For those of us who get mad at God when life takes a wrong turn, we need
a good dose of biblical therapy.
“Wall-Bangers Anonymous”—a two-step program toward a positive, God-honoring response to pain.
Step One: Think straight about trouble. It’s
not only inevitable, it’s indiscriminate. Trouble comes in all shapes and sizes. “Various trials” (James
1:2) affect our health, our careers, our relationships. Once we understand the facts, we can begin appreciating their significant
value in our lives.
Step Two: Trade resistance and resentment
for receptivity and rejoicing. “Count it all joy” (v.2). The joy is not in the presence of pain but in the knowledge
that God is using our pain to refine us and make us better, not bitter. —Joe Stowell
If we embrace adversity,
Accepting every pain,
Then we will learn what we should
know;
Our grief will turn to gain. —Sper
God chooses what we go through; we choose how we go through it.
Before
the Music Ends
In this concert of life, choose your song and don't stop playing
it.
By Bob Perks
"You
really love your music," she said.
It was early. I had no idea what the woman was talking about. I always joke that
even though I am moving about, dressed for work and appear to be functioning, I don't wake up until 10 AM.
"I saw you pull into the parking lot,
and I could hear the music playing."
I started to laugh. I realized that I had been blasting my stereo in the car.
I was listening to Michael Crawford. You may know him from "Phantom of the Opera."
This was a live recording of a
concert he did, and there are a few songs that really burn in my soul. As I am driving down the road, I can often be seen
singing at the top of my lungs.
But there is a point on this CD that most of you might not relate to. It is the closing
music, a reprise of a song he did earlier.
"On Eagle's Wings."
Mr. Crawford thanks the crowd, takes his bow,
and heads off stage as the music fills the auditorium. Of course, if you have ever watched a concert, you know there will
be more at this point.
There must be an encore.
Whenever I listen to this part, I pull over. I stop what I'm
doing and really listen, perhaps imagine and dream a little too.
I am a singer. Having finished a concert, I envision
myself so fulfilled, so complete that I cannot ever imagine it could get better than this. It's like Heaven.
It
was at that very point when I pulled into the parking lot. The music was so very intense for me that I could not shut off
the car. I had to hear it end.
In a recent commercial, a young man does the same thing. His girlfriend gets out of
the car and waits for him as he sits listening to the end of a song. He can’t leave before the music ends. It was this very thought that gripped my
soul afterwards. There have been times when I thought I should just quit, walk away from a project or a dream. I was feeling
down, perhaps depressed, and I could not see the good in anything that was happening.
God creates, the world spins,
days come and go--seconds, minutes, hours perfectly planned.
Perfect timing. Everything in tune with the cycle of
life. A musical version of the beginning and ending of the world.
Each of us comes to the spot on the stage and stands
before the world--and in perfect harmony, we play the song that is ours. The tragedy is when a life is cut too short, too
soon. The sadness is hearing that someone has given up on their dream. Their song is never fully played, and the world suffers
the loss.
What song is yours? What part do you play? Why would you think, even for a moment, that it is time for you
to stop dreaming, believing, or playing your song?
Stay. The stage is yours, and the Maestro stands, baton raised,
waiting.
The best part is ahead of you.
Don't go before the music ends.
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"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."---George Santayana
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This touched me
BEN STEIN'S LAST COLUMN
For many years Ben Stein has written a weekly column
for the online website called "Monday Night At Morton's." (Morton's is a famous chain of
Steakhouses known to be frequented by movie stars and famous people from around the globe.) Now, Ben is terminating the column
to move on to other things in his life. Reading his final column is worth a few minutes of your time.
Ben Stein's Last Column... (read
all of this or you will have missed the best part ).
============================================
How Can Someone Who Lives
in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?
As I begin to write this, I "slug" it, as we writers say, which means I put
a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is one line FINAL, and it gives me a shiver to write it.
I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved writing this column so much
for so long I came to believe it would never end.
It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the
world's change have overtaken it. On a small scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as
it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days
ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty
in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton's is not the star galaxy
it once was, though it probably will be again.
Beyond that, a bigger change
has happened. I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important.
They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who
makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should
all look up to. How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's
world, if by a "star" we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model? Real stars are not riding around
in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit
while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails. They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer.
A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into
a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq. He could have been met
by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all
of the decent people of the world.
A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to
disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad. He approached it, and
the bomb went off and killed him.
A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day,
is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he
was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad.
The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets
of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and
their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.
We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely
scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle
are anonymous as they live and die.
I am no longer comfortable being a part of
the system that has such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton's
is a big subject.
There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament...the
policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive; the orderlies and paramedics
who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery; the teachers and nurses who throw their
whole spirits into caring for autistic children; the kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.
Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to
collapse. Now you have my idea of a real hero.
We are not responsible
for the operation of the universe, and what happens to us is not terribly important. God is real, not a fiction; and when
we turn over our lives to Him, He takes far better care of us than we could ever do for ourselves. In a word, we make ourselves
sane when we fire ourselves as the directors of the movie of our lives and turn the power over to Him.
I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This
is my highest and best use as a human. I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor
as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin...or Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or as good an economist
as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close
to any of them.
But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all,
a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life. I did it moderately well with
my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister's help). I cared for and paid attention to
them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered
immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.
This was the only point
at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in
New York. I came to realize that
life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved
upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.
Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will.
By Ben Stein
http://www.benstein.com/stein2.html
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