A Place for Everything and Everything in It's Place! - A Dose of Encouragement

  Where is it?

      Where did you leave it?

          Where did you last see it?

              Where did you last have it?

                  When did you last have it?

                      What did you last use it for?

I need

A Place for Everything!

   

All these questions and more are regularly asked in our house.


So the simple solution to all of this is my favourite quote

A Place for Everything and Everything in it's Place

But even though I have loved this saying for many years

                              I have never yet got to this ideal position in my home or life.


One of the reasons

                       is simply that there are

I often have to overhaul my Study and even there I pick a place to keep something and then later I change my mind and decide to keep in in a different part of that room and then the next time I want that item I go back to the original place and wonder why I can't find it there!

I have forgotten that I changed my mind!

This is especially so with my craft items.

One time I think that one box or container suits my stamps best and then I get some more and decide that the original container was not big enough to hold all that I now have 

or I have my embellishments in segmented containers and then I decide to sort them by a different criterion and find that the sizes of the compartments don't suit or the number of compartments don't suit.

So I rearrange them and then later when I want a certain item I have to go through all my containers again because I can't remember how I rearranged them.

I have forgotten that I changed my mind!

When we lived in America (many years ago) we bought a lovely piece of furniture.

It was a Computer Armoire.

While we were in America and also for some years after we had returned to Northern Ireland, we used it for our computer but then when we all had computers we stopped using it for this purpose and I claimed it as a Craft Armoire.


BUT this is what it can get like when I let it get out of control.

When I don't take the time to put things in their proper place inside it.

Unfortunately other things can get out of control in our lives too.

We start to order our finances with a nice little budget but then forget about or don't write everything down.

We start to be more careful about our eating habits and exercise habits and then after a few weeks we get lazy again.

We plan to do things but just keep putting them off.

What we could be tempted to say then is

I need a

Place for everything and Time for everything!

When what we really need is to get rid of the things that take up space and time in our lives and say

I need to

Concentrate on the good and sensible things that give meaning to my life.

by asking ourselves what God would have us do and going back to the reason we are on this earth


What is Man's Chief End?

Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.


Or in other words


What should we be concentrating on?

We should be concentrating on living our lives so that

 we bring

 glory and honour to God

 and

 draw others to God

Then we will know the fullness of joy that the Bible talks about because we will be in the right place.

Then we will be content with our life because we will be in the right place with God.

Then we won't have perfect homes or perfect memories or be perfect but we will be in good relationship with  our heavenly father.

Let's Put the RIGHT things FIRST in our Lives and Homes.

Let's not keep changing what we think, what we do, what we hold on to.

Let's follow God and stick with what He leads us to.

Let's not keep forgetting or changing our minds.

I'ts time to be consistent in our faith.

God is an unchanging God

Can we be an unchanging people who stick to God's Word and obey all of it.

What are You Putting into Your Mind? - A Dose of Encouragement

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There is an affiliate link in this blog post.

Are you a book lover?

Have you ever been involved in a Book Club?

When we lived in Belgium I joined a Book Club organised by mothers from the school our daughter was attending.

I really enjoyed meeting up once a month, having snacks and discussing the book we had all read.

In fact several times I was pleased to have been in the club because I was introduced to books I would normally have not particularly thought of reading.


For example

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.







AND

The Time Traveller's Wife.

Both of which I thoroughly enjoyed.

(Click on the book titles or pics above if you would like to know more about these books)



I am also the type of person who seldom leaves a book unfinished even if it does not always keep my attention and takes me months to actually finish it because I will go off and read other books in between spurts at the boring one.

However during my time in that book club there were two books which I did not finish.

The Life of Pi.

This just seemed to me to be rather boring.
My daughter's then boyfriend was also an avid reader and we would talk about the books we were reading when he would be round at our home finding that we enjoyed a lot of the same books but we just could not agree on this one.  He kept telling me that I had to persevere and get to the second half of the novel and then I would enjoy it.
I could not see the point in that because I did not anticipate any more of my interest being grabbed when it was so dull so far, plus I had heard about an imaginary tiger in a boat so no it was not my scene.

I have still never read the book and don't believe I ever will as there are always more books I want to read than there is time to read them.



The Kite Runner

To me this one was just simply disgusting.

I got to a certain point in the story where I knew I would never finish this book and at that precise moment I was in a Tram from Brussels to Tervuren with my daughter (who also adored The Time Traveller's Wife).  I closed the book and told her I was not going to read any more and also told her that I hoped she would never read that book.

Then when I was about to throw it into the bin at the tram station I stopped and took it on home with me.

Had I changed my mind?
No, I decided to take it home to dispose of rather than have the chance of being the person responsible for someone else coming along and picking it up to read.

I have still not read the book and I know I never will.



When I told the others at the Book Club that I had not finished the book and never would because I felt disgusted by what I had already read their attitude was one of complete amazement.
I was immediately told that the purpose of reading this book was to be able to recognise the mentality, attitudes and behaviour of people in Afghanistan at that time.  It was stated that I would not be able to understand the culture and what it is like to live there.  It was even implied that I was burying my head in the sand and did not want to know what was happening in the world.

These women were wrong.
I knew more about the country than they thought as I knew people who were actually working there.

From that Book Club I learnt that I don't have to finish a book.

If that book doesn't really interest me or is poorly written or is about a subject that I do not want to read about then I can just close the book or even destroy it.

It is my decision what I read.

What we put into our minds affects our thoughts and words and actions and emotions.


It is better to put good wholesome things into our minds.

I have a choice as to what I ALLOW to go into my mind.

Yes the word allow is exactly the word I mean here, it is my mind and I need to take responsibility for what enters it.

I want to take good care of my mind 

and I am sure you want to take good care of your mind.

What you allow into your mind affects your thoughts and your words and your actions and your emotions.

I want to take good care of my mind 

and I am sure you want to take good care of your mind.

God has given us the responsibility to take care of every aspect of our lives and our minds are important to Him as well as our bodies.

You have a choice as to what you ALLOW to go into your mind.

Let's be encouraged that we can make a difference in our thoughts, words, actions and emotions by taking the responsibility for what we allow into our minds and seriously consider what we are reading or looking at or listening to or talking about on a daily basis.


In Philippians 4  verses 8-9  we read the words of the Apostle Paul

8 Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.  

9 The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do, and the God of peace will be with you.

Lot's of times we only think of the first of these two verses.

But look at the the second one:

Paul says do the things we have been taught, seen and heard - take heed of God's Word.
The result will be God's Peace.

If I had read the rest of that book The Kite Runner, I would have absorbed imagery and language into my mind that would have stayed with me forever. 

That is how serious it is to be careful of what we put in our minds.

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