Are you suffering from the Winter Blues...

it seems that many people are this week. I think it has something to do with Ground Hog day...it makes us focus on just how much time we still have of cold or snowy weather. I have been pretty good this year. I don't know why...I think perhaps it is because we are in our last winter of school and I don't want to waste a moment of these now fleeting days. I recently bought a copy of The Message...I have never read it...but thought it would be a nice companion to my daily readings. Yesterday I ran across this verse. It was so beautifully written that I thought I would share it with you just in case you were feeling like it were just another ordinary day...for me reading this I felt renewed and refreshed...I hope that you find it as soothing as a warm summer breeze.

So here is what I want you to do, God helping you. Take your everyday ordinary life - your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-informed maturity in you.
Romans 12:1-2
(The Message Remix 2.0)