Live Hummingbird Nest Camera

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If you enjoy watching live bird cams, here is one of Bella the hummingbird.  She is sitting on two eggs which should be hatching in a few days (not sure exactly when), so you can watch her raising her babies from the very beginning:  Bella Hummingbird Live Cam.  (You can also find the live video here: https://www.bellahummingbird.com/.)

 I started watching this one when she laid eggs back in February 2019.  But shortly after I started watching her (and was really excited about it because I needed something to brighten up the depression/anxiety I was going through), she was attacked by something and didn't come back to her babies.  And they had to give the babies to rehab.  

 I felt like a jinx, like I shouldn't have these kinds of little delights in my life because something always seems to go wrong when I do, when I get my hopes up.  

 So I refused to watch another bird nest cam ... until now, when I clicked on it out of simple curiosity, just to see if she was back at the nest and doing ok.  And that's when I saw that she had new eggs and is doing well.  I'm glad to see all is well.  For now.  (But I still don't feel comfortable getting too excited about it or caring too much.  And I won't watch too much, just in case.)

 But take some time every day to enjoy the wonders of nature.  Of God's beautiful little creations! 

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Though they have eyes, they will not see

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[I originally posted this on one of my other blogs , Oct. 2021] So   according to this article , it appears that scientists have found evidence of the type of biblical destruction that happened to Sodom.  They say they found a town that was destroyed by a blast of heat so hot that it pretty much melted everything.  They say that there's no earthly natural heat source that could do this, so they speculate that it must have been an asteroid that exploded over the town, melting everything.  Oh, and they speculate that the reason no one lived there afterward was that the asteroid impact might have brought over so much salt from the nearby Dead Sea that nothing could grow.  This, they say, must be what inspired people to make up the story of Sodom in the Bible. But I say that here's your "asteroid," scientists: "The Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah - from the Lord out of the heavens.  Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, incl...
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We Left Our Church Because of Calvinism (Things My Calvinist Pastor Said)

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[A repost: Updated July 2020 with lots of new stuff, including memes.  (When do I ever write anything short?)  For the text-only version, no memes,  click here .   For the memes only,  click here .   For the links only,  click here .   I also broke this long post down into smaller posts for a "Things My Calvinist Pastor Said" series  (click on it for the links in the series).  All memes were created with  imgflip .] The inevitable has finally happened, the day we hoped would never come: The day we officially resigned from our church because of our pastor's dogmatic Calvinist preaching (May 20, 2019).   (From now on, I will try to call him our "ex-pastor."  And for the record, it was an Evangelical Free Church, which are being  taken over by Calvinism  all over the place.  So be wary and educated.) It's been a long road.  He came on board about 6 years ago, and began introducing hi...
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Alexa PenaVega on her heartbreaking loss

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On Godtube, I just watched this touching testimony from Alexa PenaVega (she's in my favorite Christian movies of all time, Do You Believe? , and one of my favorite TV shows, The Middle ).   I had no clue she had gone through such a tragic loss in her life (in 2024, I think) - the death of her newborn baby.  Heartbreaking! I haven't experienced the same kind of loss she did, but I totally appreciate that she's sharing her story, from a heart full of faith.  May God bless her and use her story to encourage others who've gone through loss, too. [One thing that caught my attention is that she quoted a verse - one verse - and it happened to be one (of about 5) that I had just written down shortly before I watched her video.  Out of all the verses in the Bible, I encounter the same one twice within a couple hours... coincidence?   I know that it's a verse I need... and maybe someone else out there needs it too:  "I will refresh the weary and satisfy th...
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Some Problems With Predestination/Calvinism (And What I Think The Bible Really Says)

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(Part of the "Predestination vs. Free-Will" series) Calvinists (those who believe in predestination, that we don’t have a real choice about salvation) – say that we have to evangelize and pray because God told us to and because God knew that this is how the lost would be saved.   This is a pretty flimsy reason for evangelizing, given that (according to Calvinists) no one really has a choice about where their souls end up anyway.   (And actually, they'll say that we do get a choice, that we freely, willingly choose according to our nature.  But what they don't say is that God alone determines our nature, whether we get a new "saved" one or whether we have to keep the old "sinner" nature which can do nothing but sin and reject God.  This is still God determining whether we believe or not, whether we sin or not.  Don't buy into their double-talk.)              If evangelizing didn’t really make a difference, then doing it j...
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How to Tell if a Church, Pastor, or Website is Calvinist (extended version)

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(For the simplified version, click here .   And feel free to copy  this and share it with others, to help them learn to identify Calvinism when they see it.  Just make sure to share the link to this post so that they can find the original one if they want it.  Thank you.   New :  For the super-short version,   click here .   And FYI:  I found a couple times when the Calvinist author of an article I linked to changed the article after I linked to it.  So if an article doesn't seem to match what I said about it, it may be because they altered it. ) We just left our church of almost 20 years because of the dogmatic Calvinist pastor who recently came on board.   Unfortunately, our church was one of the best around, with some of the most biblical teaching.  WAS!  And so now we are struggling with where to go next.   (I just heard that, apparently, the elders were aware of how dogmatic he was before they ...
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Hardest Spiritual Lesson #6: Accepting God's Timing

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Learning to be okay with God’s Time and God’s Way A.k.a.: Learning to Trust (Somewhat of a continuation of #5: Just do your job ) 1 Peter 5:6-7 :   “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.    Cast all your anxieties on him because he cares for you.” In due time!    Such a scary thought for us.    Such a hard thing to accept and to wait for.    How hard it is to humbly submit our lives to the Lord’s timing and way.    But if we want to have the kind of life He wants for us, then we have to learn to humble ourselves before Him and to wait for Him to lift us up - in His time and in His way. But we're too anxious for that, aren't we?  Too hasty?  Too self-focused?  We  want what we want when we want it.   W e have our own ideas of how and when things should happen.   We  have dreams we want to fulfill, plans we want to succeed, goals we want to a...
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A Little Girl's Nonsensical Sign

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I saw a picture online of a little girl holding up a sign.   She had a great big smile on her face, yet she was clearly too young to understand what the sign meant.   But the sign said something about how religion says that people are broken, imperfect, sinful, etc., and how science (a world without God) says that people are intelligent, beautiful, capable of great things, etc.   And then it asks us to decide which one is more harmful, obviously implying that religion is negative and damaging, while science is positive and affirming. This sign that the little girl was holding bothered me.   Because it’s nonsense.   Because it doesn’t give an accurate picture of Christianity.   And so, in response, I want to make my own list, which I think more accurately represents Christianity and science. Of course, there are some damaging religions out there and there have been bad representatives of Christianity throughout the course of history.   And those bad...
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#10: I Just Want To Finish Well, August 2017 (repost)

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(Actually written in 2014, but reposted in August 2017 because it still totally applied.  And since it fit how I was feeling in 2017, I am including it in this numbered "after my panic attack" series.  This is one of the last posts in that series.  Maybe one or two more to go.) Once again, I found myself in an emotional funk (this is a repost from 2014, yet it still seems to be where I’m at in 2017), feeling like I can’t accomplish anything.   Can’t give any one thing the effort and time it needs.   I am so stretched-thin in places.   The housework never gets done.   This house will never be "finished."   My cooking has seen better days.   There’s not enough time to do everything I want when it comes to homeschooling … so, of course, my boys are going to grow up to be great big drains on society.   I was feeling a little panicked that things were slipping away from me too fast, that I couldn’t get a grip on anything. ...
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List of Calvinist Preachers, Authors, Theologians, Websites, etc.

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I  found a lot more names to add to my list of known Calvinists (found in my various  "How to Tell if a Church, Pastor, or Website is Calvinist"  posts).  But instead of adding this huge list to all those posts, I am going to put it here, and I'll just provide a link on those posts to this one.  [FYI: I added a note at the bottom of this post on May 5, 2021.] So here it is, a "master list" of known Calvinists to help you be careful and discerning about who you listen to and where you get your theology from.  There are plenty more Calvinists out there, but these are just the names that I ran across the most.   These are either definite, self-professed Calvinists or "most likely Calvinist," in my estimation.  (I haven't heard of most of them, but it's good to know their theology before I do.)   After finding these names in various places online, I looked up each person to see if they are Calvinist.  If they did not self-identify ...
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Things My Calvinist Pastor Said #15: No Altar Calls, And Replacing "Believe" With "Repent"

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(This "Things My Calvinist Pastor Said" series is a breakdown on this much longer post:  "We Left Our Church Because of Calvinism,"  which was written last year but updated July 2020.  They are almost exact quotes.  All memes were created with  imgflip .) 15.    Our pastor never does altar calls and never asks people if they want to ask Jesus in their heart or choose Jesus as their Lord and Savior.  Instead, Calvinists emphasize the need to "repent."             As I mentioned in the last point, w ith Calvinism in general, there are no altar calls, no "Do you want to ask Jesus into your heart, to choose Him as your Lord and Savior?"                They say it's because they don't want people thinking they're saved just because they "walked the aisle" or "prayed a prayer."  But I know it's because they don't want people thinking they have a choice.  Beca...
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