Random Occurence Window Art

So you scoff at the possibility that this could ever happen randomly... yet you take as an absolute fact that the universe in it's infinitely more complex level of wonder just happened to fall into place like that naturally? Think about it...

Grace Leaves Fertilizer...

This may surprise you, but I am not always as smart as I like to delude the world around me into thinking. One of the things I am sometimes not fully proficient in is the process by which evidence adds up to result. Scientists have proven that early in a teenagers life the part of the brain that becomes aware of "cause and effect" is not yet fully formed. In me it seems more a process of whether I have it turned on or not. If I am paying attention I believe it to be one of my strongest assets. However I am guilty of allowing the tedium or stress of daily life to fill up my consciousness to a level that makes me oblivious. In my part of the world that is expressed with the saying "If that had been a snake it would have bit him". I could colloquial-ize that down a bit, but I think you get my meaning.

God knows this about me. He is most of the time patient and quiet and allows me to experience the pain it ultimately causes, because he knows it will make me wiser. Wisdom comes from failure. Sometimes believing that I am wise becomes another failure for me. When I step back and watch my faltering path through life I have to smile at how much amusement and consternation I must cause him. I have kids, so at least I have a small idea of what that may be like.

Occasionally though, I will have a thought drop into my mind that is so far out of the ordinary in it's content and quality that I KNOW I am being guided. I call this method of communication, advisement from the Holy Spirit. I am far from perfect, and I know what my thoughts look like. When I get a proverbial "word from God" it shows in it's uniqueness. I had two moments like this just a few days ago on my way to work. The two thoughts were so profound I decided that I needed to trivialize them and place them on Twitter. I make light of the occurrence but really, I knew they needed to be shared. I jotted down a couple of notes to myself to remind me what to write when I got to work. The first line was GRACE and then a little further down the page I wrote Leaves and then Fertilizer. If you read my "quotes" below you will see how they prompted my memory.

"GRACE permeates the world. It is to our detriment if we do not take the time to view it's simple beauty in every thing and circumstance."

"Failures in our life, like the fiery changing leaves of Autumn, will fall to the ground only to supply the nutrient of our future success."

In these messages I believe are the thoughts I was meant to share. The real message to me were the combination of the words I saw in a totally different context when I glanced down at the page again later in the day. Obviously, God was prompting me to be kind and purposeful in my relations with others. He knew it was time to remind me to pay attention. By leading me step by step by step he revealed a message that was meant just for me... and now shared with you.

"Grace leaves fertilizer"

When you care for someone else in a loving, non-expectant manner, it leaves benefit beyond the act. The term pay it forward comes to mind. Spend time being purposefully nice to those around you. Show the love of Jesus to someone who needs it. Look around today, he will show you what to do if you will just slow down and take the time to listen. He is depending on you to tend to his children... after all, that is our job while we are here if you think about it.

You Don't Know What You Don't Know...

While conversion testimonial stories are very personal, it is really nice to hear a very honest and open discussion of the life change involved when someone moves from a position of absolute skepticism to undeniable truth. It resonates with me because, although the events in the story are different, the overall process is VERY similar. Please take a moment to read it through. I promise it will be worth your while.

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.1 Corinthians 1:18 NIV

Fox News' Highly Reluctant Jesus Follower

Of all people surprised that I became an evangelical Christian, I'm the most surprised. --Kirsten Powers

 

Photo by Scott Suchman

Just seven years ago, if someone had told me that I'd be writing for Christianity Today magazine about how I came to believe in God, I would have laughed out loud. If there was one thing in which I was completely secure, it was that I would never adhere to any religion—especially to evangelical Christianity, which I held in particular contempt.

I grew up in the Episcopal Church in Alaska, but my belief was superficial and flimsy. It was borrowed from my archaeologist father, who was so brilliant he taught himself to speak and read Russian. When I encountered doubt, I would fall back on the fact that he believed.

Leaning on my father's faith got me through high school. But by college it wasn't enough, especially because as I grew older he began to confide in me his own doubts. What little faith I had couldn't withstand this revelation. From my early 20s on, I would waver between atheism and agnosticism, never coming close to considering that God could be real.

After college I worked as an appointee in the Clinton administration from 1992 to 1998. The White House surrounded me with intellectual people who, if they had any deep faith in God, never expressed it. Later, when I moved to New York, where I worked in Democratic politics, my world became aggressively secular. Everyone I knew was politically left-leaning, and my group of friends was overwhelmingly atheist.

I sometimes hear Christians talk about how terrible life must be for atheists. But our lives were not terrible. Life actually seemed pretty wonderful, filled with opportunity and good conversation and privilege. I know now that it was not as wonderful as it could have been. But you don't know what you don't know. How could I have missed something I didn't think existed?

Continued ...
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2013/november/fox-news-highly-reluctant-jesus-follower-kirsten-powers.html?paging=off

With God's Help You Can Put a Stop To It...

Regardless of the issue... abuse, alcoholism, gambling, adultery, etc., you do NOT have to follow in the footsteps of your parents. It can sometimes be hard to recognize the inroads that have been programmed into your personality that would allow these seeming self-destructive traits to take hold. Our world today seems steadfast in it's collusion to allow everyone to ignore or pass responsibility on for issues that confront us daily. I say it is time to stop, point the finger at the enemy and the action, and declare that you will not allow it to affect your life or that of your family. While the image below may seem a bit melodramatic, it demonstrates the level of commitment it will take. Stand on the bridge of your life and do whatever it takes to keep the sins of the past from moving into the future of your family.

Generational Garbage

by Max Lucado • October 16

Your family history doesn’t have to be your future. The generational garbage can stop here and now.
Don’t give your kids what your ancestors gave to you. Talk to God about it, in detail. God, everyday I came home from school to find mom drunk, lying on the couch. I had to take care of baby brother, do homework on my own.  It’s not right, God. Difficult, for certain.  But let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Let Him replace “childish thinking” with mature truth.
A dear friend of mine was called to identify the body of his father who’d been shot by his ex-wife. The blast was just another in a long line of angry, violent family moments. He made this resolution:  “It stops with me.”  And it has!
God wants to help you—for your sake! Trust Him—with His help, you’ll get through this.
From You’ll Get Through This

This is going to be one of these "Yeah, But..." conversations, I just know it.

What evidence do you have that there is a God?”
The universe itself is evidence that there is a God. Let’s think about this for a moment. There are only three options to explain the existence of the universe. One, that it has always been. Two, that it created itself. Three, that it was created. The first option, that the universe is eternal, has been utterly rejected by the scientific community. The motion of the galaxies, the background radiation echo, and other evidences all overwhelmingly point to the fact that the universe sprang into existence at a particular point in time. Option two, that the universe created itself, is philosophically impossible. Of course, before the universe existed it would not have been around to do the creating. Obviously, a non-existent universe could not have done anything! It did not exist. We all know that nothing can not do something. Nothing is nothing. Nothing cannot see, smell, act, think, or create. So option one and two can be thrown out on scientific and philosophical grounds. Option three, that something or someone outside of the universe created the universe, is the option that both reason and the evidence point to.

SKEPTIC: I hear what you're saying Charlie, but I still have a hard time believing in a God that I cannot see

CHARLIE: I understand that struggle. I struggled with that before I became a believer as well. Let me help you think through this though. Let’s imagine I am holding up a painting. When you see a painting, what proof do you need to establish the fact that a painter exists? Nothing else besides the painting itself. The painting is absolute proof that there was a painter. You do not need to see the painter to believe that he or she exists. The painting is all the evidence you need. It would not be there if the painter did not exist, and so it is with the universe. The existence of the universe itself is compelling evidence for a creator.
SKEPTIC:  But if the universe demands a creator, then why can’t we just say God must have a creator as well? In other words, who made God?
CHARLIE: Nobody made God. Unlike the finite universe (a universe that began to exist) that demands a creator, God does not need a creator.

SKEPTIC: Why?

CHARLIE: Because He is eternal. Someone who has always existed does not need a creator or someone to have brought Him into existence, because He’s always been. Psalm 90:2 says, “Even from everlasting to everlasting You are God.” God is eternal. But the universe falls into an entirely different category. As the scientific discoveries have shown, it has not always existed. And anything that begins to exist, requires a cause or maker. Things don’t just pop into existence all on their own. Nothing does not produce something.
SKEPTIC: Okay Charlie that makes sense, but you believe that God has just always existed?

CHARLIE: Yes.

SKEPTIC: Impossible!

CHARLIE: Well, before you scoff at the notion of God having always existed, keep this in mind: something must have always existed. Do you realize that?

SKEPTIC: Why do you think that?

CHARLIE: Well, think through this with me: if nothing cannot produce something, and yet something exists, then it follows necessarily that something has always existed (in order to bring the something into existence). Think of it this way:1. If there ever was a time that absolutely nothing existed, nothing would exist now.
2. Something exists now.
3. Therefore, there was never a time that absolutely nothing existed.

www.alwaysbeready.com

 

Teenagers and Potential

I have two children. My daughter is older and has already begun here life independent, in another state even (I miss her). My son is 14 and immensely intelligent... but he is a teenaged boy and motivation for him is sometimes elusive. I want to be inspiring and say just the right things, so that he can sidestep some of the hardship of his teenaged years, but alas, I have become the out of touch parent. Somehow I would like to be able to convince him I am an advocate, hired by his future self, to guide him in making the decisions his 30 year old self wish had been made. This sort of high brow philosophical nonsense just reinforces my ineptitude. All that being said, I am still greatly impressed by his potential. Whatever it takes, I hope someone will fill that niche and inspire him towards the greatness I see for his future. This article is one of those types of lessons I hope someone whispers into his ear... soon.

16 Things I Wish They Had Taught Me in School

by Henrik Edberg

I am 28 now. I don’t think about the past or regret things much these days.

But sometimes I wish that I had known some of things I have learned over the last few years a bit earlier. That perhaps there had been a self-improvement class in school. And in some ways there probably was.

Because some of these 16 things in this article a teacher probably spoke about in class. But I forgot about them or didn’t pay attention.

Some of it would probably not have stuck in my mind anyway. Or just been too far outside my reality at the time for me to accept and use.

But I still think that taking a few hours from all those German language classes and use them for some personal development classes would have been a good idea. Perhaps for just an hour a week in high school. It would probably be useful for many students and on a larger scale quite helpful for society in general.

So here are 16 things I wish they had taught me in school (or I just would like to have known about earlier).

1. The 80/20 rule.

This is one of the best ways to make better use of your time. The 80/20 rule – also known as The Pareto Principle – basically says that 80 percent of the value you will receive will come from 20 percent of your activities.

So a lot of what you do is probably not as useful or even necessary to do as you may think.

You can just drop – or vastly decrease the time you spend on – a whole bunch of things.

And if you do that you will have more time and energy to spend on those things that really brings your value, happiness, fulfilment and so on.

2. Parkinson’s Law.

You can do things quicker than you think. This law says that a task will expand in time and seeming complexity depending on the time you set aside for it. For instance, if you say to yourself that you’ll come up with a solution within a week then the problem will seem to grow more difficult and you’ll spend more and more time trying to come up with a solution.

So focus your time on finding solutions. Then just give yourself an hour (instead of the whole day) or the day (instead of the whole week) to solve the problem. This will force your mind to focus on solutions and action.

The result may not be exactly as perfect as if you had spent a week on the task, but as mentioned in the previous point, 80 percent of the value will come from 20 percent of the activities anyway. Or you may wind up with a better result because you haven’t overcomplicated or overpolished things. This will help you to get things done faster, to improve your ability to focus and give you more free time where you can totally focus on what’s in front of you instead of having some looming task creating stress in the back of your mind.

3. Batching.

Boring or routine tasks can create a lot of procrastination and low-level anxiety. One good way to get these things done quickly is to batch them. This means that you do them all in row. You will be able to do them quicker because there is less start-up time compared to if you spread them out. And when you are batching you become fully engaged in the tasks and more focused.

A batch of things to do in an hour today may look like this: Clean your desk / answer today’s emails / do the dishes / make three calls / write a grocery shopping list for tomorrow.

4. First, give value. Then, get value. Not the other way around.

This is a bit of a counter-intuitive thing. There is often an idea that someone should give us something or do something for us before we give back. The problem is just that a lot of people think that way. And so far less than possible is given either way.

If you want to increase the value you receive (money, love, kindness, opportunities etc.) you have to increase the value you give. Because over time you pretty much get what you give. It would perhaps be nice to get something for nothing. But that seldom happens.

5. Be proactive. Not reactive.

This one ties into the last point. If everyone is reactive then very little will get done. You could sit and wait and hope for someone else to do something. And that happens pretty often, but it can take a lot of time before it happens.

A more useful and beneficial way is to be proactive, to simply be the one to take the first practical action and get the ball rolling. This not only saves you a lot of waiting, but is also more pleasurable since you feel like you have the power over your life. Instead of feeling like you are run by a bunch of random outside forces.

6. Mistakes and failures are good.

When you are young you just try things and fail until you learn. As you grow a bit older, you learn from – for example – school to not make mistakes. And you try less and less things.

This may cause you to stop being proactive and to fall into a habit of being reactive, of waiting for someone else to do something. I mean, what if you actually tried something and failed? Perhaps people would laugh at you?

Perhaps they would. But when you experience that you soon realize that it is seldom the end of the world. And a lot of the time people don’t care that much. They have their own challenges and lives to worry about.

And success in life often comes from not giving up despite mistakes and failure. It comes from being persistent.

When you first learn to ride your bike you may fall over and over. Bruise a knee and cry a bit. But you get up, brush yourself off and get on the saddle again. And eventually you learn how to ride a bike. If you can just reconnect to your 5 year old self and do things that way – instead of giving up after a try/failure or two as grown-ups often do -you would probably experience a lot more interesting things, learn valuable lessons and have quite a bit more success.

7. Don’t beat yourself up.

Why do people give up after just few mistakes or failures? Well, I think one big reason is because they beat themselves up way too much. But it’s a kinda pointless habit. It only creates additional and unnecessary pain inside you and wastes your precious time. It’s best to try to drop this habit as much as you can.

8. Assume rapport.

Meeting new people is fun. But it can also induce nervousness. We all want to make a good first impression and not get stuck in an awkward conversation.

The best way to do this that I have found so far is to assume rapport. This means that you simply pretend that you are meeting one of your best friends. Then you start the interaction in that frame of mind instead of the nervous one.

This works surprisingly well. You can read more about it in How to Have Less Awkward Conversations: Assuming Rapport.

9. Use your reticular activation system to your advantage.

I learned about the organs and the inner workings of the body in class but nobody told me about the reticular activation system. And that’s a shame, because this is one of the most powerful things you can learn about. What this focus system, this R.A.S, in your mind does is to allow you to see in your surroundings what you focus your thoughts on. It pretty much always helps you to find what you are looking for.

So you really need to focus on what you want, not on what you don’t want. And keep that focus steady.

Setting goals and reviewing them frequently is one way to keep your focus on what’s important and to help you take action that will move your closer to toward where you want to go. Another way is just to use external reminders such as pieces of paper where you can, for instance, write down a few things from this post like “Give value” or “Assume rapport”. And then you can put those pieces of paper on your fridge, bathroom mirror etc.

10. Your attitude changes your reality.

We have all heard that you should keep a positive attitude or perhaps that “you need to change your attitude!”. That is a nice piece of advice I suppose, but without any more reasons to do it is very easy to just brush such suggestions off and continue using your old attitude.

But the thing that I’ve discovered the last few years is that if you change your attitude, you actually change your reality. When you for instance use a positive attitude instead of a negative one you start to see things and viewpoints that were invisible to you before. You may think to yourself “why haven’t I thought about things this way before?”.

When you change your attitude you change what you focus on. And all things in your world can now be seen in a different light.

This is of course very similar to the previous tip but I wanted to give this one some space. Because changing your attitude can create an insane change in your world. It might not look like it if you just think about it though. Pessimism might seem like realism. But that is mostly because your R.A.S is tuned into seeing all the negative things you want to see. And that makes you “right” a lot of the time. And perhaps that is what you want. On the other hand, there are more fun things than being right all the time.

If you try changing your attitude for real – instead of analysing such a concept in your mind – you’ll be surprised.

You may want to read more about this topic in Take the Positivity Challenge!

11. Gratitude is a simple way to make yourself feel happy.

Sure, I was probably told that I should be grateful. Perhaps because it was the right thing to do or just something I should do. But if someone had said that feeling grateful about things for minute or two is a great way to turn a negative mood into a happy one I would probably have practised gratitude more. It is also a good tool for keeping your attitude up and focusing on the right things. And to make other people happy. Which tends to make you even happier, since emotions are contagious.

12. Don’t compare yourself to others.

The ego wants to compare. It wants to find reasons for you to feel good about yourself (“I’ve got a new bike!”). But by doing that it also becomes very hard to not compare yourself to others who have more than you (“Oh no, Bill has bought an even nicer bike!”). And so you don’t feel so good about yourself once again. If you compare yourself to others you let the world around control how you feel about yourself. It always becomes a rollercoaster of emotions.

A more useful way is to compare yourself to yourself. To look at how far you have come, what you have accomplished and how you have grown. It may not sound like that much fun but in the long run it brings a lot more inner stillness, personal power and positive feelings.

13. 80-90% of what you fear will happen never really come into reality.

This is a big one. Most things you fear will happen never happen. They are just monsters in your own mind. And if they happen then they will most often not be as painful or bad as you expected. Worrying is most often just a waste of time.

This is of course easy to say. But if you remind yourself of how little of what you feared throughout your life that has actually happened you can start to release more and more of that worry from your thoughts.

14. Don’t take things too seriously.

It’s very easy to get wrapped up in things. But most of the things you worry about never come into reality. And what may seem like a big problem right now you may not even remember in three years.

Taking yourself, your thoughts and your emotions too seriously often just seems to lead to more unnecessary suffering. So relax a little more and lighten up a bit. It can do wonders for your mood and as an extension of that; your life.

15. Write everything down.

If your memory is anything like mine then it’s like a leaking bucket. Many of your good or great ideas may be lost forever if you don’t make a habit of writing things down. This is also a good way to keep your focus on what you want. Read more about it in Why You Should Write Things Down.

16. There are opportunities in just about every experience.

In pretty much any experience there are always things that you can learn from it and things within the experience that can help you to grow. Negative experiences, mistakes and failure can sometimes be even better than a success because it teaches you something totally new, something that another success could never teach you.

Whenever you have a “negative experience” ask yourself: where is the opportunity in this? What is good about this situation? One negative experience can – with time – help you create many very positive experiences.

What do you wish someone had told you in school or you had just learned earlier in life?

What Does Gratitude Look Like?

Here is a great idea... Gratitude is one of those things that must be actively pursued in our lives to be felt and appreciated. Try this exercise and see if it helps fine tune your efforts.

zoom in on gratitude: 30 day photo challenge