Friends are medicine for a wounded heart, and vitamins for a hopeful soul.

Steve Maraboli

Some people arrive and make such a beautiful impact on your life, you can barely remember what life was like without them.

Anna Taylor

The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart.

Elizabeth Foley

A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow.

William Shakespeare

Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It's not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything.

Muhammad Ali

If there's no inner peace, people can't give it to you. The husband can't give it to you. Your children can't give it to you. You have to give it to you.

Linda Evans

Do not neglect the gift that is in you.

living water

I am made in the image of God, not your image of God.

And Jesus told us to go into the world and tell our story, so that others might come to believe that if God can certainly bless me, if God could certainly work through me in the drama of my evolving story, if God could certainly still love me in the unfolding of who I am as a child of God, living and breathing, and still finding the blessings of God in my life, then if God can do it for me, God can do it for you.

And that's another cool thing my Senior Pastor told us.

PROGRAM LISTINGS & PROGRAM SCHEDULES

From what does one learn love?

Today's opening video brought to mind David - the King. I am not sure why. He isn't a contemporary of mine, but I've grown attached. I'm a fan.

In that video Huang Yi is harmoniously weaving together the art of dance and the science of mechanical engineering - a man-machine dance duet with KUKA ~ a robot he conceptualized and programmed to a stirring cello rendition by Joshua Roman. It grabbed my attention and took me to a new yet familiar place where I met a refreshing new set of ideas. And good friends!

You will meet Chris (below) in a moment.

Meanwhile, let's enjoy a sweet moment: David. A comforting familiarity, he is. David was once a boy then a youth before becoming a man, yet for me he is and always was a king ~ growing from the boy who is to be king to a musician who is king. King David. Growing alongside me. And in me. And with me. And for me. Oh, the miracles of the mind, especially the mind of a child! Yes, King David.

Just look at him! He walks on air!

He probably turned old through the years, but that visage is way beyond the periphery of my enthralled vision. He is King David! My boy wonder! God-lover!

Don't worry, Jonathan; I love you too; we'll share some precious moments, but today I have a King David sweet-tooth in my soul. I am in this luscious field listening and watching - all googly-eyes - at the make of an authentic man! He walks on air. He leaps. And Bounds. He soars. Isn't it any wonder God loves him so unreservedly. I 'heart' him too! He and I would've been wonderful friends. Yep. I know.

Pardon me?

Now what does a king do? My royal friend, specifically? This dancer! This singer! This lyricist! This worshiper! My great friend! Yes. Indeed, this king does many-many things! A plethora of things! This word is worthy of him. Plethora! He has done so much and does so much more.

What undergirds his longevity? What fuels his unique magnanimity, his greatness?

I'll let you solve that sweet puzzle. Permit me to highlight this one thing: a great king solves problems. The king who is loved and adored, the king who lifts the people above the cringiness of normalcy, whose peoples are ever ready and willing and longing to lift their king to majestic new heights, such a king solves problems.

Mhm! You know it. Don't you? I do.

Herod, also, was a king! M-hm! ~ another genre of sorts, isn't he? ~ M-hm! I am not a fan!

Life bends that way too, but let me draw you back into my luscious field filled with joy and sweet loving and my David. So kingly, he! Ah, and that question, my question: from what does one learn love?

Turn this way for a moment - along this side street. Tarry with me for a little while.

Meet Chris. He is our contemporary. Later, I'll introduce you to Eduardo and Elif. (There is just something about them, it seems to me, something about what they share, about what they reveal, that - for me - uniquely hint at, peel back, then point a probing light into and through the thick atmosphere of this intriguing question: from what or where or whom does one learn love?) Oh, to walk on air. Free!

Being fully functional & wholly human!

A Familiar Personal Experience!

Ooops!

I made a quick dash between joyful duties on an errand to find a fix for that. Got it. Oooh, prices have gone up. Oh, well! What-ya-gonna do! Forget cheesecake this year. Cows eat grass and they've been around for eons, and no complaints; none I heard.

Oh, well.

For nigh on two years there is this other problem I've been chewing on and working around unable to organize an affordable fix. A fix would get me baskets of cheesecake whenever I had the urge. There! Something caught my eye. That's new. I called the attendant. Tell me about that! He told me. That's a fix, I was thinking. And close to affordable too! What's the downside? I pestered the attendant to reveal the downside. I don't want to get burned by the downside, I warned him. No downside? No downside! Are you sure? I use it, he said. Let me think about it. I like what you're telling me. I like. I like. Yes, I do like. How long has this been around? Two years! Oh, God! Really? Two Years? Two years!

My life!

Oh! Something quite special is about to happen. Cheescake Factory, here I come. Before my exciting revelation - Oh, Life! - here is the real thing, and what I so like about Huang, Chris, and a slew of like minds. They see a problem. They recognize a new possibility - a solution. They organize a fix. No judgments. No condemnations. Fixes! I kinda like that. Very much. Don't you? It inspires me! And when I'm inspired, I feel light. I experience a lift. I am ready to start walking on air. Jeez, I could jump over the moon!

Here is the difficulty - I have discovered! We are sometimes trapped by the familiar, by accustomed methods, by comfortable ways of how a thing is done and been done since before granny had teeth. We miss positive change all around us. Eyes get latched to the 'bad' things we disapprove. Hearts grow cold and unexciting. Custom keeps us tied to the ground while the tide is rising high - Oops! - when in reality there is a lot of air around to walk on. Then again, what's the use of walking on air, one might ask, when we don't know how to fly? Hmm?

Oh, I digress; I was about to tell you about my cheesecake revival.

The attendant said something; I almost missed it, and was walking away. I spun around back to him and said, Did you say such-and-such? Yes. And that would be an even better fix for my two-year old problem? Yes, he said, and, sir, you already have that right in your home; you won't have to spend four hundred bucks to get this.

Wow! Just like that! For two years my fix has been right under my nose! Jeez! Never mind that. Cheesecake Factory, here I come.

So I went home, and barely began salivating on this trip for my lovely cheese-cake treat, when Knock-Knock! Knock-Knock! Knock-Knock! That's my door. I opened it. Hello, I said.

"Good day, sir. Isn't this a beautiful day? These children need cheese. And these families need cake. Do you happen to have any to spare?"

Well! Gosh! Your timing!

LATER THAT DAY:

Dear Loving God who takes care of all of my needs, in whom I trust, and whose loving mercies follow me all the days of my life, why are all these cows in my yard?

Three words come to mind. I think of David! What a man! What a man! Indeed, what a man! A man of demonstrably deep love across an emphatically broad spectrum of life; what love is this? Is this love emotional, intellectual, spiritual, physical, essential? Is it elemental to who he is: king? Is it demonstrable of who we all are? Oh, my sweet tooth, I was destined to explore and to inquire wherever the probing light pointed, wherever curiosity declared a path. This was not a trampled fareway; it is trully magnificent. Lots to learn. Lots to consider. Love is a mighty word. Powerful.

"Knowledge that takes you not beyond yourself is far worse than ignorance." Elif Shafak.

Consider These

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You are

What a PRIVILEGE!