Together forever

Posted on March 10, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

A tragedy in 1959 is today the basis of a strange law in France. Following a major disaster President Charles de Gaulle passed a law that allowed a young woman to marry her fiancé who was one of those killed. Since then a number of posthumous marriages have taken place: like Christelle Demichel who married her fiancé killed in a traffic accident. Standing alone and wearing black with a bouquet of yellow roses, she was married to her lost love. Christelle insists she is not in denial. “My husband is dead. I accept that. I’m not fighting reality or the fact of his death; but we were meant to be married.”
There’s something very moving about stories of lost love, but for people of faith sadness is always tempered by the unshakeable hope that we will meet again, never to part

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God forgives and forgets

Posted on March 10, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

Some years ago, rumors spread that a certain Catholic woman was having visions of Jesus. Her archbishop was skeptical and said to her: ‘The next time you have a vision, I want you to ask Jesus to tell you the sins that I confessed in my last confession.’ Ten days later she told him Jesus had appeared to her again. ‘What did Jesus say?’ the archbishop asked. ‘Your Eminence,’ she said, ‘These are his exact words: he said ‘I don’t remember.’
Well, whether she was telling the truth about those visions or whether they were merely a figment of her imagination, the fact is the actual message she delivered was true; for the Bible records that God says: ‘I am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.’ If we confess our sins to him in sincerity, God forgives and forgets.

Posted in Confession, Forgiveness, God, Self Deception, Sin | Leave a comment

When you get a glimpse of heaven

Posted on March 10, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

Lord Kenneth Clark, who created the famous TV series Civilization, said that once, while visiting a beautiful old church, he had an overwhelming religious experience. ‘My whole being,’ he said, ‘was irradiated by a kind of heavenly joy far more intense than anything I had known before.’ But the ‘gloom of grace,’ as he described it, created a problem. If he allowed himself to be influenced by it, he knew he would have to change. His family might think he had lost his mind, and maybe that intense joy would prove to be an illusion.
So he concluded, ‘I was too deeply embedded in the world to change course.’ And ever after he lived with the memory of what might have been his, and his unwillingness to open himself to it.
The message is: when you get a glimpse of heaven – don’t turn away.

Posted in Heaven, Joy, Rejecting God, Spiritual blessing | Tagged , | Leave a comment

When you get to the top, there’s nothing there

Posted on March 10, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

When Boris Becker was at the top of the tennis world he actually contemplated suicide. He said, ‘I had won Wimbledon twice – once as the youngest player to do so. I was rich. I had all the material possessions I needed …I was like those movie stars and pop stars who commit suicide. They have everything, and yet they are so unhappy. I had no inner peace. I was a puppet on a string.’
He’s not the only one to feel that sense of emptiness. Jack Higgens, author of such successful novels as The Eagle Has Landed, was asked what he would like to have known as a boy. His answer was: ‘That when you get to the top, there’s nothing there.’
They are all examples of what Jesus meant when he said ‘What profit is there if you gain the whole world but lose your soul.’ So ‘Come to me and I will give you rest.’

Posted in Disappointed, emptiness, Faith, Futility, Life, Life's journey, Living Life, Meaninglessness, Success | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Helping us laugh again

Posted on February 26, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

Researchers say that children laugh around four hundred times a day, whereas adults, on average, only laugh fifteen times a day. Why is this? Do we stop laughing because we are old, or do we get old because we stop laughing? There are, of course, different types of laughter: there’s the laughter at someone else’s expense, the laughter in response to something crude, and the laughter that’s just a cover for the emptiness we feel. The Bible says, ‘Like the crackling of thorns under the pot, so is the laughter of fools,’and ‘Even in laughter the heart may ache.’ But it also says ‘A cheerful heart is good medicine.’
It’s interesting to note that one of the constantly recurring statements Jesus made was: ‘Be of good cheer,’ or, as we would say, ‘Cheer up.’ One of the things that faith does for us is to help us laugh again.

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You’re on your own now, Buddy

Posted on February 26, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

They tell me that in America you can buy a St Christopher statue that can be wired up to your car’s odometer, and St Christopher, who is the patron saint of travellers, promises to look after you as you drive – that is until the odometer reaches eighty miles an hour, at which point the statue begins to glow red and a sign lights up that says, ‘You’re on your own now, Buddy.’
Maybe there’s a parable in this for us too. The Bible says that the presence of Jesus in our lives empowers us to overcome those things we often feel ashamed of and sometimes feel powerless over. But if we deliberately put ourselves into situations where those weaknesses are stimulated, there comes a point where we are on our own too.
‘Put on the Lord Jesus,’ the Bible says, ‘And don’t let yourself think about how to gratify the things you know you’ll regret.’

Posted in Sin, St Christopher, Temptation | Tagged | Leave a comment

Not escape, just quiet confidence

Posted on February 26, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

When I was very small the best feeling in the whole world was to lie in bed on a stormy night all tucked up snug and warm, listening to the wind howling outside. Most of us have memories like that. It’s strange that our memories of feeling at peace should have been in the midst of a storm, but maybe that tells us something about what peace really is. We often think that we will find peace by escaping to a place where the environment is always calm; but most of us soon find that boring. What we really need is a place within ourselves where we can withdraw and feel secure even while the storm rages around us.
And that’s what faith is. ‘Come to me all you who are weary and burdened,’ Jesus said. ‘And I will give you rest.’ Peace is not an escape from life, It’s a quiet confidence in the midst of it.

Posted in Confidence, Escape, Peace, Peaceful Sleep, quietness, Spiritual Insight, Stillness, Storms of life | Tagged | Leave a comment

My little red car

Posted on February 26, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

I remember the first time I saw my little red Renault 750, sitting in a used car lot. It was my first car and I fell in love with it. It didn’t go very fast and sounded like a chaff cutter, but I kept on loving it until I went to the Sydney Motor Show and sat inside a brand new Mini-Minor. When I returned to my little red car I hated it and couldn’t wait to get rid of it.
What is it about us that can love something one moment and despise it the next? Whatever it is, it impoverishes our lives, because the only real value of anything is in the pleasure it brings us. Funnily enough, years later I saw a little Renault at a display of classic cars; and I prefered it to all the Minis on display. It makes me think that the Bible is right when it says ‘Our real wealth in life is godliness with contentment.’

Posted in Contentment, Disatisfaction, enjoyment, Envy | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Useless, but beautiful

Posted on February 26, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

The Chinese have a story about a carpenter and his apprentice resting in the shade of a huge, gnarled oak tree. ‘Do you know why this tree is so big and beautiful?’ the carpenter asked. The apprentice shook his head. ‘It’s because it’s useless. If it had been useful someone would have cut it down years ago. But because people thought it was useless it was able to grow to the magnificent tree it is now.’
Well. In a world that tends to judge people only for their economic value, there are many who feel that the world has judged them to be useless and that life has passed them by. But allowed to grow, as God intended them to grow, they become what the Bible says God’s people truly are, ‘Like trees planted by streams of water which yield their fruit in season and whose leaves do not wither.’

Posted in Beauty, God's pleasure, Growth, Judgementalism, Transformation, Useless | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Spotting the one good thing amidst the failures

Posted on February 26, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

Edward Steichen, one of the world’s most renowned photographers, almost gave up on the day he shot his first pictures. At the age of sixteen he bought a camera and took fifty photos. Only one turned out – a portrait of his sister at the piano. Edward’s father thought that was a poor showing. But his mother insisted that the photograph was so beautiful that it more than compensated for forty nine failures. Her encouragement caused him to stick with his new hobby and eventually gave the world one of its greatest photographers. But it had been a close call. What tipped the scales? It was the vision to spot one thing good in the midst of failure.
That is one of the great lessons of life because the supreme value in life is not in how much success we have achieved but in how hard we have tried.

Posted in Accomplishments, Encouragement, Failure, Positive Thoughts, Seeing the possibilities | Tagged , , | Leave a comment