Although you know I’m homeless,
need shelter from the cold.
Don’t give me a coat and bag of food,
just warn me about my soul.
Now time is moving swiftly,
growing feeble weak and old.
The shelter I need is in His arms,
just warn me about my soul.
For if my soul’s in danger,
that’s something I must be told.
Don’t fill my plate with food and drink,
just warn me about my soul.
You see I’m in an emergency,
and sin has taken its toll.
It’s spiritual food I need the most,
just warn me about my soul.
The thing I need you to feed me,
bread of life to make me whole.
My body dies but my spirit lives on,
just warn me about my soul.
Don’t try to give me money,
don’t need silver cash or gold.
If you really cared about my fate,
you’ll warn me about my soul.
You’ll tell me I’m spiritually dead,
I’m lost under Satan’s control.
You’ll tell me how Jesus died for me,
you’ll warn me about my soul.
You’ll tell me about His love,
good news you should never withhold.
Gave up His life just to save mine,
you’ll warn me about my soul.
You see I’m in spiritual trouble,
my life Satan easily could have stole.
The one’s I’ll love when I finally get home,
those who warned me about my soul.
For at my day of judgment,
I’ll stand at eternity’s threshold.
I’ll enter in as one of the flock,
I was warned about my soul.
My life will be everlasting,
a splendor that can’t be told.
A life I’d never have,
if not warned about my soul.
And now I’m a king in heaven,
I’ve finally reached my goal.
The thing I credit to my success,
was the warning about my soul.
© 2005 Terry Goss
♠ ♣ ♥ ♦ 12 Things to Remember ♠ ♣ ♥ ♦
Ω
- The value of time.
- The success of perseverance
- The pleasure of working.
- The dignity of simplicity.
- The worth of character
- The power of kindness.
- The influence of example.
- The obligation of duty.
- The wisdom of economy.
- The virtue of patience.
- The improvement of talent.
- The joy of origination
∞
≈
Each of these is worth considering with
regards to how we live our lives.
How can we grow in all of these attributes?
By associating with the wise and by
respecting the Word of God.
♣
Proverbs 16:16 puts it this way:
“How much better to get wisdom than gold!
And to get understanding is to be chosen
rather than silver.”
♣
Only through attaining godly wisdom can
we improve how we live our lives now and
ultimately find eternal happiness in God’s
Kingdom.
♣
♣
*source : gnmagazine*
φ
*Life is all about ROWING*
φ
My grandfather was a man who lived a rich life. A shipbuilder by trade,
he was one of 11 children born in rural Nova Scotia. Grandfather was a
quiet man, a deeply religious man and, perhaps most of all, a person of
significant character. Once when I was in high school, my grandfather
invited me to go on a rowing trip with him. He loved the sea and told me
that this particular evening promised a glorious sunset.
“Would you be interested in going on a rowing trip with me to visit a
tiny cove I’m sure you’ve not seen?” he inquired.
Looking outside, wiping the sweat from my teenaged forehead,
I suggested that 95 degrees was not the perfect time for a long rowing
trip and said another time would be better.
“Ah,” he said, “another time is for young men. Let’s do it now.”
With that clarity of perspective, off we went on what would turn out
to be a nonstop row of more than an hour. Given that he was in his
seventies and I a mere fifteen, the rowing naturally fell on my shoulders.
All during our trip to that cove, he was chiding me to go faster else we
miss the promised sunset.
“Chop, chop,” he piped up.
Sweating profusely, I diligently rowed until more than an hour had passed
and we turned a corner beyond a tiny point of land and into the promised
cove. Moments later, the sky burst into an orange-purple blaze.
My grandfather was right, the cove and the sunset were both breathtaking.
The scene is one I will never forget.
We were there, however, for no more than a couple of minutes when my
grandfather said, “Well, let’s head back now.”
Incredulous, I protested. “Granddad, you were right, it is beautiful here.
But look at me, I’m dying – let’s stay for a while.”
“No,” he said, “they’ll have made dinner for us and we’re already late.
We ought to think of others, not just ourselves. Besides, we’ve seen it
and this beautiful sunset will follow us home.”
Hands on the oars, I began the journey back. With each pull I renewed
my complaining: “It was nice, but not worth all that rowing…
This boat is too old and needs new oars… The current’s too strong today…
You’re the big shipbuilder – why don’t you take a turn rowing?”
On and on I went.
My grandfather merely sat quietly, enjoying the sunset.
Finally, after about thirty minutes he gazed at me and quietly said,
“John, put the oars down, would you?”
With the oars in the boat he stared me in the face: “I want to tell you
something today, something I very much hope you will remember.
John, most of life is rowing and if you don’t learn to be good at –
and enjoy – the rowing, you will grow up to be a very unhappy man.
Now put your hands on the wood and take me home.”
I would love to tell you that the scales fell from my eyes in that moment
and my life was lived differently from then until now.
But that would not be true.
At the time, those words seemed like the babblings of an old shipbuilder
about to make his last sail. But thirty years have passed and I know
now what he meant.
- wise sage words .. enjoy the rowings of life .. that’s what life is all about .. treasure every moment
Life is mostly rowing.
There are, of course, moments of ecstasy, but most of life is made up of
simpler moments.
A walk on the beach,
a glancing view of a beautiful cornfield out an airplane window,
the first time you see your child steal a base,
a conversation where you know your words helped a friend,
lying in a tent by a river with the few people you love most,
the good feeling at the end of a hard day at work when you
know your efforts were not in vain.
It is precisely our ability to be present and enjoy those moments that
makes life worth living. We can spend our entire lives trying to get
from one big sunset to the next and miss a whole lot of great living
in between.
Sure those great sunsets are wonderful, but they are the icing, not the cake.
And it is not the big things that determine our success in the many realms
of our life.
Marriages are not built on the big anniversary trip to Hawaii or the special
gift that marks a date. It is in the rowing that marriages are made and broken,
in the daily honoring of life together.
Parents do not raise children well because of the camping trip taken once
each year to provide “quality time.” Rather it is in the rowing moments,
simple exchanges that occur thousands of times over the years that our
children learn the lessons they will need to live a life uncommon.
Leaders do not earn their stripes at the annual meeting when they give
a rousing speech that inspires the masses, but in the daily way their rowing
inspires a sense of pride and respect among those whom they lead.
But how do we begin to get better at the rowing and to appreciate the
simpler pleasures it has to offer?
How do we reclaim the innocence, faith and wonder with which we were
graced when we came into the world?
It seems to me that it begins with realizing that life is not about where we
are going as much as it is about being where we are.
How much of our lives are lived with the future as our focus – saving for
retirement, waiting for the weekend, counting the days until vacation,
looking forward to graduation, the next promotion.
We seem destined to believe life will be better when we finally get there.
When we choose to believe that each moment, however simple, offers
as much to us as the great shining moment of ecstasy, we begin to
experience our lives in a different way.
What part of the rowing must you pay more attention to?
Are you enjoying the moments of your life fully or waiting
for some future sunset when life will be what you desire it to be?
- rowing life away into a glorious future sunset?
By John Izzo, Ph.D.
≈ ∞ ≈
♣
A tomorrow comes
A tomorrow goes
Distance between us all,
grows and grows and grows….
≈ ∞ ≈
While pondering on this, does everyone have this one burning question;
why do we busy ourselves endlessly going round and round in circles
chasing our envisioned pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?
Are there such promises of treasures? The quest and the attainment of it,
does it all satisfy the hunger for fulfillment of happiness and peace of our
inner soul? By the end of it all, is it worth every breath we take and every
minute that we expend our present moments for an indefinable uncertain
future? On the other hand, some of us would rather championed the other
favored route of taking charge of our lives and construct our own path to
success and contentment as to meandering and walking the path which
the Lord God above has mapped out for us.
Patience and Faith is called for while heeding the voice of God in directing
us to which streams or rivers we should flow and swim along. Though all
of us struggle with the long and winding road of life with obstacles and a
whole load of burdensome challenges, just remember that we are God’s
clay and He is our Potter. When we plod along life’s precipices, do not
forget that a Potter is very patient when molding His clay. He needs to
reshape and remold till He is pleased and satisfied that the vessel will be
near perfect accordingly that reflects loving considerate traits along with
a great character. Through the midst of our living, we tend to be shifted
off or misshapen by drifting of from being the original intended shape but
our Potter will always be there at the wheel to fashioned us again and again.
The final product of that special beautiful piece of clay falls praise to the
molder and architect of design of our lives, the *One True God Yahweh*
who sits majestically above in His awesome heavens.
The pursuit of a successful life lies in the perception of the seeker. Though
one might achieve own’s harvest of fame and fortune, one might lose his
valuable time with himself or herself and his or her loved ones. That’s the
start of the growth of distant communication where it grows and grows
and creeps on like the vines until it’s so unreachable that all sources of
connections would have been severed. This will be the domino effect of
disintegration and dissolution of family unity, the onslaught of
misunderstandings and miscommunications which will then result in
divorces and which in turn will affect the psychological and emotional
well being of any child. The cycle of disturbed, troubled and unloved
children will have the tendency of unhealthy living standards such as
diving into alcoholism, drug abuse, sexual promiscuity, vices of robberies
and the list goes on and on.
In the aftermath of all these, societies break down and moral decay sets
in and that will definitely roller coast to a dysfunctional country whereby
productivity and resourcefulness of it’s citizens would be decreased
alarmingly and that’s a heavy critical blow of deficits that will spiral
a healthy economy agonizingly downwards. If this “distance-virus” is
not checked, remedied and healed soon enough, the country will suffer
greatly with the deficiencies of it’s people.
The irony of it all is that, though we are so closely and sometimes intimately
connected with the super linkage bandwidth of computers, there is still that
lingering tarrying wide, open, silent and empty void of interaction hovering
in cyberspace. To sum it up in conclusion, the distance between souls will
keep on germinating and growing until there is only that silent and eerie
stillness of interplay and interchange in the future.
© keziah boey – May 16th 2008
α
Ω
Three things in life that, once gone, never come back –
1. Time
2. Words
3. Opportunity
Three things in life that can destroy a person –
1. Anger
2. Pride
3. Unforgiveness
Three things in life that you should never lose-
1. Hope
2. Peace
3. Honesty
Three things in life that are most valuable –
1. Love
2. Family & Friends
3. Kindness
Three things in life that are never certain –
1. Fortune
2. Success
3. Dreams
Three things that make a person –
1. Commitment
2. Sincerity
3. Hard work
♣
Three things that are Truly Constant
♥ ♥ ♥
Our GOD and FATHER JEHOVAH
His SON Our Messiah JESUS CHRIST
GOD’S HOLY SPIRIT
Yeshua Our Messiah
