Put The Past Where It Belongs

 I so enjoyed this article by my friend Dave Price.

The greatest tragedy of life is to be chained to the past. Oscar Wilde said, "Every sinner has a future, every saint has a past." The lie, the deception, is that the past defines who you are. That is a bald faced lie. The past certainly has shaped you, but it does not define you. What is the past, anyway? It is an imagination - a memory, influenced by emotion, tainted by opinion and perception. Every moment you allow that imagination, that twisted lie to influence the present moment, you deny yourself the opportunity to create the pure and perfect gift that this very moment has to offer.

What is the present? It is the opportunity to fulfill God's purpose for life. That purpose is creation! God created us in His image, with the power and the purpose to create. This present moment provides the only opportunity to fulfill that purpose. This present moment provides the only opportunity to fully create what this moment will be for eternity. To the degree that you believe God, trust God, seek God in the present moment, leaving behind the past just as He has, is the degree to which you fulfill the entire purpose of life, to create the perfect moment with all the power of creativity He has designed and empowered in you.

If you say you lack the ability to change the circumstances you find yourself in, you deny the power of God in you. If you say you lack the ability to change what the past has created in you, you deny the power of Christ's rebirth. If you deny the ability to change this very moment, you deny the power of the Holy Spirit in you, and you deny the very purpose of life.
You cannot change the past. You cannot deny the influence the past has had on who you are. However, you must not believe that this is a negative thing. Yes, the past has added to who you are. The key is that it has added. Each moment adds to who you are. It can never detract from who you are. The past has added to who you are and you are better for it. You have a responsibility to this present moment to use all you have gained to create everything you have the power to create, to make this a perfect moment.

Life is an open book and you are the author of its pages. You can wallow in the self pity of yesterday's poorly written words, or you can relish the opportunity to create the masterpiece you were created to create. What is the future? It is the unfinished masterpiece of your present moments. You are the Rembrandt, the Edison, the Einstein, the Shakespeare of your present moment - what will you write next?

Rich

It’s Not About Heaven

A little boy and his babysitter are walking along the street. Arriving at the corner, the woman begins to cross but at that moment glances behind to see the boy is not with her. She impatiently barks, “Hurry up!” but the boy pays no mind, because he is engrossed in something too wonderful for words. He has discovered that if he stands just the right way, that the little sticks he has collected along the path fall just so into the sewer grate. He can hear the water below; he can see his little sticks as they splash. Mesmerizing.

My wife once taught a delightful little 9 year old girl named Jennifer. During the parent/teacher interview, the mother complained of her daughter’s ‘dreaminess’ and how it took her forever to get home from school every day. Now, my wife knew Jennifer very well and in a flash of inspiration said, “Oh, but can’t you see? Jennifer isn’t trying to frustrate you. This is what Jennifer does on her way home from school: she gazes up in wonder at the beauty of the spring leaves. She stoops to watch the slow progress of a ladybug in the grass. For Jennifer, life is a marvel. She sees wonder and beauty all around her, and her imagination is boundless! She could very well grow up to be a great writer.”

For most of us, life is anything but marvelous and wonderful. The tedious monotony of everyday living is what most of us face day in and day out. We look forward to going to heaven just to escape from the dreary cares and worries of this life. But what is missing? The splendor and wonder and majesty of all that is glorious is hidden in the mundane realm.

What is heaven without being personally engaged with the living Prince of all that is heavenly, growing, basking, reveling in His boundless and intoxicating total love of and for me?

Rich

From the Mouths of Babes

My wife teaches Junior/Senior Kindergarten and she loves her little students. Recently, she led them, step by step, into making paper doily ‘angels’ for the hall bulletin board. As is the case with many boards of education in this day and age teachers cannot simply put up students’ artwork; it has to be accompanied by a writing activity. Since only her junior students, ages 3 and 4, made the angels, this posed a problem (most find it challenging even to print their names)!

So my wife came up with a solution. She asked the students what they knew about angels and wrote down their responses. She says she always takes what her little kids say seriously, since most people do not – nevertheless she often has to bite her lip to keep from laughing at the charm and delightfulness of what comes out of their mouths! Following is their response to the question “What do you know about angels?”

What I Know About Angels

Angels are in my backyard. I saw them!

Angels have wings for to fly. They fly up in the sky. They eat snow. That’s what makes them white.

I don’t know about them except I know they live in the wild.

Angels live maybe in caves like monsters. They eat flies. They can follow trains (it’s magic).

Angels fly. They have wings made of glue.

Angels do not walk on leaves. They’re not allowed.

Some have arrows on the front of them.

Angels live in little circle things and stand in the grass. They have jet packs that help them fly. They blast off.

Angels live in walls. They eat chicken.

Angels are white. They eat grass. They have names like Bugs Baby.

Some angels are statues. Real angels have wings made from plastic.

Angels are like a rainbow. They have pink hair bands. They live in fairy castles and eat peas, apples, pineapple and ice cream.

I’ve included a delectable visual presentation that spoke to my heart from what these precious children shared, please enjoy.

Rich

I Can Only Imagine

Listening to the illustrative language Jesus used was such a wonderful blending and weaving of the natural sights and sounds the average person would normally encounter, and yet, those words more often than not were but as colored pictures on a menu pointing to the hidden substance unseen in the heavenly kitchen.

I was thinking this morning about this illustrative language he used in referring to himself as ‘the door’ in the Gospel of John chapter 10.
So Jesus again said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

It’s funny how a simple fleeting thought, much like a butterfly that lights upon one flower only to quickly search out another could be seen as almost magical at times.
Such a thought lighted on me this morning, and it was within this passage that some of the hidden wonder and awe began to draw me into this portal.
I began to look upon the use of the word, ‘door’ as something that I don’t normally associate its meaning to, the thought of it being a portal much like that used in C S Lewis’ book, The Lion Witch and Wardrobe, how one of the children (Lucy) discovers that in going into a huge clothing cabinet it turns out to be but a portal transporting her and her other siblings into a far away place, a land called Narnia, the sheer wonder and awe that captured their hearts defied all logic and rational comprehension.

Is it possible that as Jesus referred to himself as ‘the door, that he was in fact a living portal whereby anyone who chose to respond to Him was as in the language used in the bible, ‘translated (transported) out of the realm of darkness into a (previously unseen ~click) realm of light and love so real that the wording of language seems to melt in ones mouth trying to describe it?

Like the line from the movie The Matrix, where Neo who has been disconnected from the Matrix and who is being rebuilt as it were, (all of his muscles have totally atrophied in never having used them) says at one point as he is lying on a surgery table, “Why do my eyes hurt so much”?
The answer was, “Because you’ve never used them before”!
When the eyes of our heart are opened and they continue to be opened even more so, that which appears to have been hidden, undetected, becomes so surreal, you almost have to pinch yourself to see that you’re not dreaming.

So many believers I know have at one time or another expressed the notion of hopefully reentering that which was lost, Paradise, the Garden of Eden, thinking how wonderful that would be, and I’m sure it was a cool garden, BUT!
In this space time continuum we now live in, is it possible that there is in fact a portal in and through Jesus that has been opened up whereby any may go in and out at ease only to discover so many incomprehensible delights that only free us to BE who we were always meant to BE?

I want to share this line from the movie The Majestic from 2001~Click:

That's why we call it The Majestic. Any man, woman, child could buy their ticket, walk right in. Here they'd be, here we'd be. "Yes sir, yes ma'am. Enjoy the show." And in they'd come entering a palace, like in a dream, like in heaven. Maybe you had worries and problems out there, but once you came through those doors, they didn't matter anymore. And you know why? Chaplin, that's why. And Keaton and Lloyd. Garbo, Gable, and Lombard, and Jimmy Stewart and Jimmy Cagney. Fred and Ginger. They were gods. And they lived up there. That was Olympus. Would you remember if I told you how lucky we felt just to be here? To have the privilege of watching them. I mean, this television thing. Why would you want to stay at home and watch a little box? Because it's convenient? Because you don't have to get dressed up, because you could just sit there? I mean, how can you call that entertainment, alone in your living room? Where's the other people? Where's the audience? Where's the magic? I'll tell you, in a place like this, the magic is all around you. The trick is to see it.

Rich