Be Ye Separate

July 20

Each Little Thought

For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.

Proverbs 23:7a

What were you thinking about just before you began reading this? What have you been thinking about the past few days? What do you think about most of the time?

What you are is a product of what you’ve been thinking about. Take some time today to watch your thought life. Do you meditate upon the law of the Lord day and night? Do you think about the things mentioned in Philippians 4:8? Is God serious when the Bible tells us what we are supposed to fill our minds with? Did you ever know God to not mean what He says? God says we must think about these things if we want to be fruitful.

A little thought does not seem so bad. But each little thought is another brick in the wall of the stronghold we are building in our minds for either God or Satan. The stronghold of God is a mighty fortress of protection against the storms of life. But Satan’s strongholds lock us in a dungeon of guilt, shame, and misery. He will take us captive whenever he wants to. When he says “hate” we will hate. When he says “overeat” we will overeat. When he says “complain” we will complain. When he says “fear man” we will fear man. In what ways does Satan have you chained?

To repent means to change our thinking. Today, pay close attention to what you think about. Ask yourself, “What kind of person thinks thoughts like that?” With God’s help, pull down those Satanic strongholds in your mind, and build strongholds for God. Perhaps it will take several days or months until you’re done. But do not give up. The strongholds that took many years or generations to erect may take time to pull down. He that perseveres and patiently brings forth fruit unto perfection will be blessed

by God and saved eternally.

Philip Cohen, Summersville, MO

Your mind is the gateway to your heart.

Bible Reading: Philippians 4

One Year Bible Reading Plan:

Acts 21:15–40

Psalms 31—33

Used by Permission of Vision Publishers

PO Box 190, Harrisonburg, VA 22803

Phone: 877-488-0901

E-Mail: [cs@vision-publishers.com]

If it wasn't for me...

Do you ever find yourself saying, "If it wasn't for me________would never get done!" (fill in the blank)? Be honest now:P I don't do it as often as I once used to but I did find myself doing just that the last week:P

It was a couple of days of things just being so busy and sometimes feeling like we were taking two steps forward and one step back:P It began with, "What would you all do if I wasn't here to sweep up your mess on the mudroom floor?" It progressed with things like, "How would you folks survive if I wasn't here to close the cupboard doors?" "What will you do when I'm not here anymore to, pick up the dirty towels off the bathroom floor...rinse the dishes before stacking them, clean out the muddy drop in the bathroom sink, replace the soap in the dish etc!?!" Then the last one that got me thinking harder than anything was..."Am I the only one who knows how to replace the toilet paper and actually put it ON the dispenser?":P

All this to say, I had become a class one nag and self oppointed doitall:P I got to thinking about how much God has done for me because I didn't do it first or do it for myself and blah blah blah. Hearing yourself yet?:P

I wondered how many times God has said to me "Am I the only one that sees you dragging your feet, not praying enough, worrying too much etc?" What would you do if I wasn't here to help you through your trials, pick you up when you are down, hold you when you are shattered etc etc etc?"

My answer? I would be lost. Completely and utterly lost. I would be desparate, desolate, alone and forgotten. How much He does for me and how often I take it for granted.

What would my family do? Perhaps they would be lost, desparate, desolate, alone and forgotten. All or some of each? Who knows. I know one thing for sure. They wouldn't feel my love or know my guidance. Teaching them as I go along, helping them to become not so much independant but reliant on God's provision. They've been given the gift of someone who loves them enough to do these things (even if it comes with a complaint now and then) for and with them.

I will never be complaint free but I do try to let them know that there are lots of things that I couldn't do without THEM either:) My sweet husband and children will often turn my frown upside down by turning my words around. They will jump on it and say "What would we do if you weren't here to________" or they will do something with a lot of fanfare to make sure I know they are doing it and, with a mischevious little grin, say "What would you do if______":P

I love my family and I know they love me. Better yet GOD loves my family and I know He loves me!

Daily Devotion 201

July 19

Worries or Peace?

But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

Matthew 6:33

Where will the money come from for the next payment? How can I get this business paid off more quickly? Where will our next meal come from? Where will we get the money for the shoes we need so badly? How can I make more money so I can buy the truck I want so badly? Where can I invest my money to make sure it increases? What can I do with all my riches, so I can keep them? After all, a fire could burn up all our things, or someone could steal them, or . . . The list could go on.

Being overly concerned about any of these things should tell us we are not trusting God as we ought. God does not have our total devotion, which He deserves.

If God has our total devotion, material things will not matter so much. We can be poor and still serve God with a whole heart. If the Lord has blessed us with riches, we can use them to bring honor and glory to God by sharing with the needy instead of hoarding it to ourselves.

The key is found in verse 33 of our reading. “But rather seek ye first the kingdom of God; and all these things shall be added unto you.” If we put God first in everything, He will supply all our needs.

Lowell Brenneman, Cullman, AL

True peace and contentment are found only in Jesus.

Bible Reading: Luke 12:13–34

One Year Bible Reading Plan:

Acts 21:1–14

Psalms 28—30

Used by Permission of Vision Publishers

PO Box 190, Harrisonburg, VA 22803

Phone: 877-488-0901

E-Mail: [cs@vision-publishers.com]

Banned Books

I was not tagged for this meme either but it sounded interesting so I decided to do it too:) (Like so many others who found it just as interesting):)

As I understand it you need to mark or bold the books you've read. so here goes:)

#1 The Bible
#2 Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
#3 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
#4 The Koran (interesting and scarey)
#5 Arabian Nights
#6 Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
#7 Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
#8 Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
#9 Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
#10 Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
#11 Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
#12 Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
#13 Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
#14 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
#15 Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
#16 Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
#17 Dracula by Bram Stoker
#18 Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin
#19 Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
#20 Essays by Michel de Montaigne
#21 Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
#22 History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
#23 Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
#24 Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (interesting and misguided)
#25 Ulysses by James Joyce
#26 Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
#27 Animal Farm by George Orwell
#28 Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
#29 Candide by Voltaire
#30 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
#31 Analects by Confucius
#32 Dubliners by James Joyce
#33 Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
#34 Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
#35 Red and the Black by Stendhal
#36 Capital by Karl Marx
#37 Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire
#38 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
#39 Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence
#40 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
#41 Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
#42 Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
#43 Jungle by Upton Sinclair (very political in nature but makes you think)
#44 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
#45 Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
#46 Lord of the Flies by William Golding
#47 Diary by Samuel Pepys
#48 Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
#49 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
#50 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
#51 Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
#52 Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
#53 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
#54 Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus
#55 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
#56 Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
#57 Color Purple by Alice Walker
#58 Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
#59 Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
#60 Bluest Eyes by Toni Morrison
#61 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
#62 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Both in Russian and in English)
#63 East of Eden by John Steinbeck
#64 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
#65 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
#66 Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#67 Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais
#68 Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
#69 The Talmud
#70 Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#71 Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
#72 Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
#73 American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
#74 Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler (both volumes with my grandmother)
#75 A Separate Peace by John Knowles
#76 Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
#77 Red Pony by John Steinbeck
#78 Popol Vuh
#79 Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith
#80 Satyricon by Petronius
#81 James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
#82 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
#83 Black Boy by Richard Wright
#84 Spirit of the Laws by Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu
#85 Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
#86 Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
#87 Metaphysics by Aristotle
#88 Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
#89 Institutes of the Christian Religion by Jean Calvin
#90 Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
#91 Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
#92 Sanctuary by William Faulkner
#93 As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
#94 Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
#95 Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
#96 Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
#97 General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
#98 Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
#99 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Alexander Brown
#100 Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
#101 Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines
#102 Émile by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#103 Nana by Émile Zola
#104 Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
#105 Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
#106 Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#107 Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
#108 Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
#109 Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
#110 Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

I did not correct the incomplete titles but those that read them would know anyway:)

That was a walk in history for me:) Some read in school as required reading, some because of curiosity and some because it touched my family in one way or another. (And I adore Ray Bradbury. I met him at a college lecture and who later allowed me to participate in a local radio production from the Theatre in the Round, of Dandelion Wine. He also signed my copy of the script at the time):)

Warning! Graphic photos on butchering

Well, as promised, I finally compiled my photos together on our butchering day and wanted to post them before I completely forget:)

These photos are really how it was done from start to practically finished so if you are squeamish, leave now. Otherwise, it's just another day on the farm:)

The first thing to do is to calm the chicken before placing it in the killing cone. This does several things. It keeps the animal from bruising itself and even breaking bones both before and after it's been butchered.

As I said before, we had never butchered this way before so I was really interested in trying it. I must say it was a lot less stressful for the people too:) In our old way we would simply swing the bird dizzy then place on a stump and swing the hatchet. This way is much calmer although a little more intensive.

Once the animal is in the killing cone you have to find the arteries on both sides of the neck and cut carefully, as my friends husband is doing here (my friend is NOT hiding from it, she's calling to the children to bring another one over)

The wheelbarrow of wood shavings soaks up the blood and makes for a much cleaner butchering. Once the arteries are cut (not as easy as it looks) with a VERY sharp knife, the animal simply bleeds out with very little movement. There are characteristics that happen throughout that you begin to notice as the butchering has a rythm to it.

One must hold the animals feet until it stops moving which isn't as dramatic as when you butcher it on the stump. I found it to be much more tolerable and controlled.

Once the bird is done it is taken to hang on the fence for about 10 minutes or so to finish draining. I was surprised at how little blood there was during the fencing time. The way the butchering is done makes it much cleaner, as I said before.:)

Once the bird has hung long enough it is dipped in hot water (140*F) for 45 seconds to loosen the pin feathers and make plucking MUCH easier. You can see me on the right, sitting down (my legs were so tired) and miss Sarah on the left also sitting. Bending over that table to pluck is hard on the back:)

(My friends best friend showed up to say hey for a few minutes as she was visiting folks in the area and she's from out of state):)

No one gets out of it...EVERYONE has a job to do:)

Miss C taking birds to be put on fence

Miss C, catching up another one.

Master W. and Miss M plucking away.

Many hands make light work:)

Once the bird is plucked it's places in the bucket to the right in iced water to keep cool until the cleaner is able to get to it.

The gutting area is kept separate from the plucking area to keep it clean and rinsed at all times.

From there it's packaged and thrown into the freezer:)

We will be doing it again soon as we still have another 34 chickens to go! It was a very productive and educational day for me. Next time I will try the butchering part. About the time I finally got the nerve to try it was over (isnt' that the way it always is?):P

All part of living a farmsteading life. The children are taught that food doesn't originate in the store, someone has to raise it, butcher it and package it. These children know it's a blessing to know exactly where the food came from, what it was fed and how it was treated during it's life.

The Lord provided us with such a bounty of resources for our sustenance and for this we are truly thankful:)

We'll be making soap again soon and I"ll post the process here when we are finished:)

Be Ye Separate

Daily Devotion 202

If it wasn't for me...

Daily Devotion 201

Banned Books

Warning! Graphic photos on butchering

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