We must live life joyfully because God has painted this picture for us in vibrant tones and pastels and sombre black, he has written this dance for all to play a part, created a clock of intricate delicacy, and it ticks and tocks to the beat of his heart. Therefore, “remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come,” and in the evil days you will see God’s hand as you have always looked for it since youth.<\/p>\n
I thank him for ~
\nthe freshness of the waking air
\nand the serpentine tendrils emerging from waking Earth,
\nthe songs in our hearts,
\nour clarity of sight and strength of purpose,
\nGod’s gift of giving me something I know I could never have found myself<\/p>\n
this well-worn, woolen sweater, hand-knit of new wool
\nscratchy wool and catching thorns and cold
\na drip of scarlet blood – the stunning, alarming life of it
\nfreedom, like a bird, to fly without fear
\nearth-stained feathers decontaminated in microwaves
\nShame that molds the softened flesh anew, replacing the pride that had stiffened it into plaster
\nthe dirt from whence we came, you and I,
\nmoist breath that brought us life,
\nthe swamp, our brother, reminder of our origin,
\na fire that washes over and through us,
\nthe vodka singing in my veins.<\/p>\n
I am all I am through God and need be nothing more. The bits and bobbets, the gristle any good butcher would toss, He included for a purpose. The poor man may never receive credit for saving the city, but that’s not why he did it. He fostered wisdom and good deeds that God might receive glory on this dark earth.<\/p>\n
“He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart<\/em>, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.”<\/p>\n “I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live<\/em>; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil – this is God’s gift to man.”<\/p>\n And the world is a kaleidoscope of shifting perspectives. Make yours consistently grateful. Have an attitude of gratitude. Goodnight and farewell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We must live life joyfully because God has painted this picture for us in vibrant tones and pastels and sombre black, he has written this dance for all to play a part, created a clock of intricate delicacy, and it ticks and tocks to the beat of his heart. Therefore, “remember your Creator in the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1901,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[499],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-college"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/rasmusen.org\/special\/ameliajane\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Old_forest.jpg?fit=480%2C270&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4WcVY-v2","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasmusen.org\/special\/ameliajane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasmusen.org\/special\/ameliajane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasmusen.org\/special\/ameliajane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasmusen.org\/special\/ameliajane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasmusen.org\/special\/ameliajane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1924"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/rasmusen.org\/special\/ameliajane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1934,"href":"https:\/\/rasmusen.org\/special\/ameliajane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1924\/revisions\/1934"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasmusen.org\/special\/ameliajane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasmusen.org\/special\/ameliajane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasmusen.org\/special\/ameliajane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasmusen.org\/special\/ameliajane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}