Jesus and his friendships

During this time of the six weeks of Easter I find all sorts of writing and essays and quotations from the bible and other historical books. Most of them are accurate and without agenda. Excellent for gaining knowledge and meditation. Much needed after such a cold month. But, then again, there are those with an agenda other than spiritual growth.

If given the time and with effort I suppose anyone can find a biblical quotation to back their own, often time inaccurate opinion. All one has to do is take the subject matter out of context or change the punctuation. However, doing that does not alter the original meaning, it merely changes it into a false statement. In effect, concealing the teaching lesson of faith.

The statement that Jesus sat and dined with thieves, tax collectors and prostitutes is commonly used for a variety of reasons to prove one point or another. Maybe we are all guilty of that at one time or another. The thing that bothers me is that when someone used that statement to somehow legitimize a behavior which is illegal, immoral or goes against nature the statement is made to be inaccurate. Jesus, in no way condoned those particular behaviors or life styles by sitting or dining with those people. What the teaching was and is becomes very clear when we look at Jesus' teaching in those cases. He said: "Now go and sin no more." He did not say: " Gee guys, I don't care about you enough to tell you when you are doing wrong." You see Jesus did and does care enough to be with people that practise those things, He loves them, but that is not to say he loves any sin.

If quoting a sacred text I feel it is best to allow the true meaning to be seen. Especially if we are attempting to justify a particular behavior. "Now go and sin no more."

Writing, which words to use?

The writing of "Joe's Story: The Book of a Lifetime" and becoming a published author took a long time. From beginning to end it was a fantastic learning experience for me. The story itself was already in my head of course, but the way of putting it on paper was really muddled. The horrors of the Carbon Monoxide poisoning and resulting near death and amnesia experience were kind of tough to deal with again. Recording it in book form became a wonderful tonic though and brought me more completely into the world so many others may take for granted.

I am quite intelligent but my many areas of expertise didn't include the rules of composition, writing and journalism. Much to my eventual dismay. As a matter of fact, my ignorance and resistance to commonly accepted rules of writing may very well have been my undoing as far as getting on the best seller list of published books. Following rules is not necessarily a guarantee to writing success but it has been my experience that it definitely does help. As an example, every professional reviewer, except one, that has received Joe's Story for an opinion has refused to go past the first few pages. If they were professional enough to give me a response, (most are actually very rude and far to aloof to offer any reply whatsoever) they simply said they were not interested in that type of story. What a loss, they had a wonderful, true, funny and heart warming, memorable story in their hands and they passed it up. Their loss but I learned not to take it personally, it was my choice not to follow the rules.

Things that still evade my understanding will always haunt me I guess. its and it's, either and neither, friends or freinds, affect or effect, just where to put a : or a ; , climbed or clumb, you know, stuff like that. The questions of this weekend are naturally save or saved, thief or angel, heaven or hell. I wonder how I could write about them? It's already been done though anyway, I'll just leave it at that....Happy Easter1

Easter Sunday

Happy Easter!


It's not all about the bunny rabbit!


A reminder that every problem has an ending!


An ending of a problem is often a new beginning!


If you are going through any problems, hang in there!


You just might wind up with something to celebrate!


I wish you a Happy Easter!..................................Joe

Sharing hope

If you are a blogger or have an email list, a face book or twitter page, I'd certainly appreciate it of you would pass this site on to anyone you think might find it of interest. This is a sign of our shared heritage of hope. There are days when we could really use a sign of hope isn't there? All we have to do is open our eyes to it.




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Someone was willing to do anything to bring you hope.

This year my Lenten resolution is to spread the sign of hope as far and wide as possible. Good news for everyone. I can't do it without you. Thank you for your help. Wouldn't it be great if between us we brought hope to 1,000,000 hopeless people? But then again, why stop there?.......................Joe