Interpretation

Interpretation

Years ago I ask My Father in Heaven (My Friend) for a “sign.” It was important to me to understand if something I was being told by a religious “teacher” was His will. I wanted to be sure that it was in agreement with Him. At first I was surprised at the answer I received! I was told; that I should never ask for a sign! He told me that He never gave signs! He told me to always ask for answers, not signs, as signs could be subject to interpretation! That answer was different from things I had been told, but the logic was easy for me to understand.
At times I have received answers to my questions to Him that I did not fully understand. It made me feel strange to have to go back and ask another question. Sensing my question, I was told to never go to the next question until I fully understood the answer to the last!
Years ago, I had a teacher that had a line she used often on me. She would say; the answer to your question is right there, right in front of your face! It’s on that page in black and white! It’s as plain as the nose on your face! What could possibly be there that you don’t understand? She never could understand, although we were both reading the same printed page, each of us was interpreting the words differently! Sadly, many times we are graded or judged according to the way others see those words, not how we read those same words!
I just opened the Yellow Pages to the Christian church section; I found over FOUR HUNDRED listings! I looked but I found no listings for other religions, it made me wonder just how many additional doors that others walk through to worship that one God!
That book, the Bible, is written in black and white! Its words should be as plain as the nose on our face! Its sole purpose is to have us all end up in the same place! Please tell me why; we need over four hundred interpretations of that one book in my small area.
I wander what would happen if; a person that had never been exposed to the Christian religion was given the opportunity to walk through a different one of those four hundred doors every day and be allowed to listen to the teaching behind that door. Could that person ever believe that all those words were coming out of the same book?
The entire world around us is subject to interpretation, yours and mine! I see and hear things differently than you. Even though some will tell you, it is as obvious as the nose on their face; they have yet to walk in your shoes and you in theirs.
Many things that I see or consider blessings, others may walk on by unknowingly. Some feel that they are entirely rejected by God. While we both walk down the same path, some are looking only for life’s unpleasant happenings, rocks in their road, in their lives they’ve forgotten to look up from the storm clouds and see that beautiful rainbow, they are completely missing all of life’s good things. We are really what we look for in our lives! How we interpret our own lives!
Just one last question; do you think where you are today is fair? It’s really up to how each of us interprets us, isn’t it?

Attitude

At the start of this week I made up my mind that I was going to make this the BEST WEEK OF MY LIFE! As I started looking at those coming days I realized that; I was exhausted, I hurt all over, Sandra was hurting, my credit card was full, my checking account was empty, and unfriendly expensive sounds were coming from under the hood of my car!
Then I thought; all of those things had been given to me so that I could improve upon them!
Of course my being a brainwashed American human; the first thing I thought of was my wheels! So---when I took the car to the dealership and they told me the price for the repair, it took a moment or two to start breathing again! But, it was repairable! Then I started to realize how blessed I was because; as I turned the corner, going to the dealership, I had passed a war vet, one who had offered his life to his country, my country and yours. He now stood there homeless and begging on that corner! He unknowingly had helped me. He made me realize just how good I had things! It seems as though any time that I start to feel sorry for myself, my God always shows me someone in much worse shape than me. He helps me realize how much I really have!
Instead of standing around wringing our hands and asking; Why me God, why me? Give thanks for being shown ways we can improve what we have!
It is of no interest to me, if my cup is half full or half empty. I’m going to drink every last drop and savor it all.
My Grandma was an attitude person. I can remember her pointing someone out to me and then telling me that person had a bad attitude and that would cause them to have a hard life. In all my many talks with her she never mentioned her schooling, but now I realize that she was the smartest person in my life.
As I go deeper into this blog, I’m continually being alerted to how important our faith in ourselves is. That faith certainly affects our attitude, the way we look and feel about ourselves! While working in these blogs, I find that my eyes are being opened more and more to the many things that are God given.
It surprises me how many times people who know nothing about us, feel it is their calling to change us. And, it’s us that let it happen!
Just what is this attitude thing? It’s how we live and look upon our lives. And, if we let it, we can change it as fast as a snap of the finger! Many times we let, or blame others, for doing the snapping!
Yes, they have attitude pills! They’re called anti depressant pills. Sandra just mentioned that she has yet to see opinion pills! I guess that sooner or later we’ll have those too.
Sometimes I feel so good that I feel I may have overdosed on those pills! I’ve also noticed that music helps put me there!
Here it is; mid January, the sun is shining brightly, the sky is blue with bright white clouds, out of my window I can see a camellia bush covered with bright pink flowers! Oh yes, the temperature is seventy-one degrees! See, I told you it was going to be the best week of my life!!!

My Big Nine O

I’ll start at the beginning for any new reader and a revue for some of my regulars. Just before my eighty-fifth birthday, My Father in Heaven (the one I usually refer to as My Friend in my blog), told me to start a blog. I had never seen a blog. In fact; I had no idea what a blog was! So, I just brushed it off!
A short time later, I was again conversing with My Friend, when He said “I told you to start a blog!!!” What could I say? He already had heard all of my excuses many times and He had refused to accept any of them before! This time I said I would, at the same time realizing that yes meant that I had a long way to go and no idea how to get there!
I suddenly had to cram a lot of learning into a short time, I had wasted a week by not listening in the first place! One of my problems was trying to figure out where to start!
First I walked into the book department of my local computer store and there right before me was the solution to that first problem. It was “Blogger for Dummies!” I knew that was the book for me! Wasn’t I the dumbest dummy of them all?
I started reading my new book only to find out that sometimes a solution to one thing often creates a new problem! The book told me that I should use Microsoft Word! I had seen Word on my computer, but I had never used it! Again, there I was back at square one, I was faced with another panic learning experience!
I was proud of myself, I had learned enough of Word to start my blog. Then suddenly I realized something new, something that I had not considered; when I typed I only used one finger! Not ten fingers like most use! This blog thing was going to take time but, thinking back, My Friend had said nothing about His plan for me being easy or fast! He just said “Start a blog!”
After all of my trials and learning experiences I found myself proud of one thing; I had a steno-pad and ball-point pen ready to go. Again I ran headlong into reality! I had never written a blog, in fact I had never seen one, I wasn’t even a writer. I was lost again and long ago I learned that whenever I lose my way it’s best to go to God to straighten me out and give me direction. So, I ask Him, “Please tell me what I should write?” It is still hard for me to believe His answer. He said; put the pen to the paper and start writing!
I sweated blood trying to put together enough words to fill that first page! And then, I found a few more that filled another half page! It was hard for me to realize just how many words My Friend could put in the ink of that pen and then He allowed me to let those words out!
It was just over a month after I was told to start that blog that I posted the first one! It was on August 17th of 2010 that I went on line with my first blog!
Now for the rest of the story; today’s date is January 17, 2012, just a year and a half after that first entry. This is the 90th entry on my blog!
I want you to think about this; nearly a hundred have been written, several are waiting to be published! Over fifty-two thousand words have been published! These words have been read by more different people than the active membership of any religious institution in my area!
And, each of these words was first printed by hand on one of my steno-pads (dozens of them have been filled!) That first ball-point pen ran out of ink months ago as have many others. Each word on the pad is read and reread several times by me with My Friend looking over my shoulder. Some things are rewritten; some words are crossed out and replaced.
Next, I type them into Word, still using but one finger. Many times I thank God for the spell checker in Word! Again My Friend and I edit the work. Last, it goes to Sandra for final editing. Only then does it come to you.
I know that all of this sounds easy but I feel a bit more should be told. My Friend put a few restrictions on the things I should do in this blog. I will never ask for money. You will never find Bible Scriptures used in the blog. You will find quite a bit of God stuff but it’s your God and mine. You will never be ask to change your religion; your religion, or lack of, is your choice and there are millions in this world trying to do that without any help from me.
I will try to help you maintain or increase your faith in yourself. YOU are important to me and to yourself. I will try to help you raise your standards in YOURSELF.
With each entry my goal is to touch one person. I have learned many things in these first ninety blogs. I hope at least one of them has touched a part of you!

The Panic Button

Think of our bodies as having two big buttons on our forehead. One is a big round red button with the word “PANIC” written all in capital letters. The other is a slightly larger round white button with the word “FAITH”. It too, in capital letters. The faith button sticks out a little farther because it is a deeper button.
At first glance, one could think that the word faith on that button was a reference to our religious belief, but as we study why it is deeper we realize it is referring to our faith in our self. Also we notice the button is on the right side, our easier to reach side!
As we reach up to test push each button, we find the faith button sounds a pleasant chime like sound. Upon pressing the panic button we hear a loud warning sound much like a fog horn.
We know we will learn much from each button, but first, we must LEARN HOW TO LEARN! As an example; I talked to a person that told me that each time they ate a certain food, it would upset their stomach! I asked them why they continued to eat that food. I got nothing from my question but a blank look! That person had not learned how to learn!
If something upsets me, I will not keep doing it over and over!
We develop that faith in ourselves from the many things we learn from our everyday living. We learn from the mistakes we have made and the outcome for us by those mistakes. We develop by: I learned by that and I will not do that again, if I see someone else heading down the same road, I’ll tell them what happened to me. You see, that faith we learned, that we use to better ourselves, may also be used helping others better themselves!
We add to our faith by learning; we add to the faith of others by example! When we are driving, if we see the brake lights come on ahead of us we take our foot off the gas and move it over to the break.
Should we not do the same when we see an argument coming?
Faith in our self does not mean that we have to dominate every situation. Humility in no way is showing a lack of faith! Faith is shown many times by one knowing when to speak or when to keep their mouth shut! As our faith increases we learn how seldom we have to reach for that panic button and make things worse!
Our God, yours and mine, continually shows us ways to increase our faith in ourselves. And, He also gives us many little approval blessings when we do it.
In today’s world, we are continually encouraged to push that panic button. We are discouraged from believing in our own faith, the faith that helps keep us being our own person. We are told to take this pill for one thing and another pill for that. Many of those pills are nothing more than a lack of faith in our self pill! If you read the labels, they will say that they should make one feel good for four to six hours and when that wears off, take another pill or call your doctor in the morning, but always keep your finger near the panic button! That faith in yourself thing, who cares about that as long as that pill bottle is nearby?
I wonder how many of us have said “I’m sure I can do that” and then under our breath added that one word “but” to the statement?
If you are sure you can do it, fight that hand that wants to press the panic button! If you are sure, then BE SURE! Put your faith back in you!
No one else can live your life, although many will try. No one else can look into your inner spirit and see your faith in yourself! God gave you who you are, it’s up to you to make the best of God’s gift!
I just looked for my panic button. It took a while to find, but there it was. My button was hard for me to find because; it was no longer that big round red button, I found it as a small red LED light hidden under my emergency flasher button! Then I noticed that big round white faith button to be still in its place!

Take Away

I want you to think hard about this; what would you do if everything you owned was taken away? Or, if everything you were able to do was no longer possible!
The first thing I thought about was those thousands of people that lost their homes to foreclosure! That could be devastating! But then, I thought about something Sandra told me last night.
Her son Kenny had to be taken, by ambulance, to the emergency room of the hospital. While they were waiting for the doctor a gurney was wheeled past and the unmoving person on it had a sheet over the face. That person really had everything they owned taken from them!
All the stuff that person had owned couldn’t be traded for just one more breath!
Many times in my life I’ve been told to plan for the future, but live for today. Can you ever envision that person planning to take their last breath in an emergency room and on that day? Doesn’t it make you wonder how many “I wish I hads” came along with that last breath?
Our “future planning thing” should also include ETERNITY! And, that is an eternity without all our stuff! If you think you can’t live your earth life without, your TVs or your cigarettes, I wonder how you have planned for your forever life.
I have lost most of my stuff several times and just with my hope and my faith somehow I managed to survive! If I ever end up in that emergency room with that sheet over my face, I have that covered too.
One of the things that bothers me the most is the number of people that I talk to that tell me that they have no faith in themselves. Several have told me that they think of themselves as a piece of junk! Many feel unimportant! I don’t believe God creates unimportant people.
It is possible to lose most of your stuff and still feel rich. But, those that have lost faith in themselves can own most of the world and still be “dirt poor!”
Different religions preach faith, faith, faith, but the faith they are talking about is faith in that religion. They overlook one important thing; without faith in one’s self, a person cannot have a strong faith in anything else!
A bad thing about the lack of faith in one’s self is that it is contagious. It shows and it will not take the kids long to follow. Each of us must realize that we are teachers. That we teach by examples to those around us especially the kids and husbands and wives!
I have learned that no matter how bad I feel, I never have to look far to find someone in worse shape. That, whenever I start to feel sorry for myself, I never have to look far to find someone that has less than me. But, it takes finding a person who has lost faith in themselves to make me realize how truly rich I am! You can take away everything I own, but you cannot take away my faith in me!

His Face

As I sat in church on Sunday an image was shown on the big screen. I was told that if I would look closely I would see the face of Jesus!
Yes, with the help of a little imagination, you could see an image that could be interrupted to look similar to the image on a painting hanging in the foyer of the church. That image at the back of the church is also someone’s idea of how they think Jesus looked.
You must remember; there were no photographs of Him. No portraits of Him while He was alive. Just many hundreds of artist’s interpretations of how they thought He “may have” looked. And, all were painted hundreds of years after His death! No one really knows what He really looked like!
My interpretation of Him today, would find Him with well groomed beard and hair and probably wearing jeans and a sport shirt. If He was to return to our world of today, tell me why we should expect Him to look like He did two-thousand years ago? But, remember, that’s just my interpretation! I just can’t see Him today like the wispy image that some see in a photo!
Now, let’s take another step. I’ve often heard people of different faiths tell me, that when they die, they will set at the right hand of God and “GET TO SEE HIS FACE!”
Why do they have to wait to die to see His face? I see God’s face every day! In fact, I saw it less than an hour before I started writing this! I believe that My God is the God of all things. Some disagree with me; they think God is some bearded old man floating somewhere
in the clouds. A God to be called on only when needed and then filed safely away until needed the next time! Also that one needs special words and places to make that call.
For most of my life I’ve had special things happen to me. Things I knew were put there just for me! I always believed my God put them there to let me know that He was always with me! I could walk past thousands of flowers and then one bloom would stop me in my tracks! I could be looking at the sky and suddenly I could see images in the clouds that had meaning for me! I could be listening to music and suddenly hear sounds that were so great that they would almost bring me to tears!
Some mornings I would look out of my front window and see a family of Blue Jays. Their actions would always put a smile on my face, and one of the birds would come so close to my window that we could look eye to eye! Other mornings, two young squirrels would perform for me, they would run up and down a small tree, they would jump and chase each other but best of all they made me smile!
For all those years I have given thanks for all of those special things that have found their way into my life. But, it was not until that photo was put on the large screen that it hit me!
As I told you before; I believe my God is the God of all things. It was then that I realized that all of the special things I felt were being done for me, was my God showing me some of His many faces!
I had to see something that I really did not believe in to make me realize something that I could truly believe! My God had been showing me his face all this time and I had not recognized Him!!!
That made me wonder: how many others had lived their entire lives walking past His face and never recognized Him? Were they so sure that He looked like that old bearded man in those paintings that they didn’t bother to look elsewhere?
Today I recognized Him! I saw the most beautiful red rose I had ever seen! I stopped and looked closely and studied that rose. I felt a warm smile in my heart! I had seen His face!
How can we expect to find Him until we learn to look for Him?

Our Faith

After many years of walking through doors of different religious institutions, I can remember the word faith being used many times. But, the term faith was being used as a measuring tool pertaining to how well I was accepting the things I was being told!
Looking back, I can’t remember ever hearing faith being used in reference to how I believed in MYSELF! I believe, and remember that this is Bob speaking; if we don’t have faith in ourselves we will find it difficult to have a “true” faith in anything else. I know that having faith in me is important to My Father in Heaven because My Friend told me so!
In my prison ministry, I have held sobbing grown men in my arms while they told me that they were nothing more than a piece of junk! Some of them were just waiting around to die but, after what other religious leaders had told them, they were scared to death of dieing!
On each visit I would stress how important each person was to me. I would also make a point of telling them that my God did not create junk. And, if they were that important to God how could they consider themselves junk?
On the outside, I have had strangers walk up to me and tell me that their lives were over. That they were headed straight to Hell! That their religious leader had told them that there was no redemption for them! I want you to take a minute and cook that one over! Their leader had told them “there was NO HOPE for them!!!” This in the name of religion! This sounds like to me; someone without faith trying to pull others into their same unhappy world with them! Maybe, like someone wanting to play God!
It baffles me, how in the name of religion, a person can be convinced to strap on a bomb and then walk into a group worshiping out of the same book and detonate that bomb! Could that bomber have any faith in himself? Where do they find people like that? They say it is being done in the name of God! I cannot believe that they have ever spoken with my loving God that speaks with me!
Along with faith in us I have found a few other things that walk hand in hand. Things like; pride, self-respect, and standards. I’ve also found a few things that can easily turn the milk sour. Things like; ego, intolerance, and controlling.
Faith in our self is not trying to create someone of our self that we are not. Faith in our self is taking the person God has given us and doing the best we can with it.
In our walk of life, where ever we go, one step at a time is how we get there. And, if that first step is faith in our self, all the rest of our steps are much easier!

Our Questions

I am starting this blog barely twelve hours into the New Year. I had planned on an entirely different subject for my New Year’s blog. But, things change in life, I look upon this as an almost “stop the presses” type of thing!
About two hours ago My Friend handed me a change of subject, so here goes!
If a person hasn’t ask a question, how can they ever expect to receive an answer? Thinking back, it makes me wonder if my asking questions could be one of the reasons for me being told to do this blog! I don’t think anyone ever finds me short on asking questions! And, I have never been afraid to go directly to the source for those answers.
That is how and why, many years ago, I started asking questions of My Father in Heaven. Think about this; you don’t ask questions if you don’t expect answers. Yes I expected Him to answer MY questions!
Now, think about this; I was just a kid in grade school and I was expecting GOD to answer MY questions!
I was getting some answers but I was so awe struck by those answers and being told that I was crazy by religious people that there was much I didn’t understand. Some even told me that God never speaks to little kids!
It was not until I started looking upon my God as my Friend, not someone to always be in fear of, that those answers came to me in a way that I could understand.
One of my hardest learning experiences was how to ask those questions. Just one misplaced word can change the meaning of the entire question!
Sometimes our entire life can be changed by our failure to ask a question or even to ask that question the wrong way! I’m sure many of us can look back to a “wish I had asked.” I’m sure I have!
Without questions and answers a mortal is no different than a grain of sand along the shore.
I’m going to make this New Year 2012 my year of the question. I never again want to hear someone say “but, Bob if you just would have asked!”