difference

by

There Is A Difference One Day To The Next

Things can be different one day to the next, even when the conditions are the same.

Have you ever noticed that you can have a great day and, with no rhyme or reason, the next day is crummy?

I find that young adults can be like this. My wife, Lily, and I regularly talk to our kids on the phone. One day they can be sailing and the next they are in the pits.

Maybe there is some latent hormonal chemical reaction that strikes from time to time (they’re both in their late 20’s), but I am always dumb-founded to know what changed from the day before.

Often nothing changes, but we look for something to blame. It somehow feels better when we can find a reason for the turn of events.

… Like when the weather fails to turn out the way we had hoped it would, we blame the weatherman, as if he had something to do with changing the weather. As if he or she had some control over how the weather was going to turn out!

It doesn’t matter that meteorologists only predict the weather, we like to stick it to them and focus our frustration on their seeming incompetence.

The other day I played hockey with a group of guys and everything clicked – passing, shooting, skating. I scored one goal that I’m still playing over in my mind … it was a beauty!

I’m sure the guys on the other team weren’t saying the same thing. They seemed frustrated; not much was going right for them. I almost felt a little sorry for them.

But hold on to that thought …

Today came around and this time, playing with another group of guys, nothing was working.

Passes never seemed to get to me, and my passes sometimes got intercepted by my own teammates. Shooting, well, I hit three goal posts … that’s enough said there.

I felt as good today as I did the other day when I played. All the conditions were the same.

I was playing with a different group of guys, so I could say that it was the players that made the difference. I could blame them to make me feel a little better about myself.

The problem with that is I was playing with better hockey players today than I was the other day when everything went right!

There just doesn’t seem to be any explanation for the change, or any way to hang some blame on anyone.

One day everything went right and the next day nothing seemed to go right.

When someone is in a grumpy mood, we tell them that they woke up on the wrong side of the bed, or that they didn’t get enough sleep. We can blame their mood on something they did or didn’t do because those are conditions we can measure.

When there is nothing to measure, we are left with a mystery that will never be solved; it just must be accepted.

Here’s the thing: We often blame God when, out of the blue, things go wrong. We blame Him for allowing the bad to come into our lives. We want to blame someone or something and we feel God is as good a person to blame as any. However, before you turn your ire on God for something He may or may not have been at the centre of, why not accept it and keep moving forward? If you don’t, you will just spin your wheels, fixated on blaming.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: Who or what have you been tempted to place blame on lately? Leave your comments below.

by

Embrace Your Difference

It’s amazing how different our bodies work. What’s good for one person may not be good for another.

Recently a friend sent my wife, Lily, a video clip and told her not to let me see it. Of course, Lily couldn’t help but show me the video.

DPSign1

The video clip showed a lady who was 104 years old telling the interviewer that she drank three glasses of Dr. Pepper a day. She said, “It’s good; it has sugar in it.”

She also told the interviewer that two doctors had told her that drinking that much Dr. Pepper would kill her. But then she said, “Both doctor are dead and I’m still here.”

For this woman, she found an elixir that has kept her going for over 100 years. If I drank that many Dr. Peppers a day the only 100 I would count on would be the pounds I would gain in no time flat!

It’s curious that the same thing can have such drastic differences depending on the person.

Some people can eat fries, pizza, and chicken wings, and never have their cholesterol change one bit. However, if I just look at a picture of wings my cholesterol starts to rise.

Maybe that’s why I eat my wings while watching hockey games. I keep my eyes on the screen and never have to gaze at those delicious little morsels passing over my palette on their way to my arteries.

Our bodies also change over the years so what never was an issue, at some point becomes a problem for us.

In university Lily used to drink coffee by the bucketful. Now caffeine gives her headaches and keeps her awake at night.

When I was younger I could eat anything and in any amount. I might have felt stuffed at the time, but the next day, just like an anaconda that swallowed a rabbit whole, there was no sign any crime had been committed.

Now if I could just stick to eating salad without any dressing, I might be able to keep myself from gaining weight … of course that would still depend on averting my eyes from pictures of wings with Frank’s red hot sauce on them.

I’m happy for that lady who can drink three glasses of Dr. Pepper a day and live to 104, while keeping her school girl figure.

I would like to find the thing I could eat or drink without caution that would keep me going for years and years. My fear, however, is that what would work as my elixir would be brussels sprouts or something along those lines.

It’s not that I haven’t tried to find my elixir, but so far I’ve had to write off liquorice, Mike and Ike’s, and Turkish Delight. I’m still hopeful for dark chocolate with whole almonds.

Almonds are good for cholesterol, you know.

Here’s the thing: There are many voices that will try to tell you how to structure your time with God. When someone finds a way to have a rich and meaningful relationship with God, they believe everyone can have the same kind of relationship if they follow their pattern. There may be points and principles that we can pick up from others on how they spend their time with God, but for the most part, we need to seek a way that works specifically for us. We just don’t all respond to God, or find meaningful interaction with him, in the same way or setting. Find your way to a meaningful relationship with God.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What have you tried in establishing a rich, meaningful relationship with God? Leave your comment below.