By Marie Alvero
My family and I once drove up to the top of Pikes Peak, the highest summit in the Rocky Mountains. Around 14,000 feet above sea level, we took in the breathtaking views of winding mountaintop lakes, rock formations, forests, and soaring mountains on all sides. The whole scene has been etched into our family’s collective memory, to be shared over and over. I know there are many ways to take in nature and experience its splendor. A wildlife enthusiast might marvel at the creatures that inhabit the area, a geology buff would be impressed at the stories the mountains tell, an adrenaline junkie would thrill in the highest climb or even a more extreme sport, but as a God lover what I saw was a massive expression of God. I’m in awe of how God created these stunning scenes, not based on my worthiness, nor the collective worthiness of humanity. Knowing our fallen nature, He still created this beautiful world. Somehow He connected humanity to this creation, and to each other. Through the physical nature, the mountains, oceans, forests, deserts, plains, and waters, we get a glimpse of His nature: enduring, awesome, fearsome, and life-giving. What’s more, anyone can experience His wonder, regardless of where we stand with God. The Bible says He sends the rain on the just and the unjust, showing His love for us as a whole. His creation demonstrates His desire to care and sustain the world and His faithfulness toward us regardless of our actions. Creation, nature, is renewing, continually showing hope and promise, even in the wake of disaster and catastrophe. I feel small, just a little note in a fantastic and enormous symphony, but I also feel known. I hope you also get a chance to stand on top of the world, so your soul can exclaim with mine, O God, how great Thou art!
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Strength lies in differences, not in similarities.―Stephen R. Covey
We need to give each other the space to grow, to be ourselves, to exercise our diversity. We need to give each other space so that we may both give and receive such beautiful things as ideas, openness, dignity, joy, healing, and inclusion.—Max de Pree I have a disability, yes, that’s true, but all that really means is I may have to take a slightly different path than you. —Robert M. Hensel It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences. —Audre Lorde Human diversity makes tolerance more than a virtue; it makes it a requirement for survival.—Rene Dubos If the world thinks you’re not good enough, it’s a lie, you know. Get a second opinion. —Nick Vujicic Disability is a matter of perception. If you can do just one thing well, you’re needed by someone. —Martina Navratilova We need to reach that happy stage of our development when differences and diversity are not seen as sources of division and distrust, but of strength and inspiration. —Josefa Iloilo We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter what the color. —Maya Angelou Diversity is not about how we differ. Diversity is about embracing one another’s uniqueness. —Ola Joseph Quote of the day:
“Learning is like rowing upstream: not to advance is to drop back.”--Chinese proverb Think about it: The other day I read a very interesting article about the Feynman Technique, which promises to help you learn anything in four steps. It intrigued me, as I enjoy learning and jump at any opportunity to make the process easier. In the article, it says that Feynman tried to always explain complex ideas in the simplest terms. Here are his Four Steps of Learning. 1. Pick a topic you want to understand and start studying it. Write down everything you know about the topic on a notebook page, and add to that page every time you learn something new about it. 2. Pretend to teach your topic to a classroom or group. Make sure you’re able to explain the topic in simple terms. 3. Go back to the books when you get stuck. The gaps in your knowledge should be obvious. Revisit problem areas until you can explain the topic fully. 4. Simplify and use analogies. Repeat the process while simplifying your language and connecting facts with analogies to help strengthen your understanding By Shannon Shayler
I listened to a song demo today. I’d heard plenty of them before, but this one sounded unusually rough. I tried not to let on that it grated on my nerves. My friend had warned me that it was a demo before he pressed the play button, but I still wasn’t quite prepared. I hoped he hadn’t noticed me cringe or squirm in my chair. After about a minute of private anguish, I reminded myself. It’s just a demo, but it’s still difficult to listen to. You have to hear it as the composer hears it—as it will be, not as it is now. Everyone has good qualities. Find specific things about others that you can sincerely compliment them on, and be generous with your praise. If you can’t find anything right off, look deeper. Ask God to show you the positive qualities that must be there, because He sees things worth loving and praising in everyone. The harder it is to find that special something, the greater the reward is likely to be for both you and the other person when you do. If you can find even a threadlike vein and shine a little love on it in the form of praise, it can lead you straight to the mother lode. People will open up to you, and you’ll discover lots of wonderful things about them. That’s an interesting way to look at it. Yes, and also the best way. It’s how I look at you, actually. Ouch! Alright, I’ll give it a try. To my astonishment, it worked instantly. When I listened beyond the rough background noises, the missed beats, and the off-key notes, the song was actually quite good. The melody, it turned out, was beautiful and relaxing, and it fit the lyrics perfectly. I looked forward to the finished product, and I told my friend so. Throughout life, people make mistakes; they say or do some things wrong, and sometimes repeatedly or with disastrous results. That’s because we are all rough demos in God’s hands right now. There’s a lot about each of us that He still needs to fix, and it’s going to take time. When we can look at others that way, when we try to see them not as they are, but as they will be, everyone wins. They have leeway to be less than perfect, learn by trial and error, and thus keep growing; and we can better appreciate the God-given beauty in those around us. Stress is not what happens to us. It’s our response to what happens. And response is something we can choose. —Maureen Killoran
The truth is that stress doesn’t come from your boss, your kids, your spouse, traffic jams, health challenges, or other circumstances. It comes from your thoughts about these circumstances. —Andrew Bernstein Our anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, but only empties today of its strength.—Charles Spurgeon It makes no sense to worry about things you have no control over, because there’s nothing you can do about them, and why worry about things you do control? The activity of worrying keeps you immobilized.—Wayne Dyer Stress is the trash of modern life—we all generate it but if you don’t dispose of it properly, it will pile up and overtake your life.—Terri Guillemets Believing that you must do something perfectly is a recipe for stress, and you’ll associate that stress with the task and thus condition yourself to avoid it. —Steve Pavlina For fast-acting relief, try slowing down.—Lily Tomlin Your sense of humor is one of the most powerful tools you have to make certain that your daily mood and emotional state support good health. —Paul E. McGhee, Ph.D. Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are. —Chinese Proverb Quote of the day:
“All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson Think about it: I’m sure parents the world over share my dread of wrestling with children’s homework and preparing for tests. Calming my teenagers’ anxiety before a test or trying to get them to eat breakfast before a benchmark exam are parenting moments I’ll be more than happy to be done with. After many struggling sessions, I’ve realized that more than prepping them, I need to change our approach to testing. The issue is in our view of scoring and failure. If my kid brings home a 60% score on a test, I’ll try to say something like “That means you understand 60% of the material. What do you think you need to learn next?” We now use the scoring more as a “you are here” marking on a map, not as a determination of success or failure. We try to make growth the goal. Focusing on growth puts a new spin on making mistakes, asking questions, reworking a problem, and even failure. Growth is exciting and rewarding, and always pursuable and attainable. Even if they haven’t fully mastered the material, they can learn one more thing. And progress becomes a lifelong pursuit. I don’t want fear of failure to hold them back. I would rather have them try, fail, see where their weaknesses are, strengthen those weaknesses, and try again. This has led me to find out a lot about myself. I realized that I’d hit my ceiling of growth because I wasn’t venturing out of my comfort zone. I was terrified of failure, speaking up only when I was 100% sure I was 100% correct, only attempting things I knew I was proficient in, and generally holding back. Recognizing that in myself was uncomfortable. When it comes to growth there’s no such thing as simply maintaining; you’re either going forwards or backwards. And who wants to go backwards? Who wants to be less wise, less healthy, and poorer today than you were yesterday? Since I’ve made the choice to grow, I’ve found endless opportunities— harder workouts, uncomfortable conversations, new recipes, “scarier” investments, applying for promotions at work, signing up for training courses. Oh, and backing into the driveway! Each step of growth has made me want to keep going. -- Marie Alvero The greatest gift I ever had Came from God; I call him Dad! —Author unknown
Any man can be a father. It takes someone special to be a dad.—Author unknown Character is largely caught, and the father and the home should be the great sources of character infection.—Frank H. Cheley You have a lifetime to work, but children are only young once. —Polish proverb Father of fathers, make me one, A fit example for a son. —Douglas Malloch Directly after God in heaven comes a Papa.— Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as a boy Noble fathers have noble children.—Euripides I watched a small man with thick calluses on both hands work fifteen and sixteen hours a day. I saw him once literally bleed from the bottoms of his feet, a man who came here [to the U.S., from Italy] uneducated, alone, unable to speak the language, who taught me all I needed to know about faith and hard work by the simple eloquence of his example.—Mario Cuomo A good father is worth a hundred teachers.--Jean Jacques Rousseau Until you have a son of your own, you will never know the joy, the love beyond feeling that resonates in the heart of a father as he looks upon his son. You will never know the sense of honor that makes a man want to be more than he is and to pass something good and hopeful into the hands of his son.--Kent Nerburn To her the name Father was another name for love.—Fanny Fern One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters. —George Herbert
When I was a kid, my father told me every day, “You’re the most wonderful boy in the world, and you can do anything you want to.”— Jan Hutchins My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person: he believed in me.—Jim Valvano [My father] didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it. —Clarence Budington Kelland My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard. Mother would come out and say, “You’re tearing up the grass.” “We’re not raising grass,” Dad would reply. “We’re raising boys.”—Harmon Killebrew A father carries pictures where his money used to be.—Author unknown When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.— Mark Twain A man’s children and his garden both reflect the amount of weeding done during the growing season. —Author unknown Small boys become big men through the influence of big men who care about small boys.—Author unknown There’s something like a line of gold thread running through a man’s words when he talks to his daughter, and gradually over the years it gets to be long enough for you to pick up in your hands and weave into a cloth that feels like love itself. —John Gregory Brown A dad is respected because he gives his children leadership. A dad is appreciated because he gives his children care. A dad is valued because he gives his children time. A dad is loved because he gives his children the one thing they treasure most—himself. —Author unknown Every dad, if he takes time out of his busy life to reflect upon his fatherhood, can learn ways to become an even better dad.—Jack Baker Quote of the day:
“Maturity begins to grow when you can sense your concern for others outweighing your concern for yourself.”--John MacNaughton Think about it: There is one day I will never forget. It happened a week or so before I turned 12, on what started out to be just another day. The prospect of turning 12 seemed challenging, even scary. For the past several weeks, lurking large in my mind were questions and apprehensions that I was facing for the first time. Would being 12 mean that I could no longer do certain things I had enjoyed as a child? Was I supposed to act differently—suddenly “grown up” and “mature”? I wasn’t even sure I knew what those terms meant. I was confused and clueless. That afternoon Dad and I took a walk, and I finally plucked up the courage to ask those big questions. Dad’s answers, simple but wise, did more than wipe away my birthday fears; they also helped shape my life since. Dad assured me that turning 12 didn’t mean that I would be expected to grow up overnight or that I could no longer enjoy the simple pleasures of childhood. Rather, he explained, enjoying and appreciating the little things in life is a quality of childhood that we should never outgrow, no matter how old we live to be. And to my surprise, I found out from him that maturity has nothing at all to do with trying to act older or impress others. True maturity, he said, is learning to think more about others than myself; it is looking at the world through unselfish eyes, trying to see how I can build up others and make a positive difference for them, putting myself in their place and showing understanding and compassion. In short, it’s being loving, being “you first” instead of “me first.” Pretty good advice. How mature are you? By John, Syria
There is a woman that I have been helping now for over a year. She has two young children, an injured husband, and on top of this she has cancer. I have often taken her for her chemotherapy treatments and brought foreign guests to help her with financial aid. She had a very good life in Aleppo and speaks English. She is so touched by our help, and is trying to convert me to Islam. Muslims say “revert,” as they believe we were born as Muslims and need to return to Islam. I remain polite, showing sincere respect. After a year of friendship, she recently told me that she “has to believe in the Messiah” due to the love and care given her. We have had a similar experience with M., who we have been helping for the past fifteen months. M., was a national sports star from eastern Syria who was tortured by ISIS for trying to leave the caliphate. When we met him, he had been here for only a month, and was a literal bag of bones, 90% paralyzed, and living with his pregnant wife and three young daughters in a rattrap slum. They were about to be thrown out into the streets, as their meager finances were spent. T. kindly took them into his own home, and we eventually found them supporters and a house in a nearby city. Shortly before a recent visit, he sent us a message saying, “We are your children, why have you not come to see us?” How could we not answer his call? M. carries a deep sorrow and desperately needs inner healing. We read Matthew 5:44 with him, the verse about “loving your enemies, doing good to those who hate you…” Time seemed to stop as M. deeply reflected on the verse, and then went ahead to read the remainder of the chapter about how God, our heavenly Father, is kind both to the righteous and the evil by sending to all mankind both rain and sunshine. He called his wife over and excitedly showed her what he had just read. He proceeded to read all of Matthew chapter five, and a certain calmness and peace came to this man who has suffered such brutal torture, excruciating pain, indescribable loss, and more. For the first time in his life, he saw that there is another way, and asked more about the Man who spoke such words that no man has ever spoken, words of loving your enemy and actually praying for those who despitefully persecute you. Thanks for your prayers and support, which help us to bring His message of hope and reconciliation to these refugees in their hour of greatest need! |
AuthorThe goal of the blog is to provide interesting, motivational, soul feeding material. All to help remind us that God loves us all and wants a personal relationship with each of us and will take care of us in times of trouble. I aspire to be a force for good by providing you with positive input. I encourage you to share the blog with others. Archives
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