I may not leave lasting footprints when I pass by, but may I pass on a flame that will keep on burning until it reaches another torch that will carry on the radiance of its warmth.
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Life – quote
Life is not at all a game of accumulating everything you need and maintaining a certain level of happiness, for happiness after all cannot be maintained. Life is a constant flow, of touching and growing and moving on. Life is either experienced or not, in joy and in sadness, in anger and in despair. Those who choose not its sorrows choose not its happiness as well; and those who choose not to live fully choose only to crumble and to die. – www.itakeoffthemask.com
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
Very few realize what burdens geniuses carry their whole lives – what of Van gogh, of Edgar Allan Poe, of the mathematician John Nash?
Very few realize how hard it might have been to constantly manage and control that great power that they possess, to undertake it all alone, ostracized by the society that fails to understand them intellectually, and to sympathize with them as normal human beings who also need to be understood and to belong.
People may not realize the efforts that they made in order to reach out. On the other hand, people may look at them as snobs who can get by on their own and need not anyone else to fellowship with their whole life. Others may even envy them and shy away from taking their company for fear that they might lose their self esteem in their presence.
Indeed, the greater the power given, the greater also is the cross and the task of harnessing it to the full. May God help us all attain our full potentials, and may He help us find good friends who can lend us a warm hand along the way.
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How To Give Unconditional Love
Have you ever wondered how only God can love us unconditionally? Because only God is perfect and need not anything from us. If He will love us, we can be certain that it’s not because He wants anything back.
We can’t love like that. Our love, however good is still conditional. We want something in return because we are not perfect, and we try to get from others what we lack.
That is the reason Jesus gave us two commandments, why we needed to love God first. In truth, it is a command to allow God to love us, to be so embraced and ensured that we couldn’t ask for anything more. In that way only can we love others truly as God has loved us.
That kind of love is therefore not waiting for any condition or reward. That love is also not boastful, self righteous or looking down upon another person because it knows that whatever love it can give has come not from itself but from God, like the moon reflecting only the light cast upon it by the sun.
It is hence our first duty to seek God’s love, to know, to believe, to feel, to be enveloped in the Light of God’s marvellous compassion. All else that follows are but mere expressions of our gratitude for the priceless gift we have received.
Whenever I feel injured or angry against another, it is most likely because I felt unloved at that time and the solution is not to continue seeking it from the person concerned but from God Himself.