What Will Matter

Today's writeup is taken from Character Counts by Michael Josephson:

"Ready or not, some day it will all come to an end. There will be no more sunrises, no minutes, hours or days. All the things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten, will pass to someone else. Your wealth, fame and temporal power will shrivel to irrelevance. It will not matter what you owned or what you were owed. Your grudges, resentments, frustrations and jealousies will finally disappear. So too, your hopes, ambitions, plans and to-do lists will expire. The wins and losses that once seemed so important will fade away. It won't matter where you came from or what side of the tracks you lived on at the end. It won't matter whether you were beautiful or brilliant. Even your gender and skin color will be irrelevant.

"So what will matter? How will the value of your days be measured?

"What will matter is not what you bought but what you built, not what you got but what you gave. What will matter is not your success but your significance. What will matter is not what you learned but what you taught. What will matter is every act of integrity, compassion, courage, or sacrifice that enriched, empowered or encouraged others to emulate your example. What will matter is not your competence but your character.

"What will matter is not how many people you knew, but how many will feel a lasting loss when you're gone. What will matter is not your memories but the memories that live in those who loved you. What will matter is how long you will be remembered, by whom and for what. Living a life that matters doesn't happen by accident. It's not a matter of circumstance but of choice. Choose to live a life that matters.

"This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts."

Dear God ..

please help me ..

to live in light of eternal values ..

so that my life will not be wasted ..

but invested in the lives of others for all eternity ..

so that my life will matter ..

Thank You for hearing and answering my prayer ..

Privilege to Explain

A lovely little girl was holding two apples with both hands. Her mum came in and softly asked her little daughter with a smile: my sweetie, could you give your mum one of your two apples? 

The girl looked up at her mum for some seconds, then she suddenly took a quick bite on one apple, and then quickly on the other. 

The mum felt the smile on her face freeze. She tried hard not to reveal her disappointment. Then the little girl handed one of her bitten apples to her mum, and said: mummy, here you are. This is the sweeter one. 

No matter who you are, how experienced you are, and how knowledgeable you think you are, always delay judgment. Give others the privilege to explain themselves. What you see may not be the reality. Never conclude for others. 

Doers vs. Watchers

"Dr. J.B. Gambrel tells an amusing story from General Stonewall Jackson's famous valley campaign. Jackson's army found itself on one side of a river when it needed to be on the other side. After telling his engineers to plan and build a bridge so the army could cross, he called his wagon master in to tell him that it was urgent the wagon train cross the river as soon as possible. The wagon master started gathering all the logs, rocks and fence rails he could find and built a bridge. Long before daylight the wagon master told General Jackson that all the wagons and artillery had crossed the river. General Jackson asked where the engineers were and what were they doing. The wagon master's only reply was that they were in their tent drawing up plans."

It has been said that there are three kinds of people: those who make things happen; those who watch things happen; and those who don't know that anything is happening!

With God's help, I want to be a doer and among those who make things happen. In college days, I was attending a college-age youth group. The group was struggling and I was asked by the leaders what I thought was wrong. I said that I didn't feel I had a right to criticize unless I was willing to do something about the problems.

 

Guess what ? I got actively involved as a doer. Those were some of my best college days.

Let's not be critical unless we are willing to be involved. To be a doer, start doing something of eternal value, realizing that we serve God by serving people.

Dear God

please help me

to invest my life

by being actively involved

as a doer in the work of Your Kingdom

—no matter how small and menial the tasks I do may appear to be.

 

Thank You for hearing and answering my prayerz ..

Remember Mt. St Helens

In their book, The Truth Behind Left Behind, Mark Hitchcock and Thomas Ice wrote about the morning of May 18, 1980, when Mount Saint Helens in S.W. Washington, "exploded with the force of thirty thousand atomic bombs, sending super-sonic concussive waves that flattened everything within 150 square miles. On the heels of that wave, a fifty-foot wall of mud and ash screamed down the mountain and into the surrounding forest land, burying everything in its path and changing the landscape forever."

Harry Truman, the eighty-three-year-old caretaker of a lodge on Spirit Lake at the foot of Mount Saint Helens, knew all about the multiple seismographic evidence that warned of a pending massive explosion. Harry claimed that he knew more about this mountain than anybody else. He ignored the endless earthquakes in the preceding two months, the hundreds of steam blast explosions, and the massive eighty-meter bulge on the mountain side.

He claimed it wouldn't dare blow up on him. But it did. Harry, along with all others who ignored the warning signs, was buried under 600 feet of volcanic ash and material.

Make absolute sure that you are not like Harry Truman who disregarded all of nature's warnings about the pending doom, and ignore God's repeated warnings.

Dear God ..
thank You ..
that you have warned me ..
time and again ..
to be ready ..

I believe ..
and I ask ..
for Your forgiveness ..
for all my sins ..

Thank You for hearing and answering my prayer ..

.. amen ..

Dreams: God's Forgotten Language?

Dreams not only give valuable personal insights but also have given many creative insights. Some inventors, for example, have received profound ideas from dreams. I recall reading how the inventor, Elias Howe, designed the first sewing machine. He was having great difficulty in conceiving a workable needle. When he was close to running out of money, he had an unusual dream. He dreamt that he was about to be executed because he failed to design a sewing machine for the king of a strange country.

In his dream he was surrounded by guards, all of whom held spears that had been pierced with holes near the tip. Howe woke up and immediately rushed to his workshop. The perfect concept for the sewing machine needle came to him in this dream. Within a few hours the first sewing machine design was well on the way to being completed.

I have heard it said that the theory of relativity came to Einstein in either a dream or a vision. Apparently he saw it on a beam of light. I have also read that the design for the first radio tube came to the inventor in a dream.

Was it time for these discoveries to come into the world and did God give them to the persons who were trained to understand them and put them to use? Or did they just happen by chance? I prefer to think the former.

So whatever we think about dreams, they are a God-given gift in that He gave us the ability to dream. Whether we repress them as many do, ignore them as most do, or use them for creative purposes as some do is entirely up to each individual.

If you want to remember your dreams, keep a pen and pad at your bedside and record any dream that makes a strong impression on your mind. Speaking personally, dreams have given me some valuable insights for growth and recovery.

Compassion and Kindness

Michael Josephson of Character Counts shared how he "once read of a man on a subway with two young children who were being loud and unruly. The man seemed to ignore their behavior, so a fed-up passenger confronted him: 'Sir, don't you see how your children are disturbing everyone? How can you be so thoughtless?'

"The man sobbed, 'I'm so sorry. Their mom just died and I've been thinking of how we'll live without her.' In an instant the critic's self-righteousness turned to self-condemnation.

"Why is it that so many of us have to be hit over the head before we turn on our caring and empathy buttons?

"The next time you have the choice between being right and being kind, choose kindness."

My Life

Do Yu Understand ?

Togetherness

Some of the most fascinating trees I have ever seen are the magnificent California and West Coast redwoods. They reach their leafy arms heavenward, commonly growing 200 to 275 feet tall. The tallest one in Humboldt County, California, towers 368.6 feet in height. These trees stand like sentinels of time and have done so for hundreds of years.

They've been through winds, earthquakes, fires and storms—still they stand. Nothing seems to deter them.

What is so amazing is that these trees, among the tallest in the world, have a comparably shallow root system and yet they rarely ever fall. How do they keep standing even in the wildest of storms ? It's because the redwood's root systems reach out for great distances and are intertwined with one another. They literally hold each up other up.

If you and I are going to reach our full potential, we too need the support of each other, not to be overdependent but inter-dependent.

None of us can stand alone.

Dear God

please help me

to be like a mighty redwood tree

giving and receiving support

to and from my friends

so that I, too, can reach the heights

of my God-given potential.

Thank You for hearing and answering my prayerz

Redeeming the Time

Chuck Colson tells about one prisoner he met who had been on death row for fifteen years. His name was John Irving.

John was allowed out of his cell for only one hour a day. The rest of the time he was studying to become a minister—preparing to serve God.

Noticing that John had nothing in his cell but a few books, Colson offered to give him a TV.

"Thanks," John said, "but no thanks. You can waste an awful lot of time with those things."

Can you imagine wasting time on death row?

Colson goes on to say, "The real evils of the entertainment industry are not the violence and profanity—offensive though they are. No, it's the banality: the sheer waste of time. When we turn the TV on, we turn our minds off; studies have shown that the analytical areas of the brain nearly shut down during extended TV viewing."

Project 2020 - "Mapping the Global Future"

Found this incidently. This was published in 2004 by the US Government Printing Office. Interesting study and interesting today's implementations. Please keep it in mind that this study was done/ completed in 2004 and the project named "Mapping the Global Future" was launched in 2004.

Best Regards.

Azhar Abbas

Project 2020 - "Mapping the Global Future" from Azhar Abbas