Think About It

Do you ever feel bad that you can’t help everyone? It seems that there are ample opportunities to help people in need – in fact, the reality of it is that it is easy to feel overwhelmed by the number of requests out there. One of the challenges of our modern society is that there is so much need on open display that we can quickly become discouraged about how “little” we are able to do. Have you ever passed someone asking for assistance and heard Jesus’ words, “… to the extent that you did not do it for one of the least of these, you did not do it for Me, either.” (Matthew 25:46). It is easy to get down about what we are doing even if we are being proactive in helping others! So, how can we overcome the guilt we feel about not helping everyone? I think the answer is found in being purposeful in helping people. Whether it is spending a regular amount of time with a particular opportunity or dedicating a certain amount of your money to helping those who are hurting, when we are act...

How do we react when we are corrected? As much as we probably hate to admit it, we aren’t perfect, so there are going to be times when we make mistakes. Now, just for the minute, let’s take the moral element of sin out of it – what do we do when someone with good intentions corrects our information or behavior? If you are like many of us, you might try to defend yourself and discredit their admonition; however, there is a better way to deal with it. Not long ago, I was appropriately corrected in something I was mistaken. My first temptation was to react and place the blame on something else, but interestingly the way the other person approached the situation – factually and supportively – I was quickly able to move from a reaction to a response. As I thought about my circumstance, I was reminded of Apollos in Acts 18 who had his preaching corrected by Aquila and Priscilla who “… took him aside and explained the way of God more accurately to him.” (Acts 18:26). This approach not o...

Do we forget to smile? Through the years, we have been told that smiling does us good because there seems to be some connection between the decision to smile and our attitudes. Now, did you notice that I used the world “decision” – but, isn’t smiling an inadvertent response to feeling good? Well, maybe so, but I have noticed that unless I make a conscious effort to smile I tend to walk about with a scowl on my face more often than I’d like to admit. Even those times I am not upset or sad, I may not look happy. (Just ask my family about the pictures I am in – not a lot of good ones of me smiling.) I don’t think of myself as a grouch, I just don’t smile as much as I could or should. What if I made it a point to look happy (smiled), would that translate into an emotional happiness? By setting out to look the part, maybe I could experience the feeling. The next time we see a picture of ourselves or look into a mirror, let’s look for the smile. If it isn’t there, maybe we should t...

One of the most famous stories in the Bible is the conflict between Cain and Abel. We’ll maybe a better way to put it is the conflict between Cain and God. The struggle between the two brothers was pretty straight-forward; but the one between Cain and God was a bit more protracted. After being warned by God about his attitude toward Able (and the Lord), Cain killed Abel. When this happened, God confronted Cain in this infamous exchange, “Then the Lord said to Cain, ‘Where is Abel your brother?’ And he said, ‘I do not know. Am I my brothers keeper?’” (Genesis 4:10). In addition to lying to God about his guilt, he also dismissed the humanity he should have displayed to his brother. What followed was God’s punishment and another line in the legacy of mankind. Most of us are familiar with this encounter, but there are times I am a bit haunted by Cain’s question, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”. I guess my struggle with the issue is “How much of my brother’s keeper should I be?”. I thi...

Have you ever wondered why we worry about things that haven’t happened yet? I would like to be able to pose that question to all of y’all, but the plain simple truth is that I may be king of this issue. As I think about the presence of pre-event anxiety and worry, I can come up with a lot of excuses for it, but probably the most believable is that if I fret about it now, before it happens, I might be able to head off some later catastrophe. Now, while this sound noble, the problem with this type of thinking is that it never ends. As soon as I come up with a potential solution to one possible problem, I think of another one and we are off to the mental races again. It never ends! Again, while this might sound like an effective way to address life and challenges it has the potential to rob the enjoyment of living life. There are a couple of truths that we must confront: first, we must accept that we can’t anticipate every potential problem; but maybe the most sobering is that the...

  Who do you turn to when things are challenging? Most of us have people we can trust to be there for us when we need a shoulder to lean on or an ear to hear us; however, there are certain groups of people who aren’t very good at sharing their own burdens. Often times the “helper” professions are filled with good hearted people who are willing to take on the struggles of others – that’s the good news – the problem is that too often they don’t have an outlet for their own struggles. (Oh, and by the way, often times these struggles are the internalizations of the struggles of others.) There are a variety of reasons helpers bottle up their issues: a lack of trust, the “super human” syndrome, a sense of confidentiality, etc.; but the bottom line is that they don’t allow themselves the same wisdom they pass on to others – “you just gotta let it go”. If you are of that helper mindset, find someone who can help you so that you can continue to help others. Sure, there are people we c...

Irony can be so … ironic. Take for instance a poem that is often attributed to Mother Theresa that is often called, “Do Good Anyway”. Most of us have heard this poem that advocates that we probably aren’t going to get credit for the good we do, but do good anyway. One of the last lines of the poem sums up the heart of the thought, “Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway.”. That’s a pretty cool thought isn’t it? Well, that’s what Kent M. Keith thought when he penned the poem as a 19-year-old college student in the 1960s. It is purported that the nun had this poster on her wall, but the “Paradoxical Commandments” originated with Kent Keith. As I thought about this, I wondered if Mr. Keith would have known that his work would have be more often associated with another person if he would have published it anyway? I would like to believe that he would have. It is human nature to want to get the credit for what we do, but isn’t the most importa...