We live our lives on two stages

Posted on September 7, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

Using Shakespeare’s famous analogy of life being like an actor on the stage, psychologist Dr Fritz Perls said that we all live our lives on two stages. One is the outward stage; the way we present ourselves and the way the world sees us and we gain its approval. The other is the inward stage; the way we are in our dreams and imagination. Then he said: ‘But the real you is the person who lives on that inward stage.’
Long before Fritz Perls began writing about such things the greatest life teacher who ever lived made the same point. Jesus said: ‘The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.’ And ever since people with spiritual insight have recognised the truth in those words and learned to find themselves by looking to those spiritual yearnings within – that ‘God shaped hole in every human heart.’

Posted in Accomplishments, inner yearning, Kingdom of God, Life, Life's journey, Living Life | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

‘Everyone needs to write their own obituary’

Posted on September 3, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

Most of us live our lives in the tension between our desire to live the good life and our desire to be good people. Nowhere is this tension more obvious than in newspapers – in the advertisements and the obituaries. The advertisements show us how to have the good life – good cars, good clothes, good food, good teeth, good sex. But obituaries never speak about how someone achieved good cars, clothes, food, teeth and sex; they try to explain how the subject was a good person.
Most of us want to be good people and to leave a lasting legacy behind us; but most of us are also tempted to give it a much lower priority than what it takes to achieve the good life.
Alfred Nobel, founder of the Nobel Peace Prize, got it right when, based on his own experience of having read a newspaper report of his death (it was actually his brother who had died), decided he didn’t want to be remembered as the man who made a fortune having invented TNT, the high explosive that brought death to multitudes. He said: ‘everyone needs to write their own obituary while still in mid life.’

Posted in Accomplishments, accountability, Achievement, Death, Life, Life's journey, Life's lessons, Obituaries, re-evaluating life, Reflecting, Reputation | Tagged | Leave a comment

How nothing became everything

Posted on September 3, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

Listening to the more strident members of the current batch of atheist fundamentalists one might easily get the impression that they have a monopoly on intellect, claiming as they do that the whole mystery and wonder of the Cosmos can be explained simply by material phenomena. But, as C.S. Lewis said: ‘Atheism turns out to be too simple.’ Indeed, to my way of thinking, too simple to be credible. Atheism has been described as ‘the belief that there was nothing, and nothing happened to nothing, and then nothing inexplicably exploded for no reason creating everything; and then a bunch of everything wonderfully rearranged itself for no reason whatsoever into self-replicating bits, which then turned into amoeba and eventually ended up as us.’
It all makes perfect sense, doesn’t it!

Posted in creation, Cynicism, Unbelief, Universe | Tagged , | 1 Comment

‘Teach us to number our days’

Posted on August 30, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

Bonnie Weir, a hospice nurse, whose specialist expertise is in caring for patients in the last twelve weeks of life, says that people facing death often develop very deep insights into life. Amongst things people say they wish they’d done, she reports the five most common regrets are: I wish I’d lived life more true to myself than to what others expect of my life. I wish I’d not worked so hard (this was true of every male patient). I wish I’d expressed my real feelings – she reported that many of her patients were tormented by resentments that wouldn’t have there if they hadn’t supressed their feelings to keep the peace. I wish I’d stayed in touch with my friends. And I wish I’d have allowed myself to be happier instead of choosing not to be.
How sad to learn this only when you know you’re about to die. That’s why the Bible says: ‘Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.’

Posted in Death, Life, Life's journey, Life's lessons, Looking ahead, Wisdom | Tagged , | Leave a comment

God loves a cheerful giver

Posted on August 30, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

In the late nineteenth century Scottish missionaries established churches in Ghana that still worship in the same formal way as those dour Scots of yesteryear, except for one thing. Those canny Scots were smart enough to allow one typically African expression into the service. When the offering is taken up the old pedal organ and Scottish psalter are replaced by African drums and a local beat that gets the worshippers out of the pews and dancing down the aisles to present their gifts. One foreign visitor said it was the only time in the service when the people smile.
Maybe we need to take a lesson from those people and stop assuming that giving, rather than being something we do with reluctance, is actually a source of joy. After all, the Bible does say that God loves a cheerful giver.’

Posted in Generosity, Generous spirit, Giving, God | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Knowledge and privilege always bring responsibility

Posted on August 29, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

One aspect of human courts of law that often seems unjust is that ignorance of a law is not deemed to be an excuse for having broken that law. So, for example, someone wrote to a motoring organisation complaining they had been heavily fined for having the numberplate on their caravan positioned too high, even though this was where the manufacturer had put it. Their ignorance of the letter of the law, as well as that of the manufacturer, didn’t make any difference in the court’s judgement.
But one thing that Jesus made quite clear is that God’s judgement will be perfectly just, and will be based on the way we respond to what we know to be truth. Jesus said: To whom much has been given, of them much will be required.’ Knowledge and privilege always bring responsibility.

Posted in accountability, Judgement, Knowledge, Privilege | Tagged | Leave a comment

In the presence of the original

Posted on August 29, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

The NASA museum once hosted a group of blind people to discuss how they could make their exhibits more accessible – particularly the famous aircraft that hang from the ceiling. The director asked if a scale of model of each aircraft that they could touch would be helpful. They thought it was a great idea, but only if it was placed directly under the real thing. What they were saying is that touching the representation of each great aircraft would only touch their hearts and minds if they also knew they were in the presence of the original, which they were unable to see or touch.
That’s why it is that, though we cannot see God, when we do see and touch love we know we are in God’s presence. The Bible says: ‘Noone has seen God. But if we love one another, God dwells deeply within us.’

Posted in Blindness, God, love, Seeing Jesus, Senses, Touching God | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Prepare to meet thy God

Posted on August 28, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

I remember once having nearly been run off the road by a van belonging to a religious organisation, which suddenly cut in front of me. The first thing I noticed, as I nearly smashed into it, were the dramatic words emblazoned across its rear: ‘Prepare to meet thy God.’ Well, that was quite a few years ago, and I doubt you’d see such a vehicle today with those words emblazoned across it, because the concept of Divine Judgement doesn’t go down well in our sophisticated world. And yet the strange thing is that in my conversations with people who reject traditional Christian teaching the recurring theme is: ‘why doesn’t God do something about the evil in the world?’
On the one hand we don’t want to accept the idea of judgement, but on the other we blame God for not doing it.

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‘Not with a bang but with a whimper’

Posted on August 28, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

Do you remember that famous line from T.S. Elliott, ‘And this is how the world ends, not with a bang but with a whimper.’ During the Cold War when the two superpowers were locked in a deadly nuclear arms race I used to hear many sermons about the end of the world and the second coming of Christ. Nowadays humankind’s greatest peril seems to be a peace-time danger, the despoiling of our environment as a result of our mad scramble for ever increasing material wealth. In the 1960s it was preachers who were the prophets of doom. Today, the prophets are more likely to be scientists, and T.S. Elliott’s picture of the end of the world coming in a ‘whimper’ rather than a ‘bang’ seems quite a possibility.
But our hope is still the same: the Coming of Christ and the eternal Kingdom of God.

Posted in End of the World, Environment, Kingdom of God, Nuclear War, Second coming of Christ | Tagged , | Leave a comment

The true joy in life

Posted on August 27, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

Most people equate joy with pleasure. George Bernard Shaw, however, said ‘the true joy in life, is being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one: being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap, and being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.’ And C. S. said: ‘We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition, when infinite joy is offered to us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in the slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.’
Joy is the great life quest, and we rarely find it; because we forget that joy is a thing of the spirit.

Posted in Fulfilment, Joy, Purpose in life | Tagged , | Leave a comment