Young Year, Weather Woes, New Bedtime?

21 Days of Prayer and Fasting

At the end of the day, this year will be 3 weeks old. Isn't it a cute little baby?!? Of course not...LOL Things aren't going very smoothly this year for most of the world. I suppose that's been the case for a while now. I've noticed it for 5 years. How long has the world been like this? Likely since the garden...

Today's prayer focus comes from the same passage as yesterday, John 17:6-12. But instead of asking God to give me the words to speak, I'm asking Him to let them hear. Meaning, I'm asking that God opens the hearts, souls, and minds of those He sends me to that they may received the words He provides me. I'm starting to see the significance of the order of these prayers the author is showing me.

Father, thank You for the words to share with others of the Hope I have in You. Today, I ask that they are well received by those You have sent me to. Please open their ears to hear and their hearts to listen. I've had a closed heart and mind in the past. So I know what that is like. I ask that You open theirs as You have opened mine!

LORD, empower the church through Your Holy Spirit. Open the hearts, souls, and minds of the people...Your people. As You send us out into the world, open the ears and hearts of those You send us to so that they may hear and listen to the message of Your salvation. This world is hurting. May Your words heal them!

God, please be with the pastors. As they speak Your Word into the ears and hearts of their congregations, I pray the people will received Your Word and be Blessed.

In Your Name I pray, AMEN!

My Day

My day had a pleasant start. I slept in again...LOL I knew I wouldn't be walking today. So I decided to give myself some extra sleep. I'm starting to wonder if I just need to go to bed a little earlier. I've gradually moved my sleep time this month. Perhaps I just need to settle in on being in bed by 11pm and asleep by 11:30? I'd gotten it back to being in bed by 11:30pm and asleep by midnight. This, after 7 months of basically being on mountain or pacific time...LOL

Once again, I did some things in a slightly different order today. And I logged into work to find that a meeting was scheduled for 8:30am. But all worked out lovely for the morning ❤️

For the prayer section above, the actually prayer focus and the prayer itself are in a separate file from this blog entry. It is being imported when the site is compiled. This is one of the reasons I wanted to merge everything into a single site. Now I can include such things in multiple places. For example, it is included above. But it can also be in a prayer journal section of the website once I get the Bible stuff going. All without making a copy of the same content. One file that can be included in multiple pages as I see fit. Pretty neat!

I was a little productive in the morning. But I also had several meetings. One of the meetings popped up suddenly, as I mentioned earlier. One was moved to today from yesterday with it being a holiday yesterday. And the others are the usual Tuesday meetings. My afternoon was clear, though...hehehe

I had a lovely phone call with my son tonight. It was good to chat with him and do some catching up. The weather is preventing me from traveling up. So, phone calls are nice to have. I'm glad I was able to see him a few times last month. And I look forward to getting up there again soon.

The weather here wasn't great for being outside again today. It was similar to Saturday. I'm so grateful for the rain. And I think my body was grateful for another break...HAHAHA Later this week, it might be too cold to be walking outside. A few weeks ago, it was too cold. But I braved it. I realize how dangerous that can be and I'll likely skip at least my morning walk on the coldest days from now on. It isn't that I'm afraid to do it or that I think it's cold. It can be dangerous even for the healthiest of people when the windchill gets in the 20s in this climate. I mean for exercise. We even get warnings about how long to have pets outside and they don't recommend walking pets beyond their bathroom breaks. Yeah, that cold. When I describe it to people, I tell them to ignore the number. That number means nothing in this climate...LOL

It's snowing up in the panhandle of Florida today. From Texas all the way to northern Florida got hit by a winter storm. And back home in Indiana, they've been in the single digits and sometimes in negative. Like I said, the weather is preventing me from traveling up there. When I lived there, I wouldn't leave the house in that weather. I wouldn't want to be stranded in a car at those temps.

Photo of the Day

Today's photo was from inside. The weather just wasn't fit for my daily walks...hehehe I took a few videos throughout the day. But I ended up going with this one for the photo.

This is what a Florida winter looks like in the Tampa Bay area. It is a bit gloomy. It was rainy. It was cold. That's about it. I'm grateful for the rain as it doesn't rain much in the winter here. The sun will be back very soon. They don't call this the Sunshine State for nothing...HAHAHA The warmth won't be back immediately. But it won't be long before it returns too.

Wrapping Up

Today was a good day. Work went well and I chilled inside. I did more work on this new website. I did all of my prayer and Bible study as well.

I'm thinking about doing my shower and bedtime routine a little earlier today as I mentioned above. Hopefully I won't feel like sleeping in tomorrow...LOL