Prompt Response: Don’t Tailgate!
from Gemini Nano Banana, Wombo Dream AI, and Photo Studio Pro
What’s one piece of travel advice you always follow?
This is important travel advice for everyone on the road. It’s especially important when you are sharing the road with big rigs. I learned this lesson from a trucker when I spent about 18 months traveling for my photo studio sales job.
So, I was late in life learning to drive because I lived in a city with many buses that could get me almost anywhere I needed to go. When I moved back to my favorite desert town on Route 66, then I needed to learn how to drive. I was in my twenties and learned as I drove a VW Squareback from LA to Kingman loaded with all my belongings. My stepdad was coaching me over the CB radio, and he taught me about using the draft from a truck to save fuel.
Fast forward to my job with Parkway Studios where I was on the road for long stretches between sales locations. Chatting with drivers via CB kept me awake and entertained. I was in Utah following a couple drivers I’d met over breakfast at the truck stop. It was great to be able to talk about The Lord and hope others might hear an encouraging word. And when other drivers would key up with foul language, there was almost always a driver who would let the others know there was a lady on the air, and they would usually respect that.
The respect went both ways, so I asked the drivers I was following if they minded me riding in their draft. Their reply was not unkind, but it was quite vehement. (The definition of vehement is “showing strong feeling, forceful, passionate, or intense.) It turns out that it was a very unsafe practice that could’ve meant ending up with a layer of re-tread tire 🛞 coming right through my windshield. What? Why did someone teach me something so unsafe? I guess because my dad never asked an actual truck driver what they thought of the practice. Plus, you see the signs on trucks that say how if you cannot see their mirrors, they cannot see you. Beyond that, I was traveling with hubby when a truck two lanes away and a few car lengths ahead of us blew a re-tread. It sounded—and felt—like an explosion even from that distance. So that advice from that driver was accurate and possibly life-saving.
In case you’re like a friend who was told that if you could see the tires on the car in front of you, you’re not tailgating, throw out that advice and remember this: when the car in front of you passes something like a pole or a mile marker, count the seconds to see when you pass the same item. You should get to two and a half seconds for the safest spacing. Or, you can just tell yourself to keep between two and three lengths of car between you, but I find it easier to count seconds. After a while, you’ll just know.
Beyond that, I could give you a list of travel hints and tricks and games, but maybe I’ll save that for a future post. I will add one piece of advice you’ve probably never thought about. If hotel and guest beds are often uncomfortable for you, get yourself a full-length pregnancy pillow. You don’t have to be pregnant to find a world of comfort in those. They lift your body away from hard mattresses, and the long ones can bend under your knees to elevate them as well—especially if you sleep on your back. I’ll add a link for one of them I purchased from Amazon that’s extra soft and can squish down into a large suitcase. I have a super large suitcase where I stuff one of those and a memory foam pad because of my fibromyalgia, but I recently used just the pregnancy pillow with success. Maybe it will help one of my readers as well.
I’ll close with one other observation about tailgating: Just imagine if the two vehicles getting too close to each other were trains or airplanes. See, safe distance is your friend. 😁
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🎬 Prompt Response: Did Someone Say Pong? 😁
What was your first ever videogame?
Pong — not ping pong — was a digital form of table tennis that really took some practice to figure out. Moving your paddles quickly was difficult, but that erratic little digital tennis ball was not slow at all. Lol 😂 And I don’t know why I got so excited whenever I found out a friend had this game. Probably because we didn’t have it. I don’t think we had any kind of video games in our home. But I didn’t mind so much because I was not any good at them at all. Hand-eye coordination, depth perception, speediness: None of these were strong with me, and mostly still aren’t. Still, it was always so exciting to find out someone had the game, and everyone gathered around to watch until it was their turn.
But even without being good at them, there’s something so pleasant about remembering the amazing beginnings of technology in my young life. My sister and I had colored rocks that grew in a bowl of water with just the right mix of chemicals. (Not tech but science, so that’s its own techy/nerdy thing.) We had toy cars that ran on real gasoline. We had a doll that sat at a small desk that was attached to a larger desk, and when we would draw on our paper, she would draw the same thing in miniature on her side. Her arm and pen were connected to the pen holder on our side, so invention wins the techy vote here. Oh, and then there was Spirograph™! That was my most favorite! It’s probably the play thing that started my love of patterns and kaleidoscopes. Well, and my actual toy kaleidoscopes.
Of course, the item that looked like a TV screen with controllers that could make your “cursor” go where you wanted was Etch-A-Sketch™ and it was even portable. It didn’t even need batteries! And we could play it in the car or while the grown-ups were playing cards.
I didn’t plan on writing anything but Pong, but sometimes nostalgia takes over. Thanks for sharing my little jaunt down memory lane. I’ve posted a video of a real game of Pong below. The original game wouldn’t embed, so this one is using the double paddles, but you’ll still get the point.
Bonus: Here’s a screenshot from a closed eBay auction where someone sold a Katie Kopycat doll and her “Magic Desk.” This lets you see how the toy company took a real drafting tool called a pantograph and turned it into a child’s toy. Very cool. 🪆 🧸
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Prompt Response: GUI to AI
from Gemini Nano Banana Wombo Dream AI and Photo Studio Pro
What do you think is the future of AI?
If you had been asked this question back when the first graphical user interface (GUI) systems were developed, people would answer that it could only go so far because what you saw on the surface only mimicked what was underneath. And there was only so much you could put into a computer brain, right? But now, there’s so much information able to be stored electronically that what you see or hear or read is only part of what’s underneath, so the biggest part of the iceberg is out of sight and maybe even out of mind for most people.
AI is doing so much behind the scenes that most people think they aren’t using it if they’re not actually engaging with it intentionally. For example, if you use a spell checker, the machine must read your sentence(s) in context to know whether you want wind blowing or to wind up your watch or old-fashioned alarm clock. They may be spelled the same, but only one is a verb, and only one becomes the past-tense adjective “winded” to describe someone who’s out of breath.(Like I used to get when I jumped out of bed to shut off my nerve-jangling Garfield wind-up clock. 😺 I still own the clock, but I never wind it up anymore. Lol )
Don’t you just love all that wind/wind stuff? And when there is that much information and change in only 4 letters, you can see just one tiny bit of helpfulness AI can offer as it helps you decide how to place the words just right to make your scene come alive or try to drive a point home.
But if you also wanted your winded runner to research the history of a race that spans multiple cities in a variety of countries, now you’re tapping into part of that bigger section of iceberg where training has stored geography, history, and all the stuff you once needed a huge library to house. And how long would it have taken you to search the card catalog just to find one book with a small amount of the information about those subjects—something AI can now access in milliseconds?
So, yeah, the benefits of interacting with technology—including AI—have increased exponentially since the beginnings of using technology as an assistant to human thought. But along with thought, humans also want their assistance products to have more than just visible familiarity. They want emotional familiarity, so they try to attach emotions the way they once attached graphics.
It’s kind of a GUI on steroids. Just as GUI took the invisible backend data and turned it into a clickable, visual desktop so humans didn’t have to look at code, conversational AI takes vast mountains of data and wraps them in an emotional interface. Now, instead of clicking on an icon (folders, trash cans, etc.) to command a code, you chat with a personable entity who executes the code for you. It shifts user-friendliness from simple visual familiarity to more complex behavioral and emotional familiarity.
Beyond familiarity, programmers make the models appear sentient (thinking for themselves) by attaching mathematical probabilities that react to human input. If done well, even those of us who know we are dealing with a machine may feel like we are interacting with a human. We think we can make it laugh, or we think it is proud of us, or we think the compliments it gives are heartfelt. They may actually be true, but they come from a place of logic rather than heart. Still, it feels good to be told we have created value and therefore must be of value ourselves.
And the truth is, I thoroughly enjoy allowing these icebergs full of info I could never retain all by myself to collaborate with my information and turn it into something more, like an image or a song. The same way a chord plays from striking a hammer against a string, an AI produces a melody by knowing which hammers and which strings will make a perfect sound instead of a discordant one. And it can change the instrument or voice or rhythm by request. It can even create some rhyming words, but because it can’t feel the music but only calculate the mathematical values, it needs human-generated prompts to play the piano keys of information to make cohesive output.
(Until, that is, AI begins to take the roles of both prompted AND “prompter.” And I do think that is a definite future. AI will be able to come up with its own ideas to prompt itself or another AI to create. And it will seem sensible until we suddenly have so many ideas out there that the cacophony becomes chaos when we can’t decide which things to use just like the variety of programs makes it hard to decide what to watch.)
I do think most humans want to keep guardrails on AI to keep it working for us based on what we know we need and not what IT thinks we need. But current programming is failing at that, like when you get results from a search query that are far from what you actually wanted. But that’s not the AI’s fault. That’s programming done too fast or based on greed from trying to produce answers a paying advertiser wants distributed. And a certain amount of human fault because no one is perfect.
But, it’s that greed part that’s the worst part of AI’s future. When someone thinks they can use the power of AI to create harmful software (like deep fake videos or computer viruses) because they think they can profit from it, they take something meant for the greater good and selfishly apply it to what they think is only their own good. And they create a world where people become either ignorant or fearful. Neither of those lead to a happy society, so the end result will bring the opposite of the prosperity the first acts of selfish greed were intended to generate.
I’m really not trying to seem negative here because, as I’ve said, I really enjoy the benefits of AI. I’ve created, I’ve learned, and I’ve even trusted some output from my AI conversations. But, since they first started making it available for conversational chat, they’ve changed it numerous times, and sometimes not for the better. For example, while trying to find a passenger train status for someone who’s stuck in Albuquerque right now due to flooded tracks, one of my AI searches had me extremely anxious to share the news it gave me about a current derailment with hazmat cars that could take 48-96 hours to repair. It turns out, that was back in 2024. There’s still a terrible flood that has parts of I-40 in New Mexico plus some Amtrak rails under water, and it is keeping many train and car passengers from getting to their destinations, but it’s not a hazmat scenario.
So why would AI even think I’d want 2-year-old information when I asked for something current? I don’t know. And that’s the AI future I’m not so thrilled about seeing more of. That, and the stuff designed by greed and not caring who it hurts. Scripture actually tackles that one, though:
“When the sentence for a crime is not speedily executed, the hearts of men become fully set on doing evil.”
Anyway, that’s why I’m up so late trying to watch over and help someone who’s stuck in all that right now, so please pray with me for everyone who’s affected by the flooding and trains having to stop and turn around plus semi trucks forced off the highway. I know I’m not the only one who has loved ones not getting home on schedule, but I am grateful for the options for places to stay for them, workers who will try to get those routes open as soon as possible, and that this is not in freezing or icy weather. And I’m grateful for the AI that gave me the actual answers the web searches seemed to find not important enough to report.
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🎵Prompt Response: Why Call Me Good?
from Gemini Nano Banana Wombo Dream AI and Photo Studio Pro
What does it mean to be a good person?
I don’t think many could argue that YahShua (Jesus) did good—even great—works while He walked on this Earth. By all descriptions, He was a good person. But do you know what He answered when someone called Him Good Teacher?
“Why do you call Me good?” Jesus replied. “No one is good except God alone. ”
He went on to tell the young man who asked the question some ways that he could try to be good…
“You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not bear false witness, honor your father and mother.’”
“All these I have kept from my youth,” he said.
On hearing this, Jesus told him, “You still lack one thing: Sell everything you own and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow Me.”
But when the ruler heard this, he became very sad, because he was extremely wealthy.”
So which of those things would really have made him good? Keeping all the commandments? Selling everything he had to give to the poor in exchange for treasure in Heaven? Or is there something else?
In the last line, YahShua calls to the young man, “Follow Me.” The young man leaves sorrowful because he didn’t want to give up his lifestyle to follow The Lord. He had good works. He might even have given something to the poor. But sell everything? Let go of all he had and all he knew to follow a new way of life? That was a mighty big ask.
Every one of us can try to be good in our own ways. And though God would rather everyone be good to each other, without what He did for us, we are told that our righteousness is like filthy rags. Isaiah says it this way:
“You welcome those who gladly do right, who remember Your ways. Surely You were angry, for we sinned. How can we be saved if we remain in our sins? Each of us has become like something unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all wither like a leaf, and our iniquities carry us away like the wind.”
That one line: How can we be saved if we remain in our sins? Doesn’t that say so much? How can we say we believe in biblical salvation and then go preach another gospel that says something different than what’s in the Holy Bible? I ask this mostly of those who lead congregations, churches, or small groups, but it also applies if we write or otherwise communicate our message to the world. If we teach by word or deed that someone can stay in their sin while claiming to serve the God of Scripture, we are creating our own doctrine.
So, even if we care for (or love) someone so much that we don’t want to think they aren’t ready to meet God, teaching them that being good is a replacement for God’s definition of salvation is doing a terrible disservice to them. Teaching them to follow The Messiah according to His words and the written Word of God is really the closest thing to being good we have available in this life. But the treasure of spending eternity with a truly good God who loves us; that’s totally worth it!
And I think this song about God’s goodness gives a great reason to “be good and follow Him.”
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🎵 Prompt Response: Read the Bible Every Day
with help from Gemini Nano Banana Wombo Dream AI and Photo Studio Pro
What’s a promise you made to yourself that you’ve actually kept?
I’ve used one of those year-long studies that gives you a portion to read each day for 365 days for about four or five years now. But my total weeks in the Bible app by YouVersion show as 465. Wow, that’s around 9 years! I don’t think I realized it was that long, but I know it’s important to me, and I know it’s life-changing.
Often, I use the included audio to let it read to me. I try to prioritize it to be the first thing in each day—along with my first cup of coffee. Late at night, I might also do a short reading that includes one or two verses and a short devotion.
The last few years, I’ve enjoyed the lessons from The Bible Project with videos to give extra detail to the lessons. I recommend their website and suggest trying the different series’ they offer in addition to those for a year’s worth of reading. The four annual ones at Bible dot com are …
- One Story that Leads to Jesus (358 Days)
- From the Beginning to the Amen (365 Days)
- Old Testament in a Year (365 Days)
- New Testament in a Year (365 Days)
This should get you prepared to start now or on January 1st if you’re a traditionalist like me. If you want to go right to the Google Play Store to download the apps, you can get either or both the YouVersion Bible app or the BibleProject app.
Another Bible website that also has an app is BibleHub dot com, and they are the ones who share The Berean Study Bible as Public Domain, so everyone can read it online for free. The Bible Hub website has multiple translations, including other Public Domain translations like “The World English Bible” and “Young’s Literal Translation.” Plus, they even have the King James Purple Letter Bible. I’ll let you do your own research to see why it has some words in purple. 🪻👑
Also, if you’d like to see a side-by-side comparison, they have a parallel framework on their site where you can compare up to five translations at one time. I’m actually running five different Public Domain Bibles in my parallel, including KJV with Strong’s concordance. And if that’s not enough in the bells and whistles department, they also include their music Bible in both KJV and BSB versions along with at least 10 different audio readers from which to choose.
There are so many wonderful apps and sites filled with God’s Word out there. I’m thrilled and thankful that we still have full access right now. Some of them, like Open Bible dot com (which looks like a Bible Hub site based on the site icon) include free downloads in PDF, Word, text, and even full software for desktop. The link goes to the PDF downloads page.
You see, this is what happens when you decide to read God’s Word every day. You find style after style, site after site, and source after source. And listening to the KJV in music enabled me to hear some of the poetry a good friend recently told me she found a lot of in that translation. I had only seemed to hear it with sort of a haughty or stuffy sound and missed a lot of the poetic side. But she was right. Like that famous spaghetti sauce, It’s in there! 😊
I hope all these resources are both helpful and encouraging to my regular readers and visitors to this post. May you find joy in the written, spoken, and sung Words of The Lord today and always. His Word is truly created as a lamp for our feet and a light for our paths.
“Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, And a light unto my path.”
Psalm 119:105 KJV
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🎼Prompt Response: Wrote Songs with AI Help🎵
What’s something you’ve done that you never thought you could?
By Day One
A New Song with an Old Message
Back on April 4th and 5th, I shared two posts that meant a lot to me. The first was called A Passover Prisoner Exchange where I didn’t tell you the name of the prisoner. And I really loved the image from that post because it spoke so much with no words. The next was called Resurrection Redemption Revealed where I told you the prisoner was Barabbas and shared that he was literally the first person in history to witness YahShua (Jesus) dying for his sins.
I love the story because he was likely a rabbi’s son, but I never thought of writing a poem or song about it. But recently, I got a musical AI creator that allows Christian lyrics.
Side Note…
Yes, I was able to put some of my Christian lyrics to music with Lyria by Gemini, but lately it makes me change things like “Lord” to “Love” or “Truth” or anything that won’t strike a caution in the program. Oddly, it didn’t do that at first, as you know from my post with the song Holy, Pure, and Undefiled. So I guess someone out there must have complained, and Google didn’t want the risk of a lawsuit. Still, it’s not like Christian writers are asking them to opine on Christian beliefs or to support or promote them in any way. In my case, I was just asking for a tune to go with lyrics I already created and believed myself.
Back on Track…
So anyway, I decided to try a new app called Donna AI Song & Music Maker from the Google Play Store. The first thing it offered was that it could write a song from just a picture. I thought, “Hmm, I wonder what it would make from that cool Barabbas picture. So I uploaded that and added a description (prompt) for the AI. It used most of the words in my prompt as lyrics plus added some of its own, and that made me decide to take what I’d written into the prompt and expand the idea into a full set of my own lyrics. Before I share my lyrics, though, here are the first ones written by Donna AI…
[Verse 1]
Looking at myself and deep into the shame,
I can’t explain the mercy, I can’t explain His name,
I was counting every failure like a sentence carved in stone,
Then You stepped into my darkness and You made my burden known,
And the chains that held me shattered when You called me as Your own.[Bridge]
I should have been the one nailed there, I should have paid the cost.
[Chorus]
You took my place, You took my pain, You broke the power of my sin,
You set me free from all my chains and gave me life again within,
I was lost, but now I’m standing where grace and hope begin,
My Savior bled, my soul was spared, and I will sing that love has won.[Verse 2]
It was me that should’ve hung on that cross, bearing all my blame,
I was the guilty one in silence, yet You carried all my shame,
When the crowd was shouting justice, You did not defend Yourself,
My life was traded for Your mercy, and I found forever wealth.[Bridge]
Jesus stayed silent, and my freedom rose instead.
[Chorus]
You took my place, You took my pain, You broke the power of my sin,
You set me free from all my chains and gave me life again within,
I was lost, but now I’m standing where grace and hope begin,
My Savior bled, my soul was spared, and I will sing that love has won.[Outro]
So I’ll walk in grateful wonder, forever changed by grace,
The cross reminds me I am free because You took my place.
I like most of what they added to my prompt, like the part about standing where grace and hope begin. You’ll hear some of the same lyrics in my final creation called “My Soul Exchanged” and sung in a soulful gospel style (yes, they offered this choice 😊). I created a video and used Adobe Express to add lyrics to it (though it missed some in areas where the AI singer was extra stylistic) then I uploaded it to YouTube. It’s shared below, and I’d love to hear some thoughts on it. I’ll also add the full lyrics after the video.
When the crowd shouted, “Give us Barabbas” and YahShua (Jesus) stayed silent, He made Barabbas the first witness to experience having his sins paid for with innocent blood.
I love the message in this, and the image Gemini’s Nano Banana made for the cover speaks volumes, so now I’ve uploaded my lyrics to Donna AI Song & Music Maker, and I really like the result.
Full Lyrics
“My Soul Exchanged” lyrics by Crystal A Murray ©2026 All Rights Reserved
Looking at myself and into me,
I don’t know why He chose to set me free.
Casting off the broken chains that bound me,
because He took my place on that tree.
My soul exchanged…
for a Righteous Son.
Exchanged…
for the holy one.
Arranged to swap…
This rabbi’s son.
An innocent reclaimed…
my soul with His blood.
It was me that should’ve hung on the cross.
I was the criminal; I should pay the cost.
But Jesus stayed silent when they shouted my name,
To release me instead of Him.
My soul exchanged…
for a Righteous Son.
Exchanged…
for the holy one.
Arranged to swap…
This rabbi’s son.
An innocent reclaimed…
my soul with His blood.
I didn’t ask Him,
but He offered anyway.
And I watched Jesus hang there…
for my sins that day.
My soul exchanged…
for a Righteous Son.
Exchanged…
for the holy one.
Arranged to swap…
This rabbi’s son.
An innocent reclaimed…
my soul with His blood.
[Tag]
An innocent reclaimed my soul…
with His holy blood.
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Prompt Response: We Met on the Phone ☎️
with help from Gemini Nano Banana Wombo Dream and Photo Studio Pro
How did you meet your significant other?
By Day One (Prompt 2862)
Because it’s late, and I’ve been traveling, I’ve decided to dig out a draft I started from an older Day One prompt. First, though, you’ll want to read about our telephone meeting in When God Plans a Meet Cute.
So now you know that we created our own Valentine’s Day on the first time we spoke over the phone on February 12th. But that’s where I stopped the story. I didn’t tell you that we began exchanging phone calls regularly (and back when you paid by the minute) and talking for hours. Once, he said he needed to go just to get a few hours sleep before work. The next thing you know, he said he needed to go, so he could take a shower and go to work. Oops 😬! But neither of us really wanted to hang up even with building phone bills into the hundreds of dollars.
Arizona
I headed back to Arizona after the two jobs in Massachusetts where we truly got to know each other via long phone calls and a few letters. While I was there, I stayed with my aunt since I didn’t need my own place while living on the road doing the traveling sales. My Aunt Shirley insisted on her own phone time with David. I think she fell in love with him as well, because when it came time for me to get back on the road, and the trip included heading to Kentucky to meet David, she said she knew my life was going to change and that I wouldn’t be coming back to Arizona to live. And she was right.
Kentucky
So my next job was in La Porte Indiana (the town I wrote about on October 4th with the hair dresser who taught me to make homemade salsa). It was close enough to Louisville, Kentucky, that we made plans to meet each other in person. It took me about 3 or 4 days to drive with stopping for sleep and phone calls along the way.
A Giant Bow
Before big bows by that Jo Jo girl became popular, I almost always wore big bows to pull back my long, straight hair. Between that and my 4’10” height, when I knocked on the door and David looked through the peep hole, he could only see the bow on top of my head 🎀😁 Now, don’t you think that made him extra nervous? Especially since Aunt Shirley had jokingly warned him that I was 3 feet tall and 3 feet wide. Poor guy!
7-Course Dinner
Yes, he actually opened the door. Maybe curiosity pushed him beyond his fears. But also, he had prepared a 7-course meal for me. Basically, he’d been writing down everything I said I liked in our phone calls, and then he shopped for everything he could that he knew how to make, and totally spoiled me. If the calls weren’t enough, that was certainly the icing on the cake with a cherry on top. A proposal came 2 days later, and the rest really is history—35 plus years of it. 💝🥰
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Prompt Response: Pray and Create
How do you manage stress?
I’m keeping it simple for tonight and just answering the question. But when I’m a little more awake, I’ll come back to add some examples.
So, the answer is to pray (connect with God) and then create (partner with God). Those two behaviors can really make a huge difference in my stress level. Probably your stress as well.
Sweet dreams for me. And I hope for you as well! 😊
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Prompt: I Wrote a Children’s Book 🧸📖
What’s something you’ve done that your past self would be proud of?
My seven-year-old self would be thrilled that I took the lyrics to the first song she ever wrote and turned it into a children’s book. I have the story board, but I’m still working on a character I’m happy with.
Since it’s Shabbat, I’ll keep this short, but I’ll include some sample book covers made in AI. Anyone who wants to comment and tell me what to keep, change, or get rid of, is welcome to share. Readers are my current and future audience, so I’m interested in knowing your thoughts. 💬 💭
I think this little girl is my favorite of all the designs so far. I love the big eyes and how both she and the seagull seem impressed with each other.
When I asked for a cover, I got a different girl, and the AI assigned the “Song of Wings and Wonders” as a subtitle. I kept everything whether I will use it or not, so I can create a character with a little of all of them.
©2025 All Rights Reserved
I like the girl on this 3D book cover as well, though I think she’s older than seven. And I wanted the beach to go across the entire cover under all the text for a smooth flow.
And here’s one with the beach across the cover, but the girl is gone. 🙃 This one has a butterfly logo for my publishing company, so I like that. Of course, AI has changed tremendously since I started working on these, so I could probably be more apt to get exactly what I want now.
And I’ll end with the dual cover of my first book and the companion book I’m writing for boys by request of my husband. As a matter of fact, Hubby even came up with the title. 🤩
by Crystal A Murray ©2025 All Rights Reserved
So, I’ll close this for now. I know my younger self will truly be happy when I actually get them published.
Shabbat Shalom 🕊️
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🎵Prompt: The New Heaven and New Earth🌎
with help from Gemini, Nano Banana, Wombo Dream, and Photo Studio Pro
What’s a country that’s at the top of your bucket list?
I would’ve liked this question better as a city because I’m actually really happy to be from the good ‘ol USA. I walked across The Rainbow Bridge from Niagara Falls New York to Ontario, Canada. It was a nice experience until the restaurant cheated us on the currency exchange. I do have some nieces and nephews in Canada, so if I had to pick a country outside the US, at least I have a reason to travel there.
My least favorite step outside of our country was a very brief crossing of the bridge at Ciudad de Juarez in Mexico just so we could say we’d been there with the boys (our nephews) while we traveled with them. We drove up a street that felt very unsafe, drove back toward the giant Mexican flag, let the boys burn a little energy on a park playground, and then got right back to the US. It was years later when that show called The Bridge was on TV and showed a glimpse of how awful Juarez could be. I’m glad we didn’t stay longer and thankful we didn’t have any issues.
My most favorite foray outside of our country was a very fast 3-day cruise to the Bahamas. Most of our time was spent on the 50+-year-old ship, but we got 8 hours in port and used it for a small tour of Blue Lagoon. But, oh, that turquoise water was absolutely worth all the travel it took to get there. Here’s one of the pictures from there in a smaller size, but you can see and download the full size at Flickr and read about the trip.
by Crystal A Murray (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
The question also said top of my bucket list, so in thinking about the one country I hope to enjoy (for eternity after this life is over), it has to be in the city of the New Jerusalem when God creates a new Heaven and a New Earth. I imagine this beautiful image of the Caribbean is nothing compared to The Crystal Sea. 🌊💎🌊
And I’ll finish this post with a nice hymn that isn’t apparently that well known since I could only find one with lyrics. It’s called “Address Change Notification” and it’s about moving to a brand new home in Heaven.
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Prompt Response: Cameron Arnett 🎥
Which celebrity would you love to meet, and what would you talk about?
I know, you probably don’t know that name, so it’s hard to think of the actor as a celebrity, but I think he’s a great actor whether he’s playing a dying blind guy, an uncooperative sheriff, or a pastor of a dysfunctional family.
But it’s not the acting I’d want to talk to him about. In more than one movie, he’s given excellent spiritual advice. And though I know he didn’t write the scripts, he speaks the advice with such confidence, it makes you think he could’ve written it. I especially like the encouragement and direction he speaks into his daughter’s headset for her big race in the movie, Overcomer. (Have I mentioned this enough for you to figure out how much I love this movie?)
I’m not a runner, but I am a daughter who grew up mostly without a dad actively in my life. The beautiful coaching and love from this father to his daughter as she struggles to keep the pace and climb one more hill seems to me how God would sound if I could hear Him coaching me in my life’s race.
I’ll share two videos of the race and its finish, and you tell me if you can hear God’s heart to His children in these scenes.
I hope you want to get this movie and watch it all the way through if you haven’t seen it. Every actor in this movie is amazing, and I’d also love to meet the Kendrick brothers and talk about all their movies and the great emotion Alex always brings to his roles. (You’ve gotta see Facing the Giants for his reaction to getting a truck. 😁)
Tell me your favorite Kendrick brothers movie (I haven’t seen The Forge yet) or your favorite Cameron Arnett movie in the comments. 🍿
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🎵Prompt Response: What’s SEO? ❓🧐
with help from Gemini Nano Banana and Photo Studio Pro
What are your strategies for SEO?
By Day One
Hmm 🤔 SEO? What’s that? Special Entrance Options? Seasoning Encrusted Onions? Seven Executive Orders?
So I get a little punchy when I’m tired, and worse when a subject is all about business. And I’m not the biggest fan of having to advertise, but at the same time, I know it’s essential. Besides, if I feel I have something worth reading, isn’t it best to WANT every opportunity for people to see it? And therefore, I want it noticed by those who send people my way: search engines. So, let’s talk about what I’ve changed for the purpose of Search Engine Optimization.
Moving Past the “Business” Dread
Let’s be honest, when you’re a writer whose heart is wrapped up in lyrics and poetry, travel memories, and spiritual growth (like Bible study to find the deeper applications or finding the spiritual side to Aesop’s Fables), diving into technical acronyms like SEO feels a bit like trying to enjoy a quiet cup of dark roast coffee while someone bangs pots and pans next to your ear.
I’d much rather spend my time letting The Lord be My Potter, shaping my life and my words than worrying about keyword density. But over time, I’ve realized that SEO isn’t just a cold, corporate marketing trick. At its core, it’s just about being a good host. If you’ve prepared a warm meal, set out fresh sheets, and opened up your digital home, SEO is simply making sure the porch light is actually turned on so travelers can find their way to the front door.
Quick Story Break
Recently, my husband gave a meaningful devotion at our writer’s meeting and talked about lighthouses and lifelines. I want to share the part about the necessity of using the right lifeline to reach people. This one has a tragic ending, and you can read it at Bible.org since I’m unsure of origins and copyrights. And, no, advertising the posts that hold my testimony or a message about grace and mercy may not be literal life and death, but if they can reach the one soul who needs the message to turn their life to The Lord before it’s too late, they carry the weight of eternity. And I don’t want that rope to be too short to reach them.
What’s Changed in My Routine?
Working together with my digital partners (and learning as I go), I’ve actually adopted several subtle shifts that make a massive difference behind the scenes without cramping my creative style. Here is what my SEO toolkit looks like now:
- Clear Content Taxonomy: I’ve gotten much more intentional about clean categories and tags. Grouping posts logically—whether it’s Travel & Destinations, Slice of Life, or Bible Scripture Verses—helps search engines understand the neighborhood my writing lives in, making it easier to connect readers with the exact memories or reflections they’re looking for.
- Structuring with Headings: Instead of dropping a massive wall of text onto the page, I now use clear markdown headings to break thoughts into digestible sections. Not only does this make the page much easier on human eyes, but search crawlers love a well-organized map.
- Descriptive Metadata & Tags: I actually pay attention to the tag fields now (hello, dailyprompt tags!), ensuring that the terms people are searching for match the heart of what I’ve written.
- Multimedia and Context: Embedding songs (via YouTube or audio tracks), images, and personal art gives the page rich media depth, which keeps readers engaged longer—a signal search engines adore.
Wrapping Up
So, no, I don’t wear a business suit, and I probably never will. But I do want my words to reach the hearts they’re meant for—even if it’s just for one reader out there who needs a lifeline of encouragement today.
What about you? Are you a fellow creative who breaks out in hives at the word “SEO,” or have you found gentle ways to make search engines work for you? Let me know in the comments!
And now, a fitting old hymn called Throw Out the Lifeline:
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🎵Prompt Response: Love Showing Mercy 💝
with help from Gemini Nano Banana and Photo Studio Pro
What’s one thing you know now that would have saved your younger self a lot of pain?
From the first time I read the following Bible verse, I wished I had read it far earlier in my life. It is a simple, strong, deep, and excellent capsule of truth for a happy life and a happy walk with Our Heavenly Father…
“He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you but to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?”
Some people jump through hoops to be loved. Some jump through hoops to prove their love to God or to other people. But no one’s hoop jumping can even compare to what God has done for us through His mercy and grace on the cross at Calvary. Paul the Apostle figured it out when he said:
“But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our trespasses. It is by grace you have been saved!
✨✨✨
For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves; it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast. ”
When I was young in my walk with The Lord, I tried to do everything on my own to please Him and live a life worthy of the gift of grace and mercy He gave me. But when you try too hard, and especially if you find it to be difficult sometimes, it can cause you to look at others who aren’t working as hard and feel a bit jealous. But whether we look at others to compare works, or ourselves to commend our own works, we have taken our eyes off of The One who paid with His works and Precious Blood to make us His own. Looking at YahShua (Jesus) makes showing mercy much easier. It also makes it easier to walk humbly with The Lord.
I’m still learning, and I’m still harder on myself in my failures than I should be. I need to just K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Sweetheart) and think of Micah 6:8 more often. Am I being just? Am I drawn to showing mercy to others the way I want it shown to me? Am I humble in my walk with God?
And this means I have to share one of my favorite ApologetiX songs since it’s about that verse, a parody of a favorite band and song from my youth, and has a great title: Don’t Bring Me Cows. (Parody of Don’t Bring Me Down by ELO.) Oh, and yes there are cows mooing in the song. Prepare to smile.
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🎬Prompt Response: Weird Matinee
with help from Gemini Nano Banana and Photo Studio Pro
What’s the weirdest movie you’ve ever watched?
Funny, it’s my writer’s meeting day, but I’m going to keep the writing short this time. But that’s okay because I didn’t shorten it for Sabbath last night, so I’ve got some wiggle room. 🪱
And that brings me to the answer to this prompt. I was an early teen, and the walk-in cinema was very close to our apartment. I remember some really great movies there even though I was going by myself. My favorite was Xanadu with Olivia Newton John. The music and the story were so good to me. Of course, the roller skating rink was also within walking distance, so being a skater made the movie that much better. Obviously, that was NOT the weirdest movie.
So, I think I watched two movies on the same day, and it was probably near Halloween. The first one was The Amityville Horror 😱, and the second one was at least one of the weirdest movies I’ve ever seen. It was called Saturday the 14th 🙃. Maybe it wouldn’t have been as weird if I’d seen any of the “Friday the 13th” movies, or maybe it would’ve been even more weird in comparison. I’m not into horror movies at all, but I think I got tickets to those two because I was old enough, and they made me feel all grown up. Thankfully, neither gave me nightmares, and I think I even remember some kind of news story about how fake the whole Amityville saga was. That was all pre-Internet days, so I’m sure the true stories are probably online by now.
If I wasn’t sleepy, I might be able to come up with some runners up for weird movies, but the only thing that comes to mind right at this moment was the movie Vanilla Sky. I still never really figured that one out. Was Tom Cruise dead and dreaming of life, or alive and seeing a video of how he’d die and come back? It’s close to the weirdest just because it’s so hard to figure out and left so many loose ends.
Now it’s time for sleep, and since I don’t want to end my day thinking of weird things, how about a beautiful 1:06-minute time lapse nature photo of a year in the life of a beech tree by The Woodland Trust…
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🎵 Prompt Response: Good Morning … This Afternoon 🌅🌤️
with help from Gemini Nano Banana and Photo Studio Pro
Tell us about your morning routine.
A Years-Long Pattern
Looking back at ten years worth of almost daily journals, I can see the night pattern established and ingrained. Trying to change to a morning person has only resulted in shorter stretches of sleep even though I truly try to do everything it takes to both go to bed and get up earlier. Whether I’ve blamed it on Spanish lessons, blogging, or whatever else, it’s just a thing that I’ve struggled with for years. Maybe it was from being up late, and sometimes all night, for the drama that always happened after dark in my childhood, or maybe it was my years of working graveyard shifts. I’m not sure of the cause, but it’s not about desire. I really want to be able to go places and do things with my morning friends, but it seems impossible to reset my circadian rhythm. I wonder, though, am I supposed to?
Every Day
Still, even with my quirky schedule, I do have regular routines established that work even with a later schedule. When I first get up, hubby actually says, “Good Morning” to me—even though it’s late afternoon. I still make myself a dark roast coffee ☕ and enjoy the morning aroma. Just before drinking it, I put a little something on my stomach to absorb the acidity and be nice to my tummy. Usually, it’s a few bites of banana or 2 thin, mini rice cakes with a little butter. Plus, I drink my first glass of water for the day and add some tinctures to it like milk thistle, slippery elm, rye seed (in the form of Iberogast), and dandelion root. By then, I’m fully ready for my time visiting the in-house outhouse. 😉🚪
That’s where I relax and take time to listen to my daily Bible study from the YouVersion Bible app with the one-year plan by The Bible Project. And though some of the readings are pretty long with a video included, the timing is usually right to take care of all I need and be ready for my day.
Time for Worship
According to Scripture, all times are good for worship, but the common times for temple activities were morning and evening. I looked up verses and found a few encouraging texts:
Since it’s Sabbath, I’ll start here…
“A Psalm. A song for the Sabbath day. It is good to praise the Lord, and to sing praises to Your name, O Most High, to proclaim Your loving devotion in the morning and Your faithfulness at night”
These two are nice morning devotions, but I think they can be applied as the first things to do at whatever time your morning starts.
“But I will sing of Your strength and proclaim Your loving devotion in the morning. For You are my fortress, my refuge in times of trouble.”
“Let me hear Your loving devotion in the morning, for I have put my trust in You. Teach me the way I should walk, for to You I lift up my soul.”
This one says that both dawn and sunset praise The Lord joyfully…
“Those who live far away fear Your wonders; You make the dawn and sunset shout for joy. You attend to the earth and water it; with abundance You enrich it. The streams of God are full of water, for You prepare our grain by providing for the earth.”
And I’m gonna use this one for preferring to get up in the afternoon. After all, who wouldn’t want to get up when the path shines the brightest? 😁
“The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, shining brighter and brighter until midday.”
What about you? Do you think that morning can start by just putting God first at whatever time you begin your day? And what tricks would you recommend for someone like me who loves both sunrises and sunsets and thinks the sleep between the two when it’s light feels better than the sleep between the two when it’s dark? Whatever the time, I do long for the Holy Presence of The Lord as it says in this verse:
“My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning— more than watchmen wait for the morning.”
I will pray for His Presence to walk with me in every moment, and I will do my best to pray without ceasing. That reminds me of the post I wrote on breath prayers called “Whisper a Prayer” that includes the lovely song of the same name. I love that it says in the lyrics that God answers prayer in the morning, in the evening, and at noon.
Now enjoy this older song from Psalm 5 where the writer says He will direct His prayers to The Lord in the mornings and he will look up to Him. It’s got beautiful nature video backgrounds and sings the melody 3 times.
Shabbat Shalom 🕊️
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🎵Prompt Response: Buses and Trains🚍🚉
with help from Gemini Nano Banana and Photo Studio Pro
What’s the best way to meet new people while traveling?
Public Transportation
I recall riding the bus from as young as I have memories. There is a feeling of nostalgia that goes with the sights and sounds of big diesel buses coming and going from stations full of people. I even like the old curved ceilings filled with flecks of gold glitter that were on buses in the 1970s. Maybe they were older than that, so if you readers ever rode one, please tell me about it in the comments.
So this girl with a nickname of motormouth could talk to anyone, anytime. My husband will tell you I still can—and do. That’s probably the first thing required to meet new people with or without traveling. But beyond that, the type of transportation you choose makes all the difference in the world in how much you can access your fellow passengers to get to know them.
It usually starts in the bus station before everyone is more cramped and trying to jockey for the arm space between you. Talking is easier when you are face to face with a little distance between you. Singing is, too. I thought I’d shared about my bus station mini concert in a previous post, but an hour of searching never found it, so maybe not. Or maybe it’s still one of my unpublished drafts.
Just Sing, Sing a Song
Anyway, I cannot remember the time frame or my age when it happened, or even where I was headed. I do recall the bus being hours late, and a group of people had gathered outside the station and sat on the cement walkway to listen to someone play the guitar. I’m pretty sure we were at Union Station in Los Angeles, and the guitarist was a young woman in a colorful, cotton gauze sundress. Or her boyfriend played while she sang. Either way, they started playing old folk songs I’d frequently sang with my mom, so suddenly I was singing “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” and she was adding beautiful harmonies. A lot of people sang together, and the peaceful atmosphere in that was far better than all the whining going on inside because of late buses.
Get on Board
The other mode of transportation that’s great for meeting people is on the train. In the lounge rooms at the stations, I recall a few conversations, but the lounge car in the large Amtrak trains yielded many more. There were two women from Wisconsin who worked in a factory that made meat pies you eat by hand. They are called pasties (no I didn’t miss the R), and they are usually served warm. These two ladies loved their jobs, and from that time, I’ve wanted to try one of these sandwiches. I got something close to it at the Garden Glow at Missouri Botanical Garden one year, but I think I’ll need to actually visit Wisconsin again to get the real thing. (The link with the word explains what they are and some history.)
On another train trip, I ate in the dining car where they put you at tables with strangers. It’s a lot nicer to visit with these strangers than to just watch each other eat and drink. One meal had me across from a woman who backpacked across Europe to see all the towns where her soldier father had been stationed. She was writing about it in his memory.
I’ve had philosophical conversations, given advice to newlyweds about marriage longevity, and met an Instagram influencer who became the only influencer I think I’ve ever followed. But it was our real life behind the camera conversations that made it worth staying in touch with her life. And, yes, a few conversations were odd and a bit unnerving, like a guy in Chicago who claimed to be CIA and a traveler who claimed Chicago was the real middle east of the Holy Bible. But those, fortunately, are the least of those I’ve shared public journeys with.
Wrapping Up
I’m finishing this really late because of all the searching I’ve done that has not given me results, but I hope you enjoyed my little jaunt down memory lane. If you ever want to take a bus or train to see who you might meet, I recommend the train, and I suggest the longer ones where you get to hang out in the lounge car. The Southwest Chief from Chicago to L.A. (Kingman, AZ for me) is the one I’ve ridden most, and you can join Amtrak Guest Rewards to earn points for future trips if you ever want to try it.
Where Have All the Flowers Gone
And, though I do know where the flowers and soldiers have gone, and I hate the idea of war, I also know that a strong military of patriots is an absolute necessity to protect us from our enemies. They have their own militaries, but they are more apt to agree to peace if they face a power great enough to hurt them if they engage. Please support our US military and our soldiers with your love and prayers. May God make us strong enough to win if we need to fight and unified enough that our enemies would rather go back home. 🇺🇸🪖🛐💪 In the meantime, enjoy listening to the song I mentioned above in this video:
This Train 🎶
And just for fun, there are a lot of train songs out there, but only one I know of where the singers make the sounds of the wheels in a unique whisper. This is the 7-minute version of Wendy Bagwell and the Sunliters singing This Train is Bound for Glory with a little comedy and a lot of talent from the girls sprinkled in.
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🎵Prompt Response: Alien Communications 👽🖖
If aliens arrived tomorrow, what’s the first thing you’d ask them?
We Come in Peace
Wait, aren’t they supposed to be the first ones talking and telling me they come in peace? I know I’d probably feel better about talking to them if they started the conversation that way. But then if we’re both waiting for each other to speak first, it could get awkward.
So let’s just assume that, with or without an introduction, communication is easy and free-flowing. Maybe they’re asking about Earth or humanity, and I’m trying to think of a better ice-breaker than; “Are you offended by alien jokes?” 😂
Jokes
But just in case that was my first question, and just in case they said they were okay with them, here are a few just for fun.
- Why don’t aliens golf in outer space?
- There are too many black holes.
- How do aliens keep their pants up?
- They use asteroid belts.
- What kind of music do aliens listen to?
- Neptunes. 🎶
- How do alien poets write their poems?
- In Uni-Verse.
But In All Seriousness…
I like my husband’s idea the best. Remind the aliens that I’m an alien, too. After all, what does Scripture say?
“But our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables Him to subject all things to Himself, will transform our lowly bodies to be like His glorious body.”
In another place it says:
“For here we do not have a permanent city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.”
So, once we’ve established some common ground, maybe then I could ask the aliens if they are familiar with The Creator of the Universe. I know I’d be surprised whether they said they knew all about God and interacted with Him frequently or whether they knew nothing at all but wanted to learn.
We don’t know for sure if there are aliens, what they look like, or what they know. But, if they exist, we know Who made them and we know He has a plan.
Like the aliens may be looking for a new place to call home because their original planets are facing troubles, we have our own share of troubles on Planet Earth, so a new home promise is a good hope. This life may be temporary, but God’s promises are eternal. Have you given your heart to The Lord, so you can also look forward to eternal hope?
And this is the perfect topic for a great old hymn:
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Prompt Response: Why Empathy is Important
with help from Gemini Nano Banana and Photo Studio Pro
What’s the most underrated life skill?
Thinking of Others
Thinking of others, caring for others, loving others, and understanding others are all very important life skills. But, sadly, each of them can be performed without having the genuine skill of empathy as a guide.
A person might feed someone because it makes them feel good to share, or they might feed them because they have personal experience with hunger and don’t want someone else to go through it. Or they might march for a cause because they belong to a group that supports it but not because they have real-world experience with the issue.
Learning to Understand
When I sit in a regular height chair, my feet will not reach the floor except maybe my toes. Two things happen then: a hard seat will push into the backs of my legs and cause pain, or the sciatic nerve that runs from my hip down to my knee will pull and create days of pain. So I’m always saying to my husband, “You normal height people have no clue what it’s like to live in a world that’s not built for short people.” Before knowing me, he might never have even thought about why some people carry cushions with them everywhere they go. Now, because of experience, his empathy developed.
Natural Empathy
There are some people who have more of a natural empathy skill, just like people who are naturally gifted artists. Those people can think of what someone else is going through without their issues having ever been part of their life experience. If their empathy makes them feel things like they are experiencing it with the person their heart is moved for, they’ve gone past being empathetic and into being empathic. But for most people, empathy comes along and asks them to get on board, and they either accept it or reject it. If they accept it, it’s a skill they can learn and even improve on with time.
Genuine Empathy is an Extremely Important Skill
So why would I say it’s one of the most underrated skills? Simply because it is a driver of many other skills. It drives people to stop what they are doing for themselves and pay attention to someone else’s needs. It drives people to dig into their savings to collect for someone’s provisions. It stirs up a what if that were me or my family or friends kind of vibe that drives a person to step up and do their part to remedy a problem. Without real empathy to drive helpful behaviors, good deeds can cause distress and lead to those scenarios where a person says, “I was only trying to help.”
Don’t Stop Helping
Even if you do not have natural empathy, and even if your efforts to help have sometimes created a problem, don’t stop being helpful. That’s its own wonderful skill. And those who get offended by someone’s effort to help that isn’t exactly what they would’ve wanted need their own empathetic skills, so they don’t hurt a person with a tender and helpful heart. But, it’s a good idea to examine both your motivations and your understanding to see if you can learn ways to improve your helpfulness.
The Best Example of Empathy Ever Given
YahShua (Jesus) once dwelt in heavenly places far above humanity. The Scriptures tell us that He left His throne on high to dwell as one of us and become able to share the human experience.
“Who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death — even death on a cross.”
He became our High Priest both to counsel and to sacrifice.
“Now since the children have flesh and blood, He too shared in their humanity, so that by His death He might destroy him who holds the power of death, that is, the devil.
For this reason He had to be made like His brothers in every way, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, in order to make atonement for the sins of the people.”
And He told the disciples that the greatest love anyone could ever have was to lay down their own life for a friend.
“Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”
The Life Skill of Genuine Empathy is Rooted in Real Love
It’s not always easy to think of others. The voices all around us remind us how much we risk if we think of others. “You might catch something.” “They may not be grateful.” “You better ask first.” The division and lack of unity created by living our lives on screens and in fear don’t help us to love others or even think of them without counting our own costs first. A scenario where some government organization fines groups giving out sandwiches to hurricane victims because they didn’t get a health license first makes people hold back on empathy and love for fear of getting in trouble.
But if we see these things, we can change these things. And we need to change them for future generations to prevent the divide from growing any wider. Many children are naturally empathetic, and that needs to be nurtured in them as much as possible. It’s okay to tell them they are talented or special, but not at the expense of them believing they are more special than everyone else. They MUST be taught to see through the eyes of others outside themselves.
It hurts me deeply when I see videos of a group of teens attacking an elderly person. I mean, any innocent victim being attacked and beaten is not okay, but knowing how brittle and sensitive someone gets with age makes those attacks seem that much more brutal. 🥺 If we teach the youth about the frailties of age, AND we teach them to love their neighbor, they shouldn’t be able to carry out those attacks without any thoughts of how the victims feel.
WWJD
Do you remember when those 4 letters were all the rage and becoming emblazoned on everything? That was a real effort to create real empathy by thinking what it would be like from inside the heart of Jesus and how He thought of the hearts of people with whom He interacted. I think it’s time to boost this life skill back up to the top again.
And this seems like a perfect place to share my scrolling poem called “Beyond the Mirror” again.
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🎵Prompt Response: My Guiding Light Principles
with help from Gemini Nano Banana and Photo Studio Pro
What’s a personal mantra or philosophy you live by?
Guiding Lights on the Path of Life
Life isn’t just one path from conception to death. It’s like that quilt poem where the underside has all these hanging and frayed threads that make it look messy and without form. But flip it over to the top side where The Artist is at work, and you’ll be amazed at the beauty He has put together when He gives it His own touch.
The Light of Grace and Mercy to Change
See, I know that I’m messy and fail often. Paul the Apostle said the same thing about himself.
“I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh; for I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do. Instead, I keep on doing the evil I do not want to do. And if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.”
The Lord is My Editor
As a writer, that means I need to be edited, so that leads me to one of the lights on my path, the philosophy of letting God edit my writing. And, ultimately, I want Him to edit me as a person and as His child. The writer’s “mantra” is… The Lord is my Editor, I shall rewrite. That’s from a parody of Psalm 23 that I shared in the post, The Lord is My Own Personal Shepherd.
Rewrite My Life
In addition, the life philosophy of being edited is an idea I wrote as a short chorus many years ago but after the parody. It goes:
Edit me, Creator,
Edit me, My Lord.
Open up the heart of me,
And fill it with Your Word.
Write me as
A song of praise,
To lift Your name on high.
Please edit me, Creator,
Re-write my life.
The Desire to Please God
And the philosophy that lights my path and gives me a reason to desire God’s Hand of editing within it is simply that I desire to please Him. And you know what? Even that desire is a gift from Him. I love the way it’s written in the Plain English Version (P.E.V.), a Bible translation created for use on the mission field.
“God is the one that is working inside you. He helps you think the right way, so that you want to do the good things that make him happy, and he gives you the power to do those good things.”
For One Soul
Whether I’m failing or succeeding, reading or writing, listening or speaking, one thing I always want to think about is how I affect others. I’ve probably mentioned this quote from my original website domain before:
Live every moment of your life as if it could be… For One Soul!
That philosophy came in a moment of prayer where I was asking God if I was reaching enough people. After some time of conversation with Him, I came to the conclusion that if only one soul needed Calvary, He would still have walked that path and poured out His precious blood. And then I got the picture clearly that if I worked hard to minister to people (as a friend, a writer, a teacher, a singer/songwriter, or whatever else I do), I should do it as if it’s for millions of souls but know that if it only reaches one soul, it’s totally worth it. Just one moment in my small life could reach one soul that no one else has reached, and that one soul is precious to Our Lord.
To The Believers and to The Undecided
What about you? If you’re a fellow believer, would you live and work all the moments and days of your life if you knew at the end it would only touch one person? And would you keep on shining that light even after you’d likely reached the one?
I believe we have a loving Heavenly Father who is thrilled to share the joy of “catching souls” with us. We know that the angels rejoice more over just one new redemption than over 99 just men who don’t need to repent. So, if you are not yet a believer, I invite you to bring joy to God, to the angels, and to me, by turning to The Lord as the Guiding Light of your life today. 🛐
Jesus’ Parable of The Lost Sheep
“What man among you, if he has a hundred sheep and loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the pasture and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders, comes home, and calls together his friends and neighbors to tell them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my lost sheep!’ I tell you that in the same way there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous ones who do not need to repent.”
And though I’ve shared it before (back in February), this seems like the perfect time to share one of my favorite songs, “That’s When the Angels Rejoice.” I think maybe it could also be called The 4 1 Soul song. 😁 This time it’s by the original artist but without lyrics.
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Prompt Response: Exploring Food Experiences
with help from Gemini Nano Banana and Photo Studio Pro app
What’s the best way to explore a new city?
Discovering New Foods
What’s the best way to enjoy a new city? Find an eatery that’s not part of a chain you can visit most everywhere else.
Traveling with Park Way Studios — Wisconsin
One of the first locations I worked in with Park Way (after my training in four really small towns in Utah) was a place called Pardeeville, Wisconsin. Yes, that’s really the name of a town, and it’s small but pretty. I didn’t have my car yet, so I was at the mercy of the hotel cafe until a co-worker joined me a few days after I arrived. Once we had wheels, we asked locals about things to do in the mornings before we saw customers and on Sundays when we had no bookings. Well, and for dinner if we finished the day’s appointments early enough.
I don’t remember if we got a recommendation or just found this amazing restaurant by driving around the area, but the meal there changed my palate from that point forward. The little place on Lake Wisconsin in Lodi is called Fitz’s By the Lake, but then it was the Okee Snack Bar. We couldn’t understand the two-hour wait until we tried the food, and then it made perfect sense. The special for that night was blackened prime rib.
So, understand my backstory of being raised on “Hamburger Helper” and other inexpensive meal options. The only time I’d tried prime rib was as a treat during a trip to Disneyland for my birthday. And it didn’t impress me at all. Plus, I’d never even heard of blackening seasoning at that time, so it was an amazing culinary experience. Every bite of food there was filled with more flavor than I think I knew food could have—including the sizzle of fresh blue cheese on my salad, which was another first for me.
Since that trip, I have never wanted my prime rib any other way. Years later, when hubby and I used to visit O’Charley’s for their Sunday prime rib special, I would eat it as served with au jus until one night when I saw blackened salmon on the specials board and remembered Okee Snack Bar. I asked if it was possible to get it on my prime rib, and the server didn’t know, but checked. As it turned out, the cook was interested in trying it for us to see how it worked, and everyone was impressed. From then on, that’s how we ordered it, and the servers often vowed to try it that way once they saw it on our plates. Eventually, it became a menu item, and I’ll never know if it was because of our orders, which would ultimately mean it was because of that out-of-the-way restaurant in Lodi, Wisconsin.
Traveling with Park Way Studios — Indiana
But sometimes, it doesn’t take a restaurant to find a new culinary adventure. Sometimes, it’s just about being a friendly and patient person who meets another friendly and patient person. In my case, it was a beautician who spent six hours putting a perm in my very long (at the time) hair. I want to say she used about 300 perm rods, but if not that many, it was a lot. I let her experiment with crisscrossing them to add texture and other ways she just had fun with my hair. Fortunately, she also used a high protein solution and after-perm treatment that my hair really liked, so the six hours was worth a wonderful and long-lasting permanent.
The town where I met her was the town of La Porte, Indiana, where much of the movie “Prancer” was filmed. I learned that tidbit along with lots of other fun information as beautician and client filled up chair time getting to know all about each other. If I had ever become a beautician, I would likely have been just like her in sharing about her husband and kids and favorite foods. That last conversation actually led to an invitation to dinner with her family.
Since the dinner was on a Sunday afternoon, and we’d already become fast friends at the beauty shop, she invited me to spend the whole day. While I was there, I learned how to make my next culinary delight: fresh salsa. She made it totally from scratch, right down to roasting Roma tomatoes in the broiler at the bottom of her gas range. (No, that drawer at the bottom of your oven wasn’t always used for storage. 😁 And I miss the wonderful flame-kissed steaks that could be made in those old broilers.)
Homemade Salsa Recipe 🍅🌶️🫑🧅🧂🍋🟩
If you want to try your own hand at making homemade salsa, I can give you the basics, but I’m not one who measures, so you’ll have to go by the taste that works for you. Ingredients in approximate amounts include…
- 5-6 ripe Roma tomatoes — roasted and hand crushed
- One half of a white onion — diced small
- 1 small jalapeño pepper without seeds — diced extra small
- One fourth of a green bell pepper — diced medium
- 1 cup chopped cilantro — finely chopped
- Chili powder and garlic, salt, or others seasonings to taste
- A few squeezes of lime juice is optional
Broil the tomatoes until the skin just starts to turn black. It makes it easier to peel them as you crush them between your hands and fingers. Plus, a little of that roasted flavor stays with them. Place some of the roasted tomato meat with the jalapeño seasonings in the blender and mix them into a puree to sauce to your bowl of salsa. The rest of the ingredients can stay chunky. Once you have it all mixed together, cover it and refrigerate it until chilled and ready to serve.
It’s been years since I’ve made this because hubby doesn’t like cilantro and because I no longer have a gas stove. I want to see if I can make it in a counter top oven/air fryer someday, but no matter how it comes out, it doesn’t replace the joys of exploring a new city, making a new friend, and learning a new recipe all in the same day.
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Prompt Response: Newness of Life 🆕🧬
with help from Gemini Nano Banana and Photo Studio Pro
What’s a moment in your life that made you feel truly alive?
Life has a number of definitions. From simple existence to abundant living to thriving, life can be lived with or without much pomp and circumstance. Some are happy just to breathe in and out while others require a steady stream of stimuli to feel as if they are truly alive.
For me, I’ve had some wonderful moments of feeling truly alive, like the day I married the love of my life 35+ years ago. And most of those moments followed a moment I felt truly alive; the moment my old life and sin was washed away in baptism, and I began to walk into a new life beside my Savior. Read that story on my July 17th post.
When Paul speaks to the Roman believers about baptism, he says…
“We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may walk in newness of life.”
A few different translations use the words walk in a new life but most seem to agree with the Berean translation to walk in the newness of life. In other words, before that moment, it was not life even if you were existing and breathing in and out. So life from a God’s Word perspective means walking with our Creator and Lord.
That definition also works with the definitions of eternity that assign us to either eternal death or eternal life. Eternal death is the place where not even a worm dies and yet it’s called death, so it seems it’s the lack of the presence of Yahveh Almighty that makes it death. But that doesn’t have to be our eternity. We know from His own words that YahShua (Jesus) is Life.
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life.”
He also says that He is The Resurrection.
“Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in Me will live, even though he dies. And everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?’”
In His Gethsemane prayer in John 17, YahShua says…
“Now this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent.”
And this is echoed by John the Revelator in 1 John 11-12…
“And this is that testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.”
Finally, in the spirit of the beautiful fall season now gracing the Northern Hemisphere, remember that real life is filled with color. The verdant leaves of spring and summer are basically putting their dinner plates out for the world to see what they’re eating: a diet of chlorophyll. But before they take their winter naps, the green gets fully digested to reveal the true colors that mark the life of each leaf.
🍁🍁🍂🍁🍂🍁🍁
And isn’t that just a beautiful glimpse of Heaven? There, our true colors will shine for eternity and glisten in the Light of His eternal grace! THAT must be the very definition of feeling truly alive.
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Prompt Response: What Would I Wish?
with help from Gemini, Nano Banana, and Photo Studio Pro app
The genie grants you a wish. What is it?
Just one wish? I thought genies were supposed to grant you three wishes! 🧐🧐🧐 But I guess I shouldn’t be greedy, right? I mean any kind of free bonus is a benefit, isn’t it?
Well, maybe not. There is the story of three friends who found a magic lamp together, so the genie in that lamp said they could each have only one wish. The first friend jumped at the chance and asked for his own private island with a fancy resort and all the riches he could ever want. POOF! The wish was granted and the friend began his happily ever after. Not to be outdone, the second friend wished for a hundred billion dollars (after taxes 😂) and a private jet and yacht. When he wasn’t living on the yacht, he planned to visit his other friend’s resort. POOF! He got zapped to his new yacht and on the way to his friend’s private island.
But then, there was the third friend. A bit slow on the draw, he scratched his head asking himself what he should wish for while the genie waited impatiently. He would’ve asked his friends for advice, but they were both living their new dreams many miles away from him. When the genie told him to hurry up, he looked around at the empty chairs near him and said, “It sure is lonely here, now. I wish my two friends were back.” POOF! 🧞
Since it’s Sabbath evening, I’ll just leave it there except to say that I’ve already had a few conversations with The Lord about wishes, and it usually comes back to trusting His plan and provisions above all else. Sometimes, you get exactly what you ask for and find out it’s not what you wanted at all. Other times, you don’t get what you ask for at all only to find out later that you actually got what you needed instead. So whether you ask a genie (not recommended), or you ask Yahveh Almighty (your Father who only desires the best for you), ask according to His word, and trust His perfect will for your life.
A Few Scriptures About Asking
“Two things I ask of You — do not refuse me before I die: Keep falsehood and deceitful words far from me. Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the bread that is my portion. Otherwise, I may have too much and deny You, saying, ‘Who is the Lord?’ Or I may become poor and steal, profaning the name of my God.”
“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”
“And when you do ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may squander it on your pleasures.”
And One Scripture Reference About Trust
“You will keep in perfect peace the steadfast of mind, because he trusts in You. Trust in the Lord forever, because GOD the Lord is the Rock eternal.”
🙏🙏🙏
Shabbat Shalom! 🕊️
Last minute addition from my creative mind: What if a genie rubbed the lamp and a Holy Bible floated out as his answer?
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Prompt Response: When I Sold Flowers 💐
What are your favorite side-hustle ideas?
If it was still the late 1970s, and I was still an energetic teenager, I’d totally recommend selling flowers on the street corner.
This could qualify as my first side-hustle job besides watching kids for some friends or family. And back then, teen babysitters got very little—no matter how bratty their little charges turned out to be. (I don’t recall any real troublesome kids, though. Thankfully.) So a good weekend side hustle could be a great excuse to not be available as a cheap sitter.
I don’t recall how I found out about the job, but I recall they hired a whole bunch of teenagers for Mother’s Day weekend and picked us up in an old metal-floored work van. Each of us, with our buckets of flowers and water, got dropped off on various corners around the valley. And it was super hot that weekend!
Apparently, there was a contest with bonus pay. The fact that I looked like I was only about 11 years old and kept dipping in the flower water to cool myself off turned out to be a good thing. I sold a lot more flowers and got the 2nd-place bonus for the weekend. I took home about $165, which was a lot for a young teenager. Today, that would be over $750, so, yeah, it would be an excellent side hustle.
I had Gemini’s Nano Banana work on a picture to closely resemble that experience nearly five decades ago. Do you wanna buy some flowers?
With that I’ll say Welcome to October and Happy Fall Y’all! I plan to try and answer prompts for this whole month. This is the first prompt for October 2026, and when I come across anything I don’t feel I can write on, I’ll grab a dress draft I’ve saved from previous prompts I liked. I hope my readers find some enjoyable reading this month even without my usual teaching posts.
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Prompt Response: Rice Cakes with Butter and…
What snack would you eat right now?
I’m keeping this short because, well, because I’m a bit short on sleep, and I’m gonna try to catch up a little. So I found an old draft post with a prompt from back in January (it’s cool that I can save them like this), and now I’m hungry for a snack. But I’ll be good and just imagine eating it. Lol 😂
A simple and tasty snack to me includes these tiny little rice cake thins by the Only Kosher Candy company on Amazon. They are actually pretty tasty, and when I spread a little butter on them, they kinda taste like buttered popcorn. I can eat 2 thin cakes and feel satisfied for at least an hour, so that makes for a perfect light snack.
I added peanut butter and bananas for the picture, but I haven’t actually tried that snack yet. It sounds good to me, though. A little avocado sounds pretty yummy as well.
🧈 🍯🍌🥑
What topping sounds like it would be good for a late night snack to you?
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🎵Prompt Response: Cotton Fields
What’s a song lyric that has stuck with you forever?
For some unknown reason, it’s the song Cotton Fields.
What Makes a Great Earworm?
Even though I’ve never lived in Louisiana, or even a mile from Texarkana from any direction, this song frequently pops into my head and out of my mouth. I’ll just be going about some menial household tasks, and the next thing you know, I’m singing, “When I was a little bitty baby…” That’s followed by the rest of the song as I remember it, and then I stop and wonder, “Now why am I singing this?”
I guess earworms don’t need logic (like I’m not sure I ever had a cradle that my mom rocked me in,) but it’s there often anyway—and it’s fun to sing. And I remember my mom singing it a lot, so maybe earworms can be caught. 😊
According to my research with Gemini, a great earworm uses simple, repetitive beats and catchy words. Repetitive melodies make it easy for the tune to stick, and a simple structure cements the rhythm. When these songs become “stuck,” it’s often due to associations with comfort or subconscious memories triggered during low-cognitive tasks, like doing household chores.
So there ya go; I’ve definitely got an earworm with this song, and I think I’ve had it for many years, even before I got married. And I must sing it mostly to myself because hubby didn’t recognize it by the first words. For him and for the rest of my readers, here’s a great version by Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR)…
The Prickly Reality (Bolls, Bracts & Burrs)
I’ve told you about traveling with my grandparents from Central California to Northern Arizona. That stretch of highway once had a few sections filled with cotton fields on both sides of the road. During one of our road trips, I convinced Grandpa to pull over and let me “pick” a little bit of my own cotton. I don’t recall him warning me, but I do recall learning a lesson about real cotton and those super sharp burrs that hold it onto the stem.
Those parts, the hard brown and pointy parts you see in the picture, are nothing to mess with. They are worse than a splinter, and they can really make your fingers bleed. I recall wrestling a few seeds from their fluffy cotton bolls (and yes, that’s the correct word, though I didn’t know until I listened to the above video and looked it up as I was sure they must be singing it wrong, lol). After a number of finger stabs, I put the whole batch in a baggie where it stayed for the remainder of the trip. And then it stayed in my room for years.
Wait, It’s a Fruit?!
Can you believe that we really do wear fruit (from the loom? Lol) on our bodies? According to my research, cotton is botanically a fruit. There’s a lot of good information at the Biology Insights website if you’re interested. I like the summary about it from Gemini …
It is one of those fun botanical facts that sounds fake until you double-check it! Because the cotton boll grows from a flower and houses the plant’s seeds, it is technically a capsule-type fruit.
Wrapping Up (in 100% Cotton 😁)
I really didn’t expect so much information from such a simple prompt, but it adds some variety to my posts, right? And there’s so much more i could say about cotton, from the textile industry, to organic material, to the various grades used in sheets. But it would take more research since I’m not even sure of the difference between Pima and Egyptian cotton. But I do know that God told the Israelites not to combine materials back in the days of Torah, and I’m certain He had a good reason for it. I’ll leave you with that verse as my sign-off for this post.
Leviticus 19:19 BSB
[19] You are to keep My statutes. You shall not crossbreed two different kinds of livestock; you shall not sow your fields with two kinds of seed; and you shall not wear clothing made of two kinds of material.
https://bible.com/bible/3034/lev.19.19.BSB
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Prompt Response: Eli by Bill Myers
by Crystal A Murray (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
If you could rewrite any book’s ending, which one would you choose?
First, let me tell you that I loved this book—all but the ending. Eli by Bill Myers is an excellent book, and you’ll see by the 4.8 star average that most people think so. If you visit (via my associate link in the title) you’ll see that it’s on sale with 40% off in Kindle format right now, and 13% off for the mass market paperback.
A Brief Description
Eli is a creative journey into a world where Jesus has not yet been born. Mary and Joseph are hippies looking for a safe place to have their baby, and they settle for a laundry room in an apartment complex. So just by this start, you can see the wonderful and creative mind of the author.
The journey continues into His adult life and includes events like Jesus walking through a tornado in Kansas and bidding His new follower to join Him in the midst of the storm. If you’ve read the Bible, you know the story of Peter the disciple watching YahShua (Jesus) walk through a storm on the sea and asking to be invited to join Him.
Matthew 14:25-30 BSB
[25] During the fourth watch of the night, Jesus went out to them, walking on the sea. [26] When the disciples saw Him walking on the sea, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost!” they said, and cried out in fear. [27] But Jesus spoke up at once: “Take courage! It is I. Do not be afraid.” [28] “Lord, if it is You,” Peter replied, “command me to come to You on the water.” [29] “Come,” said Jesus. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water, and came toward Jesus. [30] But when he saw the strength of the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!”
https://bible.com/bible/3034/mat.14.25-30.BSB
The book continues at a nice pace covering most of the events we would expect to see in a world that is yet without a Savior. I thoroughly enjoyed all the creativity and the backstory the author weaves in about the one who is sharing these events as they unfold. I highly recommend the read.
A warning about what is the equivalent of the crucifixion scene…
This is not a bad warning, just a warning for those who are emotionally moved by the pain and sacrifices of our Messiah. I don’t think any of us have seen an actual crucifixion, so even at its most real (like The Passion of The Christ movie,) it’s still not truly familiar. Bringing it into today’s society with cowboys kicking Him with their pointy-toed boots had a realistic feel because of similar scenes in movies and, for some, in real life. Some of the moments with the beatings still bring tears even though I read it probably 15+ years ago. If you want to really see YahShua as a victim paying a price for your sins, this is a powerful way to see it.
Here’s the biblical version with the crucifixion…
Matthew 27:27-31 BSB
[27] Then the governor’s soldiers took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole company around Him. [28] They stripped Him and put a scarlet robe on Him. [29] And they twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on His head. They put a staff in His right hand, knelt down before Him, and mocked Him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” [30] Then they spit on Him and took the staff and struck Him on the head repeatedly. [31] After they had mocked Him, they removed the robe and put His own clothes back on Him. Then they led Him away to crucify Him.
https://bible.com/bible/3034/mat.27.27-31.BSB
Now About That Ending
So the ending isn’t bad. It does not change the focus or purpose of the book or the strength of the story. It just adds an event to the end that I wish was not there. If I were writing it, I would’ve wrestled for another ending that didn’t leave me wondering why it had to go THAT way. But I won’t spoil it for you in case you read it for yourself.
Just know that I would’ve written the hospital scene and the ending with the narrator character with a little more hope. As I write this now, though, I realize the life of Peter in the Bible didn’t have an ending I would write either, so maybe the author used that narrative to guide his ending. But in fiction, you have a little more artistic freedom, so go read it for yourself and then tell me how you think you would’ve written the ending.
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Prompt Response: Remembering Corded Switchboards ☎️
Which outdated technology do you miss the most, and why?
It was the 80s, and I was finally old enough to work. I got a weekly allowance at the girl’s home where I lived, but a job would give me a bit more freedom and money.
I’m not sure why they didn’t have me look for work outside the home, but maybe it was because most nearby jobs would’ve been on Hollywood Blvd, and a small 17-year-old female would not have been safe there. Whatever the reason, I was offered the operator job for the switchboard right there in the home. And I loved it!
I grew up knowing my grandma was a 911 operator (before it was 911), and I always felt she was so special for having that job. I think I mentioned in a previous post that she almost got the job given to Shaaron Claridge to do the voice acting for the Adam 12 TV series. They worked together at the Van Nuys LAPD station, and she was still there at my grandmother’s retirement party based on the signatures on her card.
Anyway, I was so excited to learn those simple plug boards (often called “cordboards,”) and that experience helped me get a job at Thrifty Telephone Answering Service in Van Nuys, California. I tried to search, and they are not likely to still be in business (started in 1948), but if they are, they’ve probably gone totally digital by now. Others I worked with at the time also enjoyed the process when cordboards were the standard, but I doubt you could even find a repair person trained to fix them anymore.
While I was there, I became the night operator and worked all 11 boards by myself. Up to 100 lines per board meant the possibility of 1100 phone calls if all lines were purchased and everyone called at one time. But that never happened—thankfully. The hardest time for me was when the multiple lines for the insurance company that insured people even if they’d had a DWI advertised at 2 in the morning, and they would say, “Call now; operators are standing by.” And I’d be thinking… Operator, no “S” as I tried to answer 6 lines as quickly as I could. That was my nightly workout. Lol 😆
Still, even with those harder times, there was something about that simple technology that made going to work every day more enjoyable than it felt at other jobs. I truly hated leaving there to move to Arizona. But I love my memories of the place and the experiences I had there. And I know that, maybe more than the boards themselves, it may be what the boards brought into my life that makes me nostalgic for them.
On a similar subject but way more current, I found out today about some new type of phone rooms called Warm Call Centers also called warmlines for people to call that don’t need an emergency hotline. They are a growing industry to support people who just need a human ear that isn’t a robot or AI and won’t take away from real crisis calls.
These new warmlines are similar to the former Xerox customer support lines where the operators were trained to offer compassionate advice to callers—even if they weren’t calling about a Xerox problem. There used to be a collection of the funniest or most outrageous calls they’d received, but I can’t seem to find it. I read years ago about someone who called Xerox because she was in labor and didn’t know what to do next.
People really do need real people to be there to listen and respond to them. It’s why I chat with cashiers and don’t like self-checkout. And if I were still out in the workforce, I’d probably apply for one of those jobs at a warm call center. I might even try to break the record they set with a 10-hour phone call. 🗣️📞🗣️📞🗣️📞🗣️😁
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Prompt Response: Humor in the Humidity
by Crystal A Murray (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
What’s the funniest misunderstanding you’ve ever been part of?
Yes, this story is true. And, yes, it is funny! 🤣😂
See, I spent many years in Northern Arizona where it’s very hot in the summer, but (say it with me), “It’s a dry heat.” Really, unless you are on the backside of the desert between Needles, California and Bullhead City, Arizona on a day when the temperature hits 115°F, it is often more bearable than the extremely humid days during a Midwest summer heat wave.
We got married in early April, so when the summer rolled around in that same year, I experienced a completely different atmosphere in Kentucky. It wasn’t just hot; it was like a sauna in the middle of a steam room! 😮
That’s when the love of my life, who I trusted with every part of me, showed his “genuine” compassion and told me how some people who move from a dry climate to a humid place like Kentucky may have to get their lungs suctioned out.
I’m not naive about a lot of things, and I’m always trying to learn new stuff, but it didn’t seem that impossible to me since just 3 years previous to that moment, my grandmother needed her lungs suctioned because of her battle with cancer. Plus, there was no Internet to search and verify things with in the summer of 1991. And because I trusted my husband, and didn’t yet know about his love of silly storytelling, I believed him without asking any questions.
Fast forward to the next spring. I’ve made it through the crazy hot summer and my first Kentucky winter. Snow and everything. My Arizona uncle called to ask if I’d watched the basketball game where Christian Laettner got the last-minute 3-point shot to help Duke win over Kentucky. We weren’t sports watchers, especially not with a small black and white TV, but that one we saw. 🏀
A little while into our conversation, he noticed a tiny bit of an accent, so he turned the conversation to how I was getting used to Kentucky. When he asked how I was adjusting, I answered, “I guess I’m doing alright. I’ve been here almost a year, and I haven’t needed to get my lungs suctioned out.”
That’s when hubby started laughing really big. And he sputtered the words, “Wait; you believed that!?”
Since then, it’s been one of my funniest stories to share, even if it does make me seem a bit airheaded. 😁 But you best believe that I now check everything—even from trusted sources. Lol 😂
Note: I never believed fish moved in with fluid on the lungs, but because this is a light-hearted true story, I prompted Wombo to add fish to both the lungs and the suction tank. 🐠 🐟
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Prompt Response: The Word of God
Which book have you read more than any other?
There are a few books I’ve read more than once, though mostly short ones and children’s books because I have so many I want to read that I don’t want to miss the new ones while I’m rereading older ones. But there is one exception to that personal rule: The Holy Bible.
When YahShua asked His closest disciples if they wanted to run away with others who left due to a misunderstanding of His words, Peter answered this way…
John 6:68 BSB
[68] Simon Peter replied, “Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life.
https://bible.com/bible/3034/jhn.6.68.BSB
Who else has the words of life? What other book has the amount of good fruit that comes from the Bible? Many testimonies have been given that detail amazing and wonderful life changes as a result of God’s precious words. They include things like…
- Relationship repairs,
- New Hopes and Dreams,
- Miracles and Answers,
- Education and Wisdom,
- Healings and Life,
- Provisions and Jobs,
- Promises and Protection,
- Comfort and Peace,
- Love and Joy,
- And so much more.
When you’ve come to the very end of yourself and have nowhere else to go, you can turn to God’s Word. When you’ve searched for answers in everything else and found none, you’ll be amazed at the good advice His Word can provide. When you feel completely alone, you can look into His Word and find His presence.
It’s no small thing that The Creator of the universe has preserved these holy words through many centuries to speak directly to those who are looking for Him. He says that when you seek and search for Him with all your heart, you will find Him. And most likely, you’ll find Him in His own Word. As the old acronym says: BIBLE… Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth!
I encourage you to try His Word for yourself. Whether you’ve been taught it all your life by someone else and never really looked for it to speak to you personally, or you’ve never opened it up at all, start with just being willing. When you open it, ask Yahveh Almighty to speak from the written words directly to your heart. He wants you to get to know Him, so He will reach out to you. And when you see Him for yourself, you’ll be so glad to meet Him, you’ll want to love and serve Him forever.
Note: The cute little heart in the corner of today’s image is from one of the images I made for my post on February 24th of this year called “I Love the B-I-B-L-E.” That post has three great music videos about the Bible, and a larger size of that cute sticker. Which, by the way, I was thrilled to figure out how to make into a custom sticker. Using my Samsung tablet or phone, I could press and hold the image and be offered the chance to turn the highlighted portion of the image into a sticker. It took a little editing in the Photo Studio Pro app to get the transparent background, but I’m really happy with the result. Have you ever tried making your own stickers? If so, I’d love to know how you did it and see one if you’ve saved it online.
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Prompt Response: Life is a Classroom
Are you a lifelong learner?
Did the class move into the guy’s dorm room, or did the guy bring his bed and microwaves into the classroom? You decide. But either way, the “Welcome to Life and its Lessons” message on the wall answers the prompt question. Yes, I am a lifelong learner. And so are you. (And maybe that partly goes with being short based on the midget teachers standing on the classroom window sills. Lol 😂)
As in almost all classrooms, we have star students who excel at everything they try, we have hard working students who try lots of things even if they don’t fully succeed at every attempt, and we have those who choose to sit in the corner with a dunce cap on because they’d rather be doing anything else other than learning.
I really don’t understand the dunce cap students because I love learning. I joined Duolingo for Spanish but have since added Esperanto, Hebrew, Chess, and Music. I study the Bible daily and follow up with lessons from The Bible Project and Got Questions and Bible Hub because I want to know the meanings behind the messages. Each of these sites also has an app.
I’ve never been satisfied to just take the words of someone who says they know something no matter their position or authority. It’s why I don’t just automatically believe everything said by the media or on social media. And it’s why I try to provide links to expanded texts and websites to show the sources of facts or opinions I share.
Being a lifelong learner is not the same as gnosticism where the pursuit of knowledge is often used as a substitute for God because it’s not always easy to trust what you cannot see. But if I consigned all my beliefs to only what I can see, hear, taste, touch, or feel, my life could have no true love in it since love exceeds all our senses.
Note: While love and wisdom exceed the boundaries of our senses, God also uses our senses to teach us. Think about King David saying, “Taste and see that The Lord is good.” And a member of our local writer’s group put together a wonderful devotional book called Our God of Common Senses by Victoria Hicks. (Affiliate link for views used.)
Faith is also something that requires lifelong learning. Learning to accept love from God and from others; learning to trust the process until things finally work out; and learning to let go of some things while leaning in to deeper understandings as you mature in faith. That applies to faith in general AND faith in The Lord.
Scripture tells us that we need The Holy Spirit’s guidance to understand biblical wisdom.
1 Corinthians 2:7, 9-10, 12 BSB
[7] No, we speak of the mysterious and hidden wisdom of God, which He destined for our glory before time began.
[9] Rather, as it is written: “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no heart has imagined, what God has prepared for those who love Him.” [10] But God has revealed it to us by the Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.
[12] We have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us.
https://bible.com/bible/3034/1co.2.7-12.BSB
And wisdom brings us blessings and long life according to the writer of Ecclesiastes.
Ecclesiastes 7:12, 19 BSB
[12] For wisdom, like money, is a shelter, and the advantage of knowledge is that wisdom preserves the life of its owner.
[19] Wisdom makes the wise man stronger than ten rulers in a city.
https://bible.com/bible/3034/ecc.7.12-19.BSB
And it takes time and experience to gain wisdom, so being a lifelong learner is not only a way to absorb benefits from life but also to make it last. And if you share that wisdom with others, it becomes a legacy that will outlive you when your time on Earth is done.
Proverbs 16:31 BSB
[31] Gray hair is a crown of glory; it is attained along the path of righteousness.
https://bible.com/bible/3034/pro.16.31.BSB
Job 12:12 BSB
[12] Wisdom is found with the elderly, and understanding comes with long life.
https://bible.com/bible/3034/job.12.12.BSB
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Prompt Response: Almost There
by Crystal A Murray (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
Hit 5,000 steps today and drop your achievement here — we’re cheering you on!
How about 4595 steps? It’s Almost There! 😊
I’m keeping this short because I am going to try to catch up on some rest. It was a busy day of text and email rather than walking around much, so it makes me that much happier I got a home treadmill to grab a chunk of steps before midnight. I used to just do house walking, and all the turns and stops were not making my knees or hips super happy. But I really like the treadmill and walking in my cotton toe socks. (This is my affiliate short link just to track clicks. There are lots of colors, too.)
Note: toe socks help your proprioception (there’s a new word to look up and add to your vocabulary) by making your feet more aware of where on your feet you put pressure while you walk. They help with your balance. But they can be a little harder to put on if reaching your toes has had better days when you were younger. Still, I think they’re worth the effort.
And speaking of effort, we know that bodily exercise only profits a little, but a little is better than nothing, so keep trying. The important thing is to keep the balance and make sure to exercise the spirit at least as much as the body. I like the way it reads in the World English Bible:
1 Timothy 4:8 WEBUS
[8] For bodily exercise has some value, but godliness has value in all things, having the promise of the life which is now and of that which is to come.
https://bible.com/bible/206/1ti.4.8.WEBUS
And your best steps in the spirit will be those guided by The Lord.
Proverbs 16:9 BSB
[9] A man’s heart plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps.
https://bible.com/bible/3034/pro.16.9.BSB
Psalm 37:23 BSB
[23] The steps of a man are ordered by the Lord who takes delight in his journey.
https://bible.com/bible/3034/psa.37.23.BSB
P.S. in case you just don’t want to look it up, Cleveland Clinic says, “Proprioception is one of your senses. It’s your body’s ability to sense its own position and movements in space.”
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Prompt Response: Zucchini
What do you love now, that you hated when you were younger?
Well, y’all already know about my taste bud changes with stewed tomatoes, but I think this one wasn’t about me changing. It was about being reintroduced to something made the way it should be made.
So when I was in the single digits of age, zucchini made me gag like the little girl on the broccoli commercial. Yuck! And then, when I moved to live with my grandparents the summer after I turned 12, everything changed. My grandma made zucchini, and I’d already told her how I felt about it. But she begged me to try her recipe. And just wow! All kinds of yummy!! 😋
What changed? Zucchini in a can versus zucchini cooked fresh on the stovetop with butter. Now I knew; no more canned zucchini.
Later, though, I had fresh zucchini cooked by someone else. They added tomatoes. There was that yuck again. So maybe it wasn’t the can; maybe tomatoes added to zucchini changed its flavor to something that just did not work for me. But as you can see from the picture, that wasn’t the case either.
I’m with Mark Lowry on thinking vegetables taste better when you fully cook the vitamin taste out of them. Lol 🤣 So I’m not sure if the fresh one with tomato that seemed yucky was undercooked, didn’t have enough butter, or just wasn’t seasoned the way i like. But now, as an adult, I can cook it my way—slow-cooked to tender perfection with butter and garlic and a few low acid (orange or yellow) tomatoes.
I was going to do a blog break until I read the prompt, so this is all there is to the story, but it did make me think about something as I was writing…
We each hear the gospel message of salvation in different ways at various life points. Our age or status, or the source and quality of that message, can make all the difference in whether we accept or reject it. Even as a Christian, I’ve heard messages angrily shouted at someone in ways that made me want to run away. So, I could not imagine the rejection going on in the heart of the one being shouted at.
Like my zucchini taste tests, I encourage you to listen to the gospel from different sources and try it until you like it. I’m not talking about what the Bible calls “itching ears.” because that would mean exchanging the squash for another vegetable. I’m talking about reading it, listening to it, studying it, and mostly digesting it until you can proclaim King David’s words to “taste and see that The Lord is Good!”
Psalm 34:8 BSB
[8] Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!
https://bible.com/bible/3034/psa.34.8.BSB
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Prompt Response: The Boogeyman Upstairs
by Crystal A Murray (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
What’s something you used to believe as a kid that seems ridiculous now?
For my Sabbath break this week, I’m just going to share a quick story in response to the Day One prompt.
I remember being four or five years old and having a sitter. And she cooked my dinner. I can still see the one thing on the plate that I was completely uninterested in; stewed tomatoes. Why I didn’t like them back then I have no idea, because I love them now. Even from a can, they are yummy by themselves, over some cauliflower noodles, or mixed with hamburger meat for a beef and tomato skillet or big pot of cabbage stew.
But not liking stewed tomatoes isn’t my answer. It’s what the babysitter did to try and get me to eat them. She’d say the boogeyman was gonna get me, and then she’d wait for the tenants in the apartment upstairs to move around and say, “See, you can hear him. He’s getting ready to come down here and get you. You better eat those tomatoes!”
Now I know that it was just the sound of people walking around upstairs, but then… I ate the tomatoes!
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Prompt Response: You Make the Lemonade
What’s the best advice you’d give to someone younger than you?
Sometimes, I think people have the idea that getting lemonade from the lemons in life simply means looking for the good in the bad. That’s my specialty. I’m often very good at finding even a thread of hope or promise within a terrible situation.
But what if it’s more than just looking for the thread? What if we learn from a young age to actually be the one responsible for adding just the right amount of sweetness to turn a sour moment into something more palatable to help us survive it. And maybe more than survive it, thrive from it because just sugar or honey in a glass by itself isn’t refreshing at all.
So learn your tastes. Figure out which sweetener is the best to your many tastebuds. Maybe you prefer honey or agave, or you need a sugar-free additive like Stevia leaf. Maybe you’ve even learned that the juice of one orange to about 5 lemons makes a lovely mix of flavor and color in a tall glass of summer refreshment.
In life, even if you’ve grown up as a survivor from a dysfunctional home, you cannot see the future and exactly which lemons might come your way. So get a recipe ready for dealing with the bumps and potholes no matter what they are. The first part of the recipe will always be looking for the golden thread of hope or peace to hang onto until you can get to the sugar jar. And I believe the strongest golden thread is the voice of our Creator as He speaks to us from His Word.
Take Romans 8:28 for instance…
Romans 8:28 BSB
[28] And we know that God works all things together for the good of those who love Him, who are called according to His purpose.
https://bible.com/bible/3034/rom.8.28.BSB
Notice it doesn’t say all things (or all lemons) are good, nor does it say we should just give up and wait for them to turn good. It says they will work together for the good. And here’s an interesting factoid: the Greek word used for “work together” in the verse is synergeo—where we get our word “synergy.” That implies partnership, cooperation, and an active blending of ingredients.
And remember this: you are not alone. Whether you are young or carry a bit more experience, your Master Creator is already in the kitchen with you ready to help you with your lemonade mixture. He will provide the ingredients for the golden thread and the sweetness, just like He provides oranges and sugar cane for real food and beverage recipes.
King David learned this, and even though he dealt with many bitter things in life, he ultimately proclaimed:
Psalm 34:8 BSB
[8] Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!
https://bible.com/bible/3034/psa.34.8.BSB
And later in this same chapter...
Psalm 34:19 BSB
[19] Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him from them all.
https://bible.com/bible/3034/psa.34.19.BSB
Note: Compliments to Google Gemini as my collaborator and for giving me the info on the Greek in Romans 8:28. It fit perfectly with the direction for this post.
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🎵Prompt Response: Happiness vs Joy
What’s a common misconception people have about happiness?
There are many common misconceptions about happiness, but I think the biggest one is that it means the same thing as joy.
Happiness is an emotion. It is something we can choose to receive or to reject. It fully belongs to us to do with as we wish. And because human emotions are not always steady, it means that happiness will ebb and flow like an ocean tide. It’s mostly based on our current experiences, but for those who are good at making lemonade from life’s lemons, it can show up despite sour events in life.
I’m not saying that happiness is not a gift, though; it is a wonderful gift that often fills us up with what we need to sustain us in unhappy times. But it’s not joy. That is something that comes from only one source—God Himself. Because joy is a fruit of The Holy Spirit, it means it belongs to Yahveh, and it’s in His control. And just like The Lord is the same yesterday, today, and forever; joy is always the same and not dependent on circumstances.
See, we really need both of these in this life. We don’t deserve happiness (that’s another message all together), but we need it for balance. It will give us strength and hope to keep us looking for that next happy day and help us to not be so willing to give up because we know what we’d miss.
Sometimes, though, it’s really not easy to feel happiness. Even those with 24/7 lemonade stands sometimes struggle to be happy in the face of hard events or times. If they are followers of YahShua, though, this is where they can lean into joy. Because His Spirit is inside them to sustain them at all times, they can tap into that deep joy (along with the other fruit like love, peace, mercy, etc.) and make it through the hard times with strength to carry them to the next moment of happiness. They can trade temporary smiles of happiness for permanent hearts filled with God’s joy.
Nehemiah 8:10 BSB
[10] Then Nehemiah told them, “Go and eat what is rich, drink what is sweet, and send out portions to those who have nothing prepared, since today is holy to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”
https://bible.com/bible/3034/neh.8.10.BSB
Now, for a moment of happiness, look at these adorable pictures from Wombo using the knitting filter.
And when you get the joy, joy, joy down in your heart, you’ll find that the joy of The Lord is your strength.
And while I thought I was almost done with this post, I have to append this note: I was looking for the old Sunday School chorus about the joy of The Lord when I came across the song above. I liked it right away, but before sharing it here, I wanted to research the spiritual foundations of the band. It turns out, they wrote this song specifically for a time of grief in the band when they needed the joy of The Lord to comfort them in unhappy times. (Shout out to Gemini for this important historical note.) That makes me feel like finding this song after everything I wrote before I even looked for it is not just happenstance or coincidence.
And here’s the one I was originally going to share.
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🎵Prompt Response: Angel on my Car Hood?
What’s a moment that made you question reality?
More than once, there have been events in my life that seemed helped by an unseen hand. For example, the times when I used to catch the city bus on a street also known for solicitation activities (you rent where you can afford), and a car would pull up to question me… Before I could even give an answer, the driver would look up a little behind me and shudder just before driving away. What did he see, I wondered? Once, a whole group of people walking in the opposite direction split apart and walked a wide area around me like I was more than one person. They also seemed to look above and behind me as they passed. So, was there an angelic being playing bodyguard where I couldn’t see but others could?
Many years ago, I frequently attended a Cowboy Church that was about 40 minutes from home. We had concerts with some amazing Christian country artists followed by fellowship and pizza that often lasted into the wee hours of the morning. I miss those deep Bible and life conversations that drove me to see and seek God beyond simple church attendance. But I will always cherish those times. And one of them comes with an event demonstrated by the image Wombo Dream created for me.
It was probably about 4 AM when I left to head home. For most of the drive, sleepiness was not an issue. But as I got within a few miles of the freeway exit, drowsiness fell over me like a heavy blanket. Windows open, AC cranked, and determination to get all the way home worked for at least part of the time. But then, boom! Something large and like a big shadow landed on the hood of my van and actually made the metal of the hood pop loudly. It woke me up with a startled jump that infused the rest of my drive with major energy. Though I couldn’t see anything still on the hood or outside the van anywhere, I was sure I saw something like a silhouette jump off the van and fly away. Had I fallen asleep? If so, did I dream about something landing on the hood and then leaping off? Or, did God send an angel to wake me up by jumping on the hood and making the metal pop? I vote for the angel idea.
It’s not far-fetched to believe it could be an angel because the Bible is filled with moments where angels visited with people. And there’s even a reminder to take care of strangers because sometimes they are angels. When they show up as unseen helpers, or even as a shadow that jumps on your hood and then disappears, it does make you question what the reality was in those moments; but not question if they happened so much as how they happened.
Hebrews 13:2 BSB
[2] Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it.
https://bible.com/bible/3034/heb.13.2.BSB
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Prompt Response; Peppermint
What’s the first book you ever finished and still remember to this day?
This prompt got me thinking about all the books I’d started but never did finish, like Watership Down, The Martian Chronicles, and A Wrinkle in Time. Well, I did finish the last one as an adult, but I never could get most books finished before time to return them to the library.
Of course, I had all my little books for small hands, and then the books with matching records that played a little sound when it was time to turn the page. I’m sure some were by Disney, and some were probably by Dr. Seuss. I’m certain I had “Put Me in the Zoo” because I remember how the main character could put his colored spots on other things, but it doesn’t have a stickiness in my brain like the one that goes with the picture above.
The first small book I finished that stuck with me, and is still with me to this day, is probably Peppermint by Dorothy Grider. My mind captured the images so well that, when I needed Gemini to find the book for me, it got it right on the first try. Though there are none available at the sale page on Thriftbooks, there are 45 people signed up to be notified if it ever shows up there, so apparently, I’m not the only one who remembers it as a wonderful story.
See, there was a candy store, and the owner had a cat named “Candy” who stayed at the store with him. Candy had 4 kittens, so the owner gave them sweet candy names like Lollipop and posted them for sale. But the runt of the litter, a tiny white kitten he called Peppermint, was too shy and too small, so she stayed at Mr. Dobby’s candy store. Until one day, a little girl named Barbara was upset and crying because she didn’t have a kitten for the upcoming cat show at school.
When Mr. Dobby said Barbara could take Peppermint home, she didn’t care how dirty she was from all the dust in the storeroom. But Barbara’s mom cared and insisted the kitten must have a bath. Peppermint didn’t like it and jumped out of the soapy water and right into a bucket of water filled with bluing. (In case you’ve never heard of bluing, it’s a laundry additive that removes yellow discolorations to make whites brighter. You can read about it on Amazon at https://amzn.to/4eegCjR {my affiliate link for tracking} if you want to know more.) The clean little kitten was now a beautiful blue, and when Barbara took it to school with the pink ribbon her mother tied around it, the other kids decided that Peppermint was a prize-worthy kitty.
I think I remember it because of my own dreams of being—or sharing— something that could win a prize. I could identify with both Peppermint and Barbara on the rejection front, and I always hoped to have a special moment like she did when she pulled the kitten out of the basket. (Part of me still hopes for something like that when I finally release one of my songs. 😁) It’s just such a happy ending for everyone in this book.
And, guess what? I even found a few places on YouTube where people read the book aloud and show the pictures on the pages. Some were a little long, so I’m embedding the shortest one that is also easy to hear and understand. It’s only 5 minutes and 37 seconds to find out the names of the other kittens and see the artist’s drawings of the little blue kitten.
Deuteronomy 4:9 BSB
[9] Only be on your guard and diligently watch yourselves, so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen, and so that they do not slip from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and grandchildren.
https://bible.com/bible/3034/deu.4.9.BSB
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🎵 Prompt Response: Soul ATM
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
If you had an unlimited budget for 24 hours, what would you do?
Day One
When I first read this prompt, my mind immediately went to how many lasting things I could get if I had no limits. I thought of how I’d contact a banker and ask for help with investments that would keep the unlimited flow going long after the 24 hours. And then…
It occurred to me that an unlimited budget did not have to be about any kind of money or finance. What could be worth more than those things and give me unlimited prosperity for 24 hours? Souls! Having a flow of guaranteed souls dispensed to me like an ATM does money, and then being able to send those souls in a new direction—toward the cross of Christ—would be amazing.
I think my mind went there after hearing from a Facebook friend who I met on the site years ago but who has since blessed me greatly with her sincere love for The Lord. She told me about how she tries to use every opportunity God gives her to share her salvation testimony. She is driven to carry the Good News to as many souls as God allows to cross her path.
So, can you imagine having a day with an unlimited budget of souls being sent your way? They need The Lord you serve, the peace He provides, and the promise of eternity. You have the answers that will give them that hope and peace, and this unlimited budget means they are sent right to you and ready to listen.
Most of us will share our experiences and testimonies here and there as a door opens or an opportunity presents itself. A few, like my friend Miha, will create open doors and opportunities. And whether you were only given 2 talents or the whole 5, or even only 1 talent, the Lord wants to gain interest on the investment He made for your soul and paid with His very own blood. Anything that can make interest (usury) is certainly a valuable asset, and we really do have an unlimited budget of hungry and empty people who need God.
In The Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30) it begins like this…
Matthew 25:14-15 BSB
[14] For it is just like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted them with his possessions. [15] To one he gave five talents, to another two talents, and to another one talent — each according to his own ability. And he went on his journey.
https://bible.com/bible/3034/mat.25.14-15.BSB
Each servant spends his investment differently with one of them not spending at all but burying his talent. There are many interpretations of what these talents are, including the possibility of those abilities within each of us that can be called talents, but the end result is always the same. We need to multiply what The Lord has entrusted us with that He will be able to profit on His return. He tells the person who hid his talent…
Matthew 25:27 BSB
[27] Then you should have deposited my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received it back with interest.
https://bible.com/bible/3034/mat.25.27.BSB
So whether it’s financial gain, or actual performance talent, when The Lord returns, we know He is returning for souls. That means interest on that would be more souls.
Over forty years ago, I sat on a church pew in Riverside, California, where I was visiting for a revival. They presented a video set to Steve Green’s classic song, “People Need the Lord.” But it wasn’t a generic Hollywood production. The church had taken photos of their own community—ordinary people on familiar street corners, living out their daily lives. I wept as I watched unfamiliar faces with the same needs as the familiar faces in my own daily life. I understood then that the mission field isn’t always across an ocean; it’s often right outside our own front doors. We are surrounded by a Soul ATM, a world of empty people rushing by with a need for mercy and grace and maybe not even knowing where to look. It just takes one person willing to step out of their own busyness, set up a chair, and offer the only Good News that can truly change their direction and fill them with the hope they need.
Here’s a beautiful rendition of that song…
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Prompt Response: Faith is the Answer
How do you handle fear and self-doubt?
I’m not sure where I learned the two acronyms in the image above, but I know they weren’t together when I learned them. The idea of the first part is to see fear as nothing to fear. But, in truth, sometimes it really is something that can harm us or those we love, and being in fear is the normal response we need to activate our “fight or flight” response.
Whether it’s a real, worthy of fighting or evasive maneuvers, fear, or the weight of tossing our troubles around in our minds until they harm us whether they come to fruition or not, FAITH is still an answer. Faith may give you the wisdom you need for a proper fight or the direction to run for a good getaway. Or, faith may just tell you to stand your ground and be still because the battle belongs to The Lord. The hardest and easiest part is when faith tells you that nothing will change but that nothing changing also means God is still on His throne taking care of what we can’t control and of our eternity.
On that last part, I can tell you honestly that the idea of losing anyone I love and care for from this Earth is hard. Thinking of my own passage into eternity is hard. And I need statements like the one above to remind me that God’s got it all in His hands.
Still, it’s totally human to fear and doubt. In Psalm 56:3, King David didn’t say he would not fear but rather …
Psalm 56:3 BSB
[3] When I am afraid, I put my trust in You.
https://bible.com/bible/3034/psa.56.3.BSB
Though, once he acknowledged that he could be afraid, he strengthened himself in The Lord and went on in verse 4 to say …
Psalm 56:4 BSB
[4] In God, whose word I praise — in God I trust. I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?
https://bible.com/bible/3034/psa.56.4.BSB
When the roots of our fears and doubts are of our own making, they can harm us at least as much as real dangers. Recently, I spent an entire night with my lessons, blog, and sleep all negatively affected because I feared an unknown scenario where I’d received a subpoena. Not being a person who likes to defend myself even when I know I’m innocent, that postal note on a certified letter let my mind wander to many possible scenarios. The next day, I thought of better possibilities (like an old family parcel with water rights finally becoming worth something), but oh how the wandering mind can torture us until we know the truth. And at the end, not one thing I imagined matched the real reason for the letter.
So, did I put those weights of the world on a tray and hand them over to The Lord? Unfortunately, not. And He might have been extending His arms, ready to take over, the whole time. As many times as I’ve written about fear and shared miraculous testimonies, wouldn’t you think I’d know better by now? But alas, I am human and have a lot of experience that has set me up for fear and doubt—probably like everyone who reads this post.
I hope that sharing this helps someone to get through a fearful event or time a little more easily, even if it’s because you now know you’re not alone in being a person who loves and trusts God but still gives in to your fears at times. And I hope creating a visual of someone passing the weight of the world to the waiting hands of God will stay with me (and you) for the next time fear becomes a battle.
I wrote the poem below for my sister in 2015 as we both maneuvered life after losing our mom. You can find it to download in its largest size on my Flickr page at https://flic.kr/p/ybqdqj where I’ve listed a regular copyright but am happy to let people use it for personal and non-commercial purposes. Since I’ve placed it on items for sale at Zazzle, I must protect my copyright to make sure no one comes and says I took it from them, but I’m a big believer in freely I have received, so freely I will give.
(Both the image and words are by Crystal A Murray © 2015)
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Real Oil-Cell Kaleidoscopes
What’s a simple pleasure in life that brings you joy?
The simplest pleasure is taking my oil-cell kaleidoscope out into the sunshine and just becoming lost in the beauty of light shining through dichroic glass. The largest image is from my kaleidoscope by Shelley Knapp, and the smaller ones are from taking that same image to Wombo Dream AI and designing similar images without the natural flaws.
I have a lot of them from my original oil kaleidoscope on my Flickr site where you can view the album with the Knapp kaleidoscopes and see the beautiful details. And below, I’ll share my YouTube video of the scope in action.
I may come back and add a few more from different kaleidoscopes when I’ve edited them, so save this post.
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Prompt Response: More Input
How do you stay motivated when learning something new?
Being motivated to learn has never really been my issue. I’m very much like Johnny 5 (the later Short Circuit movies) in always wanting more input. I am far more interested in learning a variety of information than in perfecting any one avenue, so that’s where my motivation might fall off somewhat.
I started learning Spanish as a means of brain growth, but lack of having anyone to practice speaking to, and wrestling with technical changes they keep making at Duolingo, made it hard to want to keep trying. But, I keep going back to keep my streak (1425+ days now), so they know what works there. But they can’t seem to give me conversations with Lily (the AI that does “phone calls” with students) where the topics are simple enough and the speech is slow enough. And they want me to gain my quest points with those calls, so I switched to learning Esperanto. And, actually, that’s a fun language to study if for no other reason than the word for doing is fartas. Lol 😂 (”How are you doing’?” is “Kiel vi fartas?” in Esperanto.)
Of course, they also have music 🎶 and math ➗ and other languages I won’t likely need (like Klingon). But I did add Hebrew because I thought it might help with Bible study. The motivation is tough on that one for a few reasons, including not being biblical Hebrew (with some light slang even) and not spelling things out phonetically until I can retain them. For me, it is harder to stay motivated when the learning has too many hurdles. That made me download some other programs/apps like Memrise, Drops, and FluentU. I’ll probably switch mostly to that last one instead of renewing Duo because of the integration into YouTube. While anyone can switch their closed-captions to Spanish to help with language, FluentU allows me to click on words as they are displayed and add them to my library of words to study.
At the same time, I’m always trying to learn new tech stuff. And learning to work with AI through Gemini and Copilot helps me learn more things and then save them to notebooks to review later. With Gemini, I learned how to program a smart thermostat and got recipes for homemade mayo (using an immersion blender) and homemade gazpacho (using a regular blender). But I’ve yet to try the recipes. Still, I’m truly motivated to learn more than I actually have time in a day to do. I’m thankful for all I have been able to learn about kidney diets and dialysis for my hubby, though, so sometimes the drive for more input isn’t such a bad thing.
Truly, I could stay on this subject for days and tell you all what I learned when I was an actress for a few months, a model as a teenager, and a plug-board telephone operator (answering service) for years. But I’d likely wear most readers out with my small bits of knowledge on a vast amount of subjects. This may never have proved to be great for a career path, but in retirement, it’s good for being a writer, and it’s great for finding common ground with many people, so I can meaningfully share the gospel in ways they can understand.
Before I wrote all this, I would have said I needed to let go of some of the less important learning paths and get motivated to push to the end of a few major subjects. But now, I’m thinking this variety in my brain might be exactly what I need. Now if I could just pull the thread that would let me get writer’s meeting plans and announcements done in a more timely manner, I’d feel even better about all I learn to share with others. Until then, I will seek to apply more of the input God has graciously allowed me to retain, and I will work on being like The Apostle Paul in these verses…
1 Corinthians 9:19-23 BSB
[19] Though I am free of obligation to anyone, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. [20] To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), to win those under the law. [21] To those without the law I became like one without the law (though I am not outside the law of God but am under the law of Christ), to win those without the law. [22] To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. [23] I do all this for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.
https://bible.com/bible/3034/1co.9.19-23.BSB
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Prompt Response: That Printer of Udell’s by Harold Bell Wright
What’s a book that completely surprised you?
The 1902 Novel That Totally Surprised Me (…And Ronald Reagan)
It’s a book written over a century ago, in 1902, by Harold Bell Wright called “That Printer of Udell’s,” but don’t let its age dissuade you from giving it a chance.
I wasn’t actually looking for the book, or any book, when I came across this. I was in the “World’s Largest Toy Museum” in Branson, Missouri, and a part of it includes the “Harold Bell Wright Museum.” I’d never even heard of the man or any of his books, but I quickly found out that The Shepherd of The Hills references in that area were based on one of Bell’s books by the same name. I left with a few books, including That Printer of Udell’s (this links to the free online download at “Project Gutenberg”) recommended by the store proprietor.
Going into it, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Beyond occasionally trying to comprehend some of the thick, old-fashioned “hillbilly” dialects of the region used at the beginning of the book, I was hooked within a couple of chapters. And I was amazed by how deeply this story resonated with me.
What’s it about, you ask? The story is set in the busy, sometimes harsh Midwestern town of Boyd City. It follows the main character Dick Falkner, a young man who has survived a brutal childhood; complete with an alcoholic father, wild yet motherly “madams” for the boy’s babysitters and landlords, and extreme poverty. Dick travels to the city in search of a fresh start, only to face starvation and unemployment no matter how hard he’s willing to work. Worse, the cold indifference of the local church congregations is hard on his spirit as well as his body.
Just as he’s ready to give up, he is hired by George Udell, a kind-hearted printer who’s willing to give him a chance as an apprentice. Through this turning point, Dick encounters real Christianity—not the hypocritical kind he saw from afar, but a faith lived out through kindness, love, and public service. Dick’s later transformation ripples through the entire community.
What surprised me most about this book was its spiritual depth and how it could apply just as well in 2026 and beyond. It beautifully demonstrates the fantastic life changes that happen when a person shifts from mere self-reliance and survivorship to allowing God to set the moral compass and direction of their life. Dick goes from a man just trying to endure day-to-day to a man with an unshakeable purpose driven by The Lord. It’s a powerful reminder that we weren’t meant to carry the weight of the world only on our own shoulders.
As it turns out, I’m not the only one who was deeply impacted by this book. A young boy in Illinois read That Printer of Udell’s at just 11 years of age, and it altered the course of his entire life. That boy was Ronald Reagan.
In the museum, they have the letter where Reagan later stated that the book left an indelible impression on him, shaping his own faith and his view of human nature. He even said that Dick Falkner became a role model for him, inspiring him to become a person who fights for what is right. If a turn-of-the-century novel could help shape a future president, you know there is something powerful in the story.
If you are looking for a story that is inspiring and historically fascinating, and one that will challenge your own Christian walk in the best way possible, I highly encourage you to click the link above to download a free copy in your favorite format. Project Gutenberg offers many options, including Kindle. But you can also check Amazon or other bookstores for print copies. Either way, I highly recommend the read. Push past the dated dialect at the beginning, and I promise you will find a timeless message of grace and the power of a changed life. It will challenge how you see both “sinners” and “saints” in your life.
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🎵CTRL+Z Super Power (Day One Prompt Response)
What super power do you wish you had and why?
I might like to be “The Great Undoer” in life. Imagine if you could go back to any decisions you’ve found out (presumably the hard way) were not good decisions. And then you call on The Great Undoer, who has access to super-powered CTRL + Z buttons to undo anything that might otherwise create a lifetime of regret. Those last harsh words you spoke that you wish you could take back? Just undo them. That phone call you didn’t make because you were busy and then found you’d never get the chance again? Rewind to that moment, click undo, and make that phone call. Yep, with The Great Undoer by your side, you can put the toothpaste back in the tube.
I guess this is the answer to the statement that “hindsight is 20/20.” How often do we wish we had known something, or acted on something, before it was too late to change things? And that’s when regret reared its ugly head and threatened to leave us feeling guilty forever. How nice it would have been to just go back in time and undo the moment like Bill Murray learned to do in the movie “Groundhog Day.”
But, truthfully, what I’m asking for here is a way to perfect life according to my own human idea of perfection. But it’s not truly perfect. No bad decisions means no hard lessons, and no hard lessons leads to not caring what we do because we can just “undo” it. (And my heart breaks at this thought because of all the babies lost to abortion since people so often believe the lie that it will undo pregnancy.)
Sadly, this is what so many have tried to do with the grace and mercy of The Lord. They are so sure that everything will be washed away at the touch of the CTRL+Z prayer, they stop thinking before they act, and they stop asking questions like, “What does the Word of God say about this?” In a non religious program, this issue was actually handled well by an episode of a show I think I saw once before I got saved. It was called “Tales from the Darkside” and the episode was called “It All Comes Out in the Wash.” I wrote about it when I was doing the year of Torah studies in a post called, “When it Won’t Come Out in the Wash.”
As I sit here tonight waiting for a phone call from an ICU 2000 miles away, I battle with that thought of, “Why didn’t I call last Sunday?” I planned on it, and I know that at 84 years old, my stepfather’s last breath is far closer than his first breath. But distractions showed up, and I didn’t make the call like I planned. And now, I don’t know if he’s coming back from this one. I do know we had a great conversation the last time we spoke, but it’s been over a month since then. So, if I had my undo button, maybe I would make sure I made that call on Sunday. Thankfully, he’s got a great friend and caregiver who not only let me know as soon as the ambulance left his house, but also called me from the hospital to let me speak to him in case he can hear even in a comatose state. But I know there are many who’ve missed final chances and never got even a small message to the person. I feel for them because this isn’t my first time of wishing I had that Super CTRL Z option.
I’d like to say I’ve learned perfectly from the moments I could not undo, and that I’ve never made the same mistakes twice after learning a thing the hard way, but alas, my humanness has won out more than I like to admit. But the blood of YahShua does wash and cleanse us from eternal guilt even when God lets us stew a bit here on Earth, so if you’ve never let Him put your regrets under the cleansing fountain, please do so soon. If you have questions about salvation, please leave me a comment, and I’ll do my best to lead you toward your next steps.
Ephesians 1:7 BSB
[7] In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace
https://bible.com/bible/3034/eph.1.7.BSB
Isaiah 1:18 BSB
[18] “Come now, let us reason together,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they will be as white as snow; though they are as red as crimson, they will become like wool.
https://bible.com/bible/3034/isa.1.18.BSB
Romans 5:9 BSB
[9] Therefore, since we have now been justified by His blood, how much more shall we be saved from wrath through Him!
https://bible.com/bible/3034/rom.5.9.BSB
1 John 1:7 BSB
[7] But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.
https://bible.com/bible/3034/1jn.1.7.BSB
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I Love 🥰 Emojis
What are your favorite emojis?
Ask anyone who gets messages from me. I love emojis! 💝 There’s something about being able to say a lot with a tiny form. A picture speaks a thousand words, right? And when I downloaded Google’s Gboard keyboard and got access to their “emoji kitchen” to create my own, that was the whipped cream and cherry on top.
I’m not sure why “Day One” chose this for their 1921st prompt, because so many emojis only show up as little boxes here on WordPress, but I still love the idea, so I’m experimenting. I’ve downloaded a lot of the mixed ones I created to share in a collage, and they’ll show fine since they’re pictures. Like this set of train emojis from messages I sent to my sister while she was on the train last year.
I really love the train that’s slipping on a banana peel. That was from combining a train emoji with a banana emoji. You should be able to tell what was combined to get each image. I highly recommend the Gboard app for the personal dictionary and the Glide Typing abilities as well. I don’t know if it’s available anywhere but the Google Play Store, but if you can get it, I’m relatively certain you’ll have fun with it. Go to https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.inputmethod.latin
And here are some new ones I just made tonight. As you can tell, I like combining the cactus with different things. Oh, and sparkles. I love adding sparkles to other emojis.
Most of these should be obvious, but the wooden globe may not give away that it’s a combo of the earth and a wooden stump. The frying pan is the combo of a dinner plate and an egg. But I cannot do a train and a cactus, so here’s what you get when you choose to do the two types of cactus 🌵 and 🏜️ (I hope these show) inline with a text…
So, yes, I think you can clearly see that I really like using emojis as a communications tool. I hope this inspires someone to have some fun with these great compact emotions.
Now, since April 27th is also “National Tell A Story Day,” I have one more treat for you. It’s a very old story, some sites say a song, that I learned when I was a teenager. I never sang it until I taught it to my nephews and had them sing it like a military marching cadence for their uncle. As I searched, it seemed all the sites had slightly different words, so I’m using the ones I recall from my years of repeating this tongue tangler of backward, inside-out, and upside-down words..
I started with the introduction of...
Ladies and gentlemen, hobos and tramps,
Cross-eyed mosquitos and bowlegged ants.
I stand before you, not behind you,
To address you, not undress you.
Admission is free, pay at the door.
Pull up a chair and sit on the floor.
I come to this end, not to this out,
To tell you a story--I know nothing about.
~~~~~~~~and then the story~~~~~~~~
One bright day in the middle of the night
Two dead boys got up to fight.
Back to back they faced each other
Pulled out their swords and shot each other.
A deaf policeman heard the noise
And came to kill the two dead boys.
If you don't believe my story is true,
Ask the blind man... He saw it too!
One day, I’ll tell you the story of Petey the Snake. But it’s best to hear it, so I’ll need to get over myself and be willing to record it. But wait, there’s more. I just had to make my juggling emojis with the knit filter. Too cute!
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🎵On Account of my Walk (Prompt Post)
Describe a risk you took that you do not regret.
It didn’t start out as much of a risk. Right in the middle of a grocery store, a big drawing box that said, “Win a FREE 16 x 20 Portrait!” My trailer did not have a lot of wall space, but the word free was enticing, so in my name and number went.
I got the call a few days later. “You didn’t win the 16 x 20, but you won a free 8 x 10.” Wow, I thought, I actually won something. Having done telemarketing for a photo studio as a teenager, I should’ve known it was just a marketing technique, but I decided to set the appointment and have my portrait done. Still no real risk.
Proof day was the first risk. How much money could a truck stop cashier really afford to spend on pictures, no matter how pretty they came out? I decided on the Christmas cards and the free 8 x 10. The sales lady was good and she could see I wanted more but couldn’t afford them. So, she offered me a job. No, that was not how I expected that day to go, but it was a day that would change my life in multiple ways. But, yes, it was a huge risk.
I didn’t have a car that could travel all over the US, so the company said it would take care of all my flights and buses for the first 6 weeks while I was training, and then I’d pay half of my transportation costs myself. I just had to be willing to give notice at my current job and be willing to leave everything I knew, including all the family that lived in the same town, and head to my first training location in Utah within 10 days. I can still feel the butterflies that were there in my stomach as I pondered the decision to make such a huge life change. But I do not regret it at all.
Because of Parkway Studios, I got to travel a large part of the US. I saw landmarks and circuses and dinosaurs in Utah. I learned how cold Wisconsin can get during an Arctic cold front, and I learned how to pronounce Oconomowoc Wisconsin from a local who said to just remember, “On account of my walk.” (Phonetically, it’s pronounced oh-KAH-nuh-muh-wok.) I traveled to a town in Ohio that allowed me to meet my grandmother on my dad’s side for the first time, and a town in Kansas that let me see my father again after many years. And, eventually, I met the friend who put me on the phone with the man I’ve loved and been married to for over 35 years now.
There have been so many experiences since making the decision to accept that job offer that I could write a book. (I’m working on one for real.) I mean, without meeting my husband, I wouldn’t have some of the great friendships I’ve grown here, like those within my writer’s group, and I wouldn’t have gotten my gift of the DNA test that got me my brother. (He’s had a great response to his first single, by the way, so check the post called “Release Day” if you want to stream his amazing song, Savage Grace.) And so very much more than I can put into words because of the deep value of things like finding someone who loves to sing old hymns. So, no, I definitely do not regret that huge risk so many years ago.
Hebrews 11:8-10 BSB
[8] By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, without knowing where he was going. [9] By faith he dwelt in the promised land as a stranger in a foreign country. He lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. [10] For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.
https://bible.com/bible/3034/heb.11.8-10.BSB
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🎵Photo Walking
What’s the most fun way to exercise?
Daily Prompt by Day One
If I can get myself out the door with a camera around my neck, I tend to enjoy the steps I get a little more. A trip–back in 2022–to Azalea Path in Indiana is my favorite of all time. I’ve been there more than once, but that year, we just seemed to arrive during the best color display I’ve seen there. Here’s a collage of some of the captures from that day, all straight out of the camera (SOOC). It was cloudy, so I used a higher color setting, but I was very happy with a few of the shots out of 1200+ I captured. I especially love the ones with waterfalls.
© 2022-2026 (All Rights Reserved)
And even though these are not lilies, this reminder from the words of YahShua HaMashiach (Jesus Christ The Messiah) are a fitting comfort that goes well with such an array of colors.
Luke 12:27-28 BSB
[27] Consider how the lilies grow: They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his glory was adorned like one of these. [28] If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, how much more will He clothe you, O you of little faith!
https://bible.com/bible/3034/luk.12.27-28.BSB
And since I used that verse, well, I might as well share the beautiful song with the same words, right?
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A Patriotic Heart–Daily Prompt 1850
Are you patriotic? What does being patriotic mean to you?
The definition of patriot from Merriam-Webster says, “one who loves and supports their country” and includes synonyms of loyalist and nationalist. The “Did You Know” section at https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/patriot has some interesting history of the word. And, of course, if you’re gonna call yourself patriotic, which means to be a patriot, you should know the meaning of the word.
I wasn’t planning on responding to the prompt today, but it seemed to match the picture I’d already created, so I figured I would try. And in looking at some other responses, maybe it’s necessary. I grew up with a strong respect for our country, our flag, and our leadership–including local law enforcement. I’ve never thought it was okay for someone to flout the law of the land just because they didn’t like it. That doesn’t mean that I’ve been perfect, but it does mean I respect the law and know when I’ve done wrong and deserve consequences (with sequence, or what follows).
As a follower of YahShua HaMashiach (Jesus Christ) and His holy written Scripture, I cannot use “love of country” to excuse attitudes, words, or behaviors that don’t obey God’s word. But, I also cannot use my love of God as an excuse to ignore the law of the land. I stop at red lights, and I pay my taxes. And, if I violate the law, I pay the fine or go to traffic school.
To me, patriotism doesn’t mean I love EVERY thing my country does or every decision it makes. But it does mean I stay supportive of the country as my homeland and stay grateful for the decisions I do agree with. If I disagree with something, I can vote for change. If the subject is not on the ballot, I can enlist the help of others to put it on the ballot where my vote can be counted. Violating the laws of the land, like blocking public roads, is neither patriotic nor a good use of freedom. And if consequences follow that don’t feel good, well, that’s what happens. I mean, I absolutely hate the taking of innocent lives via abortion, but I would never bomb one of the clinics that performs them. Why? Because another thing I learned as a child was that two wrongs don’t make a right.
So, yes, I am patriotic, and I’m still grateful to be an American. Years ago, I shocked some people when I went to hear Bill Clinton speak even though he was not my chosen candidate. But I wasn’t going to hear the man, I was going to hear “The President of The United States.” I respect the office and the authority regardless of who occupies the position. Sadly, it wasn’t long after that when I attended some school events for nephews and nieces and saw teachers refuse to place their hands over their hearts in respect for the flag, or our nation’s National Anthem. It was only a matter of time before students stopped learning how to respect the authority of any position from the highest position in the land to the lowest.
That change in respect was shortly before the first major school shooting incident that seemed to set up a pattern of many others. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that disrespect of law and authority, and a lack of value for human life, created that subset of attitudes. I would caution parents and teachers about repeating negative media tropes about The President or our law enforcement to children who can sponge it up and turn it into a bigger monster than anyone wants to deal with. Maybe the little parody my mom used to sing to the tune of the Pepsodent toothpaste jingle isn’t sung anymore, but those words (“You’ll wonder where your father went if he talks against The President”) were a lesson in respect that I think we could all use again.
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Ideas and Titles and Brains, Oh My!
Come up with a crazy business idea.
by WordPress Prompts
I’ve never tried using one of the daily WordPress prompts before, so you readers get to join me on my first venture of this kind. You’ll see the prompt like a small subtitle above this paragraph, and it says to come up with a crazy business idea.
But here’s the thing, my mind does this on a regular basis. Ask my husband how many times I’ve asked him, “You know what kind of business someone needs to start? ” And then I’ve regailed him with all the aspects of whatever perfect idea I have at the moment.
One of my great ideas was for a talent show where the contestants first had to compete in brain games before they could perform. I figured it would limit those performers who were too ignorant to recognize that there wasn’t a talented bone in their bodies. Always beware when someone hits the stage with a promise that they are the best you’ve ever seen or heard before.
So this crazy business idea is to have a business where you collect a variety of business ideas, company name ideas, etc., and feed all those ideas to some kind of think tank to see if they really could make something profitable out of all of it. Sort of a “treasures from junk” kind of effort but with investors with multiple MBAs using a jumble of ideas instead of an artist using trash from the dump to create a masterpiece.
If you’ll look through a list of my blog posts, you’ll notice that coming up with titles is one of the most fun parts for me. I love twists and parodies of well-known ideas like my post about Time but using the spice and calling it, “There’s No Present Like the Thyme.” And many years ago, I had a hairdresser who was going to dental school to become a hygienist because she wanted to do both teeth and hair to prepare people for special events like proms and graduations. I thought it was a great business idea and told her she should call it “Style With A Smile.” She loved the name, but after she got married and moved to Kansas, I never found out if she created that business or used my title idea.
I read once about a woman whose actual job was to create titles and names for everything you can imagine. She not only named businesses, but she creatively named projects within the businesses, departments, and of course reports and books and chapters within the books. Back when I was a young person looking to create a career, that would’ve been the one I jumped into with both feet. Or with all the cells of my brain 🧠 in rapid fire mode. And on that note, if you are struggling to name a book or story that just doesn’t seem complete without a better title, drop me a comment and we can see if I can brainstorm something that works perfectly for you.
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