What does it really mean to thirst and what is the deeper significance of Living Water as spoken of in the Bible? Last week, my friend Cindy posted about Living Water on her blog. It got me thinking about the deeper meaning of God's Word. A while back my daughter sent me some audio files of Ray Vander Laan who had spent time in Israel learning about the culture of the Jewish people. He talks about how not knowing the culture of the Jewish people and the times the Bible was written in can dull our understanding of the deeper meanings of God's Word, for example, Living Water. My parents have lived here in the ARIDzona desert for about 12...
On this day in 1998, former President Clinton dabbled in semantics during the Grand Jury hearings to clarify his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. He said, "It depends on what the meaning of 'is' is." Well, someone made this day one of those national silly holidays. What we are supposed to do on this day, I don't know, but it got me thinking about how difficult it is to describe certain words. How do we define the word is? Think about it? You can't even define the word without using the word itself. Is is a state of being. It is a form of the verb to be. According to Merriam Webster, is is defined as, "present 3d singular of be,...
I end our first week of Effective Communication Month with a real life spam funny. This is an actual email I received last week. Notice how "realistic" it looks? ROFL This one's pretty funny and, even though I've never had any encounters with the FBI, I can tell this is not something I need to respond to. What's wrong with this picture? How can you tell this spammer isn't really the FBI? Here are a few big red flags: 1. The subject line says, "Email from FBI." I've never received an email from the FBI, but I don't think my first contact with the FBI would be an email that said, "Email from FBI." 2. The From field says "FBI...
Have you subscribed to Communication FUNdamentals’ RSS Feed? Don’t miss a post! x Later on, I'll share about the humor (and problems) that comes from ineffective communication, but for now Communication FUNdamentals Week continues with the humor that used on purpose. Humor can be used to creatively express yourself in order to entertain and amuse. I posted this poem I wrote on the Art of Eloquence Facebook fan page last week and it was met with a goodly amount of comments from folks who "felt my pain." X x x X Exerciser's Lament The scale says more; my clothes, they tore. I’m often winded at the store. Though I’m not sure and it’s a bore Now exercise is my new...
Have you subscribed to Communication FUNdamentals’ RSS Feed? Don’t miss a post! x Last week I shared about speaking up to praise and support and lift others up. This week, I'd like to share a bit on just the opposite: when to keep silent. Today I'm going to talk about when it's best to keep silent and on Wednesday, I'll talk about just how we can accomplish this. The Lord tells us that there is a time to speak up and a time to keep silent: "A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;" -Ecclesiastes 3:7 When are those times? * When you should be listening * When you...
