Did you miss National Happiness Day?

 

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Happiness is contagious, so if you are happy, tell someone! If someone else is happy, listen to them! National Happiness Happens Day is an annual event and is all about unlimited happiness. What more could you possibly want from a day? A day about sharing one’s happiness and bringing a lot of joy to other people’s lives.

National Happiness Happens Day encourages happiness throughout the whole day. It is about recognizing every moment of pleasure, delight, and sheer joy. Don’t let these moments pass. After all, they are extra special! 

Ralph Waldo Emerson, an American 19th-century philosopher, once said: “For every minute you are angry, you lose sixty seconds of happiness.” We certainly agree with him!

National Book Lovers Day

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Reading as a child, enjoying the short stories, the long books and the ability to lose ourselves in a story so powerful that at the end we are asking ourselves where to get the next book in the series. At the moment I am waiting expectantly for Richard Osman’s fourth book in his Thursday Murder Club series to arrive on 14 September. In the meantime my appetite has been whetted by receiving a preview of the first three chapters. 

Today is for the reader in all of us - the celebration of National Book Lovers Day!  Crack open your favourite book, visit a bookshop or library to find your next great read, and enjoy the relaxation and joy of being a reader and book lover.

While National Book Lovers Days’s origins may be shrouded in mystery and rumour, the books themselves are not. Starting from carving on stone tablets thousands of years ago, the book was designed to make the writings and drawings portable for those that could not be carried around on stone tablets. Originally these written documents were made on parchment or vellum (calf skin, in case, like me, you did not know) that was then bound tightly with a wooden cover.

Jesus can change your life?

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It is reported that there are 7.5 billion people living on planet earth today and sad to say not many of them could say that they have never misappropriated something that belonged to another person i.e. that they have not committed theft.  Possibly, the same could be said about lying but that is another subject.  The eighth commandment is “Thou shalt not steal”, the sixth is “Thou shalt not kill” the seventh “Thou shalt not commit adultery”, so God is precise in giving us an exact code of moral conduct for life.  The definition of theft is to dishonestly appropriate property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it.  The word ‘theft’ covers many acts of misappropriation, larceny (theft of personal property), robbery, fraud (identity, benefits, expenses, mortgage, insurance etc), embezzlement and burglary.  The writer received six strokes of the cane at senior school for stealing apples from the school orchard therefore identifying himself with any other person that has violated the eighth commandment.  Other acts of misdemeanours before my conversion would be too shameful to share.  

Did Jesus really claim to be God?

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One of the recurring themes of Jesus’ teaching was explaining who He was and why He was here. He didn’t leave that issue open to conjecture. To people around Him, his most controversial and confrontational statements concerned His claim to be God.