In the blink of an eye...

 

I have been watching the news on YouTube lately.  And watching other videos about crimes.  And sometimes videos about disasters.  Tonight I watched a video on the 2004 Tsunami.  

I was amazed by the devastation I watched... by the way we see events in our time... by the desire to show all the graphic details of tragedy in other people's lives. 

Where I live there is a major move of tectonic plates expected, like the cause of the 2004 Tsunami.  I was trying to imagine what will happen here... to find out what might happen here.  This video had survivor accounts and actual video collected from people who filmed it as it happened.  It was a horrible disaster, killing hundreds of thousands of people of all ages.  There was no warning.  

I think about our lives and how they change in an instant.  

I was in an automobile accident many years ago.  I was rearended by someone going so fast the front of their car, probably their engine area, was folded flat and upward over their windshield.  The car lifted my back end off the ground.  When it disconnected, my van rolled across the center median and somehow landed on its wheels.  I had a son sleeping in the back with all our belongings.    

We survived.  I had small head injuries from the windshield breaking and slicing the top of my scalp without making a gash.  I thought I had survived without injuries, but it opened after I tried to get out of the van.  There is a permanent indentation there.  I feel GOD was with us through this unexpected event.  My son was protected by all the boxes we were carrying and the mattress we had for a bed.

These things happen without warning, without our ability to escape, and we have to live with the results.  The people in the Tsunami video said the same thing.  They survived, but not without scars.  We are thankful to have survived, but we never forget. 

Natural events like earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, and floods happen yearly, somewhere.  Accidents, crimes against us, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, terrorism, and so many more events we don't expect, happen suddenly, without a hint of danger.  Most we can't prepare for.  

A lot of people think GOD causes anything bad that happens.  Natural disasters are often called "Acts of God" because they are out of our hands. 

When GOD acts through nature in the Bible it seems to be in one specific area, like fire coming out of the sky to incinerate the offerings to Baal or the destruction of Sodom or Jericho (leaving just the place where Rahab was).  There is always a purpose to His judgments.  

We don't really understand what lies beneath the surface of our planet, why tectonic plates exist, what makes them shift and create earthquakes and volcanoes.  It could be we have done something to our planet to cause the destruction we endure.  

I have considered that taking out oil and water and gas from the earth is creating empty spaces under the ground, deep down in places we cannot reach.  It alters the way the earth is structured, changes it in ways we don't yet know or understand.  

Perhaps the weight of our cities affects the stability of the earth.  We don't really know.

I am not looking forward to the BIG ONE in the place where I live... wherever or whenever it happens.  I will prepare for it, as best I can.

The graphic I used today is my saying about challenges we face and how they change us.  When I was looking for the perfect photo to go with my words, I came across a Getty photo that looks a lot like this one except the climber is disabled.  He was climbing with artificial limbs.  That really impacted me.  I don't know what caused his injuries, but the fact that he was even attempting to climb a huge mountain with artificial limbs told me he was braver than I could ever be.

He learned how to overcome the tragedy in his life.  

I hope we can all find a way to do the same.

Politics as a weapon

 

There seems to be a liberal uproar over Arizona keeping an abortion law from the 1860's.  I am wondering why the law was necessary in that time of history.  I was never that great in history classes.  I remember a few things, major things, things that mattered to me.  I wasn't collecting details about abortion when I was young.

I have heard my whole life that abortion is about "saving" women from all the things that will be lost if she has the child she conceived.  The outcry is always about the adults life, not the childs.  No one in media or liberal politics talks about how a child can make a woman's life better.

When Trump was first running, the life of an unborn child was part of his campaign promises.  Now it is about "compromise" and finding a way to win.  I thought this was an important point in his platform.  I have been pro-life all of my life, not just because it is the murder of an innocent child that cannot protect itself, but because I was conceived out of wedlock.  

This is one of my designs for the statement it shares.  We can never know the impact a single life can have on this world.

I remember someone saying that when we kill an unborn child we may be killing a person who would have saved our world.

Many are aborted because there is some disability discovered through sonograms or blood testing.  It is true some children are born with physical or mental disabilities, but it is also true some become disabled during their lives.  We don't have a guarantee that any life will be without changes in health, struggle, pain, or unexpected events.

There is a verse in the Bible that says the weak are more important than the strong.  It took me many years to figure out why GOD would say something like that.  I realized the weak are GOD's tool to keep our hearts, as individuals and as societies, kind and caring.  They keep mercy and compassion alive in our world.

The Bible also says the love of many will grow cold in the Last Days.  We can see that happening more every day.  When I thought about this prophecy in my younger years, I decided it would be because of the media, which now includes the Internet.  I have been watching the topics on the internet becoming more and more frightening as the years pass.  There are so many stories of need because they are coming from all over the world.  We are becoming numb by the constant bombardment of all these tragedies.

The Universe is a very big place.  We like to think our planet is the only one that matters, and our lives the most important thing on the planet, but we are just a speck of dust.

It is important what we do as individuals because our lives affect others.  Abortion doesn't just happen to a woman or a child, it happens to all of us.

Once pregnant, there is no path back to not being pregnant.  There is a consequence, sometimes more than one.

The woman who gets pregnant has to choose between keeping the child, giving it up for adoption, or killing it through abortion.  They all have a lifetime consequence for both the mother and the child, and the father, and the rest of the family, and the world.  Abortion is not a simple solution to a difficult problem.

The Bible tells us that our lives have purpose.  Letting a child live, and find their purpose in this life, seems to be a better choice than killing it to avoid the consequences of our choice to sin.  Adoption is a better choice for an unplanned pregnancy than abortion.  It will be a blessing to the parents who want it and allow a child to find its purpose in GOD's Plan.

I hope you will always choose life for your child.

In Christ,

Deborah Martin

Making important choices in Life

 

This is my first "poster" design.  It is a bigger version of my CHOICES design that I had created into a magnet (but forgot to add my contact information) to sell.

When I was young I loved serious, beautiful, meaningful posters.  Every time I have checked on what is available today (whatever year it was), I only found sports and other stars for kids and teens to purchase.  I could see the reason we had problems in our society.

I'm not sure my poster could ever be compared to the ones I loved, but it was a first effort.  I think my magnet design would be better for a fridge.  I think a lot of Christian products are suffering and companies are closing.  The society we live in wants to get rid of GOD, and all the products that remind people of Him.

Today I have been thinking about what I want to create and sell to improve my income... and be worth investing my time in.

It has been the hardest part of my life because I don't have what I want to do what I want to do.  :-)  The same cry of most everyone.  So I need to "use up the supplies I already have" to get to the place I want to be.  This is my goal for 2024 - to use what I have already.

Today is a day of thinking and praying and seeking the best direction to reach GOD's place for me.

What did I discover today, again, because I forgot this bit of information over time.  I sold 5 items in my ETSY shop in the past few days, all to the same person.  After the costs of the items, shipping charges I had to cover, and fees to ETSY (about 25% of the order income), I ended up with about $7 in profit.  :-)  Not good.  If you look at the amount ETSY will put into my bank account, it seems like I made money.  But that amount doesn't cover the costs outside of ETSY.  That's the thing I forgot after all these years of inactivity.

So, I have been thinking again about what I want to sell to earn income.

This is a copy of an ad I had in a Christian newspaper in the state I live.  I never had one response.  I would have thought there would be some kind of response.  What do you think?

I am considering focusing on mugs and small posters, so I can share my words and designs with other Christians and people browsing ETSY.

Or I may just carry a few products that are "Print on Demand" (POD) and begin to list my art and vintage and other items for sale online.  Maybe some digital inspiration would work. 

I have had my writing called SERVANTS listed for many years and no questions or purchases yet.  ETSY said I couldn't sell my booklet about the Rapture there, with no ability to respond to whatever their objections were (because I didn't get told what was wrong with it).

I see this as part of the End Time process.  It is that same hidden persecution that humanity has always inflicted on their "enemies."  It is the Black issue, the Mexican issue, the Jewish issue, the disabled issue, and the issue for anyone someone hates.  I might include the Gays in this list, but they are also perpetrators of anger and hate toward anyone that disagrees with them.  True Christians would not purposely hurt others, but there are people in churches that are not true Christians.  How would anyone know they didn't represent GOD?

I found this design again today.

I have two on this topic, but I want to share this one here.  Once we are truly saved, we want everyone we love or know to find salvation through Christ.  We discover the difference GOD makes in our lives.  We change.

We don't want to hurt anyone ever again, even though we will somehow.  If we do hurt someone, we try to make amends for what we have done.  And we try never to do it again.

I think we choose to suffer ourselves because we know we will be going to heaven when we die, we understand others don't have the GOD we do, and we just wait for GOD to heal their hearts and bring them to salvation.  It isn't easy.  We hurt as much as anyone else.  We just want to trust GOD for whatever is wrong in their heart and life.  I am always so glad GOD found me and saved me.  Life without Him is so much harder.  I have seen trials and persecutions as a Christian.  They can be very hard, but life without GOD would be unbearable.

We are in times no one could have imagined before.

How to get through the times we live in without hating back... that's something we will have to learn.  I hope we can find a way to do it together, and the whole Body of Christ.

In Christ,

Deborah Martin, work2gather.us