Tag: flowers

Starved for Sunlight

Jennifred Jones

The plant in the dark needed to be brought into the light.

It had become weak and spindly. The leaves were getting yellow….no sunlight to photosynthesize into green. (starting to look a bit jaundiced!)

I moved it to a northern window (that was the only natural light available) and it gradually began to regain its color and strength. It needed the sun to strengthen it!

Is this the same with us? We hole up in our offices or homes working, working, working…too busy to get some sunshine and we wonder why we’re down in the mulley-grubs so often.

Sometimes we’re with others who can’t see one good thing about life, and it starts to turn our leaves yellow. We need to get away into some positive sunshine!

Or our own lives are filled with lots of darkness, perhaps a season we’re facing, and we need to get sunshined upon….lots of it!

Sunshine comes in other ways than from the sun itself. Often it comes from reflections of the sun.

Here are some ways to get additional sunshine:

  • Look at something beautiful. That’s it! Just look!
  • Look at the yellow marigold.
  • Look at the bluebird’s feathers…real or in a picture book
  • Look at water flowing down the creek over colorful rocks
  • Look at a baby animal trying to walk

OR

  • Head out to a cute coffee shop for a change of scenery
  • Take a walk and smile at people
  • Help somebody with something…anything…just help somebody (doesn’t have to be much)
  • Take a class at the YMCA
  • Start a new hobby/like/project
  • Get around others who are moving forward, doing good things

If whatever you’re around is not reflecting sunshine back to you, If it is instead absorbing all of yours; you need to change windows and get back into the sunshine.

Don’t starve yourself of sunlight. There’s plenty to go around…it will not run out!

Where do I need to go to get more sunshine in my life today?…right now…

Green Pastures

Jennifred Jones

Peace, contentment, non-hurried pace, calmness, sunshine, wide-open spaces with trees surrounding green grasses…birds singing…

That’s what green pastures mean to me.

Green pastures is not only a real place, but I believe it is to be a place of mind. We are to have green pastures of mind.

It’s springtime right now. Let’s practice springtime in the mind. Wake up each and every day with feelings of green pastures in our mind. Cultivate green grasses of peace and contentment in your mind every morning. Remember and think of good things you have or are working on. Think of walking in the green pastures of calmness as you go about your morning. Find one routine that brings you happiness to repeat every morning, something you look forward to.

We don’t have to wake up in the thistle-patch or thorn tree of mind. We can choose to wake up and lie down in the green-pasture mind.

Oh there’s a lot of commotion going on in other dry and barren pasture lands, bugs, vultures, discontent, but I, we, can choose the green pasturelands to dwell in, dwell in peace, dwell in hope, dwell in contentment, dwell at a slower pace where we can hear the birds sing and notice the flowers.

It really is that simple. We can choose.

Choose with me to dwell in green-pastures of mind starting now.

Neighborhoods

Jennifred Jones

We all live in some sort of a neighborhood…

The street we live on is our neighborhood.

The apartment floor we live on is our neighborhood.

The county road we live on is our neighborhood.

We have people around us wherever we are, we see them, they see us.

We’re not trying to ‘keep up with the Joneses’, that’s a whole stress factor we don’t want to get trapped in.

We…I…desire to make my part of the neighborhood attractive and well kept for me. Everyone’s morale is lifted when they drive by and see somebody’s place well kept.

We can do a ‘shabby chic’ on our yard if need be…might be overflowing with crabgrass and peeling paint on the fence, but if we keep things trimmed up, add some flowers and keep them up, sweep and edge the walk, put a fun brightly colored table or chair on the porch, it will look happy, people will notice and smile, and it didn’t take much effort or money to do it.

Daily, it seems we have to pick up trash that somehow ‘landed in our space’, but that’s part of keeping our place up. Go ahead, take your trash bag and walk up and down your street or alley and clean it up. Next time you go out and it looks fresh and tidy, you can feel good, and rightly so, that you did it. You belong to the neighborhood improvement committee and whether anyone says anything or not….they noticed!

I think today, this Sunday, is a good day for me to see what I can do for my neighborhood.

Let’s get going!