Revelations from a ‘worry table’

Posted on March 21, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

One night a man whose wife lived in fear of burglars heard a noise in the house and phoned the police, who responded and actually caught a burglar downstairs. Before they took him away the man said ‘I want you to take him upstairs. My wife’s been waiting ten years to meet him.’
It reminds me of the woman who realized that worry was ruining her life, so she made a “worry table” and discovered that 40% of her worries will never happen; 30% were about things that can’t be changed; 12% were about other people’s criticism – mostly untrue, 10% were about her health, which was getting worse because of worry; and only 8% was related to real problems.
The only effective antidote to worry is faith – the sort that says: ‘my life is in God’s hands, and there’s nothing we can’t handle together.’

Posted in Anxiety, Confidence, Faith, Fear, God, God with us, God's faithfulness, Worry | Leave a comment

Synchronicity

Posted on March 21, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

Have you ever found yourself thinking about someone you haven’t talked to for ages and then received a phone call from that very person? We often dismiss such things as coincidences, but are they? Dr Deepak Chopra, a world authority in mind-body medicine, calls this synchronicity – the interconnection and interdependence of everything in the Universe. He says, ‘Our existence is a marvel of coincidence. Physicists point out that after the “Big Bang”, the ratio of particles was precisely what was necessary to create the material world. All the factors for the creation of biological organisms required more than coincidence. The more we pay attention to nature the more we learn that synchronicity is the organising principle of the Universe.’
And behind the organizing principle is the organizer, God.

Posted in Coincidence, God, Synchronicity, Universe | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Succeeding at things that don’t really matter

Posted on March 21, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

Time magazine once did a famous with George Harrison, one of the Beatles. Speaking about their meteoric rise to fame George said: ‘At first we all thought we wanted the fame. After a bit we realized that fame wasn’t really what we were after at all, just the fruits of it. After the initial excitement and thrill had worn off, I, for one, became depressed. Is this all we have to look forward to in life? Being chased around by a crowd of hooting lunatics from one crappy hotel room to the next?’
George, who was probably the most spiritually sensitive member of the Beatles, instinctively recognized that we were created for something bigger than success. A very wise person put it this way; ‘Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at something that doesn’t really matter.’

Posted in Accomplishments, Ambition, Disappointed, Disatisfaction, fame, Futility, Life, Success | 2 Comments

It’s not enough just to observe

Posted on March 20, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

Some years ago Photojournalist Kevin Carter won a Pulitzer Prize with a picture of a starving Sudanese child crawling toward a feeding center while a vulture stared at him. That image drew international attention to both Sudan’s suffering and to Kevin Carter’s career. But soon after people wanted to know what had happened to the child and what had he done to help? Carter had to admit that after spending twenty minutes framing the shot, he had simply walked away. Two months later, Kevin took his own life. His last note said, ‘The pain of life overrides the joy to the point that joy does not exist.’
I wonder if he would have felt different if he had done something to help ease the pain of that child, not just photographed it. Jesus said ‘whatever you do for the least of my people, you do for me.’ It’s not enough just to observe.

Posted in Compassion, Indifference, Pain, Suffering, Sympathy and Support | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

When the fog disappears the truth appears

Posted on March 20, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

It’s said that the outcome of the epic Battle of Waterloo was communicated by a system of flashing lights in church steeples, stretching from Waterloo to Calais and across the English Channel to Dover and on to London. The message sent was ‘Wellington defeated Napoleon.’ However, somewhere along that chain a fog obscured the final word; and so the message that got through read: ‘Wellington defeated.’ It was some hours later that people in England got the complete message and learned of one of history’s greatest victories.
It reminds me that the message of Easter initially seemed to indicate that goodness had been defeated. But when the fog disappeared and people realised Jesus had risen from the dead, the world learned once and for all that faith is stronger than unbelief, hope is greater than despair, love is more powerful than hate and life outlasts death

Posted in Communication, Death, Defeated, Despair, Faith, Jesus, Life, Resurrection, Victory | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

All sunlight makes a desert

Posted on March 20, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

There’s an old Arab proverb that says: ‘All sunlight makes a desert.’ Most of us love the sunshine and find more than a day of rain and overcast skies quite depressing. But when the rain doesn’t come, the sunshine becomes a curse. Sir Alfred Elgar was once asked to listen to a girl sing. She had a gorgeous voice and her technique was faultless. But to Elgar she just missed greatness. His judgement was: ‘She will be great – when something happens to break her heart.’
The universal human experience is that sorrow teaches us what we would never otherwise know. It is in sorrow that we learn what things really matter in life, and what do not. We can never really find healing until we have felt and accepted sorrow. That’s why Jesus said: ‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.’

Posted in Endurance, Faith, Life, Life's journey, Living Life, Tested, Trials and testings, tribulation and trouble | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Losing one’s perspective

Posted on March 20, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

One stifling summer day in San Antonio, Texas, a baby was accidentally locked in a parked car. The mother and the aunt ran around the car in near hysteria, while a neighbour tried to unlock the door with a clothes hanger. To add to their distress the screaming child began to turn purple and foam from the mouth. Fortunately, Fred Arriola, a tow-truck driver, arrived on the scene, grabbed a hammer and smashed a side window, freeing the baby just in time. Now you’d expect he’d get hero treatment from the two women. Not so. The child’s mother actually attacked him for breaking the car window.
It’s so easy to lose our sense of perspective and forget there are some things you can replace and others that are irreplaceable. Knowing the difference is one of life’s most important lessons.

Posted in Gratitude, Ingratitude, Life, Life's journey, Perspective | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The world on our shoulders

Posted on March 20, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

Bruce Larsen was for many years a counsellor in New York. Sometimes he would take over-stressed clients to the RCA Building to see the famous statue of Atlas holding the world upon his shoulders, barely able to stand under this burden. ‘Now that’s one way to live,’ Bruce would tell them. ‘Or you can try this.’ Then he would take them across the street to Saint Patrick’s Cathedral to see the statue of the boy Jesus who, with no effort, is holding the world in one hand.
The message was clear: we can try to carry the world on our shoulders, or we can do what the Bible says: ‘Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.’ It’s all about making a conscious decision to put our lives in God’s hands, living the way we believe he wants us to live and leaving the outcomes to him.

Posted in Atlas, Faith, God, God in us, God with us, God's faithfulness, Sleeplessness, Storms of life, Strength, Stress filled life | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth

Posted on March 20, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

A little boy once told me that the word ‘Bible’ stands for Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth – B.I.B.L.E. I thought that was a pretty good insight coming from a child. In fact it’s not all that different from something the Apostle Paul said about the Bible: ‘Everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures, we might have hope.’
I remember, in the days when I first became aware of a spiritual emptiness within me and was starting to look for some deeper meaning to life, there was a copy of the Bible in a glass frame on my local railway station. Below it were written the words, ‘Read yourself rich.’ And I did. I’ve been being enriched by it ever since; The Maker’s Manual – my Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth.

Posted in Bible, Enrichment, Scriptures, Spiritual comfort, Spiritual growth, Spiritual Insight | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

We were created to believe

Posted on March 14, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

A century ago many people believed that human enlightenment would eventually banish religious belief. But it hasn’t happened, and this has caused some researchers, like Bruce Hood, professor of developmental psychology at Bristol University, to think that belief in God is actually hard-wired into our brains and may actually be part of the evolutionary process. His work is supported by other researchers who have found evidence linking religious feelings and experience to particular regions of the brain.
As long as human culture has existed, some form of belief in a divine presence has been central to it. Even Stalin and Mao Tse Tung couldn’t destroy it. Why is that? Well, I think nothing says it better than those words from the Bible, ‘God has set eternity in our hearts.’ We were created to believe.

Posted in Agnosticism, Atheism, Believing, Eternity, Faith, God, Religion | Tagged , | 6 Comments