Sunday, September 18, 2016

Children's Church, Believe 6, God's Plan

Children’s Church
September 18, 2016
Believe Lesson Six, God’s Plan
Genesis 15:1-7, 17:15-22, 18:10-15, 21:1-7, Acts 2:1-41
The Bible begins with the book of Genesis. The word ‘genesis’ means beginning or new creation. We’ve seen in this study that God created the world and everything in it, and the Bible also tells us that He had a plan from the very beginning. In our Old Testament studies today, we learn that God’s plan established His people, the Israelites. The Bible tells us about the descendants of Abraham and his son Isaac and how these people became the Israelite's, we say Jews today or Jewish.
Exodus 19:5-6 tells us about a kingdom of priests and holy nation that God's plan for Israel was to make of them such a nation.
Let's sing a song, Beautiful Savior


1. Beautiful Savior,
King of Creation,
Son of God and Son of Man!
Truly I'd love Thee,
Truly I'd serve Thee,
Light of my soul, my Joy, my Crown.
2. Fair are the meadows,
Fair are the woodlands,
Robed in flowers of blooming spring;
Jesus is fairer,
Jesus is purer;
He makes our sorrowing spirit sing.
3. Fair is the sunshine,
Fair is the moonlight,
Bright the sparkling stars on high;
Jesus shines brighter,
Jesus shines purer,
Than all the angels in the sky.
4. Beautiful Savior,
Lord of the nations,
Son of God and Son of Man!
Glory and honor,
Praise, adoration,
Now and forevermore be Thine!


Here’s my question, if Israel was God’s nation, where do we fit in?
We are grafted in because of the love of God. Jesus says He is the vine and we are the branches. Paul tells us that we are saved because of our faith. He likens it to being grafted onto a branch supported by the roots of the vine. Now that we are God’s saved children through the work of Jesus, we are part of God’s church. We say we are part of the church family.
Let us pray

Father in Heaven, we love You. Thank You for sending Jesus. Thank You for making us part of Your family. Please be with us and our parents, caregivers and teachers this week. We pray as Jesus taught us to pray, saying, our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts and we forgive our debtors. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. 

Saturday, September 10, 2016

Five Thoughts, coming to you live from Denver Colorado

View from my room at RMFW
So I haven't been posting--unsure what I should be doing now that my book will be released soon. So this is just me and a few crazy thoughts.
Crazy thought 1) The back cover of my book is terrible. I didn't finish writing the little why-you-want-to-read-this-book-blurb and while the publisher sent me a review copy, I was so gob-smacked to see my name in print and how beautiful Konii's artwork was, I just approved it without much thought. DumbDumbDumb. That was me, not engaging the grey cells. I had a great ten minute session with an editor, Jeff Seymour, while I attending the Colorado Gold Conference for RMFW (which has been another great year, go RMFW) anyway, Jeff said that authors edit their own back cover copy, emphasis on authors not editors. Just a thought, there should be a field of editors around to help challenged author's like me with this single task.
Crazy thought 2) My book is soon to be out, some say dropped, some say live. They probably all mean different things and I'm using the lingo incorrectly. Either way, a cow drops a calf, a broadcast goes or is live, but a book? I'm not certain I want anymore livestock metaphors in my world. Branding was bad enough. What is my brand--the family owns several. We use the fleur-de-lis, which we pronounce flower de luz (I know, bad, right?) but it's hard for me to get my head around branding at all. I don't want to be branded. Wasn't that a TV show?
Crazy thought 3) I finally made the jump into blogging and trying to add color to my blogs with photos and images. Yikes. I thought I was using free stuff, but I find out, maybe I'm stealing images, albeit, unwittingly. Bad bad juju, or is it joojoo. Whatever it is, I apologize to my huge readership and thank you for not sending me to the gallows.
Crazy thought 4) Can authors actually make enough money to consider it a career? People keep telling me it's a great time to be publishing, but mostly it's a great time if you're a freelance editor or if you offer independent publishing services or if you're Amazon.
Crazy thought 5) because there just needed to be five, four is too clean. I missed the RHS game Friday night and that means I missed my son in the band in their new uniforms. I never thought I'd be so gooey about a football game.
Enough for now, laughter and joy and, if not, strength to bear. Thank you for reading. BEV

Thursday, September 1, 2016

The Top 10 Things You Can Do to Sell More Books | Writers and Authors

The Top 10 Things You Can Do to Sell More Books | Writers and Authors

Writing and ... not Writing, just a Little Reflection

Today's Google Doodle is a reference to The Never Ending Story by Michael Ende. I haven't read this book though I've long had it on my 'soon,' list. While reading about the book I was fascinated by the original cover, and I tried to piece the story from the rich illustration of the lion. Was it another Narnia? Was Ende writing about redemption?
I floated to Wikipedia and found this about Ende's writing process. It was a perfect description of what many of us call a pants-er and a successful one. (A pants-er (seat of the pants person) is anyone who doesn't outline their story or know the end before they begin to write, antithetic to plotter.) I was taken-aback. I constantly push myself to do a better job of outlining, thinking that I'll never finish a book if I don't. I found a little shade and rest in this quote from Ende.
‘I sat down at my desk and wrote: “The country in which the engine-driver, Luke, lived was called Morrowland. It was a rather small country.” Once I’d written the two lines, I hadn’t a clue how the third line might go. I didn’t start out with a concept or a plan - I just left myself drift from one sentence and one thought to the next. That’s how I discovered that writing could be an adventure. The story carried on growing, new characters started appearing, and to my astonishment different plotlines began to weave together. The manuscript was getting longer all the time and was already much more than a picture book. I finally wrote the last sentence ten months later, and a great stack of paper had accumulated on the desk.’ Michael Ende always said that ideas only came to him when the logic of the story required them. On some occasions he waited a long time for inspiration to arrive. At one point during the writing of Jim Button the plot reached a dead end. Jim and Luke were stuck among black rocks and their tank engine couldn’t go any further. Ende was at a loss to think of a way out of the adventure, but cutting the episode struck him as disingenuous. Three weeks later he was about to shelve the novel when suddenly he had an idea - the steam from the tank engine could freeze and cover the rocks in snow, thus saving his characters from their scrape. ‘In my case, writing is primarily a question of patience,’ he once commented.
Thanks for reading. Thanks for writing. Happy Thursday. BEV