Preferring prison

Posted on June 27, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

Some years ago Danny Villegas was sentenced to six years in gaol for robbing a bank. However, following his release, he decided he preferred prison life to working for a living. So he held up a credit union and then sat down on a couch waiting for the police to arrive and arrest him. They did and he went back to gaol. Well, some people might see this as an indication of the failure of prisons to act as a deterrent to crime; or perhaps it just says something about Danny Villegas and his attitude to work. But it does remind me of one of the things Jesus said about human nature – that even though light and freedom have come to us, we often prefer to live in darkness and bondage. But Jesus also said: ‘If you hold to my teaching…then you will know the truth, and it’s the truth that will set you free.’

Posted in Bondage, Freedom, Prisoners, Truth | Leave a comment

‘He won’t let me love him when he’s awake.’

Posted on June 27, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

A friend told me about a boy who was the apple of his parents’ eyes. But in his teens he went off the rails, dropped out of school and began hanging around with a bad crowd. Early one morning he staggered into his house completely drunk. His mother slipped out of bed and left her room. The father then followed and found her at her son’s bedside, softly stroking his matted hair as he lay passed out and drunk on the covers of his bed. ‘What are you doing?’ the father asked. She replied: ‘He won’t let me love him when he’s awake.’
That mother stepped into her son’s darkness with a love that was still there even though he didn’t yet love her back. And that’s how it is with God and us. The Bible says: ‘Can a mother forget the child she bore, though she may forget, I will not forget you, says the Lord.’

Posted in Family, God's love, love, Mother's love | 2 Comments

Clothed with kindness

Posted on June 26, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

Researchers from the University of Utah found there’s a price to pay when couples don’t get along. They found that women who buried anger were more likely to succumb to heart disease than wives who were vocal, and that women who were domineering damaged their husbands’ coronary health. A twelve year study of British civil servants yielded similar results. Researchers concluded that those with hostile intimate relationships were much more likely to experience, heart attacks and other heart trouble. So, in this age when we put so much effort into promoting health and wellbeing, we should remember that the most important things are our relationships; and the key to making them healthy is, as the Bible says, to ‘Clothe ourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.’

Posted in Abundant life, Compassion, Gentleness, Healing, humility, Kindness, Patience, relationships | Leave a comment

Pick yourself up, dust yourself down.

Posted on June 26, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

Do you remember that song that Fred Astaire sang to Ginger Rodgers in the old movie, Swingtime? It went like this: ‘Nothing’s impossible I have found, for when my chin is on the ground I pick myself up, dust myself down, and start all over again.’ It was a catchy little song with a good message reminding us that no failure has to be final; you may be down, but that doesn’t mean that you are out. And that’s the great message that Jesus brought to this world. It doesn’t matter how much of a mess we may have made of life; it doesn’t matter how far we’ve drifted from God. If we have the sense to realise it and turn back to God, then He’ll pick us up, dust us down and empower us to start all over again. ‘When anyone becomes united to Christ,’ the Bible says, ‘they become a brand new person inside…A new life has begun.’

Posted in Abundant life, Encouragement, Failure, Faith, God with us, God's love, New Life, Overcoming, Second chance | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Photographing the presence of God

Posted on June 25, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

The famous neurologist Professor Andrew Newberg actually takes photographs of what believers call ‘the presence of God’. He invites people to meditate and pray in a secluded room. Then, when they are most deeply absorbed in their devotions, he injects a tracer that travels to the brain and reveals its activity. These experiments have revealed that there is a small region near the back of the brain that, during intense prayer and meditation, becomes a quiet oasis of inactivity. It produces a feeling of tranquility, and, if the prayer is very intense, a sense of union with the cosmos; a union which believers call the presence of God.
It just confirms what people of faith have always known by experience; that what God says in the scriptures is true: ‘Be still, and know that I am God.’

Posted in Calmness, God, God with us, God's presence, Peace, Prayer, Silence, Tranquility | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Prayers that become a curse

Posted on June 25, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

The ancient Greeks had a story about Aurora the goddess of the dawn, who fell in love with Tithonus, a mortal youth. So Zeus the king of the gods, offered her any gift she might choose for her lover; and she chose that Tithonus might live forever. Unfortunately, she forgot to ask that he might also stay young; and so Tithonus just kept on growing older, and could never die. And so it was that the answer to Aurora’s prayer became a curse rather than a blessing.
There’s a lesson in this for us and the way we pray, too. In our ignorance we can easily ask for things that at the time seem good, but would end up destroying us. That’s why Jesus taught us first and foremost to pray that God’s will be done in our world and in our lives. He then gave us his own example: saying to God: ‘not my will but yours be done.’

Posted in Blessings, Curses, God, Prayer | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

You always leave a scar

Posted on June 24, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

A man once taught his young son to control his violent temper by making him hammer a nail into a wooden fence each time he lost his cool. On the first day the boy hammered thirty seven nails into the fence. But over the weeks he learned to control his rage and the number of nails diminished as he discovered it was easier to hold his temper than to hammer nails. Eventually the day came when he didn’t have to drive one nail into the fence. His Dad then got him to pull one nail out for every day he was able to control his temper. When they were all out he took him to the fence and showed him the holes that were left. ‘Remember,’ he said. ‘When you lose control and say things in anger you always leave a scar, no matter how many times you say you’re sorry.’

Posted in Anger, consequences, scar, Self-control | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Succeeding at something that doesn’t really matter

Posted on June 24, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

A few years ago a woman in North Carolina attempted to set a world record while playing a convenience store video game. After standing in front of the game for fourteen hours and scoring an unprecedented seven and a half million points, she made her fiancée call a television crew to record the moment when she’d achieve ten million points. Unfortunately, while setting up their lights, the camera team accidentally unplugged the game, thus bringing her bid to an untimely end! It was the effort to publicize her achievement that became the agent of her ultimate failure.
If there’s a moral in that story it would have to be the words of an unknown missionary who said: ‘Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at something that doesn’t really matter.’

Posted in Failure, Futility, Life, Meaninglessness, Purpose in life, Success | Leave a comment

Missing the mark

Posted on June 18, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

A few years ago TV viewers in Britain were horrified to see knife thrower Jayde Hanson ‘nick’ the head of his female assistant while attempting to repeat his world record of one hundred and twenty knives thrown in two minutes. Commenting on his missed aim he told a local newspaper that in eleven years of performing he’d only hit his assistant five times. But I doubt she felt much reassured by that.
His momentary lapse reminds me that the original word for sin in the Bible was the Greek word hamartia, which literally meant missing the mark; and that no matter how good we think we are, we all miss the mark of God’s glorious ideal for us. That’s why the Bible says ‘If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves…but if we admit our sins to God, He’ll forgive us and make us clean again.’

Posted in Failure, Forgiveness, God, Mistakes, Sin | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Sparrows don’t worry

Posted on June 18, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

A construction crew building a new road had to knock down trees as it progressed. Their supervisor noticed that one tree had a nest of young birds who couldn’t yet fly, so he marked it not to be bulldozed. A few weeks later he went back and saw that the fledglings were gone. So he had the tree cut down. As it crashed to the ground the nest fell clear, and in it he found a scrap of paper torn from a Sunday school lesson book. On it were these words: ‘Jesus said that not even a sparrow can fall to the ground without God knowing’, and ‘He cares for you.’
Well, that was certainly true for those birds. But Jesus went on to say that we are much more valuable to God than sparrows, and that’s why we shouldn’t ruin our lives with worry.

Posted in Abundant life, Anxiety, Divine Protection, Faith, God with us, God's faithfulness, Trials and testings, Troubles | Leave a comment