Finding time for our families needs to become one of our highest priorities, it has for me lately. In many parts of the world there is a move into a downward cycle that we seem powerless to change at least for now. If we are able to recover from this cycle has become a topic on many people’s minds and the resultant issue of security has too. When these things come to the forefront of out minds we immediately think of things like family, church, spiritual works and even specific spiritual texts and translations like NASB Bible and RSV Bibles. When times are good it always seems we fail to remember what is lasting and trade it for the immediate gratification of satisfying our ego urges. It is had to argue against the fact that family is one of the most important things in life although it can take a back seat in the pursuit of our goals. Ironically it can be in the name of the family that we pursue these self appointed goals that steal time away from our family. We will often justify our absence from the family by stating that it is for those we love that we are do the things we do in the name of a better brighter future. I think we can have both but it takes a rearrangement and a giving up of the paradigm that allows us to stroke our egos with our own pursuits. It is obvious by now that I believe this approach is backwards. I do believe there can be times when we may need to be out of balance for a little while, like with businesses or projects that are being built but this has to be guarded against as the killer of relationships. When in a constant state of ego driven decisions make up a life, those things that should be important get way out of balance and our life becomes empty of those things we would consider priceless. Steps are necessary to stop this from happening and we should make time with our family a super high priority. Of course there are exceptions like life and death situations or if ones livelihood is in jeopardy. But even these situations need to be guarded against as they can become justified unnecessarily. A great author, Steven Covey discusses this sort of thing in his timeless book “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” and goes into great detail about dealing with the urgent as opposed to the important and how to change that. It is a major theme in the book and translating that into life is the motif of this article too. I hope you will pick up the book and I recommend you do so immediately. I would even go so far as to also recommend you take a look at the bible (you can find one here: Discount Bibles) as a good source of guidance in this area too. Find the time to do something important and let an urgent matter take its place after the family.

My wife’s birthday is coming up soon and I wanted to do something real nice for her this year as we have had a few rough years in the recent past and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what I could do. The traditional things that one would do just didn’t seem appropriate. She has been so patient as we have gone through several ups and downs and nothing seemed quite right. I mean I could have bought her those cheap bb guns for sale in the paper but that just didn’t seem right. I ask advice from several friends and family but even with their help I was lost for a stellar answer. Then it popped into my head. She had mentioned as we were looking at a magazine how much she liked Sigrid Olsen handbags but even that did not seem like enough. I wanted to do more so here is what I finally came up with. First it was all to be a surprise. Her birthday was coming up on Tuesday and so Saturday was the day I would spring the whole thing on her. I woke her up only after she had slept in since I had turned off the alarm that she had set. I had breakfast all done and served it on a tray to her in bed. Nice little rose on the side to make it look pretty. Her favorites were all there. Next we went for a stroll in the park like she always enjoys while it was still cool and the park was quite. When we got back I had a small gift with a note wrapped for her on the table and it lead her on a hunt around the house with one clue leading her to the next because you see my wife is a big kid she enjoyed the game. Finally when she had went on the treasure hunt for about 5 minutes she arrived at the final hiding place and what did she find? The ad we had seen was neatly folded on top of a box that contained the three Sigrid Olsen handbags pictured in the ad hidden in tissue. It was a hit! Unexpected and exactly what she wanted. The two things that make her the happiest along with a little pampering and adventure.

For several years now I have tried to find out which bible translation was best for me. I have tried both cheap bibles and pricey ones and I feel like I have finally come upon the one that makes the most sense to me. it fits my personality the ideal and it seems to be the one that talks most easily to me and so that I can comprehend. Does that make sense? I hope so. It was a struggle if you really want to know which is best for you because there are lots of things to balance. I mean from a language stand point there will be certain ones that will make the most sense but you also need to study the style of translation and see if it really stays true to what you find most practical in your history. Then too is how long you’ve been studying any sort of bible at all. That will make a large difference in terms of if you can make a judgment at all. Do you’ve any basis to begin from? Let me tell you the ones that I compared first. That will give you some idea how much work I put into this and to what degree I went to in order to make my decision. I first went full force into the living bible. In all its modern language and interpretations. That was just not me. There were several that I found to be truer to what I had grown accustomed to, The King James Bible. That is the one I was really comparing all the others to. How did they compare? Was the language too different? Were the stories too different and in fact did it seem changed in other ways. The ones that I ended up really looking at closely were the NASB Bible (The New American Standard Bible), the RSV Bibles (The Revised Standard Version) and then finally the NRSV Bibles (The New Revised Standard Version). These are all wonderful works and I would not really select to make a distinction for anyone else but for me the NASB Bible is my favorite.

When my son came home from church camp just the other day one of the first things out of his mouth after we heard about the escapades of he and his other 12 year old buddies was the request for a new bible but this time he wanted a cheap bible and maybe a couple of cheap bible covers. He had taken the one we got him for his birthday, an expensive one I might add, to camp and to state the least it had taken a beating and he knew he should probably have been more careful. I think this was his way of heading off me getting upset with him for not being more careful. He’d had a great time but as young teen age boys will often do, he had been careless with his things and in this case it was his bible. The truth is I was happy he went to church camp and I would have gladly bought him one just to go and leave it there but now he knew he’d superior cover his butt so came the request for a new cheap bible with a cover or two so he would not have to take his good one next January to winter camp. You see his bible is important to him and what he has learned I think is that things that are important to you need to be taken care of. They need to be protected and cherished for sure. This translates to many aspects of life and hopefully he will make the mental association to things like relationships, assets, reputation and other valuable things. In reality my son asking for a new cheap RSV Bible was probably the ideal lesson I could have hoped for him to have learned about stuff at his camp. Obviously there were some other lessons that it would be good for him to learn at church camp but as far as lessons about stuff. This was definitely a good one.