Category Archives: Life Lessons

Life Lessons

Beauty in the Garden!

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I’m a fan of bearded irises! They are such a beautiful flower, coming from a rather uninteresting looking plant. There are many different coloured varieties, from deep purples and wines, to delicate mauves and pure white. Still others have a faint blush of pink. Each petal in the flower has its own brush (or beard), often a yellow in contrast to the rest of the flower. Over all , the flower when picked has a definite faint scent, that can be noticed as soon as you enter the room where it is.

Many have been cross bred to have the most distinctive colours and the combination of colours is quite startling. This all goes to show the creative genius of the Master Gardener who has given them to us to enjoy.  Man may have adapted and bred different colours into them, but it all comes from the Great Creator in the first place!

I couldn’t help thinking how we are like this beautiful flower in many ways. We may not have had the most wonderful start in life, but if we give ourselves to God, He can mould us and breed in us the things that please Him, making something beautiful from a very mundane beginning. Not a one of us can say that we are good for nothing, or have nothing to give….this is a just an excuse and often because we can’t be bothered making the effort. We can all give a smile and make a comment that will brighten someone else’s day, from the girl behind the supermarket counter to the gardener working in the council gardens in the car park! People don’t remember you for how you look, as much as for how you make them feel!

Life Lessons

Looking Ahead!

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How this year has flown! As you get older, so the time seems to go quicker. What once seemed endless, now seems to have the end come too quickly. When we were going to school, we would think at the beginning of holidays, that they seem to have no end. But then suddenly,  the end would  come  and they were over. This is just like one’s life.

When we are growing up, the years stretch ahead of us endlessly.

When we are middle aged, they are still there…we think ten, twenty years, even thirty years still to go to do things in.

When we get older at retirement, we think that now is the time to get things done, with plenty of time and leisure.

But when we reach our eighties, what is left? Looks have gone, health has gone, strength is not there, energy has left, and we see  how much has been left unaccomplished.  What remains?

Without the assurance of a life to come, nothing is left, there is no hope. But for someone who knows the Lord Jesus Christ, there is everything to look forwards to. Not only will we see Him face to face, but there will be so much more to discover. The Bible tells us that “eye has not seen, nor the ear heard, the things that God has prepared for those who love Him” (1 Corinthians 2:9).

   Did you notice that phrase….”for those who love Him”? If we don’t love Him enough to get to know Him while here on earth, how are we going to know  Him in a time to come? It is never too late to come to Him…He is calling to all….”Come until Me all you who are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). What a wonderful invitation!

Life Lessons

Go All Blacks!

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The All Blacks are the New Zealand National rugby team, and as such are very special to New Zealanders. At the moment with the world rugby games on in Japan, the teams’ results make news most days. Thinking about this and the distinctive uniforms that each team wears brought several thoughts to mind.

Firstly, each member of the team is chosen. In the same way each person who belongs to God has been invited, chosen and called. The only difference in this analogy is that ALL are called by God, but not all choose to respond to Him positively.

Secondly, all wear the uniform with pride. How much pride do we have in wearing the uniform that marks us out as different when we belong to God? Do we hide our light or do we wear our uniform openly?

Thirdly, our uniform and belonging to the team, shows commitment. We must live up to what the uniform stands for, and any member of the team who disgraces the uniform is dealt with immediately. How thankful we can be that God has patience with His people when we let Him down!

Fourthly, all members of the team wear it, and are responsible to each other. We cannot take it off and sneak into doubtful places to have “fun” which only brings shame in the end. Whenever a member of the national team gets into trouble when on tour, it makes the headlines at home in the papers. Let’s make sure we hold God’s standard high above reproach.

Fifthly, members of the team need daily training, there can be no slacking off. In the same way we need to keep up our daily training in God’s Word. It is only as we do this that we can keep our spiritual strength up.

Lastly, team members depend on each other to get the ball to winning goal. We are told to pray for one another, and to bear each other’s burdens when things go wrong for them. It doesn’t take much effort to make a phone call to encourage those who are part of your fellowship. We must remember the Owner of our team and keep our eyes on Him….

Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2)

Life Lessons

That Black Dot!

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A friend sent me one of those thought provoking excerpts that you see from time to time, and I thought this one was worth passing on. A professor set his class an exercise to teach them an object lesson, and as they sat at their desks there was a blank piece of paper in front of each of them. “Now when I tell you to turn that paper over,” he said, “I want you to spend ten minutes, describing what you see on it”.

The class settled themselves down, and then he said, “Now turn your paper over and write what you see.”

They each turned their paper over and it was completely blank except for one black spot in the middle of the sheet. There was silence for a moment, and then they began to write. After he had collected the papers at the end of the ten minutes, he began to read what they had written. Without exception, they had all concentrated on the black dot, describing its approximate size and position on the paper, and what they thought it might mean.

“Now,” he said, “I did this to illustrate a point that I want you to all remember. You all concentrated on the black dot, and you’ve all written about it. But not one of you even seem to have noticed the amount of clean white paper there is surrounding that black spot! You know, that’s like the bad things that happen in our lives, and we all have them from time to time. They are just like that small black dot, and they seem to consume our thinking. But I want you to concentrate rather on the amount of clean white paper there is on that page. This is like the good things that we can enjoy, even while there is a black dot on our page! There are always things we can be thankful for, and as we concentrate on them, the amount of clean white paper makes the black dot look very small…the good things almost over-ride the black dot.”

There is a lot of truth in this small parable…we should always concentrate on our blessings rather than on the dots of disappointments and discouragements. They will pass with time while the joy of the blessings will last. No matter how bad our circumstances, there is always something that we can be thankful for, especially when we have a Christian faith and hope in God. That is the first thing we can praise God for!

 

Life Lessons

Have You Ever Thought of This?

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When a child is born it is totally dependent on its parents for all its needs. As it grows older, so this dependence is taught to turn to independence until the child is able to look after itself and ultimately leave home.

But in the spiritual life, it should be the other way around. We so often loudly declare, “I’m not having anyone tell ME what to do!” The sign of a truly spiritual person is that of growing dependence on the Lord as they go through life. We are to learn to depend on the Lord for our decisions and our behaviour more and more as we go through life …the Lord said “Unless you become as a little child, you cannot have part in the kingdom of heaven”.

It doesn’t mean that we behave childishly, just the opposite in fact. The more mature a Christian becomes, the more he will depend on his Heavenly Father. Just as a small child depends on its father for its daily needs, so we have to learn to depend on our Heavenly Father for our spiritual needs. Without this dependence, we will surely make a mess of things in our life.

We remember that Jesus called Himself the “Good Shepherd”, and a shepherd’s job is to look after his sheep. He only allows what is for the ultimate good of the sheep, but sometimes we take ourselves out of the shepherd’s care. We wander away to where the grass looks greener over the fence, only to find that it is a sour marsh! Then we have to endure the consequences of our foolish and independent actions. The trouble is that we often take those we love with us into this maze of trouble that we have deliberately gone into.

But remember this…..the Shepherd is always there to pick His lost sheep up and take it back to the fold rejoicing as He goes! A sheep is never too lost to be found….all it takes is a feeble bleat of “Help me, God! ” Not only does He rejoice over the lost sheep that is found, but His angels and His people all rejoice as well! It is up to us as a lost sheep to make the first move towards Him and He will make ten steps towards you!!

Life Lessons

Near Enough

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    We were working on a project together, and I was thinking it was time we were finished. “Well, that’s near enough”, I said as I put my gear down. My brother-in-law looked at it, and said, “Near enough is not good enough, Gwenyth, you’ll have to spend a bit more time on it!” Those words have stuck with me for over forty years, and whenever I am tempted to think “Near enough”, they come back to haunt me.

King Solomon was one who chose what was good, but it was not the best. He felt his need for wisdom to rule his people well, and that was good, but when it came to himself he made his own decisions based on worldly wisdom. He thought that by marrying these foreign princesses he would gain peace with their fathers’ nations, instead of trusting God to keep peace for him. What he didn’t reckon on in this reasoning, was that he was disobeying God’s commands to NOT marry anyone who did not follow Him. He was positive it wasn’t all that important and that it didn’t really matter….after all, look what he was gaining!

His wives brought their idols and foreign ideas with them, and as he gave each woman her own department, these idols were set up and worshipped by them. It wasn’t long before Solomon’s own walk with God had faltered, and then failed altogether. He had disobeyed God and failed in his duty. Although God blessed him physically and he became the wisest and wealthiest king that has ever been, yet his own spiritual life was dry and dusty, and he declared, “I’ve tried everything there is to try and it’s all vain and useless!”

He would have been far better off to have asked God not only for wisdom, but for an obedient heart to always follow His ways. How often in these things we say it’s “near enough” to just go to church each week and then to do our own thing the rest of the week forgetting about God’s ways. Let’s always remember that “near enough” is NOT good enough, especially in the matter of spiritual values!

Life Lessons

A Word in Season.

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     Our friend Harold had worked for many years in the prison service, and he had many stories to tell of opportunities taken to share the good news of God’s love and grace.                                                            But before he went into the prison service, he was working at selling life insurance. As he was going on his rounds in a certain area, he heard of a family who was wanting to take out life insurance on some of their family members. He decided to make them a call and see if he could help in this way at all. When he knocked on the door, a lady answered it and she appeared to be in tears.                                      “I’m awfully sorry,” Harold said, “I seem to have come at a bad time. I’ll come back another day.”                                                                                      “No, no”, she said, “I really need someone to talk to.”                                             And so the  sad story came out. Her marriage had just broken up, she said, and her husband had taken the two older girls, leaving her with two young sons. Harold listened sympathetically for a while, and said, “Well, there’s not much I can do to help, but do you have a Bible in the house?”                                                                                                                “Yes, there is one here,” she said, “It belongs to one of the boys,” and she went off to get it.                                                                                                                 Harold took it, and showed her one or two verses. After he had been talking for a while, she said that she had been going to church for over twenty-one years and never realised that she needed to have personal dealings with God. She could see now what she had been missing out on. Harold was not one to ever miss an opportunity, so he asked her if she would like to pray the sinner’s prayer of confession of sin. She was glad to do this and became a new person in spite of her continuing bad circumstances.                                 Harold lost touch with her after that, and eighteen years later, two women came into the prison where he was working to visit an inmate. Harold immediately recognised the older lady as this same person.                                                                                                                                              He reminded her of this occasion and asked her how things had been with her over the intervening years. Her face lit up, and she told him how one of her boys was now serving as a Youth Pastor in a church in Australia.

This story bears out the verse that says…..Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning…Psalm 30:5b

Grandma's Stories, Life Lessons, Stories for Teens

Why do Bad Things Happen to Good People? (Pt 1)

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A good friend of ours was ill for a couple of weeks and in the end she went to the doctor when her breathing became difficult. After numerous tests, she was told that she had an aggressive type of lung cancer. Needless to say this left everyone who knew her in a state of shock. “Why her?” people were asking, “She did so much good around the place!!”

People often ask this question….it just seems that life isn’t fair!! We do the best we can and then things go wrong for us! I got to thinking about this age-old question and then thought about a man in the Bible whose name was Job (pronounced Jobe). He was a good man who always did the best he could and then he lost everything. But reading this story  will give us a picture of why this happened which will help us to see things differently and put them in a wider picture when things go wrong for us too.

Let’s turn to the book of Job in the Bible and see what it says about him….                                                                                                                                                  In chapter one, verse one, we read….”there was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job, and that man was perfect and upright, one who feared (respected and reverenced) God and who hated evil.”

So we see that Job always did his best and as we read down the chapter, we see the things that he did for himself and for his family. Let’s turn it into a story……                                                                                                    One day, God’s team of angels came to report to Him. God noticed a shiny, glistening, sneaky looking one among them who  didn’t usually come, and recognised him instantly.                                          “Where have you come from, Satan?” He asked.                                       ”       “Oh, I’ve been walking up and down all over the place,” Satan replied shiftily.                                                                                                                             “Have you seen any person as good as My servant Job is?”, God asked, “No-one else is as good in the whole world as he is….he loves Me and hates everything evil! He makes me an offering every day, not only for himself but also for his family.”                                                  “Ho”, sneered Satan looking at God, ” No wonder he is so good! You look after him on every side, and have given him all he’s got! I bet if you took it all away from him it’d be a different story! He would curse You to Your face if that happened!!”

God knew His man, and He knew He could trust Job to do the right thing.                                                                                                                                     “OK,” He said to Satan, “We’ll see. I’m allowing you to take away everything that he has. I know he will stand firm for Me.”                  Satan chuckled gleefully. ” I’ll make him sorry for following God’s ways. I can beat him!”                                                                                                             So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD.

The next day, Job got up early as he usually did, and made the morning sacrifice for himself and his wife. Then he made another sacrifice to cover each of his children. As he did this, he prayed for each of them, as he did every day. “Lord”, he said, “Please help the boys to stand firm for you; help them to resist temptations, and always be helpful  to their mother and sisters. I pray for the girls, Lord that they will not be vain with how they look, but that they will try their best to be beautiful with their minds and their speech.”

Job knew that his eldest son was putting on a party that day for his brothers and sisters, and he hoped that everything would go well for them all. While he was sitting there after breakfast thinking about them, he saw one of his servants rushing up the path. He could tell something was wrong.                                                                                              “What’s the matter?” he called out as the man got close enough to hear.                                                                                                                                       “We were out in the field ploughing with the bullocks and the donkeys were there beside them when a marauding tribe from over the hill came and rounded them up, killing all the herdsmen, and I’m the only one who got away!”                                                                                           With that, he fell down on the ground panting with the run, and fright at what he had seen.

The man had hardly finished telling Job this when another servant came panting up. “Oh!,” he said, “There was a massive lightning storm over the paddock where the sheep were, and they have all been struck dead as well as the other servants there. I’m the only one who managed to get away to tell you!”                                                                A third servant came panting in from another direction and said, “The Chaldeans made out three bands, and fell upon the camels, and have carried them away, yes, and killed the servants with swords; and I’m the only one  escaped  to tell you.”

Job hardly had time to take all this in when another servant came rushing in from the direction of the oldest boy’s house.                          “Oh, oh,” he wailed when he saw Job, “Your sons and your daughters were  eating their meal and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house when there was a terrific gust of wind rushing in from the desert like a tornado, and the roof was lifted off and the whole thing collapsed on everyone else in the house, and they are all dead! I’m the only one to  escape and tell you!”                                                                           Job had been sitting down all this time, and now he stood up and tore his long robe off his shoulders. He went inside and shaved the hair all off his head to show how upset he was.

His wife and servants wondered how he would cope with all this bad news and the disasters that had happened. But he didn’t curse or swear, or even complain. It didn’t even enter his head to ask God why this had all happened.                                                                                          Instead, he got down on his knees and prayed in front of everyone left in his house, and said, ” I was born naked with nothing, and I will go back to God the same way, with nothing. The LORD gave me these things, and the LORD has taken them away; blessed be the name of the LORD.”                                                                                                                 In all these disasters Job didn’t sin or complain and blame God foolishly. He had truly shown a godly attitude to a disastrous situation, just as God had known he would.

So the next time something bad happens, just remember that maybe God is using this to show others the right way to behave and act by what you do and say.