Tag: love

Categories
Healing Life Spirituality

Why Can’t We Receive Our Blessings?

What keeps a person from
receiving a gift,
a very precious
and significant gift?

Given the chance to accept such a gift,

a brand new car perhaps

a beautiful house and lot

a precious jewel,

how many among us would refuse

something totally for free?

Following are some of the things I thought would prevent us from receiving the blessings/ gifts the good Lord has meant us all to receive:

1. Hostility/ doubt towards the giver

It doesn’t matter sometimes how beautiful or precious a gift is as long as we do not approve of the giver.  Who would ever receiver a gift from someone she doesn’t trust?  From someone with a vested interest perhaps?  From someone scary?  From a monster?

 We are unable to receive many gifts because we do not approve of the giver.

2. Feeling of unworthiness

Even if we believe in the giver, we oftentimes refuse our gifts because we do not believer ourselves worthy of them.  We think we do not deserve a new car because we have not studied well, we do not deserve to be forgiven because we have been so bad in the past.

But have you ever considered what the giver is giving the gift for?  Maybe it has nothing to do after all with what we did or not.  Maybe it is being given just because the giver would be happy to see us receive the blessing.  Maybe it is because of his generosity.  Maybe it is because of his unconditional love.

3. So much focus on other things
as not to see what is being given

How do you receive a gift you do not even notice?  If we are so busy doing something else, talking to this and that, taking care of this and that, worrying, fretting, anxiously thinking of our fears, would we ever have the time to even think someone’s waiting for us, intending to give us something beautiful?

4.  lack of confidence
to be able to use the gift

If we do not know how to operate a personal computer, having not even a slight interest in learning to do so, would it matte at all that someone’s giving us a top of the line PC, complete with accessories, software and technical assistance? 

If we think we’d have no use nor skill for something, we may refuse something being given us.

5. ignorance on the nature and worth
of what is being given

Our ignorance on the nature of the gift being given us hinders us from receiving it open arms.  Instead of gratitude, we have doubt.  Instead of excitement, we have apathy and we care not whether we receive the blessing or not at all.

6.  ignorance of one’s needs
that can be fully satisfied
by the gift

If we do not know our selves and our needs, we may not be aware of what good the blessing before us is going to give us.  An abundant feast may have been set before our eyes, yet if we do not even know we’re hungry, it wouldn’t satisfy us a bit.  We may even look for other things we think we need.

7.  comparing one’s gift to the
gift given to others

How many times have we refused our blessings because we deem it lesser than the gifts we saw given to other people?  Our blessings may be the best for us, yet oftentimes, we look at bigger packages given to another.  We know not that inside the small package is a precious jewel waiting to be revealed if only we’d have opened our hands to receive it rather than whine about how small it is compared to what our neighbors have received.

Have you found your blessings yet?  Have you prayed and received not the answer?  Reflect for a moment and consider, you may have refused the very blessings God has placed before you all the while.



This article was written by Jocelyn Soriano at ITAKEOFFTHEMASK.COM

You are free to redistribute this article as long as proper attribution is given to the author and a link back to this site is provided. For more free stuff and blog ideas, visit ITAKEOFFTHEMASK.COM

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Best Life Quotes

The Secret to Life – quote

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Herein is the secret to the fullness of life – that one be born again, and again, and again…  🙂 – www.itakeoffthemask.com

Categories
Healing Life Spirituality

It’s such a hard work to rest!

It used to be so easy to rest, back in those days when “recess” was our favorite subject in school, or when Friday was our favorite day of the week because we’d finally have a hard-earned weekend to indulge in a lazy Saturday afternoon.

Yet have you noticed how many people today find no more satisfaction in the simplest activity of all?  We get anxious with our vacant hours and we try to fill our days with as much activity as we can just so we can avoid that time when we have nothing to do but be with ourselves.

I recently had colds and it necessitated a leave from work as well as a leave from the many activities I enjoy, including writing.  How I prayed that it be over, how I desired to get back to my normal routine.  But the body it seems, knows when to go on and when to take a pause, when to wake up, and when to get some time to sleep.  It’s the rhythm of life, the ebb and flow, the natural course of nature that keeps everything in balance, and that makes everything fresh and renewed.

But why the unnatural response from many of us?  Why the difficulty in surrendering to rest?

1.   We’ve lost our ability to wait.

The modern times have provided us with so many tools and gadgets we need that make our life easier.  It has enabled us to do things in an INSTANT, in a single click of a button.  We do things real FAST! 

Rest is waiting.  It is downtime, a healing time both for the body and the spirit.  We just couldn’t accept the fact that we are not after all as perfect and as powerful as we thought we could be, that we can be on the go 24/7 much as we wanted to.

2.  We’ve lost our ability to trust.

Rest and healing is doing nothing necessarily active on our part, but trusting that our body knows what it is doing to repair itself, to grow, maybe even to be better than before.  We believe that only our conscious efforts can accomplish something, and if we’re not doing anything therefore, we’re already doomed!  We don’t trust anybody, not even our own body when we know we are not consciously in control.

3.  We’ve lost our ability to receive.

Our culture has impressed upon us the necessity to give; giving is a concrete sign of being alive, of being of value.  When we are not able to give or to do anything productive, we quickly lose our self esteem.  Our self worth is so connected in doing what we do, that when we’re unable to do anything, we feel empty and worthless inside.

We  do not realize that receiving is also an integral part of being.  Receiving is actively cooperating to the one healing us, actively acknowledging that we are worthy of help, of being assisted in times when we couldn’t help ourselves.  Receiving is honoring ourselves as being worthy of notice and honoring others as being able to endow upon us something that is an important part of themselves.  Receiving, like giving, is being able to share and be a channel of the flow of life.

I’ve learned that even times of sickness and unproductiveness can teach us something.  I’ve learned that in times like that, it’s quite okey to wait, to trust the way of life, and to receive healing from the God who never abandons us whether we’re living our lives energetically, or whether we’re merely trying to while away our time sneezing and teary eyed in the comfort of our cozy beds.

Categories
Life Spirituality

MOST TOUCHING POEM

most touching poemI would like to share with you the most touching poem I have ever received.  No, it did not come from my boyfriend.  And No, it was not even an original composition.  Yet the way it was able to come to me was no ordinary thing in my life, certainly nothing I’ve ever expected to give me such a joy.

I got in touch with Vicky in the internet, she became one of my on-line friends though she is only able to send me the same old phrases each time she wants to write me a letter.  She says:

 

Dear Joyce

How are you doing?

I am fine

Vicky

Your friend

If you are wondering why, it is because my friend has some physical limitations that limits her ability to express herself the way we do.  As you might have noted, she cannot write.  She is only able to write the above phrases from memory.  Obviously, she can’t read either.  But she enjoys it everytime somebody sends her mail.  She has friends that read to her the messages she receives.

One day I sent her a forwarded message, something I thought was cute that I felt I wanted to send her, which I did.

I never thought she’d take so much delight in that message!  Her friend who read it to her wrote to me how she LOVED the message I just sent to her.  She said that Vicky liked it so much that she went to the library and asked the librarian to help her pick a nice poem for me!

Her friend was amazed by that, that Vicky went out of her way to find me something, a written piece of a poem she cannot even read, to express her gratitude for a piece I never even exerted any effort in composing nor in researching and carefully picking out.  A few clicks of a button was all that it took for me to send her that piece.  But for me, she went out of her way to give of something out of her love.  I felt ashamed and undeserving of all that.  Yet I felt the sincerity of her gesture, and the wisdom that does not need the abilities we so often worship and give importance to.  It is in simple things like that that we feel the most touching memories we shall always recall.  It is in the most unexpected of people and events that we find appreciation, gratitude and love.

Following is the poem she was able to pick out for me, which I am going to quote in the exact words she wrote:

A STITCH OF BLUE

when there is rain, my neighbor comes
to while away the day
and as we chat and mend we find
skes are no longer gray

we share a cup of tea deside
an understanding fire
that knows to glow in emberred tones
or rcach its arms up higher

and when the rain stepped aside
our mending’s finished too
we’ve patched our lives together
a little stitch of blue

sometimes I wish that more of aside
were built of rainy days
so I could take the gray away
In little, friendly ways.

Are you having a grey day?  I hope you find some comfort in the most touching poem I have ever received.  Great day!  J  And thank you, my friend.

Categories
Life Spirituality

Unique!


We learn to love each other when we begin to realize how truly unique and wonderful each one of us is. Like seashells along the shore, no one is entirely alike, each is crafted with an imprint of God’s hand, each has something to share, and each has something to admire and long for in another.

People often see me as I quiet person, one who rarely cracks a joke, one that can comfortably sit in a corner and have a good time reading a book or listening to good music. But that doesnt mean I couldn’t engage in good conversation. That doesn’t mean I couldn’t comfort a grieving soul. That doesn’t mean I couldn’t share the kind of happiness that comes from things the world hardly notices in its race towards unreachable dreams. I am the kind of person God has masterfully and lovingly made me to be. I am happy. I am beautiful. I am unique!