Pondering the Psalms - Psalm 34

Each Sunday I am going to choose a Psalm and write down some brief thoughts on  it.


Today I'm looking at Psalm 34 


Another one of my favourites from when I was a teenager.

This Psalm falls into six parts:


V. 1-3
Exaltation of the Lord

V. 4-7
Testimony of Deliverance from fear & the enemy

V. 8-10
Encouraging people to seek the Lord for themselves

V. 11-14
Advice on how to come before God



V. 15-18
The Reaction of God towards the Righteous & the Unrighteous

V. 19-22
The Results of the Righteous & Unrighteous Life


To me the whole psalm is written because of the knowledge found in these verses 19 - 22

Many are the afflictions of the righteous,
But the Lord delivers him out of them all.
20 He guards all his bones;
Not one of them is broken.
21 Evil shall slay the wicked,
And those who hate the righteous shall be condemned.
22 The Lord redeems the soul of His servants,
And none of those who trust in Him shall be condemned.

Exaltation
The Psalmist desires that everyone would worship the True God.
He starts by giving His Adoration but then comes to wanting everyone to experience what he has.


Testimony & Encouragement
He tells what God has done & encourages people to turn to God.


Advice
He gives basic advice on how to have the proper awe and reverence towards God.

God's Reaction
How God treats us as righteous in His sight when we have truly turned to trust Him, compared with how He must treat us if we do not.


Results
The hand of comfort, healing & protection is on us.
God will bring us through all the tribulation others will put on us.

Basic Good Advice to Start your Christian Life

Surely when all of this Psalm is understood and acknowledged then you and I can truly say with the Psalmist:

Christian Songs for Kids - No Never Alone

Do you find it hard to get visuals and recordings for different kids songs?

I have always found this a problem so I am now sharing songs that I have used with children providing you with

Visuals 
(Powerpoint or Picture or details of how you can make one) 


Words   
(chords also available)


Recording  
(mp3 or video to learn the song) 


Then if you would like to download the visual of the song there will be a link provided to my creation, or I will direct you to where else you can find it.   

This month I am taking the theme of

The Promises of God

The song I have chosen is 

No Never Alone

This is another song that is so very simple but so full of the truth and tells of the comfort God
promised us.

I like to use this song when teaching on Joshua as it ties is well with Joshua 1 v 9 and can be used to to reinforce that as a Memory Verse.

It is also one I would use when teaching on How much God cares for us or not being afraid because God will never leave us.

This is actually the chorus of a hymn and is based on
Matthew 28:20 and Hebrews 13:5

POWERPOINT  (for Projection)

POWERPOINT  (for Printing A4)

To Download a copy of this visual for printing on A4 Card  or  Letter size  
CLICK HERE




WORDS


No Never Alone

No never alone
No never alone
He promised never to leave me
Never to leave me alone.
No never alone
No never alone
He promised never to leave me
Never to leave me alone.


To Download a copy of these words with chords for guitar and piano 
CLICK HERE

ACTIONS

Waving your forefinger in front of your face in time to the music
for first two lines
Pointing & looking upwards, then pointing to self
third & fourth line

THEN REPEAT

RECORDING  ???????????????????????

Notes:

I believe the Words are the chorus of a hymn whose first verse begins with
"I've seen the lightning flashing"   
Author is  Ludie D. Pickett.
More information can be found HERE

I Hope you enjoy the song and this is a help to you.

DON'T FORGET
If you are interested in finding out about more 

Christian Songs for Kids 

SIGN UP HERE for an email reminder of my posts & you won't miss any I feature on the Blog


OR

See Our Other Kids Songs:   

Creation  -    Who Made?
Easter  -    He's Alive
Bible  -    I will Make you Fishers of Men
Love of Jesus  -    Jesus Loves the Little Children
Love of Jesus  -    Jesus' Love is very Wonderful
The Attributes of God  -    God is So Good 


(Click on the names of the songs above to view them)

Free Printables for Kid's Song "No Never Alone"

The Seagull in Jersey - A Dose of Encouragement

While Fred has been travelling a lot these months
I had pulled out my box set of Bergerac Dvds which I had never found time to watch and settled in most evenings to watch an episode or two from this old Detective Series from the 1980s before going to bed.

First thing I had noticed was how much the young John Nettles who played the character Bergerac (he also played Chief Inspector Barnaby in Midsomer Murders in more recent years) looked like my middle son. So I had some fun teasing Daniel about that.


Then I got to thinking about the Island of Jersey where the series had been set (and filmed) realizing that even though we had once had a holiday there I didn't remember any of the sites of the island.  Of course that holiday was a long long time ago, maybe around 20 years ago.

There is one thing about that holiday that none of us will ever forget.

It has nothing to do with the sights of Jersey.

It has nothing to do with any activities that we had great fun in doing on Jersey.

My only real memory of Jersey was 

the 

Seagull.

Photo credit - Pixabay

This is how I picture that seagull to always be.

I never think of it as one of those almost comical trotting birds you see as they hobble along over the sand or rocks.

I will not even imagine it in a group of seagulls like we often see hovering down ready to catch a fish in the sea.

Photo credit - Pixabay

Yes I always remember it to be

an angry bird,

who saw something,

wanted it

and 

took it!

We were each enjoying a large ice-cream 

when this seagull swooped down out of no-where 

and stole my brother-in-law's ice-cream from his hand.

It was so sudden, so quick, it was almost unbelieveable except that we had seen it with our own eyes.

It must have been such a startling, frightening surprise for Victor as he was holding the ice-cream close to his face when it happened.


Now I can hardly see a seagull without thinking of that event.

I always view seagulls as untrustworthy, callous creatures because of that single event.

Will my impression of them ever change?

Not very likely.


Does my impression of the people I meet ever change?
Does that bad impression stay with me forever?

or

Does another person's impressions of me ever change?
Does that bad impression stay with them forever?


I hope not.


Sometimes it may be difficult to shrug off those impressions because of further meetings or time spent with a person if there is more evidence of their behaviour being similar to the first time.

Sometimes it may be easy to change our minds and see someone in a better light because of getting to know them better and seeing different facets of their behaviour.

But for most of us most of the time those bad impressions are hard to forget.


So do I want to be remembered like

Do I want to be seen as the one who saw something, wanted it, and stole it away?

Did I steal someone's ice-cream?

Do I want to be seen as the one who had to be better than others?

Do I want to be seen as the one who knew more than others?

Do I want to be seen as the one who is more important than others?

Do I want to be seen as the one who stole the attention from others?

Do I want to be seen as the one who was jealous of others?

Because that's what it may boil down to - us simply being jealous.

So we feel the need

• to say something to show we know more than others
• to do something that makes us appear better than others
• to do something to draw the attention away from others
• to speak of someone to make them appear less worthy than us 

We need to steal away, from them, the favour we want for ourselves.

Do we want all the favour for ourselves?

Truthfully, within us, we can all be jealous of others 

but if we recognise this human failing in ourselves

and then determinedly step away from it 
and do not act on it in any way; 

we can defeat that jealousy, 

conquer that jealousy 

and 

be more like the person God has created us to be.

Pondering the Psalms - Psalm 2

Each Sunday I am going to choose a Psalm and write down some brief thoughts on it.


Today I'm looking at Psalm 2

This Psalm falls into three parts:

V. 1-3
People and Nations in Opposition to God.


V. 4-9
God sees all.
The Lord is on the Throne, He is in control.


V. 10-11
Warning to the rulers that if they do not serve God they will perish.

Overall Theme

No matter who thinks he is better than the Lord and God's people, he has to remember that Jesus is Lord and will do with them as He wills.

This Psalm encourages us to know that God is in supreme control.


People & nations may seem to be making the world a horrible place to live in 
but there will be an end to this.

The end will be GOOD for those who have trusted in God.

An Organised Printer Unit

There is a place in every room where you just tend to leave things down.   True?

I know that happens in our house and I am pretty sure it happens in your house too.

But the Printer Unit in my Study really is not the place I think that should happen but that is exactly what has been happening.

I think it was because it was the place that had shelves that were not so full of things - well to start with!

Then it just seemed like there was space there so something (and everything) could just be set down there until I had time to put it away or indeed decided where it should go.


Hence it became one big mess.

The only way to do the job properly was the usual Sandra method of

"take everything out and only put back what needs to go there"

But Fred calls it

"take everything out and make a mess somewhere else"

Well what else can you do until you have decided where all the "stuff" will go?



So I cleared the shelves and left only 3 things:

• the printer on the bottom shelf
• my containers for various sizes of laminating pouches on the second shelf up
• the A3 laminator on the middle shelf

The printer goes on the bottom shelf with plenty of room above it for the back feed tray and also a better position for lifting out unto the floor when needing to get at the connections and plugs.


The second shelf up is a pull out shelf and I keep the laminating pouches there handy for use with the laminator just above on the middle shelf.


I love the containers I have for the pouches because they hold the different sizes (except for A3 but what could hold A3 size?) and they sit on top of each other taking up less space.
They were a good buy but now I don't remember where I got them.


There are three containers

The first is A4 size so holds the A4 pouches and then there are two A5 size, one for the A5 pouches and one for the A6 and A7 and business card size pouches.

At the moment I have run out of the A5 size which explains why one is empty.

These two smaller trays sit on top of the larger one

supported by the shape of the sides of the larger tray.


It is very handy to grab the pouches as I need them and just lift the front top tray to get at the A4 ones in the bottom tray.


So these were the essentials for the printer unit.



Then the decisions had to be made about what other things I should keep on the other shelves.


The most obvious thing would be to have anything else that I would normally want to use with the printer at close to it so immediately you would think of paper

but 

I already use the two Ikea drawer units immediately to the right of this unit for all my paper and card and I see no reason to change this because there is a drawer for each type of paper and card so that is all well organized.

All I had to do with it was tidy up the top of it to make it neater  -  easy job.



So what should go on the other shelves in the Printer Unit?


Well I decided that I should consider how to make the best use of the space.

Firstly I knew that would not be to store my A3 white, black & coloured cardstock because that could mean losing out on the height allowance of the shelves by putting in something large and flat.


In the end I decided it would be best to store my various boxes some with old greeting cards, some with note paper & cards and some with more miscellaneous items.  These are boxes which I will not be lifting out and in too often so it doesn't matter that some are on top of others but look how well they fill up the two top shelves - good use of space here.

Then I remembered something else which definitely should be kept in the unit and these are the new ink cartridges for the printer so I grabbed an old small black box I had kept (knowing it was good and sturdy and would come in handy for something) and put the cartridges in it and placed it at the back left corner of the middle shelf behind the laminator.


Another item that made sense to be in the unit because of it's height and what it is used for was the Photo Negative Scanner so I placed it at the back right corner of the middle shelf again behind the laminator.

I have a small metal case which came with a shaver or something for my husband a couple of years ago and I decided straight away when I saw it that it would be ideal for keeping things to do with my phone and mp3 player and bluetooth gadget and charging leads so it was put back on to the shelf beside the laminator pouches where it had been previously so not much change there.



Well with the printer unit and the drawer units done I thought I might as well finish off with the metal & wicker shelf unit that stands to the left.


This is now the place for most of my other books that I need to read and then after that decide to give away or keep - they are in the wooden crates with the chalkboard fronts.

The other nice boxes and files are for

• my recipes,
• greeting cards for use throughout the year,
• old letters
• A4 Overhead Projector Song Sheets for when we are working with the Kids Club in the school.

Did you notice the little bit of decoration I had hanging on the printer unit?

Yes the heart that had hung on the key before

Well it is back again - it is a heart and I love Hearts and it is dark red which ties in with other decorative things in the Study.  Plus I love that old "Home is where the Heart is" phrase.


And now

I am pleased with the difference in looks and the better organisation of the unit and the shelves.

compared to the before

This was more Housework than Funwork this time and more housework to come very soon with the sorting out of the other stuff that had been left on the printer shelves in the past

but

then eventually it will be more Fun because I will take some time to read my old letters and look at the old cards and enjoy memories  with a nice cup of coffee on several occasions yet to come.

This project also brings another project to my mind

How to imaginatively keep old greeting cards - might need a bit of research time on Pinterest for that!

But for now this job is finished and the pull down door can be closed on it when we want to but if it remains this well organised we won't need to try to hide it.

So another part of the Study has been overhauled and organised but we still have many more parts to tackle.


For the other parts of the Study already overhauled and organised click below


An Organised Craft Armoire

Organised Bookcases

For More Posts on Organising please click below

Organising

The Spider in the Hall! - A Dose of Encouragement

If you have read other posts on this blog you will know that my husband travels often on business.

Although some people think this has perks - it rarely does.  In fact there are so many other things that are downsides of this fact.


The Spider in the hall being just one of those.

When we moved into this house in December 2010 we noticed a lot of spiders appearing in the first 6 months here.

Suddenly we would be sitting quietly watching a dvd in the lounge when something would run along the floor past us and Fred would have to jump up to get it and kill it before it disappeared again.  Slippers were even known to have been thrown across the room in some cases.

These spiders were not wee tiny things but quite big and therefore noticeable when they tried to sprint the length of our room.


The 2 good things about that time was that

• Fred was not travelling much so he was there to do the killing (please don't judge us for killing them).
• It came to an end, we presumed the spiders had been hiding somewhere after being free to roam the house while it was empty before we bought it and now they had all ventured out and been GOT.

I'm not saying we didn't get any spiders since then but to be honest we got more outside on the patio than we did in the house and the ones in the house were not big.

Until September last year that was.

It was enormous!
I mean really enormous!

But worse than that - Fred was away on business!

I was on my own in the house!

It was 1.15 in the morning when I should have been in bed fast asleep but well.....

All I could think of was

That thing could make it to our bedroom 

and the door of our bedroom doesn't close properly 

and this thing could be crawling all over me in bed. 

 I would never be able to sleep.

It has to go!

But there was no Fred to get it for me.

Now just to prove that I did not zoom in on this spider to make it look BIG you can see it compared to the mirror which is about 4.5 feet long and 2 feet deep.  The spider was just approaching the corner and was about 1.5 feet from the mirror.

Before I decided how to kill it I had to take a picture because otherwise Fred would never have believed me about the size of it.

My biggest problem was I did not want to squash it on the wall because I did not want to mark the paintwork - too lazy to have to clean it!

I would have to act quickly before this thing ran off.

But I didn't because the spider seemed content to just sit there while I took the picture and stared at it considering my options.

No way was I going to try to scoop it onto a piece of paper and try to take it outside - it would have been far too close to my hands.

It had to be the flick it off the wall and stamp on it method!

But I was in my slippers and my feet are small so I had to go get a newspaper and would you believe that brute just sat there on the wall and waited for me to come back.  I think he thought I would be no match for him.

Then with a swift flick off the wall (making no mark), I threw the newspaper on top of it on the floor and jumped on top of the newspaper.  

GOT IT!

I actually think it was so big it couldn't move as fast as smaller spiders.

After what probably would have looked to others like a little flamenco dancing on the newspaper it was definitely dead.

Well I felt so good (not because I had killed a spider) but because I had managed something I usually relied on Fred to do and I would be able to sleep unworried about the spider.

But then the thought struck me

What if there was a spider's mate somewhere in the house?

How quickly I could go from one feeling to another!

How quickly my mood could be changed by one little thought!

But the devil sure knows which little thought to put into our minds - that one little thought that will be the one to do his evil work.

He knows just when to slip it in to rob us of any joy we have.

He tries it all the time.
He is an expert at it.
He thinks he knows us so well.

And let's face it he does know us well.

He knows all those thoughts, feelings, fears, reactions, worries that he can attack us with.

But

God knows us better than anyone.

God does not attack us.

God does not rob us of joy.

God does not throw discouraging thoughts at us.

God does not plant niggling fears in our minds.

God is the one who gives us joy.

God is the one who helps us overcome all that the devil wants to pull us down with.

So next time you feel your joy being sucked away by the devil and his whisperings in your ear think about this story of the spider and 

imagine you are flamenco dancing on the devil 

because 

Jesus has the victory over the devil and so do we.

Don't let the devil hold you back!