Bring On Lemons

I've been blessed these last few weeks - gorgeous weather and an opportunity to fill in as our church secretary and this means I am responsible for placing the SCRIP order. I'm no expert and I'll save you the lengthy story about exactly how SCRIP works. The short version is this: You buy or order gift cards through your church and the stores give a percentage back to the church. I've always shied away from doing this with my Starbucks card because I'm a Gold Card holder (and I accumulate points when I reload and use my Gold Card). As I was placing the SCRIP order this week, I came up with the following plan - which I now believe is my best PIF idea so far for 2014! Buy a $25 Starbucks gift card through the SCRIP program at church (7% or nearly 63 cents goes back to the church) Register the new $25 gift card into your Starbucks account Transfer the $25 balance from the new card onto your Gold Card Use your Gold Card to buy a drink or pay for the order of ...

What can you give that you can never take back? Of course, it's our words. We choose them carefully because we all know that we can say I'm sorry, but we can never take back the words we've said or change the impact they've had on others. We can choose to give a compliment or an insult. We can choose to lift someone up, or knock them down. The list goes on and on. None of this is profound, new, or should come as a surprise to any of us. What I do find profoundly interesting is something said by a friend recently. She said something to the effect of: Words are really powerful - God used them to create everything we know...even mankind. Wow! That explains it, doesn't it? I've been been thinking about this for weeks and if God used words in our creation, they are really the most powerful things we have. They are more powerful than nuclear weapons and guns in the sense that they can both create and destroy instead of just having the ability to destroy. Whe...