Work and Books

Amazing stuff happens when you pray about them. Three days ago the 93-year-old man that I help take care of took a bit of a slide for the worse. He is still ok, but his doctor doesn't want him to do most things on his own anymore. Well, I told his daughter that I would be willing to watch him on the weekdays and only work on the weekends for the time being. She is doing away with the rent in lieu of this. I think this is only fair, and I have felt an obligation to help with him. This had all happened AFTER I had been to my supervisor and told him I REALLY needed full time. The staffing service lady was trying to jump through hoops to get me "in" the company and start to work full time by next week. Well, I never did get a call for the orientation on Wednesday, so I called them and my name wasn't on the list! Well, I was just about ready to have a cow when the old guy's daughter called me and told me what the doctor had said. She had been praying for somebody to show up for awhile now that would be able to stay with him and watch him most of the time without needing them to pay alot, because they don't have alot of money. Well, I show up only working weekends!

I told her that if I didn't have to pay rent, then the money I make on the weekends would be plenty for me to live off of, and that I would do this for awhile. I don't know how long this is going to go on, but we are only going to take this one day at a time for now. A friend of the old guy is going to come visit him on Monday, and she is willing to stay for 3 weeks! So that is going to help out alot.

I told the Staffing service lady about my living situation and that I could wait awhile before I started working full time. She said that it was no problem at all, and when I was ready to work full time, just leave her a message at the HR office and she would get me into orientation ASAP.

I had been praying for a long time now for God to use me wherever He needed me. I feel like the last 8 years he has used me in situations I never thought I would be in, and certainly no situation I would have picked lol. But when God uses you, it's for His purpose, not ours. The daughter and I had a talk about this and was just amazed at how it all worked out like it did. She was about ready to have a nervous breakdown when I showed up and she is now starting to feel like she can pull back a little bit and let others help out more.

Anyway, now to my book; I am reading a bit of history this time, a book called Constantinople, Capital of Byzantium by Jonathan Harris. I am about halfway through it and it talks about the city's fortification and some of the myths that the leaders fed about the city. One part that I found really interesting was when the muslims were conquering the areas and they were trying to take over Constantinople, the christians were perplexed as to why God was allowing this to happen, thinking they were doing something wrong to have this happen to them. One of the few things that they knew about the muslims was that they considered any kind of statue a form of idolatry. The christians decided that must be the reason why their city was in trouble, so a bunch of them decided to try to get ride of all the statues. Well, there was a HUGE outcry about that because half the christians wanted the statues, while the other half wanted to keep them. Then a wise old monk said that it's not the statues that our worshipped, it's the person behind the statues. Well, that made everyone feel better so they decided not to tear down all the statues.

The people saved their city from the invasion by a weapon called "Greek Fire". It was concocted from a mixture of ingredients that was probably sulfer, pitch, and quicklime, and possibly crude oil because at that time surface deposits were available. This was highly inflammable when it was heated and could be shot onto an enemy ship and the flames could not be put out. It would even burn on water. This demoralized the enemy, esp when it burst from the siphon like thunder and it was fired from the bronze heads of lions and dragons. The Arabs dropped back at that point and the city was saved.