hoped could help bring comfort to the children who had lost their toys due to the tornado.  Our class quickly got to work to cover collection boxes with colored paper.

 We used the pictures that I had brought to decorate the boxes 

to call attention to why we were doing this.

We enlisted the help of our church's technical staff to produce a short video

to make others aware of our project. 

This video is to be aired in "Big Church" next Sunday

 and we hope to post it on YouTube. 

We are filled with anticipation and excitement as we begin the collection and distribution process.  With the recent horrific devastating F4 tornado in Joplin,

 we have an area closer to home that can benefit from our efforts.

So, as a Sunday School class, we challenge you:

What Can You Do?

EVERYBODY CAN DO SOMETHING!

This post is linked with Spiritual Sundays

and Jenny Matlock's "Alphabet Thursdays"

Thanks for stopping by!

Visit my companion blog at The Rock4Today

Living up to your name

It all started with an email that my younger sis sent me of the Hebrew names for God.  I couldn't help but notice that the first four names all started with the syllable "EL" - El Shaddai (The All-Sufficient One), El Elyon (The Most High God), El Olam (The Everlasting God), and Elohim (Creator).

This got me curious.  I got out my Bible Dictionary to find out what "EL" meant.  This is what it said: "God, the primitive, generic word for God in the Semitic languages." (The New Compact Bible Dictionary by Zondervan)

I couldn't help but think of human names that began with "El".  So, using my little dictionary again, I looked up some of them.  Here are a few of them:

ELiezer - means "God is help".  God certainly helped him as he picked out a wife for Abraham's son, Isaac.  (Eliezer is first mentioned in Genesis 15:2, and I am assuming this is the same man in Genesis 24.)

ELkanah - means "God has possessed me".  He was the father of the prophet Samuel, who was given to the LORD's service at a very young age. (1 Samuel chapters 1&2)

ELijah - means "Jehovah is God".  This brings to mind the contest between Jezebel's priests of the god Baal and Elijah's God, Jehovah.  (1 Kings 18)   By the way, Jehovah God won hands down!

ELisha - means "God is my salvation".  He was a prophet who definitely lived up to his name, with twice as many miracles recorded as his predecessor Elijah. 

There were more names that began with "El" than this - all of them interesting to me, but I'll not make this post that long.  This little study made  me wonder how much the name that we are given at birth affects the outcome of our lives.  My name is Esther, which means "a star".  .....Hmmm - am I shining as brightly as God intended?

What is your name?  And what does it mean?   Are you living up to it?

If you don't know the meaning of your name, you can find it on this link: ThinkBabyNames.


Sharing this link with Spiritual Sundays and Jenny @ Alphabet Thursdays.

To see my companion blog on this, go to The Rock 4 Today.

The Wilderness

This past week my husband and I decided to go for a short adventure hike.  For months we had been looking over a book which listed waterfalls within our area. We had high expectations of finding a spot that had four waterfalls.  What we didn't count on was the difficulty we would encounter in trying to follow the directions to get there.  Could the landscape have changed since the author wrote the book?  Or were we just that bad at following directions?

  We never found the waterfalls. At one point, we thought we heard the rush of water, but when no waterfalls were found, we decided it must have been just the noise of the wind in the trees.  After three attempts of following what might have been faint trails, we gave up.  Instead of finding waterfalls, we felt like we only found jungle!

We turned around, this time having to climb up hill while fighting vines, and straddling over fallen logs.  With relief, we finally saw our Jeep.  Instead of completely giving up, we took a small road marked "Wilderness Trail," ...this time going by vehicle instead of on foot.   After about 8 miles of rough dirt road with little change in scenery, we decided the road was going nowhere.  With a few tries, my husband managed to turn the Jeep around on that narrow one lane road, and we viewed the same repetitive scenery on the way back. 

We became a little frustrated with the outcome of our little trip, and began to see why the trail was marked "Wilderness Trail."  I thought of the Israelites wandering in their wilderness for 40 years.  We got frustrated after a couple of hours of feeling like we were going nowhere, ...and we think they were bad for grumbling! 

After "wandering in the wilderness," we did a "mountain top experience."   We didn't see "the promised land,"  but we viewed the swollen river from the recent deluge of rainfall. 

A little bit of Gatorade to our tired bodies, and we were set to go back home. 

We are so blessed.  We didn't even have to wait for "water from a rock" - just opened a bottle of Gatorade and quenched our thirst.  God is so good!