Sunday Morning Sunshine: Happy Valentine's Day!

1 Peter 4:8: 

"Above all, love each other deeply, 

because love covers over a multitude of sins."

Love when it's hard.

Love when it's not returned to you.

Love when the other person is despicable.

Love when someone takes advantage.

Love when you're hated.

Love because God requires it.

Love because it's good for you.

Love because God loves you!

I Corinthians 13 describes love as:

Patient and kind,

not envious, boastful, arrogant or rude,

it doesn't insist on its own way,

is not irritable or resentful.

Love doesn't rejoice in wrongdoing.

But...

is rejoices in truth.

LOVE never ends. 

Have a lovely day! 

 

Rambling Friday: And That's Enough

God is love, 

and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, 

and God in him.

I John 4:16b

I'm always looking for ways to show my love to my family and friends.

It not only gives them happiness and joy (I hope),

but it also gives me satisfaction and peace

to know I've again shown I love them.

So...

recently I saw this picture:

and decided immediately to do this for my youngest grandson's

class for Valentine's Day.

I wanted to make sure it would be okay with him (Jonathan).

I sent him the picture and asked if he'd like me to make these for his class.

He faced timed with me and emphatically declared,

YES! 

I said, but what if some didn't like applesauce?

No, he assured me, everyone in his class liked applesauce.

Now, whether he really knows or not,

his enthusiasm gave me the answer.

This week I'm gathering the materials for this simple project 

and plan on delivering the Valentine Applesauce cuties

to him when its time.

How I love that boy!

But even more so, 

how God loves me.

A fumbling, mistake-making,

sometimes selfish, sometimes hesitant

sometimes asking forgiveness

person I am,

and...

God loves me.

And that's

 enough.

The Sweetest Thing, Five Things I love, CONTEST

The Sweetest Thing!

Isn't this the sweetest thing?

Be My Valentine

"Be My Valentine" it said,

Upon the arrowed heart of red,

 With its frill of paper lace,

Offered her with awkward grace.

He longed with tender words to show

He'd like to be her steady beau,

But all that he could do he found,

Was voice a muttered, stuttering sound.

Tubbed and scrubbed and polished neat,

From his cowlick to his feet,

He stood before her, heart in hand,

Trying to make her understand.

No words of love had she to say

Before she laughed and walked away.

For she was only half past four

And he was only one year more.

--Alice B. Johnson

*********

Five Things I Love:

1.  hubby with a passion

2. Sons, and their wife and girlfriend: always and forever

3.  Grandsons: forever grateful to God for giving them to us!

4.  The life we've lived, the memories we've made

5.  God and his blessings on us. Even thru the tough tmes he's seen us thru.

*********

Don't forget February's Contest!

CONTEST QUESTION TIME

(You must comment on every contest question I have this month--

February, 2018,

 and I will label them as such. 

One per week for the whole month.)

Contest Question:

Name one thing you positively love
(person, item, place, whatever...)

VOTING TIME...

Oh, yeah, you want to know what you get?

This:

and a kindle copy of 

Knight in Shining Apron

Book 2

of the Appleton, WV Romantic Mystery series

How's that for a beautiful, romantic gift?

Happy Reading!

A New Month: What's in Store?

That's a good question to ask myself: 

What's in store for February?

Of course, I don't know for certain,

but I can predict (rightly or wrongly),

I can plan,

make another list,

and WORK HARD

to accomplish.

* It's Valentine's Month, the love month, so...

I'm looking forward to taking and spending a bit of special time with

the love of my life.

* I'm planning to near the finish line writing my second WWII novel,

A Flute in the Willows

* Planning to enjoy two birthdays this month,

Son #1's and hubby's. 

* Want to draw closer to God, stay loyal and faithful.

Do you have any special plans for February?

Blessings!

Sunday Morning Peace: God's Love

Sunset on the Hills

How wonderful the evening

When sunset tints the hills;

Such opalescent colors

An artist's dream fulfills.

A peace falls like a mantle,

As God bids earth to rest;

The birds lie safely cuddled

Inside each cozy nest.

A soft breeze gently whispers

This message from above;

God cares for all creation

With tenderness and love.

--By Clifford Thomas

Sunday Morning Peace

Let not your heart be troubled.

Ye believe in God.

Believe also in me.

--Jesus, St John 14:1

Sunday Morning Peace

Let us love one another

for love is from God

and everyone that loves

if of God.

I John 4:7

Blessings!

Pondering on Love . . .

Or lack of.

In my book, The Redemption of Caralynne Hayman, Cara struggles with issues of love.

• She loves her girls immensely; no doubt of it. But is placing them in danger, to prove a point real love?
• She cares deeply for her friends but trusts none of them fully. Is that real love?
• She thinks she can never feel true love with a man. His physical appearance certainly is attractive: dark hair, eyes to die for, tanned skin. But it's his personality that has the most effect on her: gentleness, strength, steadfastness.

She doesn't understand Dayne MacFarland's lack of action in denouncing the cult group, yet her method of revenge is subtle in many ways.

Can Godly love be present in the midst of so much sin, so much ignorance, so much hate?
Can there be love unless the person is willing to let go of their sin?

What serious issues have you faced that has brought you to your knees? Have you ever wondered if what you feel is really love?

Blessings!

Saved by an Apple

This is a true story and you can find out more by Googling Herman
Rosenblat. He was Bar Mitzvahed at age 75.
August 1942
Piotrkow, Poland.

The sky was gloomy that morning as we waited anxiously. All the men,
women and children of Piotrkow's Jewish ghetto had been herded into a
square.

Word had gotten around that we were being moved. My father had only
recently died from typhus, which had run rampant through the crowded
ghetto. My greatest fear was that our family would be separated.

"Whatever you do," Isidore, my eldest brother, whispered to me, "don't tell them your age. Say you're sixteen."

I was tall for a boy of 11, so I could pull it off. That way I might be deemed valuable as a worker.

An SS man approached me, boots clicking against the cobblestones. He looked me up and down, and then asked my age.

"Sixteen," I said.

He directed me to the left, where my three brothers and other healthy young men already stood. My mother was motioned to the right with the other women, children, sick and elderly people.
I whispered to Isidore, “Why?”

He didn't answer.

I ran to Mama's side and said I wanted to stay with her.

“No,” she said sternly. “Get away. Don't be a nuisance. Go with your brothers.”

She had never spoken so harshly before. But I understood: She was
protecting me. She loved me so much that, just this once, she pretended not to. It was the last I ever saw of her.

My brothers and I were transported in a cattle car to Germany. We arrived at the Buchenwald concentration camp one night later and were led into a crowded barrack. The next day, we were issued uniforms and identification numbers.

“Don't call me Herman anymore.” I said to my brothers. “Call me 94983.”

I was put to work in the camp's crematorium, loading the dead into a
hand-cranked elevator. I, too, felt dead. Hardened, I had become a number.

Soon, my brothers and I were sent to Schlieben, one of Buchenwald's
sub-camps near Berlin. One morning I thought I heard my mother's voice. “Son,” she said softly but clearly, “I am going to send you an angel.”

Then I woke up. Just a dream. A beautiful dream. But in this place there could be no angels. There was only work. And hunger. And fear.

A couple of days later, I was walking around the camp, around the barracks, near the barbed-wire fence where the guards could not easily see. I was alone. On the other side of the fence, I spotted someone: a little girl with light, almost luminous curls. She was half-hidden behind a birch tree.

I glanced around to make sure no one saw me. I called to her softly
in German. “Do you have something to eat?”


She didn't understand.

I inched closer to the fence and repeated the question in Polish.


She stepped forward. I was thin and gaunt, with rags wrapped around my feet, but the girl looked unafraid. In her eyes, I saw life. She pulled an apple from her woolen jacket and threw it over the fence.

I grabbed the fruit and, as I started to run away, I heard her say faintly, “I'll see you tomorrow.”

I returned to the same spot by the fence at the same time every day. She was always there with something for me to eat - a hunk of bread or, better yet, an apple.

We didn't dare speak or linger. To be caught would mean death for us
both.

I didn't know anything about her, just a kind farm girl, except that
she understood Polish. What was her name? Why was she risking her life for me? Hope was in such short supply, and this girl on the other side of
the fence gave me some, as nourishing in its way as the bread and apples.

Nearly seven months later, my brothers and I were crammed into a coal car and shipped to Theresienstadt camp in Czechoslovakia .

“Don't return,” I told the girl that day. “We're leaving.” I turned toward the barracks and didn't look back, didn't even say good-bye to the little girl whose name I'd never learned, the girl with the apples.


We were in Theresienstadt for three months. The war was winding down
and Allied forces were closing in, yet my fate seemed sealed. On May 10, 1945, I was scheduled to die in the gas chamber at 10:00 AM.
In the quiet of dawn, I tried to prepare myself. So many times death
seemed ready to claim me, but somehow I'd survived. Now, it was over.
I thought of my parents.. At least, I thought, we will be reunited.

But at 8 A .M. there was a commotion. I heard shouts, and saw people
running every which way through camp. I caught up with my brothers.

Russian troops had liberated the camp! The gates swung open. Everyone was running, so I did too. Amazingly, all of my brothers had survived; I'm not sure how. But I knew that the girl with the apples had been
the key to my survival.

In a place where evil seemed triumphant, one person's goodness had
saved my life, had given me hope in a place where there was none. My mother had promised to send me an angel, and the angel had come.

Eventually I made my way to England where I was sponsored by a Jewish charity, put up in a hostel with other boys who had survived the Holocaust and trained in electronics. Then I came to America, where my brother Sam had already moved. I served in the U. S. Army during the Korean War, and returned to New York City after two years.

By August 1957 I'd opened my own electronics repair shop. I was
starting to settle in.

One day, my friend Sid who I knew from England called me. “I've got a date. She's got a Polish friend. Let's double date.”

A blind date? Nah, that wasn't for me.

But Sid kept pestering me, and a few days later we headed up to the
Bronx to pick up his date and her friend Roma.

I had to admit, for a blind date this wasn't so bad. Roma was a nurse at a Bronx hospital. She was kind and smart. Beautiful, too, with
swirling brown curls and green, almond-shaped eyes that sparkled with life.
The four of us drove out to Coney Island. Roma was easy to talk to, easy to be with. Turned out she was wary of blind dates too! We were both just doing our friends a favor.

We took a stroll on the boardwalk, enjoying the salty Atlantic breeze, and then had dinner by the shore. I couldn't remember having a better time.

We piled back into Sid's car, Roma and I sharing the back seat.

As European Jews who had survived the war, we were aware that much
had been left unsaid between us. She broached the subject, “Where were you,” she asked softly, “during the war?”

“The camps,” I said, the terrible memories still vivid, the irreparable loss. I had tried to forget. But you can never forget.

She nodded. “My family was hiding on a farm in Germany, not far from
Berlin,” she told me. “My father knew a priest, and he got us Aryan papers.”

I imagined how she must have suffered too, fear, a constant companion. And yet here we were both survivors, in a new world.

“There was a camp next to the farm.” Roma continued. “I saw a boy there and I would throw him apples every day.”

What an amazing coincidence that she had helped some other boy. “What did he look like?” I asked.

“He was tall, skinny, and hungry. I must have seen him every day for six months.”

My heart was racing. I couldn't believe it. This couldn't be. “Did he tell you one day not to come back because he was leaving Schlieben?”

Roma looked at me in amazement. “Yes!”

“That was me!” I was ready to burst with joy and awe, flooded with emotions. I couldn't believe it! My angel. “I'm not letting you go.” I said to Roma. And in the back of the car on that blind date, I proposed to her. I didn't want to wait.

“You're crazy!” she said. But she invited me to meet her parents for Shabbat dinner the following week.

There was so much I looked forward to learning about Roma, but the
most important things I always knew: her steadfastness, her goodness. For
many months, in the worst of circumstances, she had come to the fence and given me hope. Now that I'd found her again, I could never let her go.

That day, she said yes. And I kept my word. After nearly 50 years of
marriage, two children and three grandchildren, I have never let her go.


--Herman Rosenblat of Miami Beach, Florida

(This story is being made into a movie called The Fence.)

Sunday Morning Peace

Remember playing the childish game of "He loves me, He loves me not" as we plucked each white petal off? However it fell (loves or not) we girls could always tell whether a guy would love us or not. Amazing! Of course, if you did two in a row, you just might get conflicting answers.

Not so with our heavenly Father. He always, unconditionally, loves us. We need no games to tell us.

Blessings!

Sunday Morning Peace

God's love is unbounding and forever.

His love is strong

true

and perfect.

Have a lovely day!

Blessings