Book Club: Today is the first day to begin reading Unstoppable by Christine Caine. Have you started to read it? Go here to get Unstoppable. 

Compassion Counseling Center Update: Only 45 days until Compassion Counseling Center begins receiving clients! Also, this Saturday (December 6th) we will have our first fundraiser and Open House from 10 am to 4 pm at Oakdale United Methodist Church, Stephenville, TX. Have your Pampered Chef gifts shipped directly to your gift recipient in time for Christmas and try out Pampered Chef products! Tour the rooms that will be set up as counseling rooms and hear from Compassion staff members! Free childcare and cooking demonstrations! A portion of the proceeds go to benefit Compassion! Click here to shop online!

Last week’s Word of the Week was adscititious. My daughter attempted guesses, based on the prefixes and suffixes of this interesting word, but quickly admitted she had no clue, just like me. Thankfully, we can consult Merriam-Webster Online which tells us that adscititious means: derived or acquired from something extrinsic. Yeah. That was helpful.

Maybe we should just move on to this week’s WOW (Word of the Week) which is malversation. Here are my guesses for malversation:

malversation (mal-vər-ˈsā-shən) 1. a bad conversation 2. a conversation with Mallory 3. a description of discussions between Congress and President Obama

What’s your guess for the definition of malversation? Go here to let me know what you think.

Wednesday’s Post: The Return of Fast 5!

You Might Also Like: Word of the Week: adscititious; Word of the Week: infix; Word of the Week: opusculum; Word of the Week: knackered; and Word of the Week: hegira

Paul’s Letter to Philemon

The hubby and I rebelled against the “game system craze” of the 1990s and early 2000s, which irritated the stuffing out of our offspring. To quell their dissatisfaction we did buy educational and Christian games that could be played on the home computer for quite a number of years. I am the first to say that I am lousy at playing video and computer games, unless we’re talking about the Difficult level of Spider Solitaire or Pet Detective on Lumosity.com (Let me guess–there are Jim Carrey fans at Lumosity.com.) But, one game that I finally managed to master during the era of computer games at our house, was Onesimus. There were 33 levels to that game (I think?!) and it required the user to get Onesimus, the slave, safely back to Philemon, his owner. Getting Onesimus back to Philemon safely was no easy feat! And even the offspring took quite a while to finally master the game. Onesimus must have loved danger, because the boy managed to find all kinds of trouble on his way back to Colossae, probably the town where Philemon resided. Let’s just say it was easier to avoid that donkey in Donkey Kong. 

Confession Time: I often loathe reading my Bible. (I’ll wait for my Christian friends to gasp in horror from that little statement.) It’s not that I don’t want to hear what the good Lord wants to say to me through His word; it’s just that a good portion of the Old Testament is an odd collection of writings about times I have difficulty relating to modern life. In the words of Beth Moore, “It’s not always about you!” and I agree. Sometimes I just need to study those ancient writings and wait for the Lord to tell me its relevance.

If you also sometimes struggle to to read your Bible often or you have decided it’s a total waste of your time, may I suggest some of the following tips to help with that? Here they are:

1. Find a translation that works for you. I’m currently partial to the Message (or the Bible According to Eugene, as I like to call it–Eugene Peterson is the author of this paraphrase.) because it puts difficult passages into everyday English.