Jesus answered, “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say, ‘He is our God.” John 8:54 (ESV)
Because I heard the phrase, “Winner, winner, Chicken Dinner,” a lot lately, this word geek wanted to know its origins. Turns out it is from the 1970s in the Las Vegas casinos. They had a chicken dinner special on their menu for $1.79. Because the standard bet on Blackjack was $2, if you won the hand, you had enough to buy dinner. The dealers would call out the phrase to congratulation the winning player. I have been thinking a lot about winners lately. Our Country does love winners, and they are all over the television this week. Starting with Maksim Chmerkovskiy and Meryl Davis who won Dancing With the Stars and Josh Kaufman who won the Voice. I haven’t watched either of the shows in years past. This year, because I have been resting more, I caught a few episodes of The Voice when it was audition time, and I would peek at the ending of Dancing with the Stars each week just because I admire Candace Cameron Bure. So, on Monday night, I flipped back and forth between each show, turning off some of the awful singing by “professional artists” or trashy dancing routines. Based upon my limited viewing time, I was surprised by the audience choices on both shows. Had I been paying more attention, I might have been able to pick the winner just as I did on American Idol. I do admit to watching more than once episode of American Idol over the years. Depending on the cast members, some years, I watch more times than others, but I always get caught up in the dream of the kid who has a passion to sing and gets discovered quite by accident. I know it’s not as naïve as that, but the behind the scenes home town stories always get me. And of course, we had our own hometown boy in the running until just the last few weeks. I deduced several weeks ago that it would be Jena and Caleb in the finals and figured it would be the nice boy singing bad music who would win. The fact that Caleb has auditioned several times before made his story even more like Cinderella’s. In this midst of the excitement over the wins by Maksim, Meryl, Josh and Caleb, I had my own excitement this week. Julia’s Story is finally available on Amazon both in print and in Kindle! I was so excited to see the cover on the screen that my first reaction was to download it to my Kindle. Then, of course, I started to second guess myself and worry about what people will think about it. Julia’s Story is very different from Eliza’s Story. Will people like it as well? In the end, it is not really about winning one event or award, but Who gave us the talent and whether we use it to glorify Him. That’s all I really want, though there is a nice place on my mantel for a Pulitzer!
We actually watched some of Idol this year (the last time I did that was the year of Taylor Hicks, Kellie Pickler and Chris Daughtry) and liked Caleb very much. He'll get to sing the National Anthem on the National Memorial Day Concert this Sunday on PBS!
I'm so glad his dream finally came true – just like YOURS! I'm going to order Julia's Story ASAP to join Eliza's Story on my shelf. I loved Julia's Story… and I'm looking forward to the next installment.
Going to get Julia's story right now – LOVED Eliza's as you know.