Category Archives: Miscellaneous

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Loving My Neighbor as I Love Myself…

Hello World, 

As a single woman, it is sooo easy to get caught up in what happens to ME, MYSELF & I…But as a Christian, I know that I am charged to love my NEIGHBOR as much as I love MYSELF…(Luke 10:27)…And so from to time, I have to examine how I am actually helping those around me…

When I went to Blogalicious (a convention for bloggers) last year, I was introduced to the United Nations Foundation’s Shot@Life Campaign in which Americans are encouraged to learn about, advocate for, and donate vaccines to children around the world…

Below are the facts:

 1. 1 in 5 children die of a vaccine-preventable disease. That’s one child every 20 seconds and approximately 1.5 million children each year.

2. In countries like the U.S., most children already receive life-saving vaccines. Because of this, American parents don’t typically worry about losing their children to deadly diseases like measles or pneumonia.

3. Seventy-five percent of unvaccinated children live in just 10 countries. For children in India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Indonesia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, China, Uganda, Chad and Kenya, access to vaccines mean the difference between life and death, a healthy life or a lifetime of struggle.  

 What we can do to give every child a Shot@Life:

1. Donate $5 – For the cost of a gourmet coffee drink, you can protect a child from polio and measles for his or her lifetime…

2. Donate $15 – For the cost of an inexpensive concert ticket, you can pay for vaccines to protect a child from the two most deadly diseases – pneumonia and diarrhea…

3. Donate $20 – For the cost of a pedicure, you can give a child a lifetime of immunity from pneumonia, diarrhea, polio and measles…

Of course, you can always give more :)….The point I’m trying to make is that I can easily fritter away cash on all kind of things like gourmet coffee drinks, concert tickets, pedicures and on and on…While I love these things, I am also commanded to love my neighbor…

To donate, please go to this secure website.

Also please take less than 2 minutes to watch this video:

Finally, as part of World Immunization Week (this week), help spread the word about Shot@Life! Did you know that some mothers throughout the world walk 15 miles to get life-saving vaccines for their children?! I waste more than 15 minutes probably an hour on Facebook…Why not join me this week in not only investing my disposable income to saving the lives of the world’s children but also donating my time to spreading the WORD and the word…Next to loving God, we are also called to love others as we love ourselves…Shot@Life gives me the opportunity to love my neighbors….

Any thoughts?

 

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Irreverent Christian Memoir Comes to the Silver Screen!!!

Hello World,

Back in 2009, I wrote a book review about “Blue Like Jazz,” an irreverent Christian memoir and New York Times bestselling book written by Donald Miller. I must say it is one the best Christian memoirs I’ve read in a long time…What I like about Miller is that he is Christian enough to be a saint and worldly enough to be interesting…lol…And we have all met Christians who are too holy to be any earthly good…And we have also met some worldy Christians who may as well not be Christians for their lack of discpline when it comes to Christian disciplines….Well, now Miller has taken his memoir to the big screen! The movie debuted on Friday, and the trailer is below…

 This is what Lou Carlozo, contributing writer, watchgmctv.com, had to say about the film:

“…’Blue Like Jazz’ is almost sure to offend some Christians who’ve come to equate ‘faith” with ‘family friendly.’ It’s not exactly a spoiler alert to say that one scene shows a church steeple draped in an enormous condom. And it turns out that’s just one of many shocking moments in the film, which some evangelical film heavies have criticized because of its edgy content.

“Critics and fans alike should leave their expectations and stereotypes at the door. Taylor and Miller, with co-screenwriter Ben Pearson, have crafted the most honest, satisfying depiction of young man’s faith trials ever produced by filmmakers with evangelical ties. The fictional Miller (Marshall Allman) leaves his Texas Bible Belt upbringing for Portland’s Reed College, the center of ultra-liberal thought and outlandish student behavior. Straight-laced and proper, Miller dumps his teenage faith after his mother has an affair with the youth pastor at his home church – an event that has tragic consequences.”

“…’Blue Like Jazz’ shines, from its use of John Coltrane’s ‘A Love Supreme’ to its humble, anything-but-predictable closing.

To see where this movie is playing in your town, go to  www.bluelikejazztickets.com!

Any thoughts?

 

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OWNing Your Mistakes (with apologies to my 21-year-old self)

Hello World,

What I love about Oprah and have always loved about Oprah is her ability to keep it real although she is in the public eye and admit her mistakes – from her decision to use a dangerous quick weight loss regime to lose the pounds years ago to the launching of her OWN network last year. In an interview with her bestie Gayle King on “CBS This Morning,” Oprah revealed her top mistakes in launching her network. Launching too early was her top mistake, she said.

“Launching when we really weren’t ready to launch,” she said. “And doing that because you’ve announced you’re going to do it. It’s like having the wedding when you know you are not ready and you are walking down the aisle, and you are saying, ‘I don’t know if we should be walking down the aisle… maybe we should have postponed this.’”

 Check out the video below if you want to see the interview…

Oprah isn’t shy about admitting mistakes she made before she was Oprah the media mogul either. In the May issue of “O Magazine,” Oprah writes a letter to her younger self when although she was a college student at Tennessee State University, she was already a reporter at Nashville’s WLAC-TV! She was actually the youngest and the first black news reporter for the station. And although she was already on the cusp of success, she was preoccupied with dating a boy named Bubba. One day, she brought him to the station to let him see where she worked. Instead of being proud of her, he was intimidated by her success…An excerpt of her letter is below…

“On this day you’ve brought him to the station to see where you work, hoping he’ll be proud, too. He seems less than impressed. The truth is, he’s intimidated. You don’t know this, though, because you can see yourself only through his eyes. A lesson you will have to learn again and again: to see yourself with your own eyes, to love yourself from your own heart.

Read the entire letter here….

When I look at my life when I was about 21 years old or so, I, too, regret some of the choices I made in love…choosing the guys that were ambivalent about me instead of the ones that really held me down…my mother warned me about mistreating one former really nice boyfriend in particular…all things have worked together for my good (Romans 8:28) but if I could go back, I would have done it differently for sure…

I don’t live in regrets but what would you do differently at 21 or so if you could go back and right wrongs?

Any thoughts?