Lisa M. Buske's Blog, page 75

Take Time to Enjoy God's Beauty

“As Romans 11:36 states, 
all things are from God and to God. Beauty boomerangs from God into created beauty, 
then through the senses 
and soul of the image-bearer, and finally back to God with praise and glory.” 
~ Eyes Wide Open

In life, we have choices EVERY day. There are mornings when the commute and drop off in front of our local high school bring out the grumbly rumbly bear within. I have friends who deal with twenty to thirty minute commutes for a few blocks but this isn't the norm for Mexico, New York...UNLESS it's between 7:25 a.m. - 7:40 a.m. During this time, this small town turns into a congested, slow moving, and stressful scenario as a multitude of parents drop their children off in front of the high school.

As my daughter and I approached yesterday morning, we both became quiet as we viewed this beautiful sunrise lighting the sky around the high school and creating a sight to behold. Once I turned around and dropped Mags off, I pulled ahead to take a few pics. My hope, to capture some of God's beauty and peace in the midst of morning drop off chaos. 

While the pictures don't do the magnificent sunrise justice, I think you understand the significance. I'm guilty of grumbling and not looking up as much as the next person.  How would our days be different if we slowed down or stopped to look up and absorb the beauty God surrounds us with...in the midst of the darkness and chaos?

YOU are a RAINBOW ~ Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I hope you have a wonderful and safe St. Patrick's Day! For my Irish side of the family, this is a fun day!


A read aloud of YOU are a Rainbow... .Happy St. Patrick's Day 2015! #wsite-video-container-364013812659942659{ background: url(//www.weebly.comhttp://www.lisambuske.com/uploads/4/7/9/2/4792487/524167285465650196_873.jpg); } #video-iframe-364013812659942659{ background: url(//cdn2.editmysite.com/images/util/videojs/play-icon.png?1426553079); } #wsite-video-container-364013812659942659, #video-iframe-364013812659942659{ background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position:center; } @media only screen and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 2), only screen and ( min-device-pixel-ratio: 2), only screen and ( min-resolution: 192dpi), only screen and ( min-resolution: 2dppx) { #video-iframe-364013812659942659{ background: url(//cdn2.editmysite.com/images/util/videojs/@2x/play-icon.png?1426553079); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position:center; background-size: 70px 70px; } }

"No Luck Needed: Everybody Wins" Find out How Below

Yesterday morning I enjoyed a delicious breakfast, time of fellowship, and an opportunity to share hope with some women in Oswego County. Wings of Grace Ministry hosts two events a year, one in the Spring and the other in the Fall. My author friend, Kolleen Lucariello, shared her story and about her book, The ABC's of Who God Says I Am , in a previous engagement.  This Spring was my turn and it was a blessed day, to say the least.

For months I've prayed for this event and the message God had for me to share. Instead of listening and following His direction, I kept praying. You see, I know He was speaking to my heart yet nothing I seemed to prepare or do seemed to fit. I couldn't seem to put it together. When forced to come up with a theme, I chose "No Luck Needed: Everybody Wins". I didn't feel this was the theme, yet I needed a title and verse for the event planners and I couldn't come up with anything better. Initially the anticipation of sharing at Wings of Grace event excited me but at the same time, I was so nervous. I couldn't figure out what my issue was. It is the first time I've shared my testimony since last July, so I determined this was my hold up.  Even with an all-nighter Friday, I still arrived feeling unprepared to share. BUT as I enjoyed some powerful worship and then a couple skits, performed by Ranch of Hope Ministries, I finally figured it out.
 
It was the I in the whole process that was the roadblock. I wasn't focused on God, in spite of my prayers. I wasn't seeking His face but instead, looking for an "easy" way to share my testimony. 
This was the problem...ME! God ordained the speaking engagement and it was HIS message to share through me. I wish I caught on to this prior to Saturday morning BUT I didn't. I guess I'm a slow study at times. Or maybe it's stubbornness. Regardless of what you call it, it was disobedience. 

Instead of praying a prayer and taking time to listen for God's answer, I just continued preparing a message to share using St. Patrick's day and "luck" items as illustrations. I couldn't make this work and then I thought I had it figured out at 3:58 a.m. (Yes, Saturday morning) when I turned off my computer. One last prayer, God this is your event and may I deliver Your message. I need your wisdom, strength, and message. I can only do this in Your strength. Night.

Two hours later the alarm rattled me awake, and by 7:40 a.m., I was loading the car and on my way. I picked up my friend, Lisa, and we began our journey. Talking, laughing, sharing, and praying.  Lisa helped me set up and I told her about my concern with my message, and then the big reveal, they asked me to give the Salvation message. She was very excited and said "Finally!" Whereas, I was still in the "I can't do this and don't want to goof it up." stage.  She encouraged me and we prayed for God's words.

Some reading this might not know what a Salvation message is. I think in the simplest of terms, it's when you Admit you are a sinner, Believe Jesus died on the cross and rose again for your sins, and then Choose to trust Jesus to forgive you of your sins. While this seems simple in theory and to write it, the importance of its life changing power makes me nervous. I accepted the challenge and trusted the whole morning to God, why hadn't I done this sooner? Such a silly human am I because the message is as easy as A B C. God answered prayers in a mighty way Saturday morning through the songs and skits during the worship portion of our morning. The songs were about trusting God and to not be afraid. My heart and mind heard this message loud and clear. Then the teens from Ranch of Hope took the stage and performed two powerful skits.

The first a light and humorous one about the power of sin and the second, about the bondage and struggles from sin and the great release and freedom found when we trust Jesus.

I finally heard God to not fear, to trust, and obey! While sitting in the back room and thinking of the lives this amazing group of teens can impact,  if they have the opportunity to share their ministry, I fought back tears. Then I realized their message isn't only for teens,. It's a message of freedom, healing, strength, love, redemption, and so much more. To learn more about Ranch of Hope Ministries , click here or on the photo of their skit. They are willing and interested in visiting churches to share God's message of love and hope. Check them out. 

Instead of opening with St. Patty's Day humor, I thanked these teens and their leaders for demonstrating God and His message without ever saying a word. Both skits used only music and movement, no words. I transitioned from praising and encouraging the teens and then God lead me through my message to the women. The morning was beautiful and a couple people raised their hands before I closed to share a message from God, one they received while I was speaking. 

While my delivery of the Salvation message was less than perfect, it was honest and a learning experience. I found myself missing my friend who helped me so much when I started to speak yet while she isn't in the area anymore, God never left me. This morning I awoke rested and thankful I obeyed and delivered God's message.  I'm still a little disappointed in my delivery of the Salvation message yet know if God was speaking to someone's heart, they heard it. I can only improve. 

Evidence God knows our hearts, fears, and disappointments...here are a couple messages I received today. I share these with their permission. If you attended yesterday's Wings of Grace event, feel free to leave a comment below. I'm sharing with the Ranch of Hope Ministry too, so your words may reach the Wings of Grace team and the Ranch of Hope too. Thanks for taking time to read, worship, and share. 

""Lisa, I was in the audience today and heard you speak. Thank you for sharing from your heart. It really spoke to my heart and encouraged me. You have a special gift for speaking and reaching people. I hope to hear you again sometime!"
~ Sarah, Attendee ~

"Hello Lisa, Thank you for speaking at Wings of Grace yesterday! It was an awesome event and I hope that it brought you some healing too! I have sent you a friend request because I manage the Wings of Grace Ministry fb page. I think I need to be friends with you to add you to the group. Not sure, but we both share a love of Dunkin Donuts coffee!!! Thanks again for sharing your experience, strength and hope. It was an extreme act of COURAGE and you rocked it!" ~ Kim, Attendee ~

How are you doing? How do you feel?

"Lovely...and you?" "Good, thanks for asking." Do you know how loved, beautiful, 
and special you are?
I hope so...

"The Morning Moon"

One of my favorite things to do in the morning is to open the curtains and look outside. In the winter my goal is to check the weather so I know how much travel time to allow for the morning commute BUT the rest of the year...it's only to admire the God's painting in the sky. While the tree line prevents a full view of the sunrise, the light illuminates from behind. 


To look from the other side of the house, it's possible to see the morning moon. Another beautiful sight, one that has amazed me since childhood. I've asked the question, "How can we see the moon in the daylight?" many times. If it's been answered then I don't remember. Regardless, it's night time beauty in the midst of a colorful sunrise is just another example of the beauty nature offers.

Lord, our Lord, 
how majestic is your 
name in all the earth!
You have set your glory in the heavens.
Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies,
    to silence the foe and the avenger.

When I consider your heavens,
    the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
    which you have set in place,
what is mankind that you are mindful of them,  human beings that you care for them?

You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned 
them with glory and honor.

You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet: all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild,
the birds in the sky,
    and the fish in the sea,
    all that swim the paths of the seas.
Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
Psalm 8 NIV

3/10/15 @ 7:15 a.m. 3/11/15 @ 7:15 a.m. Do you slow down enough in the morning to notice the paintings in the sky? When you look up and see the brilliance of a sunrise or the miracle of a brightly shining moon during the day, what is the first thing you think of? Do you share the observation with those you are with or see later in the day? 

Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love,
    for I have put my trust in you.
Show me the way I should go,
    for to you I entrust my life.
Psalm 143:8

What is your favorite time
of day to enjoy nature?

Welcome A Guest Blogger...Myrna J. Smith

Good Wednesday to you all,

While I haven't read this book, the initial description of the book in one of my WOW emails caught my attention. Today's blog has information about Myrna's book, herself, and she even took time to guest blog with us today. Without reading the book I can't make a recommendation either way but after reading her guest post and more about her spiritual journey, it sounds different than my own yet each of us have a story to tell. This is Myrna's story and I'm glad to have her join us today and I hope you'll offer her some encouragement while she visits.

Lisa  "Myrna Smith opens her story one Sunday night when she returns home from a ski weekend with her three children. While she was on the slopes, her husband had moved out. That had been the plan. 

Yet her story, though it encompasses her divorce, is much larger. Ultimately, Smith sets out to love herself, to find an inner place where she can rest and grow."

"In this search-for-the-holy-grail memoir, Smith traces her travels toward enlightenment as a middle-aged American woman with a wry humor and heartfelt longing. On the journey she discovers spiritual fulfillment doesn’t come easily, or all at once. For her, it is quite elusive. 

The quest really started, she realizes, in her childhood on an Oregon farm where she and her older sister were once “converted” in their father’s pea patch by two young Bible summer school teachers barely out of their teens. The school was part of the tiny church their mother attended while their father stayed home, read Edgar Cayce books, and mused on reincarnation. 

Later, drawn by the mysticism of the Hindus, Smith’s journey leads to Bangalore where she touches the robes of Sai Baba, the Indian saint. Back home in New Jersey, she finds herself in a country farm- house getting prescriptions channeled through a medium for every- thing from her back woes and diarrhea to an obsession with money. 

She also writes of the demons that surface during a years-long love affair with her beloved Charlie and what A Course in Miracles stirred within her. 

Smith’s story is one of adventure and effort that, in the end, reveals three simple yet essential truths that are both the journey and the destination." How Spiritual Texts Influenced My Writing
By Myrna J. Smith
"Because my memoir God and Other Men:  Religion, Romance and the Search for Self-Love is about my spiritual journey, religious and spiritual texts have had a big influence on me and on my book, mainly because they gave me concepts I had not considered before.

My divorce made me question all of my assumptions about life and set me on a long search for answers. The Bhagavad Gita, an important Indian religious text, gives four paths to God, that of karma (action), bhakti (devotion or worship), raja (meditation), or jnana (self-knowledge). Having attended a fundamentalist church until I was about twelve, my experience of church was that of devotion, devotion to Jesus. I knew fairly early that was not my path because I could see that the attitude of my church-going friends was so much different from mine. I had not fallen in love with Jesus as they apparently had.

My father was reading Hindu books at home, so I knew Christianity was not the only possibility, but the Gita showed that there are different styles of worship that might go across religions. Once I discovered I was primarily jnana, I gave up reading books of prayer and instruction for meditation and focused on self-knowledge.  The goal of the jnani is to realize that the atman, the individual “soul” is the same as Brahma, the universal soul—we could say “God”— but he/she does it through examination of the mind. 

A Course in Miracles, the text that I have adopted as my truth, gave me other words and concepts that I have incorporated into my writing. One of the big ideas of A Course in Miracles is that projection makes perception. What we see is entirely determined by our minds. The world, according to the Course, is an illusion, a common and individual projection. If we see with God’s eyes, we have vision, but if we see with eyes of the ego, we have perception, which is determined by our human minds. These are difficult concepts, ones that take hundreds of pages to clarify in the Course. Intellectually, I accept the truth of these statements, but I don’t always act as if I believe them. I try, however, to hold onto them in my writing. 

Many of the ideas in A Course in Miracles have existed in Buddhism for twenty-five hundred years, and the idea that the world is maya, illusion, has existed in Hinduism for longer than that. As Buddhism spreads in the western world, as it is surely doing, the ideas will become more widely known.

One last spiritual book that influenced me is Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramhansa Yogananda. In one of my sessions with the mystic I studied with, she, or “the spirits,” told me that the true personality no longer had dreams about the future, but that the false personality still has these dreams.  (A Course in Miracles would use the terms ego and higher self, rather then true and false personalities.) Near the end of Yogananda’s autobiography one of the holy men is coming to the end of his life. He has one unfulfilled dream:  establishing a large, beautiful ashram, something he just could not bring into form in this incarnation.  Another, more evolved, teacher projected one for him. It appears in all of its glory with bright lights around the roofline. He marvels; then he and the reader realize that this can be the end of dreaming, his final one having been fulfilled. He is now on the cusp of totally awakening—enlightenment.

In my writing I want to bring forward the ideas that most of the world would see as patently untrue and perhaps even bizarre. In explaining these ideas in terms of my own life, I am hoping that readers will find them more acceptable.  And by writing them, I am hoping I can deepen my own belief in them."

Publisher: Cape House Books
Website/Blog: https://myrnasmith.wordpress.com
Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1939129044/ About Myrna J. Smith: 

"Myrna J. Smith, EdD, is a retired professor of English and comparative religions who continues to travel and explore the world’s spiritual traditions. God and Other Men is her first book."
If you have read this book, feel free to leave a comment below to share with my readers.
Have a great day everyone!

TOP's Tuesday: What's Underneath?

In Upstate New York for the past weeks, the topic of choice is Winter. Whether it be the bitterly cold temperatures or the amount of snow, winter and its relentless attack on those who enjoy living in this beautiful part of the country. Today, the discussions have transitioned from ones of despair to that of hope and warmth. The sun is shining and snow is melting.

With this new and exciting change of events, new items of woe enter the conversation. An aspect of many inches of snow and ice is the inevitable melting to follow. Some roofs have been shoveled more than in past years and and others left to wait for this thaw. With each crash of ice and snow sliding off, the green grass and rebirth is buried a little deeper.

The snow's contour around the objects in our yard offers the illusion of life beneath the snow each time I glance out my window but the joy and truth is this...this isn't an illusion. Winter's white blanket is slowly melting and soon the green grass, flowers in arrays of color, and even my patio furniture will be revealed once again. 

Spring shows what God can do 
with a drab and dirty world."
~Virgil A. Kraft

What is hidden under the snow in your yard?

Where Can This Ladder Take You?

Finish this statement...

"While walking through the woods I saw this ladder. 
I couldn't resist, 
so I climbed. 
When I reached the top..."

Last Night of "Aida ~ The Musical"

A show you don't want to miss...
Mexico High School
7 p.m.
Doors open at 6:30 p.m. If you've already been to the show, 
leave a comment below 
to share 1 reason someone 
should come tonight!

"Aida" Elton John & Tim Rice's Musical

I attended last night's opening performance and left in awe of the talent on the stage. A standing ovation on opening night. If you are looking for a cast and pit band that can deliver a powerful musical...head to Mexico TONIGHT & SATURDAY...7 p.m.
ONLY $10 PER TICKET
Doors open at 6:45 p.m. A few pictures from the opening night performance are below.

Comments overheard after the performance:
"Wow, this was powerful. They did a great job."

"Amazing show, we're coming back to see it again."

TONIGHT'S PERFORMANCE CAN VIEWED LIVE ONLINE
BY CLICKING HERE - 7 P.M. Proud to MACS...
See you tonight!