While fixing our eyes on a beautiful rose and smelling its fragrance, it’s easy to forget its sharp, prickly thorns. When I was a child, my mother gave me a rose to feel and smell. While studying it with my fingers, enjoying its softness, and sniffing its fragrance, I was poked by one of the thorns. I was startled to tears. My mother held me close and gently explained that all roses have thorns.
“Life will have lots of thorns,” I remember her saying. “Though you may not appreciate them at first, you will come to appreciate them later on.” I was too young to fully understand the meaning of her words, but as time passed and life continued its course, the meaning of her words became clear. Seldom does it come naturally to appreciate the “thorns” in our lives—we generally have to make a choice to develop that awareness and mindset. The apostle Paul had his “thorn,” which served to keep him humble. In 2 Corinthians 12:7–9 he wrote, “In order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest upon me.” The biggest challenge in my life was coming to terms with my blindness. I was different from most of those around me. While others could use their eyes to read, I had to learn to read with my fingers. Unlike my friends and peers, I had to walk with a cane. I also needed more help and assistance with day-to-day life than most people I knew. My parents were aware of the challenges I was facing and pointed me to those very scriptures from Paul. I was especially amazed to find that, although it’s not known for certain what Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” was, a common theory is that it had something to do with his eyes. I had done my share of praying for deliverance from my blindness—and many others had earnestly prayed for me as well. But as time went on, it became clear to me, and to those who prayed for me, that God had allowed me to come into this world without my eyesight in order to fulfill a specific purpose. Therefore, He would give me sufficient grace to live with my blindness and would somehow use it for His glory. This revelation gave me a new lease on life—completely changing my outlook and the way I thought. Instead of complaining about life’s obstacles, I set out to look for opportunities. The more I looked for them, the more opportunities I found. I became determined to follow the example of Dr. William Moon, who, after suddenly losing his sight prayed, “Lord, I accept this ‘talent’ of blindness from You. Help me to use it for Your glory so that when You return, You may receive it ‘back with interest’” (Matthew 25:27). He was inspired to invent a special reading system for the blind, known as the Moon alphabet, or Moon type, which enabled blind people to read using their fingers. I concluded that if God wished to use my “talent” of blindness as a testimony to glorify Him, I would allow Him to do so for His glory, just as Moon did. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been told how my testimony has encouraged, challenged, and motivated others. I often wondered if my life would have been as much of a testimony were I able to see. God only knows. Be that as it may, I have not only come to appreciate my “thorn” of blindness, but I no longer see it as a thorn. I have accepted it as a tool that the Lord has chosen to use to serve a yet unseen but wonderful purpose.. -- Steve Heart
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In the book of Hebrews, the apostle Paul promises the church in Jerusalem that “there remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God.” (Hebrews 4:9)
What is a Sabbath-rest? I might not know all the things that it is, but I can tell you what it’s not. It’s not a thing that most people I know have. It seems that each year our pace quickens, we push for more, strive harder, and increasingly run on fumes. This probably sounds familiar to many of you. God must have known that after sin separated us from Him, we would strive to control, to earn, to create, to master, and we would end up losing His peace. So He commanded His people to observe the Sabbath. This was a day where work, earning, creating, serving, and mastering ceased, and the people rested and remembered that their relationship with God was more important than anything they could accomplish. As long as His people’s hearts were right with God, Sabbath felt like a blessing— but if their priorities were off, Sabbath probably felt like something that held them back from being as productive as other nations, or as a burden of rules and regulations. Today, we aren’t called to observe Sabbath according to the traditions in the Old Testament, but God’s call to rest is just as needed. “Anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest.” (Hebrews 4:10–11) Maybe you, like me, are at the point where your soul needs rest. I really need it. I need to let Jesus lead me to green pastures and restore my soul, but how can this happen when I’m always rushing, worrying, doing, and stressing? If I were to describe modern culture in one word, it would be “stress.” So much that we hold dear is the opposite of calm, peace, and still. And we pay for it through burnout, addiction, loneliness, and brokenness. We who have learned this culture go on to teach it to our children. But God tells us there is another way: there remains a Sabbath-rest for the people of God. How do you get that rest? Jesus tells us: “Come to me, all of you who are tired and have heavy loads, and I will give you rest. Accept my teachings and learn from me, because I am gentle and humble in spirit, and you will find rest for your lives.” (Matthew 11:28–29) When we come to Him and learn from Him, this Sabbath-rest is a promise to us. – Marie Alvero By Alina and Angela, Romania
After moving back in 2019 to the town where I grew up, we visited the old city library together with our then-three-year-old son Andrei. It was like going back in time, as everything was the same as it had been 30 years ago. It was then that we decided that it would be so nice to have a Children’s Library, a friendly place where the children from our town and from the villages in the area could come. Research shows that reading books is a more effective way to both improve and retain literacy skills, as opposed to other forms of media. Yet many researchers suggest that young people are reading fewer and fewer books. Our idea was to create a space where we could plan a series of activities to make reading fun and to inspire children to read more and to love books. Around that time, the COVID-19 pandemic started and everything was on hold. However, this last summer things started to fall into place. We talked to the mayor of the city, and he was very happy to put the space at our disposal and support us in every way. Thanks to the donations we received, we had the funds for the needed furniture. Our friends started to donate books and the other things we needed. Our dream came true when in autumn we held the Children’s Library inauguration. Officials, school directors, and teachers from the city participated. We had very good media coverage, with a few articles published and a local TV clip aired. Since then, we started having workshops twice a week, where children ages 5-10 come with their teachers. Each time we pick a theme from the STEPS Character Building Program. (“Pas cu pas” is the Romanian version that we printed this year.) Having the Children’s Library is a great opportunity to continue on a regular basis to teach and promote the STEPS Character Building Program in all the schools from our city and from the rural areas nearby. Once I was on an airplane in severe turbulence. When facing such a situation, it can be pretty frightening and, if you’re like me, you’re probably just waiting for the moment the plane touches down so your world is no longer being rocked.
A verse that I claimed for protection during our descent on that flight was Psalm 46:1–3, which I’ve known as long as I can remember.
As with most verses that I’ve known since I was a kid, the real meaning never quite struck me, but being on that plane made these scriptures come to life. My world was rocking in a sense and it was a frightening thing, but I still had the assurance that if we could just land, everything would be all right. The psalmist, on the other hand, is talking about a situation where not only a plane is in tumult, not only is there a localized hurricane or earthquake, but where the whole world is rocking and in tumult and confusion, falling apart … and yet he is unafraid, because he’s holding on to the Lord. How much trust does that take? When your world is not just figuratively but literally falling apart around you and you’re standing steadfast, looking at the storm and saying to it, “I’m not afraid of you. Do your worst. I’m holding on to the Lord.” One of the most often-repeated commands in the Bible is “Fear not.” It’s easy to apply that verse when we feel it’s something small enough to handle, but when it’s too big for human help? Well, just about every time in the Bible that they were commanded to fear not, it was in situations that were well out of the realm of human possibility. It just goes to show that our ability to be without fear is not something that is based on our power, our goodness, or anything that we do at all, but because we are His and He knows and loves each of us personally. Going back to the airplane, many people around me were unfazed by the incident, their faces stern, impassive. No doubt, these people had flown many times and had faith in the pilots to see them through the storm. While it makes for a good illustration of trusting the Lord, who is the pilot of our lives, the fact is that they weren’t putting their trust in the Lord but in a mere illustration of Him, in this case the pilots of the plane. That’s not the kind of faith the Lord wants us to have, faith in a mere illustration, even if it is a fairly good one. The truth is that those pilots were only human and susceptible to the same mistakes as any of the rest of us. To put faith in them would be like putting faith in the earth on the day before the events of Psalm 46 take place. It may seem solid because it’s held up until then, but in reality, it’s not. So in life, a lot can seem solid, because it’s held us up before, whereas the Lord can seem shaky, especially if we’ve never put our trust in Him. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard people, even professing Christians, say things like, “Will God put food on the table?” “Will prayer heal me of this affliction?” The meaning behind it obviously being that we have to put our faith in something more solid than the Lord and prayer, such as ourselves and our abilities to meet our own needs. Well, our abilities can only go so far, and when we look at life with a bit of perspective, we’ll see that almost everything is beyond our control, no matter how much we “have it together.” When thinking about all this, something that came to mind is how a lot of people here in Nigeria are leaving the country and the economic problems that they are facing for “greener pastures,” such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, etc. It’s easy for people to put their faith in such countries as they seem pretty stable compared to a country like Nigeria. And for those remaining, it often seems the safest bet to change their money to foreign currency as quickly as possible to avoid the rapid devaluation that has been ongoing for almost the past eight years. And yet can we really claim that those things are guarantees of safety? Consider how quickly things can change in the global environment. When we see a country like Lebanon’s economy completely collapse in spectacularly rapid fashion, or the destruction of war in a country like Ukraine, or the effects of natural disasters that have occurred all over the world, even in highly developed countries like Japan and the United States, and the wanton destruction they can cause, it reminds us that really nothing in this world is stable no matter how much faith we may put in it. Going back to the airplane, it makes for a pretty good illustration. The airplane is like our lives, everything we hold dear, everything we know, our world. The ground is the Lord. Everything in our lives can be shaky and in tumult, but the ground’s stability is always there to come back to whenever we need it. Our unmoving rock is and always will be the Lord. -- By Marc From Gonzalo and Anna
Long before the pandemic, Gonzalo and I felt a calling to reach the Afro-Ecuadorian community. We visited a community in Chota called “Little Africa.” Unlike this ethnic group in the west, where many have opportunities for a good education and to become professionals, here they lack job opportunities and finances for higher education. As schoolchildren, their dream is to make headway in the world via football and now boxing. They want to be famous, like the very few who were contracted to play for other nations in the west. A very few have been able to reach professional status. Afro-Ecuadorian youth have, in many cases, come to the city only to find that the underworld is where they have to make a living. Although we are not able to offer employment, what we can offer has proven to be of great value, not only spiritually, but also in giving hope, in knowing a heavenly Father with whom they can communicate, who loves them unconditionally, in whose image they are created, and who has a purpose for them. We are also able to give them unconditional love and friendship, and encourage their faith that, despite circumstances, God is a God of miracles and He is the one who will guide their steps and open doors for jobs for them. We have found this to be true in the case of Marcos, a physical education teacher, who was unable to find employment. He now miraculously has a job, but it is not yet in his profession. He is currently applying for this position in many educational institutions. Please pray for a miracle for him. He loves the Lord and will be a blessing in influencing children and youth as a teacher. With Miss Ecuador 2022 being Afro-Ecuadorian, we hope and pray that there will be more recognition and opportunities for these beautiful people. We make a point of reaching out to Afro-Ecuadorian youth in our neighborhood. We have launched out with focused lit distribution and soul winning in these areas. People here are so ripe and ready for salvation, and since we both are somewhat older (both in our 70s) and have gray hair, we seem to command some respect, as younger people patiently listen to us. The seeds that Catholicism planted are ready to be watered and harvested with the full understanding of eternal salvation through grace, not works. I was bombarded with counter-culturalism and many other “isms” when in university in the ’60s in the UK. It was a time of searching and trying to find the meaning of life, as no doubt the younger generation is also trying to do today. Well, I sure was a searching soul, and the Divine Master and the Hound of Heaven (the Holy Spirit) helped me go through various crises of faith, a time of desperate questioning, and I finally came across literature by Martin Luther King and by Albert Schweitzer (left on a bookstand in the university cafeteria), which changed my life, and together with the Jesus Revolution that swept through Europe from the US, led me to give my life in service to Jesus. This is one reason that we use the printed Word en masse. Gonzalo also found the Lord and salvation through a printed gospel tract. More than 10 years later, at the age of 33, he answered the call to full-time missionary life. We thank you all so very much for your concern, support and prayers, to keep us as we work to rescue souls and bring them into His kingdom. It was midday on a very hot summer day. It was dry season and the wind was blowing hard. All the perfect conditions to start a forest fire. Then the sky turned gray, and the sun had a reddish-orange color. We could see smoke in the distance, and soon we could smell it too. We thought it was still far away from us, until some neighbors sent messages informing us that there was a fire about 5 km (around 3 miles) from us. Time passed quickly, and the messages kept coming with worrying news. The fire finally came to our neighborhood. We live in a country area, a place with lots of tall trees that can easily catch fire and propagate the fire from place to place.
A neighbor and my husband went to the road where the fire was already burning everything in its way, and later they went to some neighboring houses that were in danger of catching fire. They had the intention to help, but because of the extreme heat and heavy smoke, they had to turn back. We called a couple of friends to ask for prayer. We were ready to leave if we had to, with just a couple of our belongings, as we knew we couldn’t do much against that kind of wild forest fire. Then I got the “peace that passes understanding” (Philippians 4:7). I’ll explain. I just felt that we were going to be all right, even when the situation got worse. When looking at the circumstances, nothing appeared to be good news. My prayer was only one verse, as I claimed “It shall not come nigh thee” (Psalm 91:7). Then all the phones stopped working; there was no Internet, no signal, no electricity. Some neighbors sent their kids away, while they frantically tried to water their land, hoping to minimize the damage. A couple of ladies started crying, not knowing what to do. All the neighbors who could help went to the place where the fire was coming from. They said between the firemen and the volunteers, 25 people were trying to save a couple of houses that finally burned to the ground. The neighbors talked about a group of robbers walking around, looking for houses where people had evacuated, to see if they could steal anything. All night we were vigilant, even thinking about taking turns to sleep, as the firemen were not able to put out the fire completely. And in the morning, news came of small fires here and there, close to us. Two helicopters kept bringing water to the places where the fires were still burning. That continued for a few more days. But our house survived. That morning I had been listening to scripture songs about not being afraid and I was praying those words, even though at that moment nothing had happened yet. The Lord was preparing my heart. Even when we know our life depends totally on the Lord, sometimes we forget. This was a good reminder to pray without ceasing. And the Lord led us to ask for prayer right before the phones stopped working. We are very thankful for the Lord’s protection. He keeps His promises. When He tells you, “All is well,” believe Him. He is God. -- Hans and Patricia, Chile We will give you a brief account of the countless activities that have taken place since we last updated you.
We gave new spectacles to two students who hadn't received their spectacles in April. We brought clothing and toys to the community of Malabar which are a big blessing for these poor people especially the clothes have been of great help, as June and July are cold months in our hemisphere. Pastor Pokha has started collecting materials for the construction of the Victoria Klass kindergarten, in the Thaba Tzeka area (Lesotho). The kindergarten will be built with stone and not with concrete blocks. This has involved the community more in that they have collected the stones. We visited Strelitzia High School, in Uitenhage. This school is attended by a number of students who receive a subsidy from the government in order to be able to attend school. These students are poor and could never afford to have a vision check. We, help these vulnerable students. We have finished the preliminary examination with the auto refractometer and are waiting to take the students who need further vision testing to our optometrist. We also visited the St. Joseph Primary School in Uitenhage and did the preliminary vision examinations on 90 children. We plan to finish the "See Clear" project in these two schools by mid-October 2022. Lesotho: After we had completed our vision check in South Africa in the two schools on the outskirts of Port Elizabeth, we returned to Lesotho. We have not visited our projects there for months, precisely since March 2022. It is difficult to be able to follow the projects from afar! In fact, the problems have accumulated and our visit became very necessary. The work at the Leqooa High School had stopped for months. The principal in charge of supervising the work is currently ill and the original contracted company had not done a good job. It seemed like we were at a dead end, so we had to terminate the contract with this company and find someone else with better experience and a willingness to finish the project. Thanks to Makhabiso (a teacher from the primary school in Ha Semenyane), who found a new company and took the responsibility of following up on the work and acting as liaison with the staff working on the Project. In addition to Makhabiso, Tiisetso also joined she is another good teacher who both have the desire to see the project completed. Some walls that were unsafe due to the strong wind of the past months have been demolished and rebuilt and reinforcements have been added. Unfortunately, when we took stock of all the material bought in the past, we realized that several items were missing. It is unclear at the moment whether they were stolen or just not delivered. There is an investigation underway to find out what really happened. In any case, we cannot wait and we have repurchased the missing material. When the missing material is found, it will be used for the construction of the bathrooms and kitchen for the school. Many of the village women, who have reached a certain age and have failing eyesight, have previously asked if we could help them with spectacles. We finally brought our refractometer and about thirty prescription spectacles. We started checking their eyes and we have been able to help many people and have solved their problem with simple spectacles. Others will need more specialty spectacles, which we will have made here in South Africa, with frames which have been donated in Italy. An 89-year-old lady who was blind in one eye walked for two hours to meet us and waited another two hours for our arrival at the Project House where we were staying in the Ha Semenyane village. With great joy we found a pair of spectacles that enabled the elderly lady to be able to read her Bible. She was so happy that she started dancing with joy, finally she could read! Distribution of shoes, educational toys and clothing: We brought shoes, educational games and clothing to Lesotho. Needy people have all appreciated what they have received. Also, sports activities were organized. Soccer balls for the soccer tournament and educational games for the Banana Ba Supileng kindergarten were sponsored. The Mavuka Primary School had part of the roof of the school completely gutted by strong winds experienced in the area, and the Headmaster asked us if we can help him. The Sephelani Elementary School, located in a village not far from Ha Edward, asked us for help with the renovation of their small school. This stone-built school needs a floor, which at the moment is just stamped earth. Part of the walls had collapsed with the strong wind experienced a few months ago, and the community have repaired the walls with simple mortar, but they need to be reinforced safely with concrete I was thinking about the benefits of being positive and I got to thinking about Joshua and Caleb in the Bible. They were part of a group of spies Moses sent to check out Canaan, the land God had promised to His people (Numbers 13:6, 8, 16).
Fact number one: It was a land “flowing with milk and honey,” which was a cool way of saying there were a lot of seriously plus-sized fruits and vegetables there. The spies cut a branch off a vine and it actually took two guys to carry ONE cluster of grapes back to show everyone (Numbers 13:23). Fact number two: The cities were fortified and very large, and the people who lived there—the sons of Anak—were giants. Now these were not just basketball-player-sized tall people; the spies said they felt like grasshoppers next to them (Numbers 13:28, 33). So most of the children of Israel cried themselves to sleep that night and said, “I’d rather have died in Egypt or here in the wilderness!” (Numbers 14:1–3). Caleb, however, silenced the people before Moses and said, “We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it” (Numbers 13:30). Now that’s a seriously positive, full-of-faith attitude! Most of the people must have felt pretty unlucky that the land God promised them was already occupied by giants, but Caleb looked at the prize—what they stood to gain if they conquered it—and God’s promises and focused only on that. Joshua joined in by saying, in so many words, “The land we passed through and explored is totally legendary! If the Lord is pleased with us, He will lead us into that land—a land flowing with milk and honey, mind you—and will give it to us. Only don’t rebel against the Lord. And don’t be afraid of the people of the land, because the Lord is with us.” (Numbers 14:7–9). Then the Israelites talked about stoning them and getting themselves a new leader to lead them back to Egypt (Numbers 14:4). The Lord was really not happy with their attitude and told them that because of it, not a single one of the older generation would get to see the Promised Land after all, except for the two spies who had faith in God and His promises: Joshua and Caleb (Numbers 14:21–24). They were the only ones of their generation who were allowed to live in the Promised Land! Having faith in God definitely brought Joshua and Caleb a good amount of happiness and good fortune in that situation. Any difficult or trying situation gives us an opportunity to place our faith in God and His promises and trust in Him to work all things together for our good. (See Romans 8:28.) To me, what is often attributed to “luck” is really a combination of a few things: Responding positively to opportunities when they come along; not turning down open doors due to thinking negatively or being afraid to fail. Having faith in God to cause all things to work together for good, and therefore, not blaming circumstances or others when facing challenges. The more opportunities we pursue as God leads us, the better chances we have of succeeding. The more positively we look at a situation, the better our reaction will be. The more trust we have in the Lord, the more open we are to His leading and guiding us to do things that might seem difficult or impossible. -- By Nina Kole By Priscila, Romania
The war crisis that emerged once Russia invaded Ukraine affected Romania and the Republic of Moldova right away. Both of these countries border Ukraine, so refugees started pouring in. The very next day, Romania, though an EU country, allowed Ukrainians to come in, even without identification papers. It didn’t take long for me to decide whether I should get involved, as the Lord was plenty clear. Not only did all my friends in Moldova fill their houses with refugees, but a center opened just a three-minute walk from my home in Bucharest. Since I have lived in Moldova, I can understand Russian, and I can communicate at a basic level. Since most Romanians don’t speak Russian, my language knowledge became a real asset, and I was soon being called on often to translate at the center next door and to help people find better accommodations, locate their friends, or find transport towards the West. However, I knew the greatest need was in Moldova. I had friends manning centers for refugees right at the border, one hour away from Odessa. Also, not being an EU country, Moldova had less funds but more refugees per capita, since Ukrainians could go in and out easily. Plus, people in Moldova are poorer and they have less to share. My friends and I were to able acquire and to give a Christian center, which functions as a boarding school for disadvantaged kids during school months and as a summer camp during summer, a fridge and a freezer, plus industrial kitchen utensils, such as knives and pots. Without these, they wouldn’t have been able to serve so many people. Being a Christian camp, it provided much better standards than a government one, so it was really important that it stay open. With the help of our dear Italian friends a truck of food and cleaning supplies was delivered to the same center. Some of the food was also distributed one-on-one to Christian families who were housing refugees. Some food was taken to Mykolaiv in Ukraine, a city very affected by the war. We also gave individual small financial donations to hardship cases that I had met while ministering to refugees. Altogether I took five trips to Moldova in 2022. Some of them included visiting different centers where our friends were active; other trips were to bring help and to provide encouragement to our dear friends who give above and beyond their capabilities, and who make us, so proud of them. We were able to give funds towards a much-needed playground for another refugee camp in Moldova that had no outdoor facilities for the children. That is a center where Moldavian and Ukrainian mothers, sometimes with children of their own, move in and foster Ukrainian children who either have no parents or who had to take refuge without their parents for some reason. For Easter, with the help of friends, we were able to provide presents for all 42 children at the center next to my house in Bucharest. Also, being that there was still no setup for children in the Romanian centers, and this center housed a couple of autistic children and a Down syndrome child, we were able to collect toys and educational materials and set up one large room as a playroom and educational room for the children. We were able to get Bible-based books, some of them in Russian, and plenty of educational games and toys, such as Legos, puzzles, and many others. Many were educational sets that I had used to homeschool my own children. We got together funds for this center in order to get some basic necessities that they were lacking. I brought over 100 kilos of good-quality clothing for children and adults. Also, a dear friend in Switzerland has been sending me guitars for children who are learning to play and who cannot afford them. Four of the guitars went to little Ukrainian musicians who had to leave their guitars behind when they had to flee. Together with the help of two volunteers from Portugal, we organized a summer camp for the residents of one camp. It was easy to see that the neediest children were from the Roma community. Not only do they have some bad habits and a bad reputation that makes the other families avoid them, but, in many cases, they don’t come from conflict zones, and they are very open in stating that they come because they find better living conditions in refugee centers than at home. For one week these kids (and whichever other kids wanted to participate) did gardening, arts and crafts, music, dance, and had trips to the park. They received two pairs of shoes each, needed medication, and whatever else was apparent that they needed. I watched an interesting documentary by a mentalist and illusionist magician, Derren Brown, called “The Secret of Luck.” He selected a small town that had a random dog statue in a park, and started a rumor that it was lucky to rub the dog’s head. They sent in a film crew to follow a few chosen members of the community—a butcher, a toy store owner, a pub owner, and so on—to see how far this rumor would go by having them all pat the dog’s head. The crew would then return and interview them after a week to see if anything good happened to them.
He set up several “lucky” things to happen to these selected few, such as a lady stopping them to ask simple “survey” questions and giving them an instant cash prize for their help. He also sent each individual a scratch card, where no matter which box they scratched, they would win a big prize. He even set up a famous stand-up comedian with a flat tire; if the owners of the two local pubs offered to help change his tire, he would do a free show in their pub guaranteed to draw a big crowd and boost their business. One said he was too busy and told him to go to the garage for help. The other jumped in and helped right away and reaped the benefits! Now the thing I found interesting about this was that at the beginning of this documentary, a few of the people they were focusing on had said that they were not lucky. One man in particular said that nothing good ever happened to him. Because of his attitude toward life, he didn’t bother to stop and answer the lady’s survey questions, he never scratched the card, and when they even put money on the road right where he walked, he didn’t see it. His negativity made him miss good things even when they were right in front of him. Some of the others, the film crew interviewed, had said that a lot of good things had started to happen to them. This was even before they encountered some of these “lucky” setups. Because these individuals were positive by nature, they looked for opportunities where there was good, and they found them! Just in case you didn’t know, the word lucky is said to have originally come from an old Dutch word meaning “happiness and good fortune.” As Christians, we can take this a step further than simply striving to have a positive attitude, because we can be confident that the Lord is with us and cares for us and surrounds us with His goodness and mercy even during the tough times we face in life. Of course, it’s not easy to always be positive and have faith but being positive gives you the faith to step out and do something that might seem crazy or adventurous, while having a negative attitude can cause you to see all the reasons why something isn’t possible, might not work, or how you might fail. Sometimes, it may even keep you from trying. When you add faith to the positive mix, it will help you to not give up when things don’t seem to be working out. In the documentary mentioned earlier, Derren Brown concluded, “The difference between lucky and unlucky people is simply to what extent they respond and embrace opportunities in life.” -- Nina Kole |
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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