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Dr. Robert McKenzie
WHY WE SHOULD ALL BE NICE...YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN IT MAY BE GOODBYE
"When you were saying goodbye I heard you say, "I wish you enough." May I ask what that means?"
He began to smile. "That’s a wish that has been handed down from other generations. My parents used to say it to everyone." He paused for a moment and looking up as if trying to remember it in detail, he smiled even more.
"When we said ’I wish you enough,’ we were wanting the other person to have a life filled with just enough good things to sustain them," he continued and then turning toward me he shared the following as if he were reciting it from memory:
" I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright.
I wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun more.
I wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive.
I wish you enough pain so that the smallest joys in life appear much bigger.
I wish you enough gain to satisfy your wanting.
I wish you enough loss to appreciate all that you possess.
I wish enough"Hellos" to get you through the final "Goodbye."
He then began to sob and walked away.
**I WISH YOU ALL ENOUGH**
And a good Father does not give everything the child asks for. A Danish proverb notes, "Give to a pig when it grunts and a child when he cries, and you will have a fine pig and a bad child." God is raising children, not pigs.
It has always been tough to be a young person growing up. And it has always been tough to be a parent and raise children into adults. Consider these quotes:
"I see no hope for the future for people if they are dependent on the frivilous youth of today. For certainly all youth are reckless beyond words. When I was a boy we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wild and impatient." (Greek poet Hesiod)
"Youth today love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority, no respect for older people, and talk nonsense when they should work. Young people do not stand up any longer when adults enter a room. They contradict their parents, talk too much in company, guzzle their food, lay their legs on the table, and tyrannize their elders." (Socrates)
"The world is passing through troublous times. The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents of old age. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as if they know everything, and what passes for wisdom with us is foolishness with them. As for the girls, they are forward and immodest and unwomanly in speech, behavior, and dress." (Peter the Hermit AD 1274)
(These quotes are courtesy of Dr. Vernon Grounds)
. “The 1989 Armenian earthquake needed only four minutes to flatten the nation and kill thirty thousand people. Moments after that deadly tremor ceased, a father raced to an elementary school to save his son. When he arrived, he saw that the building had been leveled. Looking at the mass of stones and rubble, he remembered a promise he had made to his child: “No matter what happens, I’ll always be there for you.” Driven by his own promise, he found the area closest to his son’s room and began to pull back the rocks. Other parents arrived and began sobbing for their children. “It’s too late,” they told the man. “You know they are dead. You can’t help.” Even a police officer encouraged him to give up.
But the father refused. For eight hours, then sixteen, then thirty-two, thirty-six hours he dug. His hands were raw and his energy gone, but he refused to quit. Finally, after thirty-eight wrenching hours, he pulled back a boulder and heard his son’s voice. He c...
According to psychologist William Damon, respect for the parent who exercises proper authority leads to respect for legitimate social institutions and to respect for law. In his book The Moral Child, Damon writes, “The child’s respect for parental authority sets the direction for civilized participation in the social order when the child later begins assuming the rights and responsibilities of full citizenship.” Damon calls this respect “the single most important legacy that comes out of the child’s relations with the parent.”
Michael G. Moriarty, The Perfect 10: The Blessings of Following God’s Commandments in a Post Modern World, p. 112
M-O-T-H-E-R
"M" is for the million things she gave me,
"O" means only that she’s growing old,
"T" is for the tears she shed to save me,
"H" is for her heart of purest gold;
"E" is for her eyes, with love-light shining,
"R" means right, and right she’ll always be,
Put them all together, they spell "MOTHER,"
A word that means the world to me.
~By Howard Johnson~
THANK YOU, DAD
Thank you Dad,
for giving us a very special gift.
Its the most important gift of all,
That only love can give.
You read us the Bible at bedtime
and taught us how to pray.
You made sure we made it to church every Sunday.
And even though
we acted like we didn’t hear a thing,
When I’m in church today,
I hear an old familiar ring.
I’ve learned alot through all these years,
through the good times and the bad.
I want you to know,
I thank God every night for you Dad.
I can’t imagine
how it would be to live life day by day...
Not knowing God, not knowing love,
not knowing how to pray.
It would be so cold, so lonely,
so sad a life I know.
And it’s all because of you, Dad.
God’s love - we’ve been shown.
So Dad we want to thank you
on this very special day.
Because of you - we now know
the true meaning of Father’s Day.
~By Terri Lewis~
LOVE THEM
Before becoming a mother I had a hundred theories on how to bring up children. Now I have seven children and only one theory: love them, especially when they least deserve to be loved.
Kate Samperi, author
SOURCE: Celebrating Mothers: A Book...
YOU’RE THE BEST
My mother said to me, "If you become a soldier you’ll be a general; if you become a monk you’ll end up as the pope." Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.
SOURCE: Pablo Picasso, Spanish artist. Citation: Celebrating Mother: A Book of Appreciation. Edited by Glorya Hale and Carol Kelly-Gangi. MetroBooks, 2002. pg. 63.
OUR NEED FOR PAIN
There is no tougher dilemma in the Christian life than the problem of pain. It could be the pain of broken relationship, the pain of rejection, or the pain of insults. Or it could just be plain old physical pain. Nothing tests the faith like pain.
It was physical pain that became a life's work for a man named Dr. Paul Brand. Perhaps nobody studied pain like Dr. Brand.
I became acquainted with his work through the writing of one of my favorite authors, Phil Yancey. He and Dr. Brand wrote several books together including, In His Image, Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, and The Gift of Pain.
Dr. Brand died in 2003 at the age of 89. I want to read a little bit from an article in Christianity Today about him:
"Born to missionary parents in the mountains of southwestern India in 1914, Brand attended London University, where he met his wife, Margaret Berry. The two surgeons returned to Vellore, India, to teach at the Christian Medical College and Hospital. While working as the school's first Professor of orthopaedics and hand research, Brand pioneered surgical work with those suffering from Hansen's disease, a bacterial infection more commonly known as leprosy. He was the first surgeon to use reconstructive surgery to correct deformities caused by the disease in the hands and feet, and developed many other forms of prevention and healing from the disease.
"Before Brand, it was widely believed that those suffering from Hansen's disease lost their fingers and feet because of rotting flesh. Instead, Brand discovered, such deformities were due to the loss of ability to feel pain. With treatment and care, he showed, victims of the disease could go indefinitely without such deformities.
It was on this issue that Brand's work with Hansen's disease met with his theological reflections on what he viewed as 'the most problematic aspect of creation: the existence of pain.' Pain, Brand believed, was not antithetical to life, but a requisite for it. God designed the human body so that it is able to survive because of pain,' he later wrote."
Dr. Brand's research helped him form a theology of pain. He compared the body's need for pain, to alert it to danger, to the soul and the spirit's need for pain to alert it to danger and help it to survive.
You see, as Christians, we believe, that our trials, our pain, our deepest hurts, have a purpose beyond our comprehension. This dovetails nicely with what we find in the opening pages of the book of James.
(From a sermon by Daniel Darling, The Purpose of Your Pain, 2/2/2011)
