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
When I was younger, I never thought there would come a time when this bible verse would come true – that there would come a time when no one would be waiting for God anymore. Yet as I observe our times, I realized that the time may soon come to pass when God would be seeking out his people and no one would be looking back. Why so?
1. THE RICH
Because the rich will have bought the idea of positivism to the extreme to the extent that they have learned to focus only on themselves and their needs, excluding everyone else that may get in the way of their perfectly established lives. The rich would have become indifferent, already possessing everything they thought they needed to live their lives to the full.
2. THE POOR
Because the poor would have thought of himself as being unloved, comparing himself to the rich one whom heaven has blessed far beyond the necessities he prayed for. He would have lost his hope or grudgingly accepted his lot. The poor would have grown a rage that consumes all of his soul.
3. THE RELIGIOUS
The remaining people who claim to be religious would have become the self righteous judgmental people who neither understands the poor nor prays for the awakening of the rich. The religious would judge the poor and the rich for their sins, but see not the dust in their own eyes.
There may soon come a time when all these would come to be, when the hearts of people have grown so cold as to forget the most important thing of all… authentic love.
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
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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.
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!