A poem by American ex-Judge Roy Moore

The following is a poem written by Judge Roy Moore from Alabama. Judge Moore was sued by the ACLU for displaying the Ten Commandments in his courtroom foyer. He has since been stripped of his judgeship. We leave you to open your mind & let God’s Spirit speak to you & convict you through his poem:

America, the beautiful,
or so you used to be.
Land of the Pilgrims’ pride;
I’m glad they’ll never see.

Babies piled in dumpsters,
Abortion on demand,
Oh, sweet land of liberty;
your house is on the sand.

Our children wander aimlessly
poisoned by cocaine
choosing to indulge their lusts,
when God has said abstain

From sea to shining sea,
our Nation turns away
From the teaching of God’s love
and a need to always pray

We’ve kept God in our
temples, how callous we have grown.
When earth is but His footstool,
and Heaven is His throne.

We’ve voted in a government
that’s rotting at the core,
Appointing Godless Judges;
who throw reason out the door,

Too soft to place a killer
in a well deserved tomb,
But brave enough to kill a baby
before he leaves the womb.

You think that God’s not
angry, that our land’s a moral slum?
How much longer will He wait
before His judgment comes?

How are we to face our God,
from Whom we cannot hide?
What then is left for us to do,
but stem this evil tide?

If we who are His children,
will humbly turn and pray;
Seek His holy face
and mend our evil way:

Then God will hear from Heaven;
and forgive us of our sins,
He’ll heal our sickly land
and those who live within.

But, America the Beautiful,
If you don’t - then you will see,
A sad but Holy God
withdraw His hand from Thee..

~~Judge Roy Moore~~

The Story behind “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer”

A man named Bob May, depressed and brokenhearted, stared out his drafty apartment window into the chilling December night. His 4-year-old daughter Barbara sat on his lap quietly sobbing.

Bobs wife, Evelyn, was dying of cancer.

Little Barbara couldn’t understand why her mommy could never come home. Barbara looked up into her dad’s eyes and asked, “Why isn’t Mommy just like everybody else’s Mommy?” Bob’s jaw tightened and his eyes welled with tears.

Her question brought waves of grief, but also of anger. It had been the story of Bob’s life. Life always had to be different for Bob.

Small when he was a kid, Bob was often bullied by other boys. He was too little at the time to compete in sports. He was often called names he’d rather not remember. From childhood, Bob was different and never seemed to fit in. Bob did complete college, married his loving wife and was grateful to get his job as a copywriter at Montgomery Ward during the Great Depression. Then he was blessed with his little girl. But it was all short-lived. Evelyn’s bout with cancer stripped them of all their s avings and now Bob and his daughter were forced to live in a two-room apartment in the Chicago slums. Evelyn died just days before Christmas in 1938.

Bob struggled to give hope to his child, for whom he couldn’t even afford to buy a Christmas gift. But if he couldn’t buy a gift, he was determined to make one - a storybook! Bob had created a character in his own mind and told the animal’s story to little Barbara to give her comfort and hope. Again and again Bob told the story, embellishing it more with each telling.

Who was the character? What was the story all about? The story Bob May created was his own autobiography in fable form. The character he created was a misfit outcast like he was. The name of the character? A little reindeer named Rudolph, with a big shiny nose.

Bob finished the book just in time to give it to his little girl on Christmas Day. But the story doesn’t end there.

The general manager of Montgomery Ward caught wind of the little storybook and offered Bob May a nominal fee to purchase the rights to print the book. Wards went on to print,_ Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer_ and distribute it to children visiting Santa Claus in their stores. By 1946 Wards had printed and distributed more than six million copies of Rudolph. That same year, a major publisher wanted to purchase the rights from Wards to print an updated version of the book.

In an unprecedented gesture of kindness, the CEO of Wards returned all rights back to Bob May. The book became a best seller. Many toy and marketing deals followed and Bob May, now remarried with a growing family, became wealthy from the story he created to comfort his grieving daughter. But the story doesn’t end there either.

Bob’s brother-in-law, Johnny Marks, made a song adaptation to Rudolph. Though the song was turned down by such popular vocalists as Bing Crosby and Dinah Shore, it was recorded by the singing cowboy, Gene Autry. “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” was released in 1949 and became a phenomenal success, selling more records than any other Christmas song, with the exception of “White Christmas.”

The gift of love that Bob May created for his daughter so long ago kept on returning back to bless him again and again. And Bob May learned the lesson, just like his dear friend Rudolph, that being different isn’t so bad In fact, being different can be a blessing.

The fact checking website Truth or Fiction.com, verifies the above story as being the truth!

The popular Christmas story of “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” was written by Robert L. May in 1939. According to editorial reviews at both the Amazon and Barnes and Nobel web sites, the book was written at the request of May’s employer, Montgomery Ward & Co. for a give away promotion, That year Montgomery Wards department stores distributed 2,400,000 copies of the book .

Various biographies on the internet confirm that May had a wife, Evelyn, who died in 1938 and say that he created the character of Rudolf to bring hope and comfort to his grieving daughter, Barbara.

The story of Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer has been released world wide in twenty-five languages.

In 1949 Johnny Marks, May’s brother-in-law, adapted the story to music and Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer was immortalized by singing cowboy star, Gene Autry (see cover in picture above). Over two million copies of the recording sold.

Five Lessons About How To Treat People

– Author Unknown

1. First Important Lesson - “Know The Cleaning Lady”

During my second month of college, our professor gave us a pop quiz. I was a conscientious student and had breezed through the questions, until I read the last one: “What is the first name of the woman who cleans the school?”

Surely this was some kind of joke. I had seen the cleaning woman several times. She was tall, dark-haired and in her 50s, but how would I know her name? I handed in my paper, leaving the last question blank. Just before class ended, one student asked if the last question would count toward our quiz grade.

“Absolutely,” said the professor. “In your careers, you will meet many people. All are significant. They deserve your attention and care, even if all you do is smile and say “hello.”

I’ve never forgotten that lesson. I also learned her name was Dorothy.

2. Second Important Lesson - “Pickup In The Rain”

One night, at 11:30 p.m., an older African American woman was standing on the side of an Alabama highway trying to endure a lashing rainstorm. Her car had broken down and she desperately needed a ride. Soaking wet, she decided to flag down the next car.

A young white man stopped to help her, generally unheard of in those conflict-filled 1960s. The man took her to safety, helped her get assistance and put her into a taxicab.

She seemed to be in a big hurry, but wrote down his address and thanked him. Seven days went by and a knock came on the man’s door. To his surprise, a giant console color TV was delivered to his home.

A special note was attached. It read: “Thank you so much for assisting me on the highway the other night. The rain drenched not only my clothes, but also my spirits. Then you came along. Because of you, I was able to make it to my dying husband’s bedside just before he passed away. God bless you for helping me and unselfishly serving others.”

3. Third Important Lesson - “Remember Those Who Serve”

In the days when an ice cream sundae cost much less, a 10 year-old boy entered a hotel coffee shop and sat at a table. A waitress put a glass of water in front of him. “How much is an ice cream sundae?” he asked. “50¢,” replied the waitress.

The little boy pulled his hand out of his pocket and studied the coins in it.

plain vanilla ice cream”Well, how much is a plain dish of ice cream?” he inquired. By now more people were waiting for a table and the waitress was growing impatient. “35¢!” she brusquely replied.

The little boy again counted his coins. “I’ll have the plain ice cream,” he said. The waitress brought the ice cream, put the bill on the table and walked away. The boy finished the ice cream, paid the cashier and left.

When the waitress came back, she began to cry as she wiped down the table. There, placed neatly beside the empty dish, were two nickels and five pennies. You see, he couldn’t have the sundae, because he had to have enough left to leave her a tip.

4. Fourth Important Lesson - “The Obstacles In Our Path”

In ancient times, a King had a boulder placed on a roadway. Then he hid himself and watched to see if anyone would remove the huge rock. Some of the king’s wealthiest merchants and courtiers came by and simply walked around it. Many loudly blamed the King for not keeping the roads clear, but none did anything about getting the stone out of the way.

Then a peasant came along carrying a load of vegetables. Upon approaching the boulder, the peasant laid down his burden and tried to move the stone to the side of the road. After much pushing and straining, he finally succeeded. After the peasant picked up his load of vegetables, he noticed a purse lying in the road where the boulder had been. The purse contained many gold coins and a note from the King indicating that the gold was for the person who removed the boulder from the roadway. The peasant learned what many of us never understand - “Every obstacle presents an opportunity to improve our condition.”

5. Fifth Important Lesson - “Giving When It Counts”

Many years ago, when I worked as a volunteer at a hospital, I got to know a little girl named Liz who was suffering from a rare and serious disease. Her only chance of recovery appeared to be a blood transfusion from her 5-year-old brother, who had miraculously survived the same disease and had developed the antibodies needed to combat the illness.

Young boy donates blood. The doctor explained the situation to her little brother, and asked the little boy if he would be willing to give his blood to his sister. I saw him hesitate for only a moment before taking a deep breath and saying, “Yes, I’ll do it if it will save her.”

As the transfusion progressed, he lay in bed next to his sister and smiled, as we all did, seeing the color returning to her cheeks. Then his face grew pale and his smile faded. He looked up at the doctor and asked with a trembling voice, “Will I start to die right away?”

Being young, the little boy had misunderstood the doctor; he thought he was going to have to give his sister all of his blood in order to save her.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The intent of these five lessons is to inspire us to be more considerate when opportunities present themselves. Like many novels and movies, even if a story is not entirely true, it doesn’t diminish the moral of the message. Thank you for your consideration in sharing the uplifting spirit of this thought-provoking collection.

Making Pancakes

Six year old Brandon decided one Saturday morning to fix his parents pancakes.

He found a big bowl and spoon, pulled a chair to the counter, opened the cupboard and pulled out the heavy flour canister, spilling it on the floor. He scooped some of the flour into the bowl with his hands, mixed in most of a cup of milk and added some sugar, leaving a floury trail on the floor which by now had a few tracks left by his kitten.

Brandon was covered with flour and getting frustrated. He wanted this to be something very good for Mom and Dad, but it was getting very bad. He didn’t know what to do next, whether to put it all into the oven or on the stove and he didn’t know how the stove worked.

Suddenly he saw his kitten licking from the bowl of mix and reached to push her away, knocking the egg carton to the floor. Frantically, he tried to clean up this monumental mess but slipped on the eggs, getting his pajamas white and sticky.

And just then he saw Dad standing at the door.

Big crocodile tears welled up in Brandon’s eyes. All he’d wanted to do was something good, but he’d made a terrible mess. He was sure a scolding was coming, maybe even a spanking. But his father just watched him.

Then, walking through the mess, he picked up his crying son, hugged him and loved him, getting his own pajamas white and sticky in the process.

That’s how God deals with us.

We try to do something good in life, but it turns into a mess. Our marriage gets all sticky or we insult a friend, or we can’t stand our job, or our health goes sour. Sometimes we just stand there in tears because we can’t think of anything else to do.

That’s when God picks us up and loves us and forgives us, even though some of our mess gets all over Him.

But just because we might mess up, we can’t stop trying to ‘make pancakes’ for God or for others. Sooner or later, we’ll get it right, and then they’ll be glad we tried.

~ Author Unknown

Spiritual Vitamins: A TO Z

Remember to take your vitamins every day!

Rick Warren’s Take on Life

Interview by Paul Bradshaw with Rick Warren (”Purpose Driven Life ” author and pastor of Saddleback Church in California):

People ask me, What is the purpose of life? And I respond: In a nutshell, life is preparation for eternity. We were made to last forever, and God wants us to be with Him in Heaven.

One day my heart is going to stop, and that will be the end of my body– but not the end of me.

I may live 60 to 100 years on earth, but I am going to spend trillions of years in eternity. This is the warm-up act - the dress rehearsal. God wants us to practice on earth what we will do forever in eternity.

We were made by God and for God, and until you figure that out, life isn’t going to make sense.

Life is a series of problems: Either you are in one now, you’re just coming out of one, or you’re getting ready to go into another one.

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Ghost Stories ~ Father Dominic Legge, OP

In the middle of the night at a large, old, and now only partly occupied Dominican priory in rural Ohio, a Dominican woke up to see an unknown man, wearing the white habit of the order, standing at the foot of his bed, looking at him. The figure pointed insistently at the bookcase against the wall, and then turned and walked out of the room.

After breakfast the next morning, the friar took aside the superior of the house. “One of our guests walked into my room last night. It was very strange.”

“What guest?” the prior replied.

“The visiting Dominican – someone I didn’t recognize. He came into my room in the middle of the night.”

“But we don’t have any guests staying with us,” the prior insisted. “You must have been dreaming.”

“I don’t think so.”

When he returned to his room, he studied the bookcase: nothing unusual there. He peered behind it, moved it a few inches. Intrigued, he now strained to pivot the bookcase away from the wall. A forgotten door, unopened for decades, stood before him.

Are you hooked? Everyone loves a good ghost story, especially at this time of year. This one has circulated for decades among the friars of my Dominican province. But do you believe in ghosts? Are they real?

The popular fascination with “paranormal phenomena”, perhaps always with us, certainly seems to have grown in our time. Could this be because, as Father Gabriel Amorth writes: “where religion regresses, superstition progresses”? We have a spiritual dimension that is very hard to suppress. If you don’t believe in God, often you’ll end up believing in lots of things (Tarot cards, astrology, crystals, or other New Age superstitions) much less reasonable, and much more spiritually dangerous.

The Christian tradition bears impressive witness to purely spiritual beings who can have real contact with us: angels and demons. Although their power is far greater than ours, they are still creatures of God. They either are entirely in His service, or they have chosen, eternally and irrevocably, to hate Him – and, consequently, to hate us human beings, since each of us is loved by God. There are no spiritual beings who are free agents. Whether or not Hollywood admits it, every one of those spirits believes in God and is subject to Him. “Even the demons believe – and shudder.” (James 2:19.)

So are ghosts real? That depends on what you mean by “ghost.” They could be apparitions of demons. This is probably what happens when one tries to contact the dead at a séance or with a ouiji board. Since they’re liars, they usually try not to appear malicious. Engaging these spiritual powers, the Catechism warns, “conceal[s] a desire for power over time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings, as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers.” Such attempts “contradict the honor, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone.” It’s very dangerous. (By the way, vampires, zombies, and the “undead”: definitely not real, unless they’re demonic apparitions. Witches and sorcerers? I’ve met people who claim to be such.)

Could ghosts be the souls of the dead? Perhaps, although not in the way Hollywood usually depicts. The souls of the dead are never homeless: they find themselves, in short order, in either Heaven, Purgatory or Hell. Is it possible that we could somehow encounter them? When permitted by the power of God, yes. In fact, when the Church celebrates her saints – the reason that Halloween exists, since it is “All Hallow’s E’en,” the night before the great Catholic feast of All Saints – she rejoices that we have such friends in Heaven who can help us in our need.

But what about ghost stories and haunted houses – or haunted Dominican priories? (My ghost story – slightly embellished here, as any good ghost story should be – has many priests who suspect it is true.) We cannot say for sure, but it could be that God sometimes permits souls in Purgatory to appear to the living to seek the help of their prayers. And that means that the best remedy for seeing a ghost is to pray for it!

The door opened; the friar peered into a dusty closet containing a bureau. Inside the bureau, he found a stack of yellowed slips of paper: Mass intentions. Some priest had long ago left these promises to say Mass for the souls of the dead without fulfilling them. Perhaps that is why the unknown Dominican desired so much that these papers be found – so that the duty he had failed to fulfill in his life could be completed by his brothers who remained alive.

The room was turned into a chapel, an altar erected. Many Masses were offered there. The unknown Dominican never appeared again.

A young man learns what’s most important in life from the guy next door

It had been some time since Jack had seen the old man. College, girls, career, and life itself got in the way. In fact, Jack moved clear across the country in pursuit of his dreams. There, in the rush of his busy life, Jack had little time to think about the past and often no time to spend with his wife and son. He was working on his future, and nothing could stop him.

Over the phone, his mother told him, “Mr. Belser died last night. The funeral is Wednesday.” Memories flashed through his mind like an old newsreel as he sat quietly remembering his childhood days.

“Jack, did you hear me?”

“Oh, sorry, Mom. Yes, I heard you. It’s been so long since I thought of him. I’m sorry, but I honestly thought he died years ago,” Jack said.

“Well, he didn’t forget you. Every time I saw him he’d ask how you were doing. He’d reminisce about the many days you spent over ‘his side of the fence’ as he put it,” Mom told him.

“I loved that old house he lived in,” Jack said.

“You know, Jack, after your father died, Mr. Belser stepped in to make sure you had a man’s influence in your life,” she said

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Beautiful Reasons for Praying the Rosary Even More

Often Father Gabriel Amorth, Chief Exorcist of the Vatican writes: One day a colleague of mine heard the devil say during an exorcism, “Every Hail Mary is like a blow on my head. If Christians knew how powerful the Rosary was, it would be my end.” The secret that makes this prayer so effective is that the Rosary is both prayer and meditation. It is addressed to the Father, to the Blessed Virgin, and to the Holy Trinity, and is a meditation centered on Christ.

I write in addition to the above: Please enunciate each word of the Rosary clearly and distinctly. Do not trample on the heels of the words of anyone with your words.. Do not speak over the leader if you are following or the respondent if you are leading the Rosary. Remember that they also are having a conversation with Mary Our Mother and it is not polite to speak when someone else is speaking.

In the case of the public Rosary there are only two people speaking: the Leader and the respondents. Each is speaking to the Blessed Mother and listening carefully to her response within their hearts as they meditate on the scene before them in their consideration of the mystery being spoken of and interpreted and translated into their lives.

Spread this powerful prayer of exorcism, the Rosary, which contains the Our Father, the Perfect Prayer, prayed five times in the recitation of each set of the Rosary’s Mysteries (plus one at the beginning), backed up by the powerful prayers of Our Mother who prays with us as we pray 53 Hail Mary’s.

The Eternal Father described to a group of us, through a Visionary Friend of mine, what happens when we pray the Rosary, saying, “When you pray Holy Mary Mother of God, pray for us sinners now.., the Blessed Mother comes instantly to your side to pray with you. And she does not come alone. She brings angels with her. And not just one or two for she is the Queen of Angels, so choirs of angels come with her. And she and Jesus are joined at the heart and cannot be separated so she brings Jesus with her. And Jesus cannot be separated from the Trinity so He brings the Father and the Holy Spirit with Him.

And where the Holy Trinity is, all of creation is, and you are surrounded by such beauty and light as you cannot imagine in this life. Your Mother comes as Our Lady of Grace with her hands outstretched. Rays of light emit from her hands piercing your body, healing you and filling you with graces. This is your inheritance which was poured out from the heart of Jesus on the Cross, when the centurion pierced His Heart with the spear, into the only pure vessel ready to receive such graces at that time, Your Mother.

Now as you pray the Rosary, or even just recite one Hail Mary, you receive your portion of these graces. He also said at this time, “Anyone who goes to Mary and prays the Rosary cannot be touched by Satan.”

Is it any wonder that anyone who prays the Rosary from the heart is so blessed and protected and powerful in their prayers for others?