Day 344 Bible Reading

Proverbs 30: 5 (ESV)

“Every word of God proves true; he is a shield to those who take refuge in him.”

I like this line from Proverbs 30. I know from experience that whenever I think I have heard the word of God coming through in my prayers, whatever has said has always come true. Maybe not necessarily in the way I thought it would come true, but whatever was told me would come true nonetheless.

God also provides a shield that defends me and makes me feel protected and loved. When I feel depressed and low, I feel God’s love surrounding me and I am being held in God’s hands because I am so fragile and he has to hold on to so I don’t fall apart. It’s an amazing feeling of being loved by God. I’m not sure if others feel that way about God during the low points of their lives, but it’s the way I feel.

Day 343 Bible Reading 

Zechariah 9: 9 

“Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” 

I love this line from Zechariah 9 since it reminds me of Jesus entering Jerusalem on Palm Sunday on a donkey. Would someone who was familiar with Zechariah have caught the significance of Jesus arriving on a donkey like a king from the Old Testament? It makes me wonder if they saw the similarity when it first happened, or later when they were remembering the event.

Day 342 Bible Reading

Jude 1: 9 (ESV)

But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said, “The Lord rebuke you.”

This line from Jude 1 stood out for me today. I believe God is telling us that he is the ultimate judge of people. We cannot truthfully judge right from wrong and must rely on God to be the ultimate judge of what is people’s hearts. I know that I have often judged harshly the behavior of others in the past, but through prayer, I have come to see that I can only see their actions but not the truth of why a person did what they did. It is hard, but I am trying to have more compassion for people by telling myself that God will judge them. 

 Day 341 Bible Reading

Psalm 139: 16

“Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there were none of them.”

What struck about this line from Psalm 139 is how God has a plan for our lives even before we took form. He saw the plan he had for every day of our lives before they even happened. I think there is such a thing as free will because God lays out his plan before us, and yet he loves us so much that he still gives us a choice. We can choose at every moment whether to follow God’s plan for our life. I personally think God is the best game maker and strategist, who has mapped our every choice we could make and he also has a plan for every choice we might make. So no matter what choice we make, God has a plan for that choice. But I also think God had preferred choices for us, choices that will make up happy, and that if we make a wrong choice God has a plan to put us back on the right track.

I love the movie franchise “Final Destination”. It came up on my Max channel as a movie to watch before it disappears, so I watched it. I love how the writers of this movie came up with all the little ways that death eventually found the kids who cheated death, and the theory from the undertaker that death has a design.

It made me wonder if everything in life has a design, and we can either cheat the design or just go along with it. For example, I’m not feeling very well today. I’ve been on an eating junk food binge since Thanksgiving. I let myself eat whatever I wanted on Turkey day, and it’s been hard to get back on track with my very healthy way of eating.

So if I look at everything that led me to not feeling good today, the design of it all, it all started on Thanksgiving. Well, if I’m honest, t started with my September vacation. I went on vacation after Labor Day, and it was hard to keep to my normally healthy way of eating. I wasn’t at home, and I was at a conference. And when I’m on vacation, I like to indulge and take a break from my normal way of life.

So I gained 5 pounds that week. I was just beginning to lose it, when I went on my yearly camping trip in October. Camping for me is the worst place to stick to my healthy eating habits. I go camping with a group of friends, and two of our camping meals are potluck meals. And I have this thing with potlucks that I let myself eat whatever I want because it’s fun to taste the food that people cook and bring to that event. Plus, it’s a social occasion and it’s fun to eat all the food and then talk to people about all the dishes that were good to eat.

So that became another 5 pounds that I gained. Surprisingly, I managed to lose the camping weight gain very easily, but not the original 5 pounds from my September vacation. And then Thanksgiving rolled around. And then I’m like, okay, Christmas is coming up, and I’m not going to watch what I eat at all. I’ll deal with it in the new year because there are parties to go to from now until the end of the year.

Today was a party day. Went out with friends to eat and we did a cookie potluck, where everyone brings cookies to share. And I let myself taste all the cookies. BIG MISTAKE! And I’m paying for it now because I so do not feel good. Too much sugar at one time and a tasty but carbo-loaded meal.

I’m thinking about the design of it all, and a video pops up in my Youtube feed about an astronaut talking about his nutrition. It was like a sign. d a sign this morning, so I watched it. The astronaut said his nutritionist told him that the difference between two football teams who are tied at the end of the game, comes down to nutrition. Because when you’ve pushed yourself that hard for the whole game, and you now need a little more just to win the game, it’s your nutrition that is going to determine how well you play during those extra minutes.

So the design of my day, the design of my life since September has not been that great and now I feel horrible. If I had kept my good nutrition in place since September, I know I would be feeling very good right now. Instead, I feel like crap and semi-nauseous.

If there is a design to my life, the lesson is I have to design it better if I want to feel good and accomplish the things I want to do.

 Day 340 Bible Reading

Proverbs 29: 25

“The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is safe.”

This line from Proverbs 29 struck me as very profound. Is fear a snare? Sometimes it appears to be. Fear of whatever can you lead some very interesting and sometimes dark paths. One begins to imagine one scenario and then another until it becomes a continuous fear loop. Perhaps some of the scenarios to be fearful of are justified, but other scenarios seem to stem from one’s imagination or often borrowed from other past traumas that have nothing to do with the present fear. Fear truly sems like a snare swing you from fear to fear without rhyme or reason.

But if you trust God, then he’s like that brilliant award winning movie/theater director on the live stage that is your life who yells “CUT”. God then comes over to talks to you and says “What was that about? What made you go there? Does that action have anything to do with the person you are now?” So instead of swinging dangerously from fear scenario to fear scenario, where you could fall into depression, anxiety, addictive impulses, etc; you stop and think “God is right. Let me rethink my fear scenario exploration.” And you remember that God loves you because you are amazing person, you are a child of God, and with him, you can conquer your fear and the world.

Day 339 Bible Reading

1 John 5: 4

“For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.”

I love this line from 1 John 5. We are all born of God, but it is faith that helps up to overcome the world. When I look at how I have overcome any challenge in my life, I always needed faith to do it. Sometimes it was a little faith, but other times I needed as much faith as I could muster to overcome the difficult challenges in my life. And Jesus was my role model for faith. Jesus had so much faith in himself and his disciples. He never gave up. He kept on going even though there wasn’t any physical evidence to back him up. His faith never wavered.

 Day 338 Bible Reading

I John 4: 7

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.”

I have heard this line from 1 John 4 many times, but today it struck me because as a believer in Christ God is our role model for how to love. We read of many examples in the Bible of how God loves his people, even though they often disobeyed him and did not follow his laws. God’s nature in the Bible is shown to be forgiving and generous. He sees our faults, but in the end he still loves us anyway. God seems to let his people do what they want, so they have free will to follow their desires. He then watches his people to see what we will do with our free will and free choices. Like a good parent or a good marriage partner, God’s love never wavers even when we make mistakes and make bad choices.

 Day 337 Bible Reading

1 John 4: 2-3

“By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.”

I like this passage from 1 John 4 because I am sometimes reminded that the friends whom I can rely on the most have the same love of Christ that I have. There always seems to be a sympatico between myself and another person who believes in Christ. We speak the same the same language, have the same values, and look at life in similar ways. I do have friends who do not follow Christ, but our friendship does not seem to go as deep as with my friends who do believe in Jesus Christ. Belief in Jesus Christ adds a very deep and profound layer to any friendship and maybe it has something to do with the Bible passage from Matthew 18:20; “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.” When there is a friendship between two believers of Christ, he is always there between them.

 Day 336 Bible Reading

1 John 3: 17-18 (ESV)

“But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.”

I like this passage from 1 John 3 because it says to the believer that actions speak louder than words, and if we have Christ in our heart then our behavior must reflect the presence of God within us. But we must constantly pray to God about actions to make sure they are correct, because we are asked to love in truth. To love in truth means that our actions must also reflect the truth of the situation we are in at every given moment. Because in some cases, to give to someone om need might not be the right thing to do because that person needs to hear the truth. An example of this might be when we don’t want to lend someone money because that money is being used for an addiction. The way to love the person who is an addict is to tell them the truth that the person needs help to get over the addiction and not money to fuel the addiction. So prayer to God for every action must always be a part of our lives, because only God will know that right kind of “love’ an individual person needs.

 Day 335 Bible Reading

1 John 3: 6 and 9 (ESV)

“No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him.”

“No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God.”

What struck me about these two lines from 1 John 3 is the word “abide”. From the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the word “abide” has these meanings:

As an Intransitive verb (no direct object needed

 -      to remain stable or fixed in a state

 -   to continue in a place - SOJOURN

Using these definitions, the lines would read “No one who [is fixed] on God can keep on sinning” and “For God’s seed is [stable] in a believer, and they cannot keep on sinning because they have been born of God.”

I like the idea that as a believer “God’s seed” is stable and fixed on me, so even when I sin or dwell in darkness, God will help me to come to the light. But as a believer, I have to do my part and be “fixed” on God by reading his words and the Bible, by meditating and praying to him, and keeping him always at the forefront of my mind in all my decisions. The seed of God is within me to help me, but like any plant that seed needs to be watered to grow and thrive.

Tentative ending for my next novel

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Day 334 Bible Reading

1 John 1: 5-6

“This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.”

1 John 2: 9-11

“Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.”

These two passages from 1 John 1 and 2 caught my eye today. “God is light” and with him, we live in the light. Living in the “light” means for me that I do not get caught up in the “dark” emotions and thoughts of depression, envy, anger, paranoia, etc. But sometimes I do walk in darkness, and I feel that it cannot be helped because this is life and “stuff” happens.

But then I feel the whisper of the Holy Spirit in my ear saying “Look up, there is a light to guide your way. Jesus is there to light your way out of the darkness.” The blinders are then dropped from my eyes, and the dark tunnel that I dove into head first doesn’t seem so dark. I slowly climb my way out of the darkness, I see solutions I wouldn’t have seen in the darkness, a different way of looking at things, and gratitude appears like steps that I can climb out of the darkness and into the light. Having faith is like having an emergency light that you can turn on to find your way out of the darkness, if you remember that you have that light. And even if you forget, Holy Spirit is always there to remind you, that Jesus Christ is the light you need to find your way out of the darkness. 

 Day 333 Bible Reading

Psalm 135: 15-18 (ESV)

“The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of human hands.

They have mouths, but do not speak; they have eyes, but do not see; they have ears, but do not hear, nor is there any breath in their mouths.

Those who make them become like them, so do all who trust in them.”

I love this passage from Psalm 135 as it gives us such a poetic description of money, which was silver and gold at the time this Psalm was written. We sometime worship money as idols, and treat them like they are like people, but they aren’t. But what is very interesting is how the Psalmist says that those who make “money” and those who trust in “money” become like them. So nations and people cannot speak, do not see, do not hear, nor are they alive. Does this sound like people and nations you know? I know when I’ve become obsessed with money, I did so the exclusion of all else. I thought I was living, but I think deep down inside I knew I was literally dead. Money never made me happy for long, and I found that out the hard way. I have only found lasting happiness in my faith and Jesus Christ.

 Day 332 Bible Reading

Proverbs 29: 1-9

"He who is often reproved, yet stiffens his neck, will suddenly be broken beyond healing.

When the righteous increase, the people rejoice, but when the wicked rule, the people groan.

He who loves wisdom makes his father glad but a companion of prostitutes squanders his wealth.

By justice a king builds up the land, but he who exacts gifts[a] tears it down.

A man who flatters his neighbor spreads a net for his feet.

An evil man is ensnared in his transgression, but a righteous man sings and rejoices.

A righteous man knows the rights of the poor; a wicked man does not understand such knowledge.

Scoffers set a city aflame, but the wise turn away wrath.

If a wise man has an argument with a fool, the fool only rages and laughs, and there is no quiet."

For me The Proverbs have always been interesting. They seem to be rules for how to be happy in the world, how to live a "Godly" life. Do this and this happens, do the wrong thing and this happens. 

For me, the value of Proverbs is that I often see myself as the person doing the things you're not supposed to be doing. And I'm like, duh, if I had just remembered the proverbs telling me not to the wrong thing, then X would not have happened. And yes, I often do the good things that Proverbs tell you to do but I don't remember them as well as I bad things I've done. I am thinking when I do one of the good things that Proverbs tell you what do, I need to write it down so I remember them. And when I feel I'm always doing bad things, I can look back on my notes and remember that most of the time I do the right things, and it's only once in awhile I do wrong things. 

Day 331 - my bible readings for today.

Daniel 2: 24-49 (ESV)
27 - 30: “No wise men, enchanters, magicians, or astrologers can show to the king the mystery that the king has asked, but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and he has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days ...But as for me, this mystery has been revealed to me, not because of any wisdom that I have more than all the living, but in order that the interpretation may be made known to the king, and that you may know the thoughts of your mind."

What struck me about this passage is how the prophet Daniel acknowledges that everything comes from God:

• God reveals the mysteries or dreams to the dreamer
• God reveals the interpretation of the mysteries of the dream to one who interprets them.

I don't remember my dreams very much, and when I do remember a dream it is a "big thing" for me. This Bible passage reminds me that everything comes from God, and perhaps when I remember a dream it is because God is trying to reveal something to me that maybe I couldn't have gotten any other way. Was it because I was not listening or paying attention? Or is having the dream just the start of perhaps God hinting to me that he has the message, and the dream is my first hint.

I try to interpret my own dreams, and I love the thought that God is involved in this process as well. That God is guiding me on how to interpret my dreams. For me there is a comfort in knowing that God is in charge of all aspects of life, but it is a fact that I often forget or ignore because I want to be in charge of my own life and decisions. But I have learnt the hard way over the years, that my way is often the hard way, the round about way, and that God's way is always better.

2 Peter 1 (ESV)
21: "For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit."

What I like about this line, is that it is another reminder from the New Testament, that God is in charge of all things. That the Holy Spirit revealed to prophets the visions they saw and their interpretations. All things come from God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, to teach us something, good or bad. Sometimes, or maybe all the time, this is hard for us to remember. If there is such a thing as a "Matrix", perhaps we are in God's matrix because he created it, and God is always trying to reveal himself to us in all things, all circumstances of life, good, bad, and the indifferent.

God is in everything, the micro ,the macro, and the details.

2023 Updates

 Wow, it's been awhile since I've blogged. So many things have happened. Where to begin.

I finished a novel, yeah me! The novel is tentatively titled "Escape from Atlantis." Here's the concept for the story:

A slave girl in Atlantis must find a way to leave the capitol with her daughter before it sinks into the ocean.

When I was taking screenwriting classes for two years, I learned how to do a certain type of editing, so I am using for the novel. There are 12 steps you go through for editing, and I'm on step 7. Writing was easy compared to the editing because you have to look at every aspect and element of your novel one by one, and I think it makes for a better novel. You work on the structural things first and then the fun stuff like the descriptions. This is my first time using this way of editing, but I really like it. 

But working on the editing of this novel every day is hard, so as a way of distraction, I am plotting out my second novel. It's been jelling in my brain for a year, and yesterday I finally figured out who the antagonist was going to be in the story. 

My second novel idea is tentatively titled "Love in the aftermath." Not too happy about the title right now, but I know it will change. Here is the concept:

The last Lemurian princess is forced to go on the run with a wizard monk  to escape the Atlantean prince who wants to wipe out all traces of Lemuria from history.

Some folks are convinced that Japan was part of MU or Lemuria, so I am setting the story in northern Japan on the island of Hokkaido. This elfen Lemurian kingdom is one of the oldest and most rural of the Elf Kingdoms, but they hold many of the relics and treasures of MU and its history. After the war between Mu and Atlantis, the Atlanteans wanted to wipe out all traces of Mu from history, which is the background for the story.

What else....

I've also joined a reading the bible in a year group, which has been most rewarding. So I've been thinking I would blog about what I learn in my bible reading. I'm nearing the end for this year, but I'm thinking of posting every day to see if I like doing it. I also see it as a way to force myself to blog every day. But we'll see how it goes. I want to get back the excitement I felt in the past about my blog. 

So stay tuned. Cheers!

Past Life Memory with Elf Man in Lemuria

 Free writing about my past life memory with Elf Man which I am structuring into a novel. For now, my novel is tentatively titled "After the battle between Atlantis and Lemuria". Not the cleverest of titles, but it reminds me of the past life memory that I am drawing on to write this story.

I was thinking of writing the story from the female character's point of view, but this is what I am getting in a free write on this topic.

"I can see four parts and this story told in different points of view. But I like her writing it first, and then maybe to get his point of view in, she will find his journals and include the parts of his diary that he left. She will cry a little because he only wrote about what she didn’t know about as if he knew that she would be left alive and recording their lives. She sees a note to this affect and reflects that she knew how much he loved her, but she is always surprised by the depths of his love and what he sacrificed for her. She loved him but she knows deep down she did not love him as deeply as he probably loved her. He writes that she was the joy that he was promised as a boy when he took up the magical arts, a joy that came late in his life and one that he knew would come with a price. A price that he knew he would gladly have paid over and over again. Their years together had been his joy, his only joy, in his dark life."

I was sobbing when I wrote this - past life memories should never hurt this much....

Moving to AZ

 I updated my description. I moved from SF to Phoenix Arizona.

My intuition told me to move in 2012, but it took me awhile to say goodbye to San Francisco. I finally moved in 2019, and my intuition told me I would know why in a few months.

Then COVID happened, and it seems to have destroyed the city I loved so much. Nothing seems to be same there. The crime is up further, and all the fun free stuff to do does not exist anymore. 

I'm glad I was there when it was a fun place to live. But I am so happier where I am now. Life is slower here, easier, and there are still interesting things to do.

There is great art, great fun experiences, great places to visit, so I'm happy I moved. 

2022 Update

 I can't believe my blog is still around. I sort of half expected Google to get rid of it, but it's still here.

I am still writing. I've written 3 screenplays, only to find out screenplays are not my thing. I loved taking the classes. I love how screenplays are structured and I found a teacher who I resonated with and took several classes from that organization.

But screenplays are hard, too hard for me. I'm not a visual person. I thought I was, but not enough to tell a story as a movie. Learning to write a screenplay was a fun detour, but now I am back to novels and novelas. 

I am working on novela from my past life memory with Elf Man. I wanted to explore that story more. I think it's a novela and not a novel. I am plotting it out like a screenplay, but it will be a novel. 

I will be using the 4 act structure. I really like that past memory, and it will be the opening. A dying woman who is writing down her life story as she is dying. 

So the 4 act / part titles are: 

1. Love is sudden and convenient.

2. The Hunt is on.

3. To be free you need to leave your life behind.

4. Love can overcome everything except for death.

It makes me cry to plot this story,  to think of this past life memory, but maybe this is why I have a hankering to write it down. No one should experience this much sadness from a past life memory. It's like I have a window into that life and it's intersecting with my present life, and my tears are the bridge that keeps this past life portal open.

I will post more at the story progresses.