Training Camp

Good morning!
     This computer of mine was not cooperative yesterday, and I could not get a blog post done. It was tied up doing some kind of thing or another. When I got up this morning, and it was still tied up with the same process, I just ran the antivirus check and waited for whatever. When the manual scan that I had started stopped working, I was about ready to trash the whole thing and look into getting a Mac or something. But, that would have not been feasible for me at this time, however perhaps soon. At any rate, it is working fine right now, and that is all that matters, you know.
     I thought about what to write about this morning and decided to go with a thought that has been hanging around in my mind for the last few days. It would come up, and I would push it back down and so on and so forth until it came up this morning to stay. I figured that this would be a difficult one to bring to completion. But, I will give it a try, after all, I can develop it as much or as little as I want to, right?
     If you have ever done any amount of physical training, you know that the longer you train, the better you are at a thing and the stronger you become. That is not just true for physical training but for any repetitive activity that you practice. That is why it is so crucial to practice doing, saying and thinking good things. You will ace whatever it is that you practice. For example, when I first started writing poetry, I was not as good at it as I am now. And a person that has been writing poetry all of their life is better at it than I am; that is just the way things have been put into place to work.
     When I was a little girl and wrote stories for my friends because I was bored, I was being trained (my blog writing that I do now and the books). When I had to wear shoes with cardboard in them and walk to school in the rain, I was being trained (for the times ahead when, as a minister's wife, things got rough). Think about David in the Bible, when he slew the lion and the bear that would have eaten his father's sheep, he was being trained for his upcoming battle with Goliath. When Moses spent those years tending sheep and saw the burning bush, his training was just about ended and his mission time was approaching. There is the story of Joseph and the story of Timothy and others in the Bible that the Lord had in training.
     So, back to hard times or storms in our lives that we have been talking about on and off for the last several months, you never know what you are being prepared for. Do as I have suggested to you before and as I suggested in Lesson 3 of my latest book, Chopping My Row, be patient and ride the storm out because you are in the storm for a reason. And remember that our God is so awesome in what He does, that He can have you learn a lesson, teach a lesson by your actions and reteach it after your storm is over thereby delivering a blessing to someone else. And never forget that He can bless you pre-storm, mid-storm and after-storm.
     To sum it all up, learn all you can in whatever kind of days you are going through because you never know when the lessons you learn will be needed by you. Think on this thing, precious, "You might be in God's training camp..." I know that that is a sobering thought, isn't it? But, it may be true, nonetheless. And remember, He sees; He knows, and He cares.

Doing What I Can, While I Can Because I Care,
Alma L. Stepping On Jones

Blog P. S. - You just might be the next David or Joseph. Umph, umph, umph!