‘Bless those who curse you’

Posted on November 12, 2016 by vincentsmithauthor

As a teenager Lizzie Velasquez, horrified, watched a YouTube video titled ‘World’s Ugliest Woman,’ including comments that said: ‘What a monster’ and ‘Why didn’t her parents just abort her.’ The video was about her. Lizzie was born with a condition that meant she could not gain weight. As she grew her looks became more grotesque. Throughout her life she’d been subject to bullying, but to become the subject of a hate video was heartbreaking. So she responded by producing her own YouTube videos, urging forgiveness and understanding of those who bully and persecute others. Her videos have been viewed more than eleven million times and Lizzie has become internationally renowned. Her inspiration came from the words of Jesus who said: ‘Bless those who curse you and pray for those who mistreat you.’

Posted in Blessings, Forgiveness, Grace, Mercy | Leave a comment

‘Child who takes the anger away.’

Posted on November 12, 2016 by vincentsmithauthor

There’s a Nigerian woman, who is now a doctor at a famous American hospital, whose African name means ‘Child who takes the anger away.’ The reason she was given this name, she said was that her parents had been forbidden by their parents to marry each other; and when they went ahead and did marry they were ostracized by both families. But then her mother became pregnant, and when the grandparents held her in their arms for the first time, the walls of hostility came down. She became the one who swept the anger away. ‘That’s why my parents gave me this name,’ she said. It reminds me that the Bible says that Jesus came into this world to bring reconciliation between people and God, and each other. It also reminds me that we are now called to do the same.

Posted in Peacemakers, Reconciliation | Leave a comment

Unconquerable hope

Posted on November 11, 2016 by vincentsmithauthor

Booth Tucker was a Salvation Army officer in Chicago. One evening he preached a sermon about the sympathy of Jesus. Afterwards a man said to him, ‘If your wife had just died, like mine has, and your babies were crying for their mother, you wouldn’t be saying what you just said.’
Tragically, a few days later, Tucker’s wife was killed in a train accident. Her funeral was held in that same Salvation Army citadel. Speaking at the service Booth Tucker said: ‘The other day a man told me I wouldn’t speak of the sympathy of Jesus if my wife had just died. If that man is here, I want to tell him that Christ is sufficient. My heart is broken, but it has a song put there by Jesus. He still speaks comfort to me today.’
Unconquerable hope is the very heart of Christian faith. ‘In my father’s house are many rooms,’ Jesus said. ‘I go to prepare a place for you, that where I am, there you shall be also.’

Posted in Death, Despair, Faith, God with us, Grace, Heaven, Hope, Hope of Glory | Leave a comment

Missing what our hearts want most.

Posted on November 11, 2016 by vincentsmithauthor

Tennessee Williams wrote a story about a shy young man who inherited a bookstore and married his sweetheart. But she wanted more. She had a fine singing voice and left him to follow a career on the stage. At their parting, he gave her a key to the front door and said: ‘One day you’ll want to come back, and I’ll be waiting.’ Then, to escape the pain, he immersed himself in his books while he waited for her to return.
Fifteen years later she did, but he didn’t recognise her. She said she was looking for the book about the ambitious wife who left her husband to seek a career, but could never let go of the key he gave her.
‘Don’t know it,’ he said. ‘Sound’s like something from Tolstoy.’
She dropped the key and fled, and he turned back to his books.
It’s so easy to become distracted by the routines of life that we miss what our hearts want most.

Posted in Disappointed, Disatisfaction, Distraction, Life, Life's journey, Life's lessons | Leave a comment

One should never complain about something that tells us the truth

Posted on November 11, 2016 by vincentsmithauthor

I heard about a man who lived on Long Island, who achieved a lifelong ambition by purchasing a very fine barometer. But he was extremely disappointed to find that the needle seemed to be stuck, pointing to the sector marked ‘hurricane.’ After shaking the barometer vigorously, with no change, he sat down and wrote a scorching letter to the store where he’d purchased it and mailed the letter next morning on his way to a meeting in New York. That evening he returned home to find not only the barometer missing, but his house also. Long Island that day had been ravaged by hurricane force winds.
One should never complain about something that tells us the truth – even when we don’t like what it says. As Jesus said: ‘all who reject … my message will be judged by the truth I have spoken.’

Posted in Life, Life's journey, Life's lessons, Truth, Wisdom | Leave a comment

The real test of spiritual vitality

Posted on November 9, 2016 by vincentsmithauthor

Many of us can remember moments that can only be described as mountain top experiences. In comparison, ordinary life seems so mundane, and we wish we knew how to manufacture whatever it is that would make us feel that way again. Henry Drummond, the Scottish theologian, got it right when he said, ‘God does not make the mountains in order to be inhabited and God does not make the mountain tops for us to live on. We only ascend to the heights to catch a broader vision of the earth below. But we don’t tarry there. The streams begin in the uplands, but these streams descend quickly to gladden the valleys below.’
So it is in our spiritual life. The real test of spiritual vitality is not how good we felt when we were on a high, but how well we integrate it to the reality of life in the valley.

Posted in Spiritual blessing, Spiritual discernment, Spiritual growth, Spiritual Insight, Spirituality | Leave a comment

Handfuls of grace

Posted on November 9, 2016 by vincentsmithauthor

When I was a small boy there was a shop that would sell kids a handful of lollies for a penny. The shop was owned by a married couple, and of the two the husband was by far the most generous. So we would wait until we knew he was behind the counter before we’d call in to get our pennyworth of lollies. But we’d tell him that our hands were dirty and we didn’t want to pass germs on to other customers, so we’d ask him to grab a handful for us. We thought we were pretty smart because his handful would always be bigger than ours; but I think he knew exactly what we were up to.
However, it does remind me of what the Bible says about the generosity of God, whose handfuls of grace to us are so much more than our handfuls of faith could ever hold. What we need to do is not be afraid to ask.

Posted in God's faithfulness, God's pleasure, Grace, Prayer | Leave a comment

Politicians still object to churches speaking out

Posted on November 9, 2016 by vincentsmithauthor

Albert Einstein described how he’d slowly watched his homeland give in to Adolf Hitler and wondered if any of the great German institutions would stand up and oppose Him. He said, ‘I expected the Universities to oppose Nazism. Instead they embraced it. I hoped for the press to denounce it, but instead they propagated its teachings. One by one the leaders and institutions which should have opposed the Nazi philosophy bowed meekly to its authority. Only one institution met it with vigorous opposition and that was the Christian Church.’ Einstein went on to say, ‘That which I once despised, I now love with a passion I cannot describe.’ Politicians still object to churches speaking out; but when the issues are those of good and evil, justice and injustice; if the Church doesn’t take a stand, who will?

Posted in Courage, Speaking the truth, Truth | Leave a comment

Moments of euphoric forgetfulness

Posted on November 9, 2016 by vincentsmithauthor

Robert Franks, author of the best seller Luxury Fever: Why Money Fails to Satisfy in an Era of Excess, claims that what we sometimes call ‘retail therapy’ doesn’t work. Decades of rapidly increasing affluence and the ‘shop til you drop’ mentality has not made people any happier. We have convinced ourselves that the good life comes through accumulation; but experience teaches that it doesn’t. The fact is people are never happy when they are dwelling on themselves. All the research into happiness shows the opposite to be true. In other words, happiness comes when we lose ourselves. In those moments of euphoric forgetfulness, when we are no longer dwelling upon ourselves, we find what we can never grasp when we are consciously trying to do so.

Posted in Happiness, Materialism, Selfishness, Unselfishness | Leave a comment

Flashbacks

Posted on October 19, 2016 by vincentsmithauthor

Some years ago I had a flashback memory that upset me deeply. There was a boy in my primary school class from a very poor family. He had no friends. One Friday we were allowed to bring a toy to school, and I brought an extra toy car and gave it to him. I still remember the delight in his eyes when I gave it to him and the way he had his head down on the desk looking at it as he pushed it up and down.
He was playing with it when my friend who sat next to me told me I should have given that car to him. ‘He’s got a book,’ my friend said, pointing to a very dog-eared publication on his desk. So, under the weight of peer pressure, I took the toy car back and gave it to my friend.
My mind must have suppressed that memory because I felt so bad about it, and 40 years later, when I had the flashback, all I could see was the pain in that kid’s eyes, and I knew I couldn’t go back and change it.
It speaks to me of a deep spiritual reality: that left unconfessed the consequences of how we treat people in this life are things we’ll carry into eternity.

Posted in Flashbacks, Guilt, Regret, Remembering the past | Leave a comment