A Message From Beyond the Stars

 Look up to me, I want you to wonder and know me. I am Jehovah God, your Creator. If you are in darkness I am the Light of Life. Cry out to me and I will give you the Light of Life. I see you. When you come to me in faith, your faith pleases me and you will know me.

I am He whom you are looking for and long to know. My name is Yeshua, Jesus, I Am That I Am.                    

Hebrews 11:6

Nocturne in Black and Gold, The Falling Rocket

by James McNeill Whistler

Life in Christ

Hebrews 9:27 says. “It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.” 

I am Immortal!

I have passed from death into life as it says in John 11:25

In the gospel of John 5:24 it states,
“Truly, truly, I say and to you, whoever hears my word and believes Him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.”

At the end of life, the greatest fear we will all face is death. The Bible speaks of this when it says, after death, the great judgment. 

This is very scary and it looms before every one of us, but the Lord Jesus Christ takes the sting out of death. He removes terror of death because by faith we have come to Him, and we are forever His. And, all this begins when we receive Him as our personal Savior!

“He that comes to me I will in no wise cast out.”  John 6:37

RECOVERY OF FOCUS

After much thought, I came to a pleasant resolve that having this measure of Vision loss is the proverbial slow  walk in the park compared to losing one’s mind. I had a close friend who was going through Alzheimer’s and I knew of her struggles into the last days of her life. Terrifying to see her struggle through such every day experiences that I quickly ascertained this is a hellish disease. One’s mind is their treasure and to lose one’s mind is to lose everything. For without one’s mind, memories cannot be recalled cognition of the former self is non-existent and then it’s final days it all but erased, the person of whom it had affected.

So for this day, I am at home in the company of my mind. That’s and creativity. I am presently working on my book and working on my next painting. This is hunting season and we go together and enjoy it  and I am so grateful for this life.

As my mother once told me, we are as happy as we make up our minds to be, and I am going to live this Exceptionally beautiful life, with vision loss,  happy, blessed and fulfilled. This is my life. 

The Daily Grind

 I know many have asked and in hoping for a more optimistic answer, I have been silent on the matter. But now to explain the nitty-gritty and daily grind of legal blindness; I can not photograph the hours I have poured over my little iPhone searching for an assistive computer technology.  There is no photograph or image to express the frustration and waste of time I experience on a daily basis. There are no "blind" software applications that I have found. The best hope I have is that tomorrow morning I wake up with the same (or better) visual acuity as I have today, but really I have no choice in the matter. I am not void or absent of joy the majority of my day, but I do experience little or no resolution to the problems I face.

Should anyone reading this have suggestions for me, please email my husband. I'd appreciate that.

Jim Davis ~ ptadavis1949@gmail.com

The Unfortunate

I emerged from a troubled past, a dysfunctional home, yet I still had a happy heart. An old, beat up folk guitar provided a new interest, somebody had given it to me. I knew nothing of playing the guitar, but I quickly found out that it needed to be tuned and I needed guitar chords. A few friendly souls sketched out some basic chords for me on scraps of paper and demonstrated how to play them. I remember thinking back those many years ago, "That's not so hard, I think I can do that."

I needed a song to play, I would have to learn it by repetition. This was achieved by checking an album out of the library. Having no money because I was only 14 and had no job, I did have a library card so I checked out a Bob Dylan record. I read the Bible daily and that along with the lyrics of one of his songs would develop my first musical objective. The song was "There But For Fortune". That song and the Word of God began to form in me a deep sense of empathy for the unfortunate.

Over the next few years, I checked out several Dylan albums and acquainted myself with songs that I liked and were innocuous to my teenage years. I would sing his lyrics as I walked around town, and the images were very meaningful in fact; they helped me memorize the words. My mother was not against his music or me listening to it, as they formed no rebellious attitude in me. There was nothing to be on guard of. There was no violence in his music, no sex or drugs. There was, however, the rich tapestry of human life and its struggles, which I found very kindred to my own life. It provided a glimpse into the lives of others around me and so I walked with the narrative of the Bible and Bob Dylan lyrics, side-by-side, straight into adulthood.

In 2020 I wanted to listen to some of his more recent music and I came upon the album Modern Times. I was filled with great delight as I listened to it because I could clearly hear a very spiritual undertone and God all the way through it. It was very spiritual.

This month I came upon a phenomenal reality...Bob Dylan is a confessing, born-again believer and has been sharing his convictions since 1979 when he came to Christ as his Savior. I knew he had received Christ in 1979, but had heard that he had walked away from his faith. In actuality, he never did. Today, when he has a concert, he shares his beliefs in both word and singing Gospel songs, including old hymns such as "Rock of Ages" and "Pass Me Not". Check out this book, Bob Dylan: A Spiritual Life by Scott M. Marshall.

"Never before has a book like this one delved into the spiritual odyssey of cultural icon Bob Dylan. Tracking an American original--from his Jewish roots to his controversial embrace of Jesus to his enduring legacy as the composer of the Tempest album--Bob Dylan: A Spiritual Life delivers the story of a man in dogged pursuit of redemption. Based on years of research and original interviews, this book sorts through the myths and misunderstandings and reveals Dylan to be both traditional and radical in the way he expresses his spiritual quest for purpose and meaning."

Lillie Ruth

 Our third great grandchild...

This little beauty was born to our family on November 6th and her arrival was an anticipated one. She is the third child in the family, born to loving parents and two loving brothers.

Oh, how she has captured our hearts!

And, I believe Lillie could hear her Creator's voice as he spoke to her in her spirit. 

She has a peaceful and calm presence.

Father in Heaven, Thank You for the gift of Lillie Ruth!

Community & Learning

This past June I spent time with a pastor’s wife in a remote area of our island. It was a very depressed area, and a poor community, and the members of the church were representative of this. The fellowship and joy the pastor's wife and I experienced together was special, as seen on our faces. I have learned through the loss of others, through distress and adversity and how it affected them, that if they endure with a vigilance of prayer and self-control they will achieve its reward.

My education continues through books which I've read expeditiously with my Audible.com app. I can say, with a smile on my face and countenance, the world of Learning is open to me again through this app. I would like to recommend these books which I have posted from my reading list for you to enjoy & learn from. I do not read fiction books, but only those that relate to our lives and times.

In the first major biography of Bonhoeffer in 40 years, New York Times best-selling author Eric Metaxas takes both strands of Bonhoeffer's life - the theologian and the spy - to tell a searing story of incredible moral courage in the face of monstrous evil. In a deeply moving narrative, Metaxas uses previously unavailable documents - including personal letters, detailed journal entries, and firsthand personal accounts - to reveal dimensions of Bonhoeffer's life and theology never before seen.

What can the call to discipleship, the adherence to the word of Jesus, mean today to the businessman, the soldier, the laborer, or the aristocrat? What did Jesus mean to say to us? What is his will for us today? Drawing on the Sermon on the Mount, Dietrich Bonhoeffer answers these timeless questions by providing a seminal reading of the dichotomy between "cheap grace" and "costly grace." "Cheap grace," Bonhoeffer wrote, "is the grace we bestow on ourselves...grace without discipleship....Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the girl which must be asked for, the door at which a man must know....It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life."

The Cost of Discipleship is a compelling statement of the demands of sacrifice and ethical consistency from a man whose life and thought were exemplary articulations of a new type of leadership inspired by the Gospel, and imbued with the spirit of Christian humanism and a creative sense of civic duty.

ECPA BESTSELLER • A compelling emotional and spiritual case against hurry and in favor of a slower, simpler way of life

In their own words, recorded in the famous journals of Lewis and Clark, the members of the Corps of Discovery tell their story with an immediacy and power missing from secondhand accounts. All of their triumphs and terrors are here: the thrill of seeing the vast herds of bison, the fear the captains felt when Sacagawea fell ill, the ordeal of crossing the Continental Divide, the misery of cold and hunger, and the kidnapping and rescue of Lewis' dog, Seaman. The natural wonders of an unspoiled America are here, and the lives and customs of its native peoples also come vividly to life, making for a living drama that is humorous, poignant, and, at least once, tragic.

Dr. Miriam Grossman is a child and adolescent psychiatrist whose practice consists of trans-identified youth and their families. In Lost in TransNation, she implores parents to reject the advice of gender experts and politicians and trust their guts—their parental instincts—in the face of an onslaught of ideologically driven misinformation that steers them and their children toward risky decisions they may end up mourning for the rest of their lives.

The Return of the Gods, Cahn takes the reader on a journey from an ancient parable, the ancient 

inscriptions in Sumer, Assyria, and Babylonia that become the puzzle pieces behind what is

 taking place in our world to this day, specifically in America.

Is it possible that what we in the modern world take as nothing more than 

ancient mythology could actually possess a reality beyond our fathoming?