Healthy, Healthy Chocolate

By Steph Prichard –

At last, science has acknowledged what the rest of us knew all along—that chocolate is good for you. Okay, so the verdict was limited to dark chocolate—we chocoholics can live with that. And what finally pushed the men with pointy heads to that waking point? They discovered little thingies called antioxidants living in dark chocolate, and—guess what?—these antioxidants have their own addictions! They gobble up bad cells called “free radicals” as greedily as, well, we devour a box of chocolates.

The free radicals start out as terrorists that use oxygen to parachute into our bodies and blast our cells with machine guns. The cells, lop-sided now because they lack a crucial molecule, go absolutely whack-o. Foaming at the mouth, they take off on a rampage and beat up healthy cells to steal molecules from them. Then those poor, robbed cells run amok and bushwhack other cells to steal their molecules. And so it goes, blam, blam, blam, one big chain reaction of hold-up after hold-up. The result? Ugh—disease.

All for lack of antioxidant-good-guys.

So, motivated by the desire to be dark-chocolate healthy, I cruised the grocery aisles. Candy bars, chocolate chips, cocoa, ice cream bars—if it said dark chocolate, I bought it. And ate it. My favorite antioxidant host became the ice cream bars that were dark chocolate, inside and out. For dessert every night, I faithfully ate one. I decided to become even more faithful and eat one for dessert at lunchtime too. And if one is good and two are better, why not add a third one for an afternoon snack and have triple the health?

I noticed I was gaining weight, but what’s a pound or two when the gain is in health too? At five pounds, I thought a bit of restraint might be in order, but you know what the –holic means at the end of the choco-? Uh-huh. The antioxidants and I were hooked. Totally addicted to chocolate and free radicals. Sadly, but with great resolve, we decided to bite the bullet and cut back on everything dark chocolate but the ice cream bars.

At ten pounds, when I had to shop for clothes a size larger, reality in the form of a humanoid blob stared back at me from the fitting room mirror. I sniffled, knowing I had to make a choice. It was either another month and another size larger, or go cold turkey and quit. I exchanged my dark chocolate for turkey.

What took one month to gain took three months to lose. Ever since, I have shunned dark chocolate and made friends with the antioxidants inhabiting the fifty-two calories of a raw apple. You’ve never heard of an appleholic, have you? There’s a good reason why.

But, hey, not all cravings are bad! There’s one I’ve gained exponentially from, every bit of it to my benefit. When I became a Christian at age twenty, I began reading the Bible, sometimes in bite-sized pieces, sometimes in full-plate portions. The more I read, the more I gained wisdom for my marriage, my parenting, and every decision I faced, big or small. What could be better than insight straight from the God who made me and loves me? Psalm 119:103 says, “How sweet are Your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth.” Hoo, now there’s an addiction worth indulging in!

Help Your Kids to Lose Weight

By Julie Morris –

Here’s a scary statistic: Over one-third of our children are overweight or obese. This number has tripled in the last two decades! Here are some practical ways to help them to lose weight:

When they are teens or older, don’t focus on their weight or what they eat. Instead, focus on yourself as you…
1. Eat in a healthy way and start exercising daily for 30 minutes.
2. Write down what you eat.
3. Get the junk food out of our houses (even if this is unpopular).
4. Cook in a healthy way (even if others don’t like it at first).
5. Encourage family meals almost every night—where you sit down together to eat.
6. Provide lots of green vegetables and fruits so that no one will be hungry.
7. Don’t lecture overweight kids about their weight or preach to them about healthy eating.
8. Journal your feelings and have a daily Quiet Time with the Lord. Don’t hide the fact that you do, but don’t brag about it either.
9. Invite your kids on fun activities that encourage exercise such as hikes in the woods, walks in the park, swimming, skating, golf or bowling. Do other not-so-fun things with them such as gardening, washing the car, parking far away from the store, taking the stairs instead of the escalator, walking briskly in the mall.
10. Pray for your children to have a desire to lose weight and make other healthy lifestyle changes. And pray that as they see you lose weight and feel better, they will want to join you.

When your overweight children are young, you have more control over them, so also do some of these things:
1. Teach them how to read labels and make healthy choices. Whether they’re eating out or at home, make a game of finding food “bargains.”
2. Teach them how to have a brief Quiet Time almost every day. If they can’t write yet, help them to draw pictures of their prayers and Bible verses. Help them also to journal their feelings by drawing pictures of things that upset them.
3. Give them non-food rewards when they do something good. Don’t reward by giving them their favorite foods, punish them by taking favorite foods away or calm them with food.
4. When having family celebrations, focus on the fun of fellowship instead of food.
5. Teach them how to cook in a healthy way, but never put them on a diet or force them to eat something they don’t like.
6. Limit their TV, computer or video-game time. One good rule (but not very popular at first) might be to allow them an hour of TV, computer or video games for each hour they spend doing sports, riding their bikes, or playing outside.
7. Don’t tell them that they can never have sugar or other junk food, but limit it. Supply yummy substitutes instead.
8. If they say that they’re hungry between meals, offer low calorie snacks; for example, small packs of raisins, fruits, baby carrots, individual packages of low-fat cheese and yogurt.
9. Never shame them for overeating, gaining weight or making unhealthy choices. Give them lots of hugs and compliments and let them know that you love them.
10. Don’t focus too much on food, diets and weight. Let healthy eating and exercise be a normal part of every day.

The difference these changes can make in your life and the lives of your children will amaze you! Place checks next to the items that you want to try and start making some changes today!

Adapted from Guided By Him…to a Thinner, Not So Stressed-Out You! by Julie Morris and Sarah Morris Cherry.

Signs of the End Times? Mass and Vast Communications

By Dianne E. Butts –

In January, we started looking at Biblical prophecies God predicted as the End Times approach—prophecies that might come true right before our very eyes. The first prophecy we looked at was Israel is back in the Promised Land—just since 1948, and some people from that generation are still living today.

Other prophecies seem to imply that mass communication—visual, not just audio—will need to exist for them to be fulfilled. Today we have radio, television, and the internet. These things did not exist much more than a century ago.

Here are two examples of prophecies that might show world-wide visual communications are needed in End Times prophecy, visual communication that only became available in recent decades:

Revelation 11:7-10: “Now when they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up from the Abyss will attack them, and overpower and kill them. Their bodies will lie in the street of the great city, which is figuratively called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified. For three and a half days men from every people, tribe, language and nation will gaze on their bodies and refuse them burial. The inhabitants of the earth will gloat over them and will celebrate by sending each other gifts, because these two prophets had tormented those who live on the earth.”

Revelation 17:8: “The beast, which you saw, once was, now is not, and will come up out of the Abyss and go to his destruction. The inhabitants of the earth whose names have not been written in the book of life from the creation of the world will be astonished when they see the beast, because he once was, now is not, and yet will come.”

It’s true these events might be shown on the evening news or carried “Live” as breaking news. But did you know that you can watch events in Israel live right now?

Currently live web cams broadcasting 24/7/365 overlook the Wailing Wall, also known as the Western Wall, in Jerusalem. You can also view live footage from other areas around the Temple Mount, such as Wilson’s Arch. You can find the link on the internet if you do a search for kotel cam.

Kotel is the Hebrew word for the Western Wall or the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, which is a part of, or all of, the western wall of the ancient Jewish temple that was destroyed by the Roman, Titus, in 70 AD.

Isn’t it fascinating that today, through computers, laptops, tablets, and even smart phones, we can watch live in real time, at any time we want to, what is happening at the foot of the mount of the very Temple in Jerusalem we’ve read about in our Bibles?! Will we, or those who are alive at the time, gaze upon the two dead bodies of those prophets via internet? Will unbelievers see the Beast on their smart phones?

What do you think? Is this prophecy in preparation to be fulfilled right before our very eyes?

We’re Having Triplets!!!

By Cheri Cowell –

We have triplets!!! My husband and I are proud parents of three baby mockingbirds. I’m sure that sometime in your life you have experienced the joy of watching the maternal care of one of God’s creatures. There is no training camp, no apprentice program, and no how-to baby book for these moms, yet they seem to know what to do.

I have heard many mothers say that something happened to them when their baby was placed in their arms for the first time. They didn’t have all of the answers, and especially the first time moms were afraid they would do something wrong. Yet, they instinctively knew their main role: to love and care for that child with a depth of love that can only be described as unconditional.

In the book of I John, John was an older man when he wrote boldly of begetting and birth in the passage listed below. He tells of the intimate relationship between Christ, God the Father, and the Christian. He explains that the “seed” of God’s nature is placed within each believer allowing that seed to be nurtured until it becomes a mature tree in the likeness of God. Verse 1 tells us who we are- God’s child, verse 2 tells us we are becoming reflections of God; verses 16-18 shows us how we are to respond to the gift of God’s love. Love is an action, not a feeling, and He wants us to learn from God’s love how to sacrificially love others.

PRAYER: Thank You for being my Heavenly Father, for showing me Your great love on a daily basis through the gifts of my relationships. I Praise You for placing the seed within me that allows me to become more like You every day. Help me learn from Your example how to love more sacrificially and more unconditionally today and every day.

“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure. This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth” (1 John 3:1-3, 16-18 NIV).

Third-Hand Ham

By Cynthia Ruchti –

Sometimes love looks a lot like ham.

It did the day someone gave us a third-hand ham. Oh, it was new, fresh, still in its original packaging, but it had traveled through two other homes before it came to rest at ours.

Its first owner won the ham in a raffle. He doesn’t eat ham. So he gave it to a friend. But the friend insisted the ham was outrageously too big for his small family. So he gave it to us. For us, it was an answer to prayer for something nice to serve at a big family gathering. Spiral ham, no less.
Now that I think about it, the ham was a fourth-hand ham, if you count the people who donated it for the raffle.

Rather than viewing it as the dreaded “regifting,” we saw the journey that ham took as a journey of love.

It made me stop to think about a subject that the Lord often uses to reveal more of His genuine heart toward His people. Toward me.

I’ve marveled before at the feeding of the 5,000 where Jesus took five small loaves of bread and two small fish and turned it into a feast for the multitude…with twelve basketsful left over! But fourth-hand ham stirred me to consider what might have happened with those leftovers.

Did the disciples throw the leftovers away? It doesn’t fit the picture of how God operates. Did Jesus instruct His disciples to take those baskets out into the villages and find homeless or hungry people who would receive the scraps with gratitude? That seems more likely. Once Jesus touched anything, it wasn’t worthless. His leftovers, His glances, the dust-caked hem of His robe brought people in contact with His mighty, healing power.

Someday I may meet a new friend in heaven who starts her story with, “I wasn’t there that day, for the feeding of the 5,000. But my family was the recipient of one of the baskets of leftovers. I’ve never tasted anything so delicious. It fed us for a long time and not only kept us from starvation, but it showed us that God cared about us, even us.”

What do I have—in its original packaging, fresh, valuable—that might need to pass through a few hands until it gets to the hungry person God had in mind from the beginning?

PRAYER: Father God, thank You for all the times You’ve laid a ham at our doorstep, a bag of groceries, a gift card. Please make me more sensitive to those around me who not only need the food, but the reminder that You care.

BIBLE VERSE: “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you” (Luke 6:38, NIV).

« Previous Page — Next Page »