Fencing Your Home Around with the Concrete of Love

In many parts of the world, especially in crime-prone societies, it is a common practice for home owners to spend huge amount of money to build concrete fences around their residences. The walls are so high that the houses behind them are hardly visible, except in cases where the houses are multi-storey; and they are so hard that even bullets cannot pierce through them. To add to that, sophisticated electronic security appliances are installed to enhance seamless security for the comfort of those who live in those homes.

Two Great Nuggets of Life

Martin Luther King Jr

One of the greatest men the world had ever known

 

* The wisdom of great men lies not in their infallibility, but teachability

              * Whosoever finds it hard to trust others is himself not trustworthy


                        

From my Archives

Reasons to reach for a salad today

SALADS are cool, crunchy, and fun to eat (lots of textures, colors, and flavors). Most people enjoy eating salads - even kids! You can customise them to include the fruits and vegetables that appeal to you the most, and whichever ones you have on hand.

Here are some of its health benefits

The Religion of Irreligiousness

Several authorities have proffered various definitions of religion, out of which we are going to consider a few. Webster’s 1913 Dictionary defines religion as “The outward act or form by which men indicate their recognition of the existence of a god or of gods having power over their destiny, to whom obedience, service, and honor are due; the feeling or expression of human love, fear, or awe of some superhuman and overruling power, whether by profession of belief, by observance of rites and ceremonies, or by the conduct of life.” Dictionary.com sees it as “a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.” According to Wikipedia, religion is an organized collection of beliefs, cultural systems, and world views that relate humanity to an order of existence.

Help Kids Get More Vitamin D

Getting Vitamin D is pretty important to you and your children. About 70 per cent of children are not getting enough Vitamin D. Adults with low Vitamin D are at a higher risk for diabetes, cancers, high blood pressure, and cardiovascular disease.

Dying in the Prison of Your Secret

There is a general illusion that we know whom we relate with. Spouses boast of knowing their partners. Friends proudly talk about how much they know their friends. The general notion seems to be

“I know him more than you think.”

The producers of the film Titanic, through their heroine, Rose, said “The heart of a woman is a deep ocean of secrets.” If I were to paraphrase the statement, I would say “The heart of human is a deep ocean of secrets.”

 

As we bask daily on the illusion that we know whom we relate with, we take for granted the fact that parents do not know all about their wards; spouses, no matter the depth of love between them, do not really know much about their spouses. Siblings as well have their well preserved mines of secrets they keep from one another. In fact we hardly know our fellow men beyond their face value. Everyone nurtures a well hid crypt of amazing secrets.

Often, we hear spouses say to their partners in utmost surprise, “So, all these years I’ve been living with a total stranger!” Such interjections come when they have stumbled into a particular piece of their partners’ well kept secrets. This reveals the fact that no matter how long you have known somebody, no matter the level of intimacy you share, you may not know about the part of his life, which he has chosen to conceal from you.

The odd side of the matter is that more often than not, these well kept secrets do more harm to the keepers than they do to those whom the keepers struggle all their life time to conceal the secrets from. There is a saying that “It is what you know that can hurt you.” Hence people have incarcerated themselves in maximum security prisons of their well kept secrets.

There is a kind of deliverance, or freedom, if you like, that comes when one boldly declares and owns up on his secret, no matter how ugly it has been. However, majority lack the courage to do so. They face a dilemma of either exposing their secrets to get freed or keeping it while exhibiting a make-believe that all is well. The irony they seem to forget is that conscience is an open wound; only the truth can heal it. They also have forgotten that there are two whom none can deceive: God and own conscience. Conscience is the most efficient warder; it keeps the prison with a single inmate: its owner.

Many have died, while luckier ones are nursing hypertension or chronic depression caused by angst of a nagging conscience. The scenes of crimes of yesteryears, and the screams of victims killed in secret decades away, cannot be erased. They remain visuals consistently replayed on the screen of the mind. Lies told and betrayals meted on friends assume anthropomorphic forms, pointing accusing fingers at those who, without qualms, have stained their consciences. Thus the Holy Book says “There is no peace, saith the Lord, unto the wicked.

There is no wisdom, whatever, in remaining jailed in the prison of own secrets. There is honour in taking the bull by the horns to expose ugly pasts. There is healing in self-forgiveness, which comes when we take the step to disgrace our secrets.

If afraid of scandal, the courage to brave the odds becomes elusive. The best way to condition the mind to own up the truth is to tell self that scandal will come, whether we do good or bad. In any case, it is nobler to tell the truth and own up to an ugly past. If a few ignoble minds choose to create scandal out of that noble gesture, take consolation in the fact that a fire built, no matter how wild it is, shall burn out sooner or later. And when the flames are out, honour shall sprout from the cold ashes of the scandal of yesterday.

Do not die in silence friend. Break out of the prison of your own secret today.

 

 
 

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Solutions for Anxiety

Anxiety: Worry dogs you constantly for no logical reason, and you imagine terrible things happening to you. Or maybe you're fearful about taking trips or going to parties or meetings.

 

If so, you might have generalised anxiety disorder. People with GAD experience "uncontrollable worrying," says Dr. Peter Norton, director of the Anxiety Disorder Clinic at the University of Houston. Symptoms include chronic nervousness, trouble sleeping, and fatique.

 

Massage

This heavenly therapy slows the release of stress hormones, such as cortisol, which are linked to anxiety, says Dr. Tiffany Field, director of the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami School of Medicine.

 

Her research found that a month of weekly 20-minute massages lowers cortisol levels - "a very good objective index of anxiety," she says - by 31 per cent. Massage also causes a relaxation response, which eases anxiety.

 

Exercise

"Exercise makes you pay attention to its sensations, such as breathing faster, and the things around you," says Jasper A. J. Smits, professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. "It helps you disengage from worry." In one study, he found that exercise slashed anxiety in half.

 

Meditation

In anxious people, "we see a deactivation in areas of the brain that govern thought," so worries can spiral out of control, says Fadel Zeidan, a research fellow at Wake Forest School of Medicine.

 

Mindfulness meditation helps you stop the cycle of worry. In Dr. Zeidan's study, anxiety levels of meditators eased by up to 39 per cent.

 

 

Source: Prevention.com


"Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." Philippians 4:8.

Six Ways To Ease Neck Pain

It is not everyday that life is kind to the neck. You may be all too familiar with that crick you get when you cradle the phone between your shoulder and ear, or the strain you feel after working at your computer.

 

Neck pain rarely starts overnight. It usually evolves over time.And it may be spurred by athritis or degenerative disk disease and accentuated by poor posture, declining muscle strength, stress, and even a lack of sleep, says Dr. Zacharia Isaac, medical director of the Comprehensive Spine Care Centre at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and director of interventional physical medicine and rehabilitation at Harvard Medical School.

 

The following six tips can help you take care of your neck

• Don't stay in one position for too long. It's hard to reverse bad posture, Dr. Isaac says, but if you get up and move around often enough, you'll avoid getting your neck stuck in an unhealthy position.
• Make some ergonomic adjustments. Position your computer monitor at eye level so you can see it easily. Use the hands-free function on your phone or wear a headset. Prop your touch-screen tablet on a pillow so that it sits at a 45 degree angle, instead of lying flat on your lap.
• If you wear glasses, keep your prescription up to date. "When your eyewear prescription is not up to date, you tend to lean your head back to see better," Dr. Isaac says.
• Don't use too many pillows. Sleeping with several pillows under your head can stifle your neck's range of motion.
• Know your limits. Before you move a big armoire across the room, consider what it might do to your neck and back, and ask for help.
• Get a good night's sleep. Sleep problems increase the risk for several different conditions, including musculoskeletal pain.

 

Source - www.healthharvard.com 

You Are Very Special to God

 

You may come from some backwater village, in an obscure region of an unknown corner of this world. Your family may be the poorest in your town. You may not have had any education at all. Right now, you may be stored away in some makeshift kiosk somewhere, cut off from civilization and all life gives. As you are reading through this now, you may not have had one meal yet, and may not know whether you will have one at all considering how things are with you. You may describe yourself as hopeless and helpless. A nobody. But there is something you may not have known about yourself: You are very special to God.

 

You may be someone very richly endowed. You may be very intelligent, gifted and exceptionally skillful, yet you are deprived in life. Opportunity does not seem to come for you to prove your worth. All around you are failed dreams. You have formed a wrong opinion of yourself, and sometimes thoughts of suicide play upon your mind. People, friends and foes have concluded that you are a failure. You, yourself, do not think otherwise. Here is what God says aboout you:

                                                       "For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God:

                                                         the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special

                                                         people unto himself, above all that are upon the

                                                         face of the earth" Deut.7:6

If you think you have sinned more than God can forgive, and you are too unclean even to call upon the Lord for forgivenness, hear what God says "For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God." You may have condemned yourself, yes others may have written you off as the worst sinner, but God says you are potentially holy.

People may not want to associate with you. They may not want to touch you with the longest pole, because they think you are a failure, the wretched of the earth and the very scum of the society. But God says He "hath chosen you to be a special people unto himself."

Wao! What a glorious contrast. You are special to God. It's not just that you are special, but God Himself says He "hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself." Besides, he says "above all people, he hath chosen thee." God prefers you to other people. This is a rare privilege. Praise God!

God says you are not hopeless after all. People may flaunt their ill-gotten wealth about. Yes, they may cruise around in luxury cars bought with blood money. When they die they go to hell. But you are special to God. God is going to bring to you good opportunities. you will make clean wealth and enjoy godly affluence in this life. When life on earth is over, God will take you with Him to heaven. Hallelujah!

Why don't you get excited about this revelation and drop those habits of smoking, prostitution, stealing, lying and all those dirty habits that the Devil brought into your life through frustration. Like Bartimaeus, the blind man (Mark 10:50) throw away the old garment of sin, rise up from that dust of despondency and frustration, and follow the Lord Jesus today.

He is the only one who will neither look down on nor discriminate against you. Confess your sins to Him, and ask Him into your life as your Lord and personal Saviour. Have faith that you have been forgiven. Please, don't go back to those sins.

For further help, go to comment or feedback link to reach us with your enquiries. We care. Don't throw your soul away, you are very special to God.

Blog Announcement

 

 

Blog Announcement

Owing to high demand, sodzoflakes.blogspot.com, will effect from Wednesday, November 13, 2013, introduce health tips to Joel Blog for total edification and enhancement of our esteemed followers.

 

Thanks for your encouragement. Happy reading.

Fear Is Like A Barking Dog, You Can Only Overcome It By Confronting It

 

 

 

A man once recounted his ordeal with a giant dog in his neighbourhood. It was not just that the dog was very huge, but also that the sound it produced when barking was extremely terrifying no matter how long you have heard it bark before.

 

"The saddest thing," the man said, "was that, the street being a close, had only one way out of it. If you must go out, you must necessarily pass by the gate where the dog was. Its owner lived at the entrance of the close. Going out and coming in was, therefore, always a nightmare. I had prayed literally everyday that this dog would not be there while I passed."

 

"However," the man continued, "it appeared that God never answered that prayer, because in spite of all the prayer, the dog was always there. The dog also appeared to have noticed the sweat-inducing fear its presence caused me, as it took delight in barking at and chasing me whenever it saw me come. I would run and hide until I saw someone who would help me pass the dog."

 

"One day," he continued his pathetic story, "I had an all important appointment. I had to leave home very early in the morning. Somehow, I was thankful to God that I got up that early. I actually thought the dog wasn't out that early. Before I got twenty metres to the gate, what did I see? Was that the dreadful dog staring at me; its eyes sparking fire? I froze.

 

"What do I do now? I asked myself"

 

"If I turn to run, it will pounce on me in seconds. The dog barked, sending shivers down my spine. It started towards me. I bent down and picked a stone, which graciously lay by my right foot. I raised the stone as the dog growled at me. I hit it hard and bent down to pick another stone. To my amazement, the terror dog had run away. From that day, the dog had never withstood me anymore."

 

Fear, like a barking dog, can be life-threatening. It poses sweat-inducing nightmare. It reveals man's weakness and vulnerability in the face of natural challenges. When faced with a barking dog, like the narrator did, the general tendency is for one to run away, avoid it , and find an alternative route to circumvent the barking dog; and perhaps testify at church how he escaped the dog and how God gave him the wisdom to discover another route through which he circumnavigated against the barking dog.

 

The truth, however, is that until you confront and dislodge the barking dog, you are still subject to its threats. One day, you will certainly pass through that road and the barking dog will pose a hindrance.

 

So many of us, if not everybody, have life challenges, which, like the barking dog scare us out of our wits end. Except we courageously confront it, we will be living at the mercy of that situation, while getting hindered day by day.

 

Challenges which constitute barking dogs in our lives and condemn us to a long term subservience to fear include secret of an ugly past, sin or disgraceful habit, shameful ailment or weakness, a feeling of social inadequacy, like illiteracy, lack of training, and so on. 

 

CHARACTERISTICS OF A BARKING DOG

1. It disgraces you when your spirit is high.

2. It takes delight in intimidating you, the more you revere and run away from it.

3. It has no respect for your status or title. It disgraces you all the same.

 

HOW TO CONFRONT THE BARKING DOG

Hail Baby Emmanuel

 

Baby Emmanuel arrived August 12, 2013



Who is a Christian?

 

There is an apparent confusion in our contemporary times with regard to whom a Christian is. The name, or should we say designation, Christian has come to be attributed to anyone who is not a muslim, a pagan, a free thinker, or a traditional religionist. A more widespread application of the term refers to those born into families whose members do not practice faiths enumerated above, especially when such persons have given or surnames related to the Bible eg. James, Paul, John, Andrew, and so on.

 

One has also been said to be a Christian simply because he hails from a geographical enclave where Christianity, as a religion, dominates other faiths. Similarly, one may be said to be a Christian when he can trace his ancestry to church goers, even when he, himself, may be too busy to attain church; provided he finds time to attain church service once or twice a year : At Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, wedding,  child dedication or funeral ceremony.

 

Those who particularly lay claim to being Christians are those who are more regular in church attendance, those who renew their names in the church register every new year, those who have undergone water baptism, and those who partake of the Holy Communion. Others who exhibit active partcipation in church liturgy and other religious activities can confidently beat their chests in pride that they are Christians; especially if they are in the good books of their leaders. Are they really Christians? If they are not, who is a Christian?

 

The word Christian was never used between the creation of the first human, Adam, and the crucifiction of the Lord Jesus Christ. This means that none of Enoch, Noah, Abraham, David, even Jesus Christ was called a Christian. The word was first used in Antioch after Christ's resurrection and ascension (Acts 11:26) to refer to Christ's disciples in that city, who, having assembled for about a year to study the word of God, began to exhibit characteristic traits of the Lord Jesus Christ in their conduct and relationship with other men, even outside the church circle.

 

A Christian, therefore, is not someone who attends church per se. Water baptism, getting confirmed as a member of a church, or taking part in the observance of the Lord's Supper (Holy Communion) does not qualify one to be a Christian. Active participation in church activities, or holding of positions (no matter how sensitive they may be) does not make one a Christian. Being born into clerical or levitical families does not give one the qualification as a Christian. Most surprisingly, not even possessing the gift of prophecy, working of miracles, and performance of breathtaking wonders qualifies one as a Christian (Matt. 7:22,23).

 

A Christian is one, who, having studied the lifestyle of Jesus Christ (as presented in the Holy Bible), does not only believe everything about that lifestyle; but also lives it in practice and principle. He does not live this life just because he is compelled to do so by church dogma or the desire to please some leaders. He lives it because he does not have any other life of his own than that of Christ which has replaced any other life that he had had before (Gal. 2:20).

 

Are you a Christian?

One Sure Way to Attain Significance

People do a lot of things to get noticed. Some go out of the way to do unthinkable things just to get noticed. They do all these because, somewhere in their inner reserves, they feel insignificant. They feel they have not lived up to societal expectation. Thus they must do all they can to attract societal attention, or just to get noticed by a particular target group or person.

 

Have you ever asked yourself why some people get unduly noisy in a crowd? Or why others get overly aggressive, with a tendency to being violent at the slightest provocation? Have you ever wondered why some folks would order a bar closed, just to show others that they are rich? Why do people do things they ordinarily would not in the presence of people from whom they crave admiration? The answer to all these is simple: They want to attain significance.

 

Significance. Yes everybody wants to attain it. You  may have noticed that even a lunatic behaves sane when no one is around. He, however, begins to misbehave the moment he notices a number of persons around. In other words, even a lunatic seeks to prove his worth. That desire lies innate in the bottom of the personality of man.

 

In whatever way one may seek to publicize himself to get noticed, in order to attain significance, there is but one sure way of becoming significant here on earth: By discovering the purpose for which one was created and fulfilling it. Fulfilling one's purpose for living certainly impacts lives of fellowmen, thus those whose lives have been so impacted will discover how useful and significant they are that have impacted their lives.

 

Here, we can see that it does not take wealth for one to be significant. It only takes how impactful our activities and relationship with others are. If we look closely at the life of Jesus Christ, we will discover that He had no bank account. Yea, not a house He could call His own; yet there has not been a more significant man that has walked the surface of the earth than He. Thousands of years after He had left the earth, His impact keeps gathering momentum as though He was here just an hour ago. If you ask me, that is the true meaning of significance. This He attained because He came out of the Father to whom He also returned.

 

To really gain significance, therefore, one must get linked up to the Father. That is only possible when one goes through the Son (Jesus Christ), by surrendering to Him as the only Lord and Saviour (John 14:6). If you do that today, you are on your way to impacting the human race and becoming truly significant.