Be Yourself

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.

-- Oscar Wilde

Things We Desire

The key to success is to focus our conscious mind on things we desire not things we fear.

-- Brian Tracy

One might debate what 'success' means (which isn't offered here). But, the main point, it seems to me, is that it is what we focus on that is important. Reminds me of Philippians 4:8.

To Love At All

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket -- safe, dark, motionless, airless -- it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.

-- C.S. Lewis

Thanks, Randy, for sharing this.

Does God Answer Prayer?

I believe more firmly than ever that He does (answer prayer).  He just doesn't confine His answers to the ways we envision, nor to the precise moments we demand.  ...not to mention that many of our prayers are rather preoccupied by self.

I prayed recently for the opportunity to love someone the way God would. I didn't expect the opportunity He provided...in His answer.

God is always thinking beyond what we pray for...He wants to answer in bigger ways than we tend to imagine.

Shielded

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.

-- 1 Peter 1:3-5

Dead or Dormant?

What is the difference between being dormant and being dead?

Seeing trees this time of year has reminded me that being able to tell the difference is not very easy, at least when looking from the outside. A dormant tree looks an awful lot like a dead tree...in the winter. Generally, the view from the outside may not give you the answer to whether something is dead or not. It will either take a view from the inside (which is a bit hard to do from a tree) or a waiting until another time of the year...like spring.

You can't always tell the state of something, by looking only at the outside of it. You have to allow for the possibility of other factors, like the season.

This seems possible when it comes to people as well. Not unlike water when it's not moving, knowing what is or is not happening for someone may not be fully knowable by simple observation from the outside. Things may look quite dormant, and for a long period of time, but that doesn't mean there is no life there.

So as we struggle with this reality in someone else, or even in ourselves, it is helpful to know that sometimes life is seasonal, including the signs of it. It takes a kind of faith to believe that something is there, even when it doesn't necessarily look like it.

This time of year, I essentially have to trust that the trees in my yard are still alive. I have to believe that this will be more evident when Spring arrives and they again do 'their thing'. So it is with people, a deeper confidence (faith) is helpful when they don't manifest all the signs of life. I have to believe in a Spring that is yet to arrive.

After all, being dormant may be just as necessary in our lives as it is for trees.

Life to Live Over

If I had my life to live over, I would perhaps have more actual troubles but I'd have fewer imaginary ones.

-- Don Herold

Thanks David!

Umpires

Most of us are umpires at heart; we like to call balls and strikes on somebody else.

-- Leo Aikman

Quality of Mercy

When I decide to help someone -- personally, professionally, wherever -- it’s easy to think about what I want to do, even if I'm willing to do a lot. It’s a lot harder, and a lot more important, to think about what that person needs and can accept.

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Mystery of Grace

I do not at all understand the mystery of grace--only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.

-- Anne Lamott

Compassion is Listening

Difficult as it is really to listen to someone in affliction, it is just as difficult for him to know that compassion is listening to him.

-- Simone Weil

True Dependence

True dependence is not simply asking Me to bless what you have decided to do. It is coming to Me with an open mind and heart, inviting Me to plant My desires within you.... Thus begins your journey of profound reliance on Me. It is a faith-walk, taken one step at a time, leaning on Me as much as you need. This is not a path of continual success but of multiple failures. However, each failure is followed by a growth spurt, nourished by increased reliance on Me. Enjoy the blessedness of a victorious life, through deepening your dependence on Me.

-- Sarah Young, Jesus Calling: Enjoying Peace in His Presence

Thanks, Bev, for sharing this with us.

But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.

-- Jude 20,21

Our Relationship with Money

A most fascinating little reflection on the power and role of money in our lives:

I'd been ignoring the task of addressing my ideas about money for years, hiding behind an image of myself as Bohemian, an artist, a spiritual aspirant. Money seemed something too concrete to factor into my flights of fancy. Even as an entrepreneur I never stopped to think much about money. I worried when I wasn't making it and was jubilant when I was...it was a roller coaster.

But it wasn't until an incident this summer illuminated a specific hang up of mine that I began to understand how deep the tentacles of this question of money in our lives runs. 

At first, I had a hard time noticing anything about my relationship to money. So deep were my habits and so ingrained were my views about spending, saving and earning, I was on autopilot most of the time. Even when an insight started to glimmer on the edges of my consciousness, some aspect of my self-preserving ego would erase it or color it over in washed out tones of self-soothing...

Continue Reading

...thanks David for sharing this piece.

Little Things Lead to More

When my brother and I first started out going door to door to our neighbors' homes with our push lawnmower and rake (I was only 9 years old), my dad would always say, "Do more than what they pay you to do and one day they will pay you more than what you do!!"

-- Mark R.

Not Seeing Things Correctly

Our parents were well intentioned but wrong: We can’t be whatever we want to be. We can all achieve amazing things, but we can’t do anything we set our minds to. Genetics, disposition, and luck play a part too.

…

Most of us do everything we can to avoid failure. That's a natural instinct with an unnatural by-product: We start to lose the ability to question our decisions.  And we lose the ability to see our ourselves from another person's point of view. The ability to work with and lead others is compromised when we lose perspective on what it's like to not have all the answers - and what it's like to make mistakes.

-- Jeff Haden

Choosing Strength

Every time you resist temptation, you grow stronger. Every time you choose to avoid areas that offer you temptation, you grow stronger...and create opportunity to gain more strength. When I don't do this, I weaken myself.

I chose for the habit of strength this past weekend.

Every time I make this choice, I gain some strength...every time.

Every time.

Vision, not Fear

Motivation comes from vision, not from fear.

-- Geoffrey James

Loves Flows Like Water

Love is like water. It flows. Sometimes like a flood, sometimes like a trickle, but it flows. It's always moving downward, seeping through the cracks. Even when it looks like it just sits there for long periods of time, it never stops. And, just when you're not so sure that its direction isn't just escaping you, it dumps on you again.  What you do with it can perpetuate the same for others and then again from them to others beyond...and so on and so on...love flows. Never drying up above you, it provides no reason for it to do so below you (or from you, if you like that phrasing better).  You can't out-give love.  It always out-gives you.

At times, we want it to bubble back up our way a bit ('just a little', we say). And, perhaps, you can at times find evidence that it does so.  But, not primarily.  Because it is a flowing thing and it is much bigger in scope and reach than the reverse-ripple we might be tempted to try and create out of it for ourselves.

In the end, there is much more than enough and if we keep ourselves focused on its designs and directions and reaches, we lose pretty quickly our temporary grasps for our little wishes for simple returns.

Love is an unending fountain...that never stops...flowing down over us, through us, and beyond us...like water.

Aggressive Forgiveness

But sin didn’t, and doesn’t, have a chance in competition with the aggressive forgiveness we call grace. When it’s sin versus grace, grace wins hands down. All sin can do is threaten us with death, and that’s the end of it. Grace, because God is putting everything together again through the Messiah, invites us into life—a life that goes on and on and on, world without end.

-- Romans 5:20-21, The Message

Thanks, Jerry, for sharing this with us today.

Self-Control & Habits

People with good self-control avoid temptations and problem situations, rather than battling with them. ...research confirmed that self-control works most effectively by means of controlling habits, rather than by using willpower for direct control of one’s actions in the heat of the moment.

...new evidence suggests that self-control is most effective when it operates through habits. People use their self-control to break bad habits and establish good ones....

Viewed in that perspective, virtue is best achieved when self-control is exerted so as to establish habits of good behavior. Part of the reason is that using willpower to resist temptation is a strenuous, costly business with unreliable results. Habits are far more reliable than that.

-- Roy Baumeister, Can Virtuous Habits Be Cultivated?

Continue Reading this rather fascinating little article.

Over the last few years, I've noticed some strong correlations in my life with regard to habits, so this stuff has captured my attention a bit.  Recently, I've noted these thoughts on 'habits':

Practical Advise on Habits in Our Lives

Habit of Turning, Strength

Habits

Thinking & Feeling

Unlearn

You must unlearn, what you have learned.

-- Yoda

War with your Vices

Be at War with your Vices, at Peace with your Neighbours, and let every New-Year find you a better Man.

-- Benjamin Franklin, 1755 Poor Richard's Almanac, December

The Truth Is That US Taxes Are Relatively Low

Obviously, no one likes paying taxes.

And everyone wants someone else to pay all the taxes.

But it's impossible for a government to provide all the services that the U.S. government is providing now without taxes being even higher than they are today--because we can't run our current budget deficit forever.

So, ultimately, this is a philosophical debate about what services the government should provide.

Continue Reading

Believe It

Luke:  I can’t believe it.
Yoda:  That is why you fail.

Personality

It is hard not to notice that we respond to 'hot' personalities - those that require attention.  ...especially in the short-term.  But, perhaps overall, too.

Our responsiveness may not always be best or what is needed, but we respond.

Like Those

More often than not, man becomes like those he spends the most time with.

Expressing Itself

The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.

-- Galatians 5:6

My wife wrote this on one of our windows...I am so thankful for that now regular reminder.

Little Attention to the Whole

The desire for immediate relief from specific problems has driven Christians and psychiatrists to seek and prescribe quick solutions with little attention paid to the whole person. These forces have led Christian counselors and psychiatrists to ignore or deny the existential dimensions of severe emotional suffering, neglect the life story of the sufferer, uncouple the life story from the Christian story, trivialize the Christian community as a source of healing, and superficially accommodate each other rather than engage in meaningful discourse. Psychiatrists and Christians have, in large part, drugged or denied pain and suffering and de-emphasized the importance of embedding the often-troubled stories of our individual lives within communal life.

-- Dan Blazer M.D., Freud vs. God: How Psychiatry Lost Its Soul & Christianity Lost Its Mind

Letting Them Go

If a litany of naming all things good and beautiful directs us into grace, then a litany of complaints deforms us. I have been cataloging my complaints and I am afraid they are becoming ingrained in my living. But counting faults and keeping score is tiring. And I don’t like the fact that I so willingly spend myself on counting and collecting injuries, when I could find freedom in simply letting them go.

-- Stephanie Smith

Be Not Afraid of Growing Too Slowly

How do you become better tomorrow? Be not afraid of growing too slowly. Be afraid of standing still. Forget your mistakes, but remember what they taught you.

-- Benjamin Franklin

Make Up Their Minds

Most folks are about as happy as 
they make up their minds to be.

-- Abraham Lincoln

Hope for a New Year!

To him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy - to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.

-- Jude 24-25

Someone shared these verses with me recently.  I was a bit stunned at their import...the implications are both wide and deep, worth some time to unpack and consider. Reminds me that what is going on is really about Him, not us, and that it is His zeal that will accomplish it.

I can't think of a better way to express why we can be free to live in hope in a new year...whatever it may bring.