Gifted 2017 Quotes

Global warming is a warning......... Mother earth is faltering due to global warming Today man –made chemicals causing ozone depletion Thousands of species becoming extinct due clearing of rain forest Poisonous gases and spillage emitted daily from factories and Mills Receding of Coral reefs due to global warming threat to marine life The mess created by our own hands, threatening the very existence of human race Man has woken up is it too late, and still no answers. Man’s threat to nature has dire consequences by Mother nature With the earths volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and earth slips Mother nature is angered With the interference from Man with Mother nature, can the world survive? Global warming and chemicals has taken its toll on Mother Nature, and scarcity of Water. Can the world be saved against this wanton destruction by Man? Humanity should band together and curb violence against mother nature Allow mother nature to recuperate and heal by growing more trees Respect God’s gift of nature without causing further damages Educate people to save the world from utter destruction Advise people to use alternate source of energy to bring change to the environment Energy efficiency could also be obtained by educating people to create awareness Fossil fuel from gasses should be done away with due to carbon emissions Let Mother nature take care of waste products by re-using it to grow. Let all the people of the world band together to heal mother nature for the future generation Ravi Sathasivam / Sri Lanka All rights are reserved @ 2017 - Ravi Sathasivam

Thank You, Father, for the priceless gift of freedom from sin and death that You give us through Your son, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Self care is any action you purposefully take to improve your physical, emotional or spiritual well being. Too often, we do not make time for sufficient self care because we’re too busy taking care of others. Life’s demands at home, in our community and at work can take our lives out of balance. Self care can be getting more rest, eating healthier food, spending more time in thoughtful reflection, being kinder to yourself, smiling more, playing, or engaging in any activity that renews you. By making time for self care, you prepare yourself to be your best so you can share your gifts with the world. You cannot serve from an empty vessel. © 2017 Eleanor Brownn eleanorbrownn.com

I am tired today. Very, very tired. Yet not so tired I can’t manage to see the blessings all around me, gifts that I will never tire of.

Feinstein has been a China-booster from the early 1990s, often backing pro-Beijing legislation in the Senate. Her husband has strong business links in China, which she denies have had any influence on her. In 1997 she compared the Tiananmen Square massacre to the shooting of four students at Ohio’s Kent State University in 1970, and called for a joint US–China commission on the two nations’ human rights records.35 Lowe left Feinstein’s office after the FBI warned her about him. China’s intelligence agencies also target Westerners not of Chinese heritage for information-gathering. In 2017 a long-serving State Department employee, Candace Claiborne, was indicted for accepting money and gifts from Chinese agents in exchange for diplomatic and economic information.36 She had been targeted by the MSS’s Shanghai State Security Bureau after she asked a Chinese friend to find a job in China for a family member. Claiborne maintained secret contact with MSS agents for five years, supplying them with information in return for help with her ‘financial woes’. She was sentenced to forty months in prison. In the early 1990s Britain’s MI5 wrote a protection manual for businesspeople visiting China; the advice remains relevant today: ‘Be especially alert for flattery and over-generous hospitality … [Westerners] are more likely to be the subject of long-term, low key cultivation, aimed at making “friends” … The aim of these tactics is to create a debt of obligation on the part of the target, who will eventually find it difficult to refuse inevitable requests for favours in return.

IN 1922, THE new League of Nations issued its Mandate for Palestine, which formalized Britain’s governance of the country. In an extraordinary gift to the Zionist movement, the Mandate not only incorporated the text of the Balfour Declaration verbatim, it substantially amplified the declaration’s commitments.

Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. —1 Peter 4:10 (NIV)

Eternal Father, please strengthen me during this holy season so that I may no longer mistake the gifts for the Giver.

Unleash that marination, that portential, that calling, that gift, that vision, that dream and that destiny. Happy New Year 2017.

Dear Lord, as You know very well indeed, there are more things beyond our ken than we will ever know. But because we cannot explain them does not mean that they are not so and not gifts of extraordinary, immeasurable grace. Thank You. —Brian Doyle

I have learned not to be fooled nor to be discouraged when life seems to trip me up. My mother’s dying or Terry’s needing leg braces and a cane to walk could have appeared as hard, unforgiving obstacles. But God’s gifting is in the loaves—in sustenance through difficult times—in abundant displays of meeting the heart’s desire for those who “delight in the Lord” (Psalm 37:4).

All I have is the precious present, Lord. May I never overlook Your daily gifts. —Melody Bonnette Swang

Gracious God, thank You for showering Your grace and gifts upon me wherever I am, however I am. Amen. —Marci Alborghetti

Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change with shifting shadows. —James 1:16–17 (NIV)

He had a generous spirit, which anyone can afford. For example, he was a very busy man, but he was generous with his time. Sometimes it took a couple of months to get on his calendar, but if you truly needed him, that phone call would come right away. Most of the time, these little gifts were what Adam Grant, crediting businessman Adam Rifkin in his book Give and Take, calls “five-minute favors.” They are easy for the person doing the favor, requiring minimal personal cost, but mean a lot to the recipient.7 Grant also notes, in a 2017 article written with Reb Rebele, that “being an effective giver isn’t about dropping everything every time for every person. It’s about making sure that the benefits of helping others outweigh the costs to you.” People who do this well are “self-protective givers.” They are “generous, but they know their limits. Instead of saying yes to every request for help, they look for high-impact, low-cost ways of giving so that they can sustain their generosity—and enjoy it along the way.

I feel the same way about the gift of life everlasting. I want to thank God, but I know my attempts are insufficient. It is not a gift I can pay back. But just as the truck driver who paid my way, God does not want thanks. He wants me to be on my way, to live a full life here and now. The praise and thanks due are in the act of my living for Him.

Dear Father, there is no way to thank You for the gift of life, so I will do my best to live with joy as my praise to You. Amen.

The justification of assassinations as necessary protection against terrorists, who would kill if not killed first, also rings hollow when many of those killed—Ghassan Kanafani and Kamal Nasser, for example, or PLO representatives abroad such as Mahmoud Hamshari and Wael Zu‘aytir—were intellectuals and advocates for the Palestine cause, rather than military personnel. Their artistic ventures were supplementary and linked to their political activities: Kanafani was a gifted novelist and painter, Nasser a poet, Zu‘aytir a writer and budding translator. These were not “terrorists,” but the most prominent voices of a national movement, voices Israel was determined to stifle.