For Him

Several days ago I found myself sitting just putting my thoughts together. Some would describe it as; just getting all my ducks in a row! Suddenly an overpowering thought pushed everything else aside! That thought was; ask Him what you can do for Him! Never one time could I ever remember, in any of my religious experiences, having that thought suggested to me! Give that some thought! What could I do for HIM!!!
In all the prayers and blessings, that I could remember, it was always give me this, do this for me or do this for them. I can’t recall ever hearing one “do for Him”. Most of those prayers and blessings was people telling Him just what they expected of Him! What happened to that “His Will” part of the blessing? Has it been all but forgotten by some? Could some religious people profess to know as much or even more than God?
Now, let me get back to my overpowering thought. As I sat there I ASK THAT QUESTION! Surprisingly I received an answer! The first thing I was told was “keep your faith”, not my religious faith, but my faith in ME! I was told several other things that I will explain in future blogs. There also were several things just between Him and me.
I’m still trying to digest the fact of being told the importance of my faith in myself. Let’s dig a little deeper into this faith, faith in our self, thing. The instant we were born, when we took that first breath for our self, we had nothing else but faith in our self! Along with our second breath we discovered this new world was already trying to control that faith in our self; we were being compared with every other new born. We were a big or small baby; we looked like Mom or Dad, or our Mom didn’t know who the Father was, and the visiting preacher labeled the child a bastard!
The rest of the world has already started building a shrinking box to keep both he and his thoughts and his dreams in! Were they “good parents or bad parents?” If they were bad parents, “they” said the kid would only grow up to be no good! They could be right! It would be hard to have faith in yourself with most of your world trying to stomp you into the ground! Remember that preacher that was so good to visit the mother in the hospital, but then hung that awful label around the baby’s neck? He just pointed a finger at the the same youngster, now a teenager and told him that he was going to Hell! Then he wondered why he never again saw him in church again. Now the preacher hung a new anchor around the boy’s neck, he called him a heathen! And, the man calls himself “a man of God!” Isn’t he supposed to bring people in, not drive them away?
Today’s prisons are full of those “throwaway kids turned into throwaway adults”! Most of them are there today because someone robbed THEM! Someone, or many, took away their faith in themselves!
If you happened to read my Lighthouse blog a few weeks back I have a selfish confession to make; I told you that each time I look at it I can hear the song “This Little Light of Mine.” That is a half truth! I also look at it as a monument to my faith in me! My impossible dream! My dream that came true!
I came away, from my talk with my friend, believing that faith in our selves is as important in our life as any other part of living!

Hold 'em Down

For many years I had a business in the Midwest and one of my most lasting memories, is also kind of a strange one. On Fridays we stayed open late. One of our customers was a farm couple. They came in many Friday nights, but they seldom bought anything. I felt that they were a very lonely middle-aged couple and they often came in to have someone to talk to.
The reason they stick in my memory is the way he first addressed his wife. He only called her DUMMY! He would find something that he wanted to share with her, and then shoot her down with his comment. It made no difference to him if the store was full of people or they were the only people in the store. Any time he would find something that he was interested in, always in a loud voice he would say “come here Dummy and look at this!”
After about the third Friday night of that, I invited them into the store’s back room. I told him it hurt me every time he called her that name in my store. Then she uttered the only words I ever heard from her mouth. She looked up at me and said that she was not sure if he could even remember her name! He then took her by the arm and stormed out of the store!
A few weeks later they were back! He and his voiceless wife, the one he now called by name, came back many Fridays until we closed the store.
Many religions tell the man that he is “the head of the household!” the dominant male, almost inferring that the woman should walk three steps behind! Why would any religion feel that one child of God is better than another child of God? Aren’t they really encouraging the man “to hold em down?” Aren’t they really telling one sex to have less faith in themselves than the other?
In our world of today, where it is politically correct to make fun or run-down others, isn’t the real goal to hold em down? If our God had wanted us to be goldfish in a bowl, that would have been how he would have created us!
As I have said before; My Friend is always looking over my shoulder when I’m working on these blogs. Several days after I thought I had this one finished, I was told to go back and reread this one! I was told I had more that I should say!
He reminded me of a previous blog on bullying. He asks if I could not see the relation between that entry and this one. Yes, I sure can now! Isn’t “holding em down” nothing more than bullying? And, He told me that it was bullying of the worst kind! Think of how many times that we have read of people taking their own lives because of someone’s bullying! Others taking away their faith in themselves!
Sadly, often it’s friends, family, loved ones, or even their religious leaders causing this to happen! You would not believe, that in my conversation with others, the first thing I’m told is; they wish they were dead or that they have nothing left to live for! I’ve spent hundreds of hours talking with people that feel all hope is lost! That they have lost faith in themselves and some even in their God!
There is no jail time for those thieves, the ones that take away the only real thing that some people have left!
This past week I had a lady tell me that God had given her so little to work with. God gives each of us everything we need to live our lives! It’s up to us to learn to use what we have been given!
My Grandma was the guiding factor in my life. She continually told me things like; “Bob, we both know that you are better than that”, or “Bob, we both know you can do better than that.” Many times she would point to others as an example before I would hear those words. She and Grandpa never had much money, actually they were poor, but they were the richest people that ever touched my life!
Looking back today; I realize the ones that worked the hardest to hold me down, were really the ones that caused me to set my goals higher!

Creating Your Future

For an article I’m writing, I have ask dozens what they wanted to be while growing up. Today I realized that I had only been asking one part of a two part question.
The second part? I should have been following up with; what do you want to be AFTER you’ve grown up? I have been asking that “want to be” question but, failing to follow up with; where you want to go after you got there or failed to get there!
I talk to many older folks, many of them retired, and I ask them a different question. That question is; what did you do exciting the past week? Often I only get a blank stare! Surely, in seven days something exciting happened to them! Can retirement mean to them, stop the world and let me off? I’m older than most I talk to and yet, I look forward to each new day and its excitement for me. I find it hard for me to fit all of my plans into a short twenty-four hour day! Maybe I should help them stop the world so that they could get back on!
I have some friends, they are a couple, that have a “bucket list.” Things that they plan to do and see before they “kick the bucket”, before they die. They are some of the busiest people I know. They HAVE created their future! I know when I ask them that question I better have a place to sit down. I’m in for a long interesting answer!
The many answers that I have received to my questions have taught me that our lives can be as boring or as exciting as we ourselves want to make then!
The late Steve Jobs said something that I would like to pass on to you. Steve said; “life is short! Our time is limited! Don’t waste that time trying to live someone else’s life”. I’ll add, don’t waste that time letting someone else live yours! Live your own life! Create your own future! And remember that future doesn’t have to be written all in caps to be exciting.
Occasionally I’ll have someone tell me that they wish they were dead! But, they are not! It’s just a time to start making changes! It’s time for them to start planning a better future for themselves! They already know the things they don’t like about themselves, now it’s time to look for the things they DO like about themselves or their world! It’s very hard to help someone that refuses to help themselves. All those “did wrongs” were placed there as learning experiences to show how to do right. The old saying; two wrongs don’t make a right. But, those wrongs can show us the way to make it right.
If you’re doing something you really don’t like, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place! If those old “want to be’s” worked or even if they didn’t work they still can be a help in creating that future. Remember, that future starts right now and has no age limit.

Importance

Sure, you are important to you. But really, are you very important to the rest of the world? Importance is actually more a state of mind than a fact of life!
Your importance is judged by your banker by the number of zeros after the first number in the amount of money you have in his bank. Enough zeros and you are greeted, on a first name basis, every time you walk through his front door!
If that judging is by your undertaker your importance is determined by the “quality” of the service your family is willing to pay for your last trip. The “most important” gets all the whistles and bells! The most important means good advertisement! The pauper gets hardly a second look.
I’ve heard some say they think that they will be judged on the amount of stuff they have accumulated in their life. Ever hear of hoarders?
Importance is really in the eye of the beholder. Just think of how important you would feel if you could invite the gang over to your house to watch the game on that fifty-two inch flat screen TV you lusted over Saturday in Best Buy! Then think about the importance one more breath of oxygen could be to that man in the hospital. He would wonder if that last breath WAS his last!
Being mortal, we often feel that we are the most important person in the world. And, I really believe that we should believe it when we think of ourselves! Many times I’ve held a sobbing person in my arms and had them tell me that they were nothing more than a worthless piece of junk! Suddenly my importance is nothing! That person becomes the most important one in my life. That person becomes the reason my God gave me life! I MUST convince that person that our God does not create Junk. I must help them realize how important they are to the two of us, my God and me.
I have yet to meet an unimportant person. I’ve met several that I have felt that their ego exceeded their importance but I’ve yet to meet one I considered less important than me.
I believe we are each created by God’s will. I believe that if God created a person, that person must be important to Him. I’m not going to stand around arguing and making a fool of myself trying to figure out one’s importance. If that person was good enough for God, then for sure, they’re good enough for me!
I find myself more comfortable around those satisfied with what God has given them to work with. I have been told to listen closely to the least among me for it is from them I shall learn.
A person creates the impression of their importance by the way they look, dress, and speak. Let’s call it the standards that they set for themselves. Every person is born rich in God’s eyes. The ones that feel poor are the ones that have lost faith in themselves. Lost faith in only their own eyes!

They Ought To

I was a part of a prison ministry for many years. I learned many things from it. Everyone was confined there because each had broken a law that “they” had made! Our prisons now held one person for every one-hundred that lived in our state! The reason for so many being there? They could not live their lives within the boundaries others “the theys” had already made.
Now let’s stop and think for a minute; let me ask you this, do YOU drive the accepted speed limit like me, or do you drive the posted speed limit? That’s the speed listed on those white signs with big black letters next to the road! They were put there by those “theys” that we always feel needs to do more!
Let’s look a little deeper, do we look upon all those people in the prison as being bad people, because they broke the law? And then; we look upon ourselves as squeaky clean good people, because we only bend the law a little bit! I guess good or bad is in the eye of the beholder, namely us!
All that easy stuff is now over. From here on, I may make you mad! I’m sure you only think “righteous thoughts!” You insist that “they” make new laws proclaiming what you know to be “morally right or wrong!”
Are you really that old? So old you can’t remember the temptations that went on in the back seat of that car with someone else! Weren’t your passions high, nothing but “feel goods” in sight and all of those “morally right” things and even your responsibilities were outside that closed window! If you never found yourself there, you were one of the few lucky ones!
I also want you to look at the kids today; they are expected to grow up faster, develop faster, and most become “street smart” faster! So many are just young kids, but they look like adults! They are expected to grow up faster than our kids of twenty to forty years ago. They are exposed to so much more life than we were! They have their TV’s, their Cel phones, different kind of friends, and the street! Our kids learn things every day, things that we only learned from whispered voices and cupped hands.
It was much easier to teach us the Elizabethan ideas of yesterday, than to teach those kids in the information age today. Where answers are found with the click of a mouse! We accepted many things as fact that our kids question with a “why!”
It is hard to explain “moral responsibility” to someone that has yet to understand responsibility! It’s hard to explain faith to someone that does not know who they are!
I was discussing families and responsibility at prison one day when I ask the one I was talking to if he had any children. His reply and the expression on his face were both shocking to me! His answer was;” I probably have fifteen or twenty!” Then he added, with a grin on his face, “I’m always willing! If she is willing, and something happens, why do you feel taking care of it is up to me?” That man was already in prison, do you think any law that “they” could make would change a thing?
Maybe we could get “them” to write a law that would make having unwanted children illegal! Then we could paint that law on a big white sign with big black letters and put it next to the road! A sign like that speed limit sign!
Before you pick up that stone to throw at me I want you to; walk in my shoes, talk to the thousands I have talked to, work with a prison ministry for about ten years. Then I would like you to ask yourself this question: this law you want “them” to change or write, would it help or solve a problem or would it add to the problems we already have. Or, is it something that we can sit down and talk about and work out the best solution for all?

Interpretation Two

This seems to be a subject that holds an interest for many. As I’ve stated before; several, maybe millions, can read the same printed word and get almost as many different interpretations! Many times we hear: “it’s there in black and white! How can you read it any other way?”
But this interpretation really took my breath away! I just heard about a Christian pastor that instructs his flock to only send boy children to college! Never send the girls! It makes me wonder if; each time God creates a girl genius, does that pastor point his finger towards Heaven and shout “God, you did wrong?”
Some religious teachers make me wonder if they have overdosed on stupid pills before they walk before their congregations and start their yelling and pounding! It also makes me wonder how smart those members of that congregation can be to come time after time and listen to, and believe things like that!
Think about all the smart kids that have had their minds ground into the dirt, in the name of religion, when they could have been contributing to those around them, and to their community. Please tell me; how you can look your girl child in the eye and tell her that she could have been a teacher, a doctor or even the president except for your religious beliefs?
It is difficult to help someone improve their standards, when it is their religion that is blocking them from knowing their real potential!
I believe that each person’s belief is based on their interpretation of their religion. The “herd of sheep” religion went out about the time World War 2 ended. Today’s people are far more free thinking. We are more educated, more traveled, and far more questioning.
We are not satisfied with “It’s right, because I say it’s right!” Or, “that’s what it says in the Book!” Today we live in an information world; information that is just a call, a click, a channel change, or a question away! Many of yesterday’s interpretations are just that, yesterday!
I believe that it is VERY WRONG to hold anyone’s learning back in the name of religion. Let each kid spread their own wings and fly! Of course what you’re reading is MY interpretation!
Each individual must learn to educate their brain to think and learn for themselves. Not to feel that they always have to be on a leash held by someone else!
As early as my grade school, I often found myself with questions in my heart about things my religious authorities were telling me. When I would go to others for understanding, even there I often found myself with more questions than answers. And what bothered me the most was; both my questions and their answers were based on the same book! How could that be?
That was when I started asking My Father in Heaven some of my questions. It took me a while to learn to listen but I was getting answers to my questions! Instead of those many different interpretations, suddenly I was getting answers that I could understand, from my God!
I have always been very selective with my questions. I never ask hurtful questions. Each of my questions must be important enough to me to take them to my God. Somewhere in our relationship I started referring to Him as My Friend, as I still do today.
During my lifetime I have learned that degrees, certificates, titles and books are all subject to interpretation, but those answers from My Friend are not! ____________________________________________________________
Please, continue to send comments!!!!! I read each one but the numbers are beyond me to reply! Each one is important to me! Thank YOU.

One Year to Live

Yesterday I heard a man talking about how bad it would be if you were told that you only had one more year to live! That started me wondering; how would different people look upon it if God was to give each one “one more year?” Could it be a blessing for some and a curse for others?
Could it be an incentive for some to accomplish as much as they could in such a short time? While others might say; “if that’s all the time I have left why bother?” Then, think about those in dreadful pain, wouldn’t their reply be; “I don’t think I can stand another year!”
As I’ve said many times before; each of us is an individual, our lives are how we live it and how we look upon it. Some of us always look for beauty in our world, while others only see nastiness and hardships!
I look upon my life as a beautiful ever blooming rose with each one of my days a new blossom. A blossom more beautiful and more interesting than the last! And, each of those days, I take the time to smell each rose! I look upon each day as God’s blessing! I’ve also learned that many times I had to look for God’s blessings, and find them, before I could enjoy them!
I have met several who told me that they felt cursed to have to live in their life’s miserable shell! Could that shell be the one they built for themselves? It makes me wonder if that person would be overjoyed living another year like the last one?
Some tell me they would like to live their life as if there was no God. Then, take their chances after they die! I would far rather live my life as if there IS a God and know my chances when I die!
How many different answers do you think, God would get, if He walked into YOUR place of worship and told each one they had just one year to live? And then, He would ask each one what they planned to do with those just over three-hundred fifty days?
Many would tell Him that they would lead a better life. What would you tell Him if that had been your answer and His follow up question was; “ why are you not doing that now?”
Could that one line be life’s most important question? “Why aren’t you doing that now?”
I challenge you to sit down and make a list of the changes YOU would make in the way YOU ARE living your life, if you were sure you had less than a year to live!
Just think; how many of your life’s priorities would suddenly change! Things, that today, you think you can’t live without suddenly become far less important!
Now, I have a confession to make; I’m over eighty-six years old and for the past several years I have tried to live each day as if it could be my last! If today or tomorrow happens to be that last day, so be it. My past is my past; my future is known to me. If my God was to grant me another full year I would give thanks. If I could change some of my past, of course I would. My worst mistakes are those I now have been forgiven for.
Almost every day I walk through fields of flowers, I communicate with friends, and yes, I take the time to smell those flowers! Have you?
How good or bad that year could be can only be determined by the person living it. I know my days will be sunny and bright, and I hope yours are as well!