You can be angry, but it doesn’t have to destroy you

Posted on February 13, 2016 by vincentsmithauthor

Medical research has revealed that anger reduces the amount of blood that our hearts pump to our body tissues even more than does fear or mental stress. It is a well accepted fact that angry, cynical people die young. People who score high for hostility on standard tests are four times more likely to die prematurely than those whose scores are low. And yet anger that is suppressed tends to turn inward and manifest itself in depression. So how can we defuse this bomb that ticks away within us?
Abraham Lincoln had an effective technique. He’d write a letter to the person he was angry with, expressing his feelings fully. Then, having got it out, he’d burn the letter and write another one.
I think that’s what the Bible means when it says: ‘Be angry and sin not;’ or to put it a little differently:‘You can be angry, but it doesn’t have to destroy you.’

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Taking ourselves too seriously

Posted on February 13, 2016 by vincentsmithauthor

Human beings have an amazing capacity for taking the noblest ideals and then twisting them to produce the very opposite. Years ago, a large statue of Christ was erected on the border between Argentina and Chile. Called “Christ of the Andes,” the statue symbolizes a pledge between the two countries that, as long as the statue stands, there will be peace between them. But then the Chileans began to protest that they had been slighted — the statue had its back turned to Chile.Fortunately, a Chilean newspaperman saved the day by writing an editorial that said: ‘The people of Argentina need more watching over than the Chileans.’ It soothed the ruffled feelings and gave everyone a good laugh.
I think God probably wishes we’d all take ourselves a little less seriously too.

Posted in humility, Over-sensitivity, Pride | Leave a comment

What we will find in the next world

Posted on February 13, 2016 by vincentsmithauthor

George Ritchie is an American psychiatrist who wrote a book titled ‘Return from Tomorrow.’ It is an account of his own near death experience, and in it he describes many of those elements that we hear from others who have been pronounced clinically dead and who have later revived. The most dramatic was his encounter with a being of light, whom he identifies as Jesus. The most overwhelming part of the encounter was the feeling he had of absolute love emanating from this being, and the clear question coming to him, though not spoken in human words, What have you done with your life?
Like most people who have reported such experiences, George Ritchie’s life was turned right around, and he concludes it all by saying; ‘As for what we will find in the next world what we will find in the next world … I believe that what we’ll discover there depends on how well we get on with the business of loving here.’

Posted in accountability, Afterlife, Death, Heaven, Hell | Tagged | Leave a comment

Intuitive understanding

Posted on January 27, 2016 by vincentsmithauthor

For the past couple of centuries the Western World has tended to judge reality by what can be proved scientifically. Yet increasingly we have come to see that there are all sorts of realities that are not perceived by deductive reasoning, but are perceived intuitively. For example, you could read a learned treatise on the physical, chemical, psychological and sociological factors involved in falling in love, but never understand what falling in love is. But we all have an intuitive understanding that there is such a thing as falling in love. It’s one of those realities we grasp intuitively, not intellectually.
Faith is like that. Faith taps into that deep well of spiritual reality that lies, often hidden, within us all. Faith is the intuitive understanding that those spiritual realities are true and accessible.

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‘With joy in my heart’

Posted on January 27, 2016 by vincentsmithauthor

Alec Guinness described how, one day while walking through London, he felt an irresistible urge to enter a church. He said, ‘With joy in my heart, and in a state of almost sexual excitement, I knelt; caught my breath, and for ten minutes was lost to the world.’ He couldn’t understand why he felt that way, but later realised it was part of his personal journey from atheism to faith, which began when he was playing the lead role in the famous Father Brown movie.
His son, Matthew, was stricken with polio, and Guinness vowed that if he were healed he would never prevent him from becoming a believer. Matthew did recover, but it was Alec Guinness who found faith. Despite his lifelong protestations, deep within he knew God was there. And when he accepted that suddenly everything became clear.

Posted in Atheism, Faith, Joy, Life's journey | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Stepping out

Posted on January 27, 2016 by vincentsmithauthor

An Army chaplain once told me about his first parachute jump. As the aircraft approached the dropping zone he clipped his parachute release to the static line, checked the equipment of the man in front and waited for the green light to come on. He looked around and saw that everyone, like him, was tense and afraid. But then their instructor simply said: “forget what you feel, trust what you’ve been taught.”
Then the green light came on and he stepped out into nothingness. At first there was just the sound of rushing wind, then he felt a tug on his shoulders as his parachute opened and he began to float to the ground. He said: ‘My terror suddenly turned to exhilaration.’
And, that’s what faith is, stepping out beyond our security to where we sense God is calling us to be and, as we take that step, finding that all is well.

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‘Have it your own way’

Posted on January 27, 2016 by vincentsmithauthor

The concept of Hell isn’t popular these days, and yet we see its seeds all around us. C.S Lewis said perceptively that the essence of hell is separation – separation from God and from others. To be totally separated from other creatures, to be wholly and increasingly self-absorbed, makes that self smaller and smaller, and ultimately will result in the person ceasing to be a self. The torture of separation and the terror of ceasing to exist are better seen not as punishments imposed by God, but as the natural and inevitable outcome of choices humans themselves make and attitudes they themselves develop. ‘Ultimately there are only two types of people’ he says; ‘those who say to God “Your will be done”, and those to whom God says, “Have it your own way.” ‘

Posted in God, Hell, Judgement, Separation | Leave a comment

Life is a bridge

Posted on January 22, 2016 by vincentsmithauthor

The early church had a saying: ‘Life is a bridge. You cross over it, but you don’t build your house on it.’ It reminds us that we are travellers through this earthly existence and our true home lies beyond it. As the Book of Hebrews says: ‘Here we have no continuing city, but we seek the city that is to come.’ It’s very easy for us, burdened as we are by the myriad cares and worries of daily life, to forget this, and to see nothing more than the next bill we have to pay or ailment we have to endure or loved one we have to worry about. But I remember being at my sister’s bedside, just before she died, and hearing her daughter say: ‘It feels like the room is full of people,’ and then seeing my sister sit up smiling and waving to people I couldn’t see, but she obviously could. ‘

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Revelling in the years

Posted on January 22, 2016 by vincentsmithauthor

Henry Durbanville, in his book The Best Is Yet To Be, wrote, ‘I feel so sorry for folks who don’t like to grow old…I revel in my years. They enrich me…I would not exchange…the abiding rest of soul, the measure of wisdom I have gained from the sweet and bitter and perplexing experiences of life; nor the confirmed faith I now have in the…love of God, for all the bright and uncertain hopes and tumultuous joys of youth.’ And Robertson McQuilkin summed it up well when he wrote, ‘God planned the strength and beauty of youth to be physical. But the strength and beauty of age is spiritual. We gradually lose the strength and beauty that is temporary so that we’ll be sure to concentrate on the strength and beauty that is forever.’

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The happiness that makes life complete

Posted on January 22, 2016 by vincentsmithauthor

The ancient Greeks used to call the island of Cyprus: ‘the Blessed Isle.’ They considered everything about it to be ideal, its climate, fertility, its beauty, the taste of its wine and so on. They believed Cyprus had everything in it to make life complete and one didn’t need to go anywhere else.
Now, that word blessed is the word Jesus used to describe truly spiritual people. In a world where our greatest longing is for happiness, all we do and achieve never gives it to us; it’s always over the next hill. But what Jesus is saying is that we keep looking in all the wrong places. It’s not out there; it’s in here – within our very selves. Happiness, in its truest sense, is a by-product of healthy spirituality. And when we have that we have a blessedness that will always be there.

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