Sounds of Hope

Kingdom Bloggers are taking our blog on the road and visiting each other's blogs.  Next week, you'll be treated to the bloggers right here on Sounds of Hope. When I preach or teach, I like to use video to emphasize my message.  It can be really effect!  I love doing it.  I’ve had classes on this stuff in school so I know I’m not alone.  I read a good book on preaching that talked about the use of video.  In fact, this is so popular there is a website for preachers/teachers to go to for appropriate video clips.  If you want to use video,  here  is a good place to start.  Or of course, there is always  YouTube . Sometimes God speaks to me first and then I find the movie.  Other times, I am watching a movie and the inspiration comes.   A time when God spoke to me first happened just a few weeks ago. Head over to  Fire & Grace   to   read more

Have you ever noticed that one of the first questions a man will ask about someone else is “What does he/she do?”  My husband asked me that at breakfast this morning about someone from my past.  I’m still digging up people from my past.  I guess it will never stop.  I just like doing it and am a “connector.” Recently, a good Facebook friend started a Facebook group, Brooklyn Norwegians.  It took off like lightening.  I like this guy.  He’s a writer.  We seem to think alike about things.  We went to the same “grammar” school, PS 94, then the same Jr. High School, John J. Pershing Jr. High School – I left Brooklyn during High School and he was smart, he went on to what was then Boy’s Tech.  I imagine at some point in our childhoods our paths crossed. However, neither of us remembers that time. All this Brooklyn Norwegian talk – we talked about food, the closing of the last Norwegian bakery, we talked about the neighborhood, churches, peo...

We often eat at small Chinese carry-out restaurant that has a few tables.  I always laugh when my husband says “Oh we know the best Chinese restaurant.”  To me, it’s not really a restaurant, it’s a small carry-out place that happens to have a few tables.  However, it is clean and the food is good.  My husband and I always get the same thing – we share General Tso with extra white rice.  When we come in, they just nod.  They know our order and us.  Most of the other customers come in reciting their phone numbers and get a bag of food to go. Sometimes they forget to give us our fortune cookie.  We always ask for them.  It’s become quite a ritual.  Our son made up a “ritual” for them.  We open them.  We break them.  We eat half before we look at the fortune.  After we’ve chewed the first half, we read the fortune.  If we agree, we eat the other half.  So far, we’ve always agreed.  Several times lately, I’...

Yesterday, I made connections with two childhood friends.   I am prone to looking up people from the past.   Their names and faces pop in my head.   All my senses come alive with a memory.   Are they on Facebook?   Can I Google and find them?   How much I learn and benefit from the gifts of the internet! I was an early comer to AOL and all things internet.    I’d browse and push buttons.   I had no fear.   I found one friend, then two.   With Facebook, I’ve found most of the friends whose memories flood my heart.   Yesterday, thanks to a new feature on Facebook, I saw that a year ago yesterday I had posted about the death and home going of my mother’s oldest and dearest friend.   As children, they had played under a streetlight until the persistence of their mother’s voice called them inside.   Her friend brought her to Jesus.   Long before BFF, they were BFF’s… and now forever they are in heaven under the lig...

It’s been a very odd weekend.   That’s nothing new in the life of Joyce.   Oddity and unusualness are the adjectives most used to describe my life.   My thoughts are jumbled as I write this… it will be interesting even to me to see where I end up.   Friday night my husband and I watched a movie on Netflix,  Shades of Ray .   The movie made us laugh.   It is always good to laugh.    Saturday morning brought omelets, plain and spicy followed by the weekly ritual of going to the dump with our trash.   We are now true country folk.   We have a huge pickup for this task.   It’s high, so high that I can barely get my rump on the seat.   I refuse to get a step stool and look like an old person though.   Next stop, a county fair… If you read Storehouses of Snow , you know that fairs and I don’t usually get along.   However, this was ONE fair… not a series of dirty dusty 4-H Achievement Days in deserted locations. ...

“ If all you can do is pray, that’s okay.” “I understand, but could you at least pray?” “I’m sorry , but I don’t have time, but I could pray.” If you spend any time in church circles, you’ve heard this.  We apologize for prayer like it is some substandard last resort.  I heard this statement from a Pastor just a few weeks ago in a church service in Connecticut.  I wrote it down.  I thought I’m going to blog about that.  I had forgotten about it until yesterday.  I love meeting new people.  I had that experience yesterday.  It was planned.  We’d been introduced via Facebook by a mutual friend.  I got in ol’red (my new name for old but faithful red car).  As I walked into Olive Garden I thought, I wonder what adventure God may be starting. I thought back to a similar meeting in Connecticut.  I had been put in touch with a woman who was a leader in the Aglow International ministry.  We were to meet at a restaurant.  ...

It’s been a very long time since we had the patter of little feet in our home.  Even the youngest grandchild’s feet don’t patter anymore.  They run and jump.  I live too far away to hear the patter of my great granddaughter’s little feet.  But for several days now, I’m hearing the sliding and shuffling of feet in flip flops.  It reminds me of when those feet pattered.  I’ve been traveling.  Nothing new for me I guess.  However, of late, I’ve done less.  I visited a church I called home for many years.   I wrote about my visit the other day.  It was wonderful.  More wonderful was seeing friends.  And the most wonderful of all was seeing three of my gorgeous daughters.   I am blessed to have five gorgeous daughters.  The eldest and the youngest I get to see with regularity as we live in the same area.  These daughters, I hardly get to see.  I know they don’t realize how much it grieves their mo...