Feelings can change when actions do

Posted on November 2, 2014 by vincentsmithauthor

George Crane tells of a woman who came to him for marriage counselling. She was very bitter about her husband and wanted to divorce him in a way that would hurt him like he’d hurt her. So George, craftily, suggested she shouldn’t do anything immediately, but rather act lovingly over the next couple of months, and then drop the bombshell by serving him the divorce papers. Well she loved that idea.
Three months later he phoned to see how she was doing and if she’d served the divorce papers yet. “Oh, I could never do that,” she replied. “I never realized how much I loved him until I started acting like it; and I never realized how considerate he could be to me because of it”.
Most of us let our feelings dictate our actions. But it’s amazing how feelings can change for the better when our actions do.

Posted in Actions, Acts of Kindness, Feelings, Revenge | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Worship in human form

Posted on November 2, 2014 by vincentsmithauthor

There’s great symbolism in the traditional designs of places of worship. Hindu temples are built in the form of a man. The outer court represents the human body, the inner court the mind, and the shrine room the soul; teaching us to move within ourselves to find God. Moslem mosques are also built in the form of a man. The central dome is the head and the minarets are the hands raised in prayer; teaching us to come to God through submission. Buddhist temples are built in the form of a man meditating: legs crossed and the head held straight; representing the way of inner withdrawal from the world.
The traditional Christian church is also built in the form of a man – a man stretched out upon a cross; and herein lies the difference. Jesus does not call us to find our way to God. He says, “I am the way…”

Posted in Cross, God, Places of Worship, Way to God, Worship | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Paradise Lost for ten pounds

Posted on November 2, 2014 by vincentsmithauthor

The poet John Milton sold the copyright of Paradise Lost to a London publisher for five pounds, plus another five for subsequent editions – a grand total of ten pounds for one of the greatest works in the English language. After his death, his widow Elizabeth sold all remaining rights for eight pounds to the publisher, who became perpetual copyright owner. She, like so many today, knew the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
It’s hard to imagine someone selling something of such great value for so little. As Tom Paine said, ‘What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.’ It reminds me of those confronting words Jesus spoke to those who rarely think about the spiritual dimension of life: ‘What is a person prepared to give in exchange for their soul?’ For some of us it’s not very much at all.

Posted in Cost, selling our souls, Value, Wasted Opportunity | Tagged , | Leave a comment

God shaped holes in the unlikeliest hearts

Posted on November 1, 2014 by vincentsmithauthor

When Svetlana Stalin, daughter of Joseph Stalin, history’s greatest mass murderer and leader of the world’s first atheistic state, defected to the West, she said: ‘I found it impossible to exist without God in one’s heart. I came to that conclusion myself, without anybody’s help or preaching. That was a great change because since that moment the main dogmas of Communism lost their significance for me.’
Similarly, near the end of his life, Jean-Paul Sartre, the famous atheistic philosopher also had a change of heart. He said: “I do not feel that I am the product of chance, a speck of dust in the universe, but someone who was expected, prepared, prefigured. In short, a being whom only a Creator could put here…’
As the great Pascal said: ‘There’s a God shaped hole in every human heart.’

Posted in Agnosticism, Atheism, Conversion, Faith, Fingerprints of God, Futility, God, God shaped holes, God with us | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Numbering our days

Posted on November 1, 2014 by vincentsmithauthor

Does the way you spend your life actually match your life priorities? Someone worked out that in a typical life span of seventy years we spend twenty three years sleeping, sixteen years working, eight years watching television, six years eating, six years travelling, four and a half years in leisure pursuits, four years being ill and two years dressing. All that comes to sixty nine and a half years, which only leaves six months for anything else. Now if those figures really are accurate they show that our life priorities may not always be reflected in the way we actually spend our time. Despite our best intentions the priorities we know to be vital to a good life somehow fail to get carried out in daily living.
That’s why the Bible says ‘Teach us to number our days aright that we may gain a heart of wisdom.’

Posted in Life, Life's journey, Priorities, Wisdom | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

They is me

Posted on November 1, 2014 by vincentsmithauthor

Andrew Wilson, who holds the patent on fourteen different products, decided some time ago that he needed something else that was uniquely his. So he changed his name to ‘They’. He said he did it to have a little fun and confuse people who would phone and ask if ‘They’ was there. He also saw it as an opportunity to take credit for all those things people refer to when they say ‘they did this’ or ‘they say that.’’ Who is this ‘they’ everyone talks about? He asked. ‘They accomplish such great things, so now the world will think they is me.’
Well, that may be OK for Andrew Wilson, but I don’t want to take the credit for what other people have done, nor the blame. I remember only too well that the Bible says: ‘Eventually, were all going to end up kneeling side by side to give account of ourselves – to God.’

Posted in Judgement, Life's journey, re-evaluating life | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

We are like children in a library

Posted on November 1, 2014 by vincentsmithauthor

In the light of the controversy about whether intelligent people can really believe that God and science can co-exist, it is interesting to note that Albert Einstein, probably the greatest scientific mind of all time, once wrote: ‘I’m not an atheist and I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangements of the books, but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God.’ And it seems that way to me, too.

Posted in Agnosticism, Awareness, Deism, Faith, humility, Intelligence behind the Universe, Life, Searching | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Each answer leads to new questions

Posted on November 1, 2014 by vincentsmithauthor

It’s become common to hear people ridicule belief in God as superstition, out of place in an age of science. And yet the idea that the Universe is merely the result an infinite series of mathematically unbelievable accidents is just as much an act of faith. Scientific evidence can only take us so far in our desire to discover the reason behind our existence because it is always incomplete. Doctor Werner Von Braun, the famous physicist responsible for putting man on the Moon summed it up very well when he said that for every answer science discovers, four new questions open up. It’s intellectual arrogance indeed to assume that the answer to the biggest question of all, not just how it all happened but why it happened, can fit neatly into the tiny confines of current human knowledge.

Posted in Accidents, Atheism, Bigotry, Faith | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

One peg is all it needs

Posted on October 23, 2014 by vincentsmithauthor

There’s a story from Haiti about a man who wanted to sell his house but only got one offer for it, which was much less than he wanted. So he agreed on a purchase price of one thousand dollars, but with one stipulation: the seller would retain ownership of one small nail protruding from the door. After several years, the original owner wanted the house back, but the new owner was unwilling to sell. So the first owner found the carcass of a dead dog, and hung it from the single nail he still owned. Soon the house became unlivable, and the family was forced to sell the house to the owner of the nail. This story is a good illustration of what happens to a person who wants to be spiritually renewed but still leaves a peg available for their old way of life to hang its garbage on. Eventually, the old owner will be back.

Posted in Backsliding, Devil, Resisting the Devil, Sin | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Stunted growth

Posted on October 23, 2014 by vincentsmithauthor

It was the Japanese who first learned how to grow the miniature bonsai tree. When it first emerges as a sapling, the owner pulls it out of the soil, ties off its tap root and some of its feeder roots and then replants it. This stunts its growth by limiting the roots’ ability to grow deep and take in enough of the soils nutrients for a normal growth. The bonsai tree is a good illustration of the reason why many of us feel so spiritually bereft. The tap root of our spirituality got tied off long ago when we stopped making prayer and worship part of life. We thought those things didn’t matter, and now we wonder why we feel so spiritually stunted. But the good news is that, unlike the bonsai tree, that process can be reversed. ‘Whoever is thirsty,” Jesus said, “Let them come…they shall be like trees planted by the water.’

Posted in Growth, Spiritual growth, Stunted growth | Tagged , | Leave a comment