Editor: Richard (Dick) Innes
Published by: ACTS International
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Vol. 17 – No. 1415 April 04, 2015
Thought for the week: "There's something wrong if you're always right." – Source, Mickey's Funnies
"Love does not dominate; it cultivates." – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." – Unknown
"We must take change by the hand or rest assuredly, change will take us by the throat." – Winston Churchill
"The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little 'extra'." – Jimmy Johnson, American Football Coach
"To succeed, you need to find something to hold on to, something to motivate you, something to inspire you." – Tony Dorsett
"Deal first with whatever is causing you the greatest emotional distress. Often this will break the logjam in your work and free you up mentally to complete other tasks." – Brian Tracy
Today is the only day that you will ever have in your life. Yesterday is now history and you cannot use it. Tomorrow is still a mystery, and you cannot use it. Today is all the present, the only present that you have, a present that needs reception, a clean start, an opportunity to improve on what is left from yesterday and make a solid base for what is yet to come tomorrow. Every day is worth pondering over to avoid wondering about.
– Cited on andychaps_the-funnies AndyChaps@aol.com
In Germany they came first for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time no one was left to speak up.
Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
German Protestant Clergyman
During Thomas Jefferson's presidency he and a group of travelers were crossing a river that had overflowed its banks. Each man crossed on horseback, fighting for his life. A lone traveler watched the group traverse the treacherous river and then asked President Jefferson to take him across. The President agreed without hesitation; the man climbed on, and the two made it safely to the other side of the river where somebody asked him: "Why did you select the President to ask this favor?" The man was shocked, admitting he had no idea it was the President of the United States who had carried him safely across. "All I know," he said, "is that on some of your faces was written the answer 'No' and on some of them was the answer 'Yes.' His was a 'Yes' face."
It's a serious question. As kids, we knew we were going to be something, and that to be something was to be someone. Even as our ambitions changed, we knew what we were going to be was important and our choice.
When I entered UCLA Law School in 1964, I wanted to do good. Yet when I graduated three years later, I just wanted to do well. My life's mission had changed, not as the result of conscious choice but as a surrender to the momentum of an elaborate matchmaking ritual: the ultimate competition to get job offers from the most prestigious employers and to attain the most hard-to-get jobs.
Money was definitely a factor, as almost all of us had student loans to pay off, but the larger force was a desire for validation. I was, by inclination and training, highly competitive. Getting a coveted job was the ultimate trophy. Intoxicated with a desire to win, I abandoned my wish of being significant in favor of being successful.
I was lucky. The tax firm I wanted didn't make me an offer, so I took a teaching position at the University of Michigan Law School. I discovered I loved teaching and stayed with it for nearly 20 years before I founded an ethics institute in honor of my parents.
You may start out intending to be the captain, but if you're not careful, you may find yourself drifting in another direction, a passenger on your own ship. Your life is too important to be little.
Be what you want to be.
This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.
"When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor. You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet: all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild, the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas. Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!"1
Pastor Ron Clarke from Tasmania, Australia, wrote: "One evening at dusk I was looking out of my window towards the sea when a huge flock of birds appeared, almost like a black cloud—there must have been thousands. They were traveling from west to east, parallel with the coast. Then suddenly it happened. Not a few of them, not some of them, but every single one of them instantly changed direction and flew on a different course.
"We human beings think we have perfected communication. But those birds didn't have two-way radio yet they knew precisely at what split second in time to change course and in what direction to fly.
"These birds, Shearwaters or Mutton Birds, live on the islands in Bass Strait off the north coast of Tasmania. Every year these birds migrate to the North Pacific and spend summer around the Aleutians. As the northern winter approaches, the Shearwaters fly back to their annual breeding ground on the Tasmanian islands and will go to the same nest and, give or take a day or two for adverse weather conditions en route, will arrive on that same nest on a given day."
Think, too, of a million billion other marvels that surround us every day on the earth below and in the heavens above.
Did these all happen by chance? Or is there a Master Designer of the entire universe and all that is therein? For me it would take a whole lot more faith (or presumption) to believe that everything in the universe happened by chance.
Suggested prayer: "Dear God, thank You for the marvels of Your creation. I choose to believe that You are the Great Creator who created all things great and small—including all mankind—and I thank You that You love us devotedly one and all. Thank You for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully in Jesus's name, amen."
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