What is Your Land?

Those who till their land will have plenty of food, but those who follow worthless pursuits have no sense. Proverbs 12:11

What is your land and are you working it?

Till = plowing, sowing, and raising.

Our time is so limited - it seems - when we look at the big picture of things. Back when Solomon wrote this I am sure that more people could relate from a farming perspective because I think everyone farmed. I personally don’t know any farmers, as I am sure that is the case for most of you. But we have our own “land” to till these days. The key I think is that we select the right “land” to work, and then work it! The “land” you pick to work obviously is a personal choice. And I believe that the “land” you decide to work will bear fruit. If you prioritize and make good choices with respect to the “land” you work, I don’t think there will be much time for following worthless pursuits.

Here are a few personal examples of “land”: marriage, family, children, relationships, profession.

So pick your “land” and get to tilling!

I'm Grateful

- For a loving and forgiving Heavenly Father
- For a loving and forgiving wife of 22 years
- For healthy, happy, bright children
- For my health and mental faculties - well mostly :)
- For gainful, engaging, rewarding employment
- For wonderful friends and encouraging family
- For a positive mental attitude in the wake of any adversity
- For enough sense to know “it” isn’t about me, no matter what “it” is
- For hope for the future and wisdom gained from the past

Happy 2010!

May this new year bring a new beginning of something awesome for you and yours! My hope for you is that this new year - the start of a new decade - brings you reflection of the awesome things in the past that you want to continue and reminders of the not so cool things that you made it through and have made you stronger.

Happy New Year and Happy New Decade!

RESTORE

Team Jackson is not completely ‘geeked out’ but we do have our share of electronic devices. We share a family desktop computer. Mandi has a laptop, Blackberry, digital camera, and IPOD. Jared has a laptop, cell phone, and IPOD. Victoria has a digital camera, cell phone, and IPOD. I have a laptop, 2 Blackberries (1 for work and one for personal), and 2 IPODs (a Touch and a Nano). Even Gabe has his own digital camera. Ok so maybe we are completely ‘geeked out’ (LOL) and that kind of explains our skyrocketing electric bill…but I digress.

I find that often times it is necessary to restore an electronic device if it is not working properly. Sometimes “stuff” (this is NOT a technical blog) gets hung up in a device and you can pull your hair out trying to figure out what is going wrong with it. For the laptops, sometimes it is simply powering that bad boy down and letting it reset itself. When you power it back up, everything seems to be fine and in good working order.

I have been working off and on for a couple of weeks trying to transfer Mandi’s iTunes music from the family desktop over to her laptop and then sync with her IPOD. She had nearly a gig of errant data taking up space on the IPOD’s hard drive and I just could neither figure out what it was nor how to get rid of it. Finally we noticed a restore function that would set her IPOD back to the original factory setting. One click, it restored, and synced like a champ. It is completely back to normal now. For my Blackberries, I have been using the auto on/off feature for a few weeks now. They turn off each night at a certain time, restore, and then turn back on at a certain time each morning and are ready for another day of mobile computing.

I think in life we need to restore ourselves from time to time. “Stuff” gets hung up in us and sometimes we just need to restore, return to factory settings, and refresh ourselves for what life will bring next. Would be nice if we had a restore button we could push everyday wouldn’t it? I think we do have some ‘buttons’ we can push though: prayer, reflection, laughter, and good old-fashioned sleep. Don’t let ‘corrupt files’ hinder or degrade your performance. Restore, refresh, and live life to the fullest!