Good Morning & God Bless To Every One !
Today is April 26, the 116th day of 2014 and there are 249 days left this year where it is another Blessed Day in the pleasure of our service for our Lord here at:
For God’s Glory Alone Ministries !!!
I ask you to bear with me today as I am going to steal this space for my own self centered desire to pay tribute to my beautiful wife, Sandy on her birthday. She’s my partner in life here on God’s wonderful Earth! In addition to working full-time and her tasks as a wife, mother and grandmother, she also performs the function of acting as my caretaker as I battle cancer & heart disease along with a few other problems. I get all this, without complaint, while she suffers from chronic Fibromyalgia herself! Her love, care, devotion and faithfulness are endless and I will be more than overwhelmed in my task to try to repay her the love and respect she truly deserves! My love for her is endless and a man could not ask for more than what I have received through her!!! God has been far more than generous in allowing me to share her life with her!!!
The man who finds a wife finds a treasure, and he receives favor from the Lord.
– Proverbs 18:22Who can find a virtuous and capable wife? She is more precious than rubles. Her husband can trust her, and she will greatly enrich his life. She brings him good, not harm, all the days of her life.
– Proverbs 31:10-13
As we only really have ONE birthday, I’ll not mention which anniversary of that birth we’re celebrating, but it surely was a glorious day!!!
In addition, tomorrow, will be the 18th anniversary of our union in marriage together; without question, the happiest 18 years of my life!!!
No longer having an income other than my limited retirement and disability, I haven’t a lot to offer her, but I was able to scratch together enough to get her gift card for a dinner at her favorite restaurant, Red Lobster. What I do have for her, is my Everlasting Love for the remainder of our lives together, however long God chooses that to be!!!
THANK YOU SO VERY, VERY MUCH SWEETHEART; the gift of your love is more than a man could ever ask for!!!!!!
So, What Happened Today In 1865?
President Lincoln assassin, John Wilkes Booth dies
Following the end of the American Civil War, John Wilkes Booth is killed when Union soldiers track him down to a Virginia farm 12 days after he assassinated President Abraham Lincoln.
Twenty-six-year-old Booth was one of the most famous actors in the country when he shot Lincoln during a performance at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C., on the night of April 14. Booth was a Maryland native and a strong supporter of the Confederacy. As the war entered its final stages, Booth hatched a conspiracy to kidnap the president. He enlisted the aid of several associates, but the opportunity never presented itself. After the surrender of Robert E. Lee’s Confederate army at the Appomattox Court House in Virginia, on April 9, Booth changed the plan to a simultaneous assassination of Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State William Seward. Only Lincoln was actually killed, however. Seward was stabbed by Lewis Paine but survived, while the man assigned to kill Johnson did not carry out his assignment.
After shooting Lincoln, Booth jumped to the stage below Lincoln’s box seat. He landed hard, breaking his leg, before escaping to a waiting horse behind the theater. Many in the audience recognized Booth, so the army was soon hot on his trail. Booth and his accomplice, David Herold, made their way across the Anacostia River and headed toward southern Maryland. The pair stopped at Dr. Samuel Mudd’s home, and Mudd treated Booth’s leg. This earned Mudd a life sentence in prison when he was implicated as part of the conspiracy, but the sentence was later commuted. Booth found refuge for several days at the home of Thomas A. Jones, a Confederate agent, before securing a boat to row across the Potomac to Virginia.
After receiving aid from several Confederate sympathizers, Booth’s luck finally ran out. The countryside was swarming with military units looking for Booth, although few shared information since there was a $20,000 reward. While staying at the farm of Richard Garrett, Federal troops arrived on their search but soon rode on. The unsuspecting Garrett allowed his suspicious guests to sleep in his barn, but he instructed his son to lock the barn from the outside to prevent the strangers from stealing his horses. A tip led the Union soldiers back to the Garrett farm, where they discovered Booth and Herold in the barn. Herold came out, but Booth refused. The building was set on fire to flush Booth, but he was shot while still inside. He lived for three hours before gazing at his hands, muttering “Useless, useless,” as he died.
Other Memorable Or Interesting Events Occurring On April 26 In History:
1607 – The first British to establish an American colony land at Cape Henry, Virginia;
1711 – On this day, (by the old style Julian calendar, or May 7, by the new style Gregorian calendar), David Hume is born in Edinburgh, Scotland. Although Hume died on August 25, 1776, when the American Revolution was barely underway, his essay “Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth” greatly affected the ideas of the drafters of the federal Constitution in 1787. Most famously, James Madison contemplated Hume’s proposals for an ideal government and, more precisely, Hume’s thoughts regarding the prevention of faction as he constructed his argument in favor of the Constitution in “Federalist X.” Madison successfully took a term that struck fear in Hume’s heart—”faction”—and presented it as a great benefit of the new American system of federalism. In his eyes, faction would be a positive force in the new, and diverse, United States;
1865 – General Joseph E. Johnston surrenders the Confederate Army of Tennessee to Union Major-General Sherman;
1894 – Rudolf Hess, future Nazi party secretary and deputy to Adolf Hitler who caused an international sensation when he parachuted into Scotland in an attempt to negotiate a truce between Britain and Germany, is born in Alexandria, Egypt. Hess parachuted into Scotland, hoping to negotiate peace with Britain, in the person of the Duke of Hamilton. Hess did, in fact, find peace—in the Tower of London, where the British imprisoned him, the last man ever to be held there under lock and key. After the war, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in Spandau prison by the Nuremberg tribunal. He died, in prison, in 1987;
1937 – During the Spanish Civil War, the German military tests its powerful new air force–the Luftwaffe–on the Basque town of Guernica in northern Spain. With Franco’s approval, the cutting-edge German aircraft began their unprovoked attack at 4:30 p.m., the busiest hour of the market day in Guernica. For three hours, the German planes poured down a continuous and unopposed rain of bombs and gunfire on the town and surrounding countryside. One-third of Guernica’s 5,000 inhabitants were killed or wounded, and fires engulfed the city and burned for days. The indiscriminate killing of civilians at Guernica aroused world opinion and became a symbol of fascist brutality. Unfortunately, by 1942, all major participants in World War II had adopted the bombing innovations developed by the Nazis at Guernica, and by the war’s end, in 1945, millions of innocent civilians had perished under Allied and Axis air raids;
1952 – In the middle of the night, the U.S. minesweeper “USS Hobson” rams aircraft carrier ” USS Wasp,” off the Azores and sinks killing 176;
1954 – The Salk polio vaccine field trials, involving 1.8 million children, begin at the Franklin Sherman Elementary School in McLean, Virginia. Children in the United States, Canada and Finland participated in the trials, which used for the first time the now-standard double-blind method, whereby neither the patient nor attending doctor knew if the inoculation was the vaccine or a placebo. On April 12, 1955, researchers announced the vaccine was safe and effective and it quickly became a standard part of childhood immunizations in America. In the ensuing decades, polio vaccines would all but wipe out the highly contagious disease in the Western Hemisphere. Today, polio has been eliminated throughout much of the world due to the vaccine; however, there is still no cure for the disease and it persists in a small number of countries in Africa and Asia;
1954 – During the (first) Cold War, in an effort to resolve several problems in Asia, including the war between the French and Vietnamese nationalists in Indochina, representatives from the world’s powers meet in Geneva. The conference marked a turning point in the United States’ involvement in Vietnam. The U.S. government scrambled to develop a policy that would, at the least, save southern Vietnam from the communists. Within a year, the United States had helped establish a new anti-communist government in South Vietnam and began giving it financial and military assistance, the first fateful steps toward even greater U.S. involvement in Vietnam;
1964 – The African nations of Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged to form Tanzania;
1971 – During the Vietnam War, the U.S. command in Saigon announces that the U.S. force level in Vietnam is 281,400 men, the lowest since July 1966. These figures were a direct result of President Richard Nixon’s new “Vietnamization” strategy, which he had announced at the Midway Conference in June 1969;
1972 – In the Vietnam War, President Nixon, despite the ongoing communist offensive, announces that another 20,000 U.S. troops will be withdrawn from Vietnam in May and June, reducing authorized troop strength to 49,000. Nixon emphasized that while U.S. ground troops were being withdrawn, sea and air support for the South Vietnamese would continue. In fact, the U.S. Navy doubled the number of its fighting ships off Vietnam;
1984 – President Ronald Reagan arrives in China for a diplomatic meeting with Chinese President Li Xiannian. The trip marked the second time a U.S. president had traveled to China since President Richard Nixon’s historic trip in 1972. During his visit, President Reagan impressed reporters and dignitaries with his occasional attempts to speak Chinese. However, the trip failed to break through the deadlock between China and the U.S. over the issue of Taiwanese independence;
1986 – The world’s worst nuclear accident to date occurs at the Chernobyl nuclear plant near Kiev in Ukraine. The full toll from this disaster is still being tallied, but experts believe that thousands of people died and as many as 70,000 suffered severe poisoning. In addition, a large area of land may not be livable for as much as 150 years. The 18-mile radius around Chernobyl was home to almost 150,000 people who had to be permanently relocated. On May 9, workers began encasing the reactor in concrete. Later, Hans Blix of the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that approximately 200 people were directly exposed and that 31 had died immediately at Chernobyl. The clean-up effort and the general radioactive exposure in the region, however, would prove to be even more deadly. Some reports estimate that as many as 4,000 clean-up workers died from radiation poisoning. Birth defects among people living in the area have increased dramatically. Thyroid cancer has increased tenfold in Ukraine since the accident;
1989 – Actress-comedian Lucille Ball died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles at age 77;
1994 – Voting began in South Africa’s first all-race elections, resulting in victory for the African National Congress and the inauguration of Nelson Mandela as president;
1994 – China Airlines Flight 140, a Taiwanese Airbus A-300, crashed while landing in Nagoya, Japan, killing 264 people, there were seven survivors;
2004 – The United States government unveiled its new, colorized $50 bill;
2004 – Following conservative criticism of his anti-war activities during the Vietnam era, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry accused President George W. Bush of failing to prove whether he’d fulfilled his commitment to the National Guard during the same period;
2005 – Syria withdraws troops from Lebanon, ending its 29 year military occupation;
2009 – The United States declared a public health emergency as more possible cases of swine flu surfaced from Canada to New Zealand; officials in Mexico City closed everything from concerts to sports matches to churches in an effort to stem the spread of the virus;
2013 – Legendary country singer and songwriter George Jones, whose numerous hit songs include “White Lightning,” “Walk Through This World With Me” and “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” dies at age 81 in Nashville. In a career that spanned nearly 60 years, Jones had more than 140 Top 40 country hits, including 14 No. 1 songs. Praised by many in the country music world as the greatest country singer of all time. Fellow country musician Waylon Jennings once sang of Jones: “If we all could sound like we wanted to, we’d all sound like George Jones”;
2013 – Unable to ignore air travelers’ anger, Congress overwhelmingly approved legislation to allow the Federal Aviation Administration to withdraw furloughs of air traffic controllers caused by budget-wide cuts known as the sequester;
2013 – It was one year ago Today!!!
A wise man once said:
“A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.”
– William James, American philosopher and psychologist (1842-1910)
So very true; I can account for a number of times I’ve done this myself! Sometimes we need to just sit back and ask God before going alone and making these rearrangements. This, unfortunately, occurs even in some of our churches! SLOW DOWN; ASK GOD!!!
A thought
Jesus didn’t just come and die for us. He wasn’t just raised to give us life. No, as incredible as those gifts are, he adds another blessing to all he has done for us: until he can come and take us home to God, Jesus lives to ask God for grace in our behalf. Jesus is not only our Savior, he is our defender and brother at the Father’s side!
Which leads to a verse
Jesus is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them.
– Hebrews 7:25
That brings a prayer
My Precious Savior, my Jesus, how I love you. You sacrificed heaven for me. You gave up dignity to redeem me. You destroyed death to assure me. But today, I am most thankful and most aware that every prayer I offer and every step I take you are in the Father’s presence to bless me. Thank you. Amen
Until the next time – America, Bless GOD!!!