Beauty is  powerful!

In his book, “More Beautiful”, Mark D Sikes (a gifted interior designer) shares some thoughtful quotes.

• “Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.” Franz Kafka
• “Beauty is the mystery of life. It is not in the eye, it is in the mind.” Agnes Martin
• “Beauty begins the moment you decide to be yourself.” Coco Chanel
• “The power of finding beauty in the humblest things makes home happy and life lovely.” Louisa May Alcott
• ” Have nothing in your home that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” William Morris
• “I’m going to make everything around me beautiful—that will be my life.” Elsie de Wolfe
• “I hate pretty. It’s a very empty word. It gives a bad name to beauty.” Oscar de la Renta
• “Beauty is being the best possible version of yourself, inside and out.” Audrey Hepburn
• “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.” John Keats
• “Wisdom is the abstract of the past, but beauty is the promise of the future.” Oliver Wendell Holmes
• “Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.” Confucius
• “To love beauty is to see light.” Victor Hugo
• “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.” John Muir

This was a memorable family craft project for a night or two when the kids were growing up.

Folding squares of paper in half and then in half again, either on the square or on the triangle and then one more time. Then cut into the folds and the tip and the loose edge ends with your scissors to take away half circles or triangles or wavy shapes. The more cut-aways the more intricate the snowflake.

Then have fun unfolding it until it lays flat and see what you made 🙂 If you don’t like it just make another one.

We did this with colored papers as well as white. We used full sheets of paper for large snowflakes down to 1 – 2″ squares for smaller ones.

As we made them the excitement grew, and we used Elmer’s glue (glue sticks work best nowdays) and pasted them to the windows. When you want to take them down, a wet soapy cloth will soften and remove any glue left on the windows.

We’re carrying on the fun with grandkids, cutting and pasting, dreaming and creating. The snowflakes look so happy and light on the dark window glass at night.

This might be fun for our tropical state people who dream of a white Christmas 🙂

What business does God have for us to do?

I’m talking about real business, real work…not spiritualized work, but real work that we can do to help other people… to help them live and thrive and do well.

There are things that need to get done on this earth that only we can do. People need more than prayer and best wishes. They need elbow grease.

We need people to wash windows, clean homes, paint houses, reroof them, plow snow, bake bread, sew curtains, mend fences, build barns, pet-sit, design and build dog kennels, grow food, watch kids, cut grass, pull weeds, plant flowers, sweep sidewalks, pick up trash, stock food pantries, work a soup kitchen.

‘Yeah, but those jobs are menial, manual and I don’t like to do that stuff. That’s for somebody else to do while I think and plan and decide what people should be doing. I’ll just pray about it.’

If you see something that needs to be done and you can do it – do it! That’s God’s business for you at that point. Maybe it will turn into a job or career, but we ought to be doing, cleaning, caring, helping, providing something of good service to our fellow man.

It will make the world turn easier and we’ll all feel better about ourselves.

These are just some of God’s ‘businesses’ for us to be doing. I don’t mean only volunteer work, but real paying jobs in some of the above capacities that provide for the physical needs of others.

Have I had some misconceptions about my work, about work in general, about God and prayer and what I need to be doing?

I want to be in business with God.