Editor: Richard (Dick) Innes
Published by: ACTS International
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Vol. 14 – No. 2212 June 02, 2012
Thought for the week: "I expect to pass through this world but once; any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again." – Quaker saying, sometimes attributed to Stephen Grellet
"Accept responsibility for your life. Know that it is you who will get you where you want to go, no one else." – Les Brown
"In the absence of clearly-defined goals [and life purpose], we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it." – Robert Heinlein, American Novelist
"The difference between a politician and a statesman is: a politician thinks of the next election and a statesman thinks of the next generation." – James Freeman Clarke
"Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced." – James Baldwin
"It isn't where you came from; it's where you're going that counts." – Ella Fitzgerald
"All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to criticism." – Cited on Mickey's Funnies
Children's Logic: "Give me a sentence about a public servant," said a teacher. The small boy wrote: "The fireman came down the ladder pregnant."
The teacher took the lad aside to correct him. "Don't you know what pregnant means?" she asked. "Sure", said the young boy confidently. 'It means carrying a child."
Like the trees of the forest,
may you find nourishment
in rain as well as sunshine;
Bend with the winds of misfortune
without breaking;
Give of yourself to others
to provide shade from
the blistering heat;
Grow old gracefully and not
become rigid or unbending;
And above all —
may you keep reaching upwards
towards heaven and to God.
Tour boats ferry people out to the USS Arizona Memorial in Hawaii every thirty minutes. We just missed a ferry and had to wait thirty minutes. I went into a small gift shop to kill time. In the gift shop, I purchased a small book entitled, Reflections on Pearl Harbor by Admiral Chester Nimitz.
Sunday, December 7th, 1941: Admiral Chester Nimitz was attending a concert in Washington D.C. He was paged and told there was a phone call for him. When he answered the phone, it was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on the phone. He told Admiral Nimitz that he (Nimitz) would now be the Commander of the Pacific Fleet.
Admiral Nimitz flew to Hawaii to assume command of the Pacific Fleet. He landed at Pearl Harbor on Christmas Eve, 1941. There was such a spirit of despair, dejection and defeat, you would have thought the Japanese had already won the war. On Christmas Day, 1941, Adm. Nimitz was given a boat tour of the destruction wrought on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. Big sunken battleships and navy vessels cluttered the waters everywhere you looked.
As the tour boat returned to dock, the young helmsman of the boat asked, "Well Admiral, what do you think after seeing all this destruction?" Admiral Nimitz's reply shocked everyone within the sound of his voice. Admiral Nimitz said, "The Japanese made three of the biggest mistakes an attack force could ever make, or God was taking care of America. Which do you think it was?"
Shocked and surprised, the young helmsman asked, "What do mean by saying the Japanese made the three biggest mistakes an attack force ever made?" Nimitz explained:
Mistake number one: the Japanese attacked on Sunday morning. Nine out of every ten crewmen of those ships were ashore on leave. If those same ships had been lured to sea and been sunk, the U.S. would have lost 38,000 men instead of 3,800.
Mistake number two: when the Japanese saw all those battleships lined in a row, they got so carried away sinking those battleships, they never once bombed our dry docks opposite those ships. If they had destroyed our dry docks, we would have had to tow every one of those ships to America to be repaired. As it is now, the ships are in shallow water and can be raised. One tug can pull them over to the dry docks, and we can have them repaired and at sea by the time we could have towed them to America. And I already have crews ashore anxious to man those ships.
Mistake number three: every drop of fuel in the Pacific theater of war is in top of the ground storage tanks five miles away over that hill. One attack plane could have strafed those tanks and destroyed our fuel supply. That's why I say the Japanese made three of the biggest mistakes an attack force could make, or God was taking care of America.
I've never forgotten what I read in that little book. It is still an inspiration as I reflect upon it. Anyway you look at it—Admiral Nimitz was able to see a silver lining in a situation and circumstance where everyone else saw only despair and defeatism.
President Roosevelt had chosen the right man for the right job. We desperately needed a leader [at this time of our U.S. history] that could see silver linings in the midst of the clouds of dejection, despair and defeat.
There is a reason that our national motto is, IN GOD WE TRUST.
5. History Always Repeats Itself—A Powerful Reminder
In 1887, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinborough, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years prior:
"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship."
"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:
From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to complacency; From complacency to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage."
Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota, believes the United States is now somewhere between the "complacency and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy, with some forty percent of the nation's population already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase.
If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million criminal invaders called illegal residents—and they vote—then we can say goodbye to the USA [in its present form] in fewer than five years.
I've mentioned before that, despite my great admiration for people who are instinctively and consistently kind, kindness does not come naturally to me. Yet the older I get, the more I agree with Abraham Heschel, who said, "When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people." Henry James was more emphatic when he said, "Three things in human life are important: The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind."
In 1994, Dr. Chuck Wall, a professor of human relations and management at Bakersfield College in California, came up with a concept that turned into an influential movement. Weary of hearing about "senseless acts of violence," he began to teach and talk about "random and senseless acts of kindness." The idea was simple: the best response to a world coarsened by selfishness and cruelty was individual acts of kindness.
In 1999, Catherine Ryan Hyde wrote a novel called Pay It Forward (later adapted into a movie) that builds on Dr. Wall's initial inspiration. It starts with a teacher's assignment to "THINK OF AN IDEA FOR WORLD CHANGE, AND PUT IT INTO ACTION." Trevor, the 12-year-old hero, comes up with an idea. If he does something "real good" for three people and asks in return that instead of them "paying him back," they "pay it forward" by doing a good deed for three other people, who are in turn asked to pay it forward, the math quickly shows that he could change the world.
Whether acts of kindness are random or spontaneous as advocated by Dr. Wall or premeditated as proposed by Ms. Hyde, acts of kindness are certainly not senseless. To the contrary, they're the best possible proof of good sense. Every single person can send forth ripples of kindness and compassion simply by being nice.
This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.
"Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil."1
"In December, 1775, an American colonist (believed by many scholars to be Benjamin Franklin), noticed the increasing use of a symbol throughout the colonies, stamped onto barrels and other items, depicting a coiled rattlesnake with the words 'Don't Tread On Me' written below the snake. He wondered about how the symbol of a rattlesnake could be a symbol of the American desire for freedom?
"He wrote the following words: 'The rattlesnake is found in no other quarter of the world besides America. She never begins an attack, nor, when once engaged, never surrenders: She is therefore an emblem of magnanimity and true courage. She never wounds 'till she has generously given notice, even to her enemy, and cautioned him against the danger of treading on her.'"2
I've been hiking in the mountains and heard the warning sign of a rattler and was extremely thankful for that. Recently, our little dog was barking furiously, so we went out on our back deck to see what was going on, and there was a rattlesnake warning our puppy not to come too close. We were extremely grateful for the snake's warning rattle. In the Bible, Satan is depicted as a serpent—a serpent who not only doesn't warn about his lethal bite, but appears in alluring disguises promising great rewards of pleasure, ready and waiting to devour his every victim.
How different from God because over and over he warns us in his Word, the Bible, to avoid sin at all costs for it will destroy us. He, too, has generously given notice even to his enemies to "flee from the wrath to come" and to turn to Christ the Savior of the world.
Suggested prayer: "Dear God, help me to be careful where I walk (how I live) and avoid the ways of Satan at all costs. Thank you that there is salvation from the evil one when I turn to you. Help me so to do. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer.
Gratefully, in Jesus' name, amen."
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