ChosenFast.com

The next time you feel like GOD can’t use you, just remember…

Noah was a drunk.
Abraham was too old.
Isaac was a daydreamer.
Jacob was a liar.
Leah was ugly.
Joseph was abused.
Moses had a stuttering problem and was a murderer.
Gideon was afraid.
Samson had long hair and was a womanizer.
Rahab was a prostitute.
Jeremiah and Timothy were too young.
David had an affair and was a murderer.
Elijah was suicidal.
Isaiah preached naked.
Jonah ran from God.
Naomi was a widow.
Job went bankrupt.
Peter denied Christ.
The Disciples fell asleep while praying.
Martha worried about everything.
Mary Magdalene was an adulteress.
The Samaritan woman was divorced, more than once.
Zaccheus was too small.
Paul was too religious.
Timothy had an ulcer.
And Lazarus was dead!

Read more on Not Good Enough? Read This….

Check out this link for a detailed schedule with shopping list and recipes to feed a family of 4-6 for a week for $45. These low-fat, low-cholestrol, high-protein, high-fiber meals are healthy and nutrition info is included! There’s even instructions for making them low-sodium. Meals include french toast, black bean soup and mac & cheese. Yum!!

Read more on Feed A Family For $45…

“Arthur Sena spent years living in a hole that he had dug near the railroad tracks. He would probably still be there, defying offers of help from social workers and using cardboard to ward off the chill, if Denver had not adopted a radical strategy of putting homeless people into apartments of their own, no strings attached.”

Read more on From A Hole To A Home: How “Housing First” Is Working Across America…

The Guilford County-Greensboro-High Point Task Force to End Homelessness met again on Thursday, June 22. This was just the third meeting of the Task Force, which was announced in February. Further meetings had been delayed as leaders sought to add additional members who could assist the Task Force in meeting its goal of developing and implementing a Ten Year Plan to end homelessness in our community. But it looks as though we’re really on our way this time, and we’ll meet monthly in the future.

Read more on Task Force to End Homelessness Meets Again…

The draft of Winston Salem’s Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness is available on the web, as well as their public forum presentation and research. Go here. (Scroll to bottom of page for TYP links.)

Read more on Ten Year Plan: Winston…

Last night was a gorgeous evening for a Meetup, and I enjoyed my time with my fellow bloggers (and Lucy!) at Panera. Find out more about Meetups. See you in July!

Read more on Meetup…

A while back, I asked fellow blogger “The Bobbysitter” about the origin of the phrase “protect and serve,” which is used by police departments around the country. He promised to get me an answer, but shortly after that, he took a break from blogging. But despite the break, he still found the answer, and sent it to me via email this week:

Read more on “To Protect and To Serve”…

Listening to Joyce Meyer:

“We get all of our little ways that we’re going to get rid of our problems… ‘Well, I know what I’ll do’… and we wear ourselves out trying this and trying this and trying this… and we finally go to God and we say, ‘Well, I’ve just done everything I know how to do and I just don’t know what to do now,’ and then we go to our friends and we say, ‘I just have tried everything I guess, I just, all I can do is pray’… Isn’t that pathetic?… [laughter] … Our first line of defense, first and foremost, should always be prayer…”

Amen.

Read more on “All I Can Do Is Pray”… What?…

Dr. Mary Seymour tells the stories of her daddy and Uncle Bruce:

“On Wednesday morning, my Daddy watched the Devil’s ‘long black train’ pass right on by – and punched his ticket for the Paradise Express.There is victory in the Lord, I say. Daddy finally found his gold… Uncle Bruce died late on the afternoon of Father’s Day. If anyone sees unexplained lights dancing up and down the railroad crossings around South Elm in Greensboro, do not be alarmed. It’s just the souls of two local boys revisiting old stomping grounds before they go home.”

Aching. Haunting. The best writing I’ve ever read on a blog. Don’t miss a word.

Read more on Unexplained Lights: Two Local Boys Go Home…

The headline in this morning’s News & Record read, “Stress disorder cases soaring among troops who served overseas.” The VA expects to see 20,000 new cases of post-combat stress this year from troops who’ve served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that’s six times more than they’d expected. There’s a concern from some members of Congress that the VA’s budget is not adequate to provide the care these vets will need.

Read more on Stress Disorders Among Overseas Vets A Cause For Concern…

Yesterday, Katherine and I went back to visit the old Red Shield Lodge property at MLK and Lee, to see if we could find anyone else staying there. We found and talked with folks along MLK, and even met up with one guy walking across the property, but he just seemed to be on his way somewhere else.

Read more on Homeless Camps at MLK & Lee (w/pics)…

Katherine’s name is on my blog a lot lately. So I thought you might be wondering who she is. We both used to serve in the CARE Ministry at Grace, working with the homeless and poor. I started there as an intern and became a case manager. And Katherine was one of my interns. Now she’s a missionary with the Navigators in Massachusetts, but she’s home for the summer.

Read more on Who Is Katherine?…