Love Never Gives Up

Wisdom Nugget : Love never gives up on people. It never stops trusting, never loses hope, and never quits. 

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One of the reasons life brings people into our lives is because everybody has something special to offer the other person to make their lives better, and since no man is an island life will always use iron to sharpen iron.

Paul puts it thus :  "He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love".

This truth applies to all relationships :"As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow". So our growth is partly a function of the special part or role played in our lives by others. This implies straight away that none of us is perfect but that one of the essence of great relationships is the ability to leave people better than you met them.

Baltasar Gracian said "True friendship multiplies the good in life and divides its evils". If we all understand that friends are in our lives not only for what we can get from them but for the special way in whcih he can affect their lives, then the world would be a better place. So as we relate with people get ready to see their faults, mistakes, dysfunctions, skewed lifestyle and failures.

Don't give up on people because we all need friends to be patient with us. Before you give up on your friend, according to our text, ask yourself "have I done my own special work or fulfilled my divine assignment in this life ?" And if the answer is a "No" then you have no right to give up on them.
During a terrible storm at sea that threatened every moment to carry the ship to the bottom, one of the ship’s crew was doing something on the deck when a great sea struck the ship and went fairly over the deck, striking this man with great force, disabling him and carrying him into the mad waters.
Although he was a good swimmer, he was so disabled that he could only keep his head above water. They saw him lifting up his imploring hands through the white foam, signifying his desire for help. But the Captain said, "Don’t lower a boat, for no small boat can live in this sea, in this terrific storm. We cannot save the man. The most we can do is to save the ship."

The vessel was bearing farther and farther from the helpless man. Once more they saw his imploring hands come up among the white caps further off, which moved all hearts that witnessed it. Still the Captain said a small boat must not be lowered, as it could not live a moment among these wild billows. But one man who was an expert swimmer, was so moved by the imploring signals of the drowning man, that he threw off his loose garments, saying: "I will save that man, or die with him."
So plunging into the surging deep, he struggled so bravely with the mad waters, that he reached the poor man just as his strength had gone; he had given up and was filling with water, and sinking down unconscious. He grasped him, and strange to tell, he brought him so near the ship that a small boat was lowered, and both men were taken up and laid down upon the deck. The one that had been swept overboard, entirely unconscious and his deliverer nearly so. Appliances were used and both were brought to consciousness.
As soon as the rescued man opened his eyes and found he was not in the ocean, his first words were: "Who saved me?"

He was pointed to his deliverer still lying on the deck in his wet clothes. He crept to his deliverer, and putting his arms around his feet, and in the most tender and heart moving tone of voice cried out: "I’m your servant, I’m your servant." He felt that he could never do enough for him.

 Love never gives up on people.

What Do You See? Change Your Goggles

Wisdom Nugget: "For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he..."



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Our perspective of certain circumstances is enough to either motivate or demoralize us or anyone close to us for that matter.

The aforementioned nugget can be paraphrased to mean "what you think about a situation is how it turns out to be". If you think it is favourable, it'll turn out favourable, but if you don't think it is, then it won't. In other words, it means that two people going through the same situation can both end up having different results depending on what they believe and how they see it. Ever heard the saying, "the grass looks greener on the other side"? I dare say that you can actually make the grass on your side greener, by simply thinking and believing it is.

One day, a very wealthy man took his son on a trip to the country with the express purpose of showing him how poor people live. They spent a couple of days andnights on the farm of what would be considered a very poor family. On their return from their trip, the father asked his son, "How was the trip?" "It was great, Dad." "Did you see how poor people live?" the father asked. "Oh yeah," said the son. "So, tell me, what did you learn from, the trip?" asked the father. The son answered "first, I saw that we have one dog and they had four. We have a pool that reaches to the middle of our garden and they have a creek that has no end. We have imported lanterns in our garden and they have the stars at night. Our patio reaches to the front yard and they have the whole horizon, daddy, continued the kid, "We have a small piece of land to live on and they have fields that go beyond our sight. "We have servants who serve us, but they serve others. We buy our food, but they grow theirs. "We have walls around our property to protect us, they have friends to protect them." The boy's father was speechless. Then his son added, "Thanks Dad for showing me how poor we are."

How do you consider your life's circumstances? How do you see the obstacles life puts in your path? Do you see them as stepping stones or stumbling blocks? Are they for your promotion or do you think that they are meant to kill you? Remember these words of wisdom: "A fool's mouth is his ruin. His lips are a trap to his soul."

We should "Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion..."

Seeing life's situations differently—not just looking at the surface—will change your view of your circumstances. Suddenly, things will seem clearer than you've ever seen before. This hapens because you stopped looking through the eyes of fear, but have started seeing with the eyes of faith. You'll start to see differently when you stop looking with your negative expectations.

There Is A Time For Everything

Wisdom Nugget :“Because to every purpose there is time and judgment, therefore the misery of man is heavy upon him."

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While all of us may not have been through a Nazi Treblinka death camp like I shared yesterday, all of us have experienced injustice in life one way or another. For instance, you were wronged and lodged a report with the police, only to be invited later by the same police officer, who had taken bribe, and you ended up becoming  the accused instead of the complainant; or you may have been involved in an accident that wasn’t your fault, and yet someone testified falsely that the accident was in fact your fault, and you have to pay the damages. Or perhaps you turned in a test, and the teacher accused you of cheating because your answers were exactly the same as another student’s answers. Or perhaps you gave a large sum of money to someone to invest with the assurance of a significant return on your investment, only to discover that you have been defrauded of your life’s savings. Or perhaps your coworker made unwanted sexual advances towards you, and when you told your superiors, you—and not your coworker—got fired.

 A similar event occurred when I was about 11 or 12 years of age but I remember it like yesterday because it was an experience too painful to forget. We were on a brief holiday in an uncle's home when he sent me on an errand. On my return my uncle was inside his bedroom which I had no access to, so I gave the change to Mary give to him inside the bedroom. About an hour later my uncle was asking me for his change and I said I had given it to Mary. Well she denied completely ever collecting any change from me and because she was an in house member and I, just a visiting holiday maker, she was believed and I was called a thief. Boy, was it painful ? I cried and tried to convince my uncle but to no avail. Next day I was asked to leave the house and return to my home. Unfortunately many years after I have never met Mary again. I have since forgiven her but I vowed to remind her anytime, anywhere and any how we meet, of how she lied against me.

To those of you who have suffered grave injustice and think even God failed to defend you, remember these words "....The righteous will be judged and so will the wicked, for there is a time...!"

Judgement is sure but THERE IS A TIME  appointed for it. Don't forget that many innocent people suffered for decades in the hands of their oppressors, but judgement still came eventually. The bad news is that we cannot choose the time. The good news is judgement will eventually come. For Adolph Hitler, Muammar Gaddafi, Sadam Hussein or Idi Amin, judgement did eventually come. Since it is not for you to judge or appoint the time for the judgement, why not, for your own health's sake forgive and let go. "Remember There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness."-Josh Billings

The Reality of Injustice

Wisdom Nugget.....He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and like a lamb dumb before his shearer, so opened he not his mouth: In his humiliation his judgment was taken away: and who shall declare his generation? for his life is taken from the earth."

Sign on Nobel Laureates Boulevard in Rishon LeZion saluting Jewish Nobel Laureates.

Here are my closing thoughts on injustice.

We all like stories with happy endings. Whether the story is in a book or movie or even in real life, we like stories with happy endings.That's one reason why I love Chinese movies. The good guy never dies and he always beats the bad guy at the end. Sometimes, however, real life stories don’t have happy endings. And although we prefer stories with happy endings to stories with sad endings, we understand that life and its stories don’t always have happy endings. And as much as we all hate to live in a world of injustice, truth is because we live in a fallen world, some stories have unjust endings. Solomon wrote :
"Again I saw all the oppressions that are done under the sun. And behold, the tears of the oppressed, and they had no one to comfort them! On the side of their oppressors there was power, and there was no one to comfort them. 2 And I thought the dead who are already dead more fortunate than the living who are still alive. 3 But better than both is he who has not yet been and has not seen the evil deeds that are done under the sun."

In 1947, Simon Wiesenthal formed a volunteer organization to help find and prosecute Nazi war criminals. During the next forty years, Wiesenthal’s organization helped track down more than one thousand war criminals, including Franz Stangl, the former commandant of the Treblinka death camp.
What was Wiesenthal’s motivation? He had plenty of good reasons. During World War II, he spent the last three years of the war in a series of labor and concentration camps. The Nazis killed 89 members of his and his wife’s Jewish families during the war. But when asked the reason for his work, he pointed to one concrete experience that happened in a World War II death camp. One day two Nazi officers rode to the site where the prisoners were excavating rock. One of them grabbed a Jewish man and made him stand back to back with another Jewish man. He had a guard bind the two men together with a rope. Then, just as calmly as if he were swatting a fly, he pulled out his gun and shot through the first man’s head into the head of the man behind him, killing both men with one bullet. He turned to the other officer and said to him, “See, I told we’ve been wasting 50 percent of our bullets.”
Simon Wiesenthal’s responded to this atrocious act by saying, “God was on leave.” He wondered where God was when the world was filled with injustice.

66 years later the Jews rule the world. Out of the total 684 Nobel laureates ( in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, Economics and Peace.) world over, a full 22.66% of them have been of Jewish lineage. An amazing list of achievements for a people who comprise just 0.1955% of the world population! There are 115.9 times as many Jewish Nobel laureates as there would be if every race had equal representation among the Nobel Prize winners). Many of their contributions to science and society are practical and beneficial to our everyday lives (e.g. anesthesia, penicillin, blood groups, relativity which enables GPS).

How did they do it ? Many reasons, but one of them being that
after thousands of years of persecution, climaxing at in the Holocaust murder of 6 million of them They were resurrected and restored to greatness because " Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit".


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The Speck In Your Eye?

Wisdom Nugget: "“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? ⁴ How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? ⁵ You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye."

Ever experienced a situation where you tried to use a particular tool, but couldn't? You tried several times to no avail then you finally concluded that it was broke, only for someone else to make use of the same tool and you realizing it was your fault, you didn't know how to use it?
Blaise Pascal puts it this way, "Truly it is an evil to be full of faults; but it is a still greater evil to be full of them and to be unwilling to recognize them, since that is to add the further fault of a voluntary illusion". Robert M. Hutchins added "This is a do-it-yourself test for paranoia: you know you've got it when you can't think of anything that's your fault." Outward judgment often fails, inward judgment never" - Theodore Parker

A mother and daughter walked into a supermarket to get some groceries. On their way out the mother very upset said, "I don't know what's wrong with that attendant; her character is so annoying she couldn't even smile", she snapped.  "Did you see your face when you approached her?" her daughter replied smiling, "mum, your facial expression was worse when you approached her, it's not the attendant". Sometimes we get so engrossed with what the problem is with other people, that we fail to realize that the problem may not be with the other one as we always think, but very much within us.

A man feared his wife wasn't hearing as well as she used to and he thought she might need a hearing aid. Not quite sure how to approach her, he called the family doctor to discuss the problem. The Doctor told him there is a simple informal test the husband could perform to give the Doctor a better idea about her hearing loss. Here's what you do," said the Doctor, "stand about 40 feet away from her, and in a normal conversational speaking tone see if she hears you. If not, go to 30 feet, then 20 feet, and so on until you get a response." That evening, the wife is in the kitchen cooking dinner, and he was in the den. He says to himself, "I'm about 40 feet away, let's see what happens." Then in a normal tone he asks, 'Honey, what's for dinner?" No response. So the husband moves closer to the kitchen, about 30 feet from his wife and repeats, "Honey, what's for dinner?" Still no response, Next he moves into the dining room where he is about 20 feet from his wife and asks, Honey, what's for dinner?" Again he gets no response so, He walks up to the kitchen door, about 10 feet away. "Honey, what's for dinner?" Again there is no response. So he walks right up behind her. "Honey, what's for dinner?" "James, for the FIFTH time I've said, CHICKEN!"

We must take care to correct the problem with ourselves; we must work on our own shortcomings. There are changes we need to make. This isn't to say that faults, bad habits and sins do not abound with those around us. They do. We out to focus on ourselves because until fault-finding or blame transfer stops, character building cannot start. While we can easily see the other persons' short comings, we are almost all the time blind to our own faults. For most of us, it's difficult to shift the spotlight to ourselves from others..

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