Welcome to the planet ME

Why is it always that we tend to criticize the faults and the shortcomings of other people, and yet we do not attend to the "bad spots in our own life's?

In the Gospel according to Matthew, Matthew documents one of the teachings Jesus taught as part of the Sermon on the Mount.(I think it is called the Sermon on the mount, because of the location where Jesus taught the people - either a hillside or on top of a mountain.)In this teaching, Jesus says that we must attend to the beam in our own eye, before taking out the small splint in another person's eye.

You might have realized by now, that the the above-mentioned analogy Jesus has used in his day is something we are guilty of, even until this very day and age.

We tend to judge and compare people by looking by their outward appearances an comparing it again to the "good characteristics" of our selfs. So "I" became the measure of success, love life, social standing, fashion, etc.The world started to revolve around the planet called "I", and everything is being monopolized by "I".

We live in culture that celebrates self-centeredness, with self-gratification as the only need, it seems, to be satisfied every minute of every day.

I must admit, I am also guilty of being self-centered and selfish, and I know that through my selfish, self-centered actions, I have caused hurt to people surrounding me, I acted in a manner that God would see as sin and in the process, I hurt God as well.

As you might have noticed, love played a pertinent role in my previous posted blog-entries, especially a love for your neighbour. I think that is what Paul meant in the letter he wrote to the church in Philippi, where he urged them to put the needs and issues of other people in front of your own needs and desires.

How would the world look if we were not worried about 'me', but thinking of the person, that might be stuck in rush-hour traffic in the car next to you, that might be in the need of neighborly love, without your judgmental attitude towards them?

I want to leave you with a challenge: To love other people, with the love love you give to another,will reflect the following words of Scripture:

Love is patient, Love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
1 Corinthians 13:4 - 7, NIV

The human touch

The biggest killer on earth is not a disease like cancer, but the inability to be inspired by another human being.

If humans were not inspired by another human being, then life would be a living hell. Because any form of inspiration, causes a human to react in a way that could impact people surrounding them in a positive manner.

Words are the main medium of inspiration. It can be written or spoken. Also words can be unwritten or unspoken. The “unwritten” or “unspoken” I am referring to is the things you could do to inspire a person. I try to inspire other people surrounding me using both written and spoken word, but also deeds that might inspire them to make a difference in the world.

Did you know that just because of one person’s action, generation after generation has been saved because of his unselfish love for the human-kind? The same person was labeled peculiar by his own people! The person I am talking about is not just human, but also fully God.

His deeds did not just change parts of the Middle East and Turkey, but is still changing the world as we know it today, and will do the same into the future, until He comes back for a long visit, one or another time.

So, be ready to give up your “house”, because when He moves in, He will never leave! “Never” is a absolute never, not the type you will get at some marriage vows, just to find “never” being over before you can even say “happy 5^th anniversary!”.

But what is it about Him that inspired writers, artists, and for that matter, everyday people, to life their lives in a way that is totally different, than what the society would consider as normal. I know that He is the one whose example I want to live by.

I think the reason that I want to live my life in the same way as He did, have to do with the way He treated humans around Him. His compassionate eyes caused Him to weep, due to the suffering in this world, and unlike most of us, that struggle to do something about the suffering in the world, He did something.

With limited resources (2 fishes and 5 loaves of bread), He was able to feed over 5 000 adult men. (The amount of woman and children present at the specific occasion has not even been mentioned)

If you have not figured it out by now, the Person I am talking about is no one else than Jesus Christ. By many He has been seen as a religious nut of some sort, or even a fictional character in a mythical or cultural story-telling.

I believe that He is the King of kings and Lord of lords, and I have seen Him at work in my own life on several occasions, and that He manifested Himself to me in different ways.

During my life so far, I have been involved with three different motor-vehicle accidents, every time just walking away, with a bruise here and a scratch there. There has also been a incident during the course of last year, when a 18-wheeler, try and ran my bakkie (Pickup truck) off the road.

This is not really the point I am trying to make here, but it might be that you are starting to realize that there is a God and He is real. And that Jesus came to this earth to set me and you free.

The point I am trying to make, is that through my words and my actions, I want the world to know that He loves us with an Everlasting love.

Jesus said, just before He ascended into heaven on the clouds, that we must go to all the corners of the earth and make the people that we meet and interact with, His followers, teaching them also the things He taught when He walked the earth.

This includes the sermons on being humble, caring for one another, loving each other with a sacrificial love, a willingness to put another person’s life(and all aspects of that person’s life), before your own. And this does not mean to give another the permission to trample your life into the mud.

A certain aspect of putting another person’s life, before your own, is to stop looking down at other, thinking that certain character-traits of them are inferior to you, and also not to judge them, according to your standards. When Jesus walked the dusty roads of Judea, he treated the Pharisee and the Tax Collector the same, dying for them both on the cross.

I just realized that while I typing the couple paragraphs, before this one that everything Jesus did on this earth was never for Himself, but always, for the people he loved so much. And that through His human touch a lot people has been inspired to live their life’s differently and inspiring others to do the same. In the original Greek, inspiration means literary, “to be breathed upon”. And I believe that through my human touch, God will also breathe upon your heart today.

The Greatest Commandment

I have come to the conclusion that God still uses everyday people to answer life’s greatest conundrums and let His will be known for the world through these ‘everyday people’. (By everyday people, I mean the people that you would interact with everyday, like your family, friends, colleagues and other people that might cross your path.)

My story starts a week or so back, when I was in a battle with myself. Will I make a choice, based on the accepted norm of society within the teaching and morals of the church, or will I follow my heart’s desire.

I have to come out of the closet about something, not many of you might know: Two of my friends are lesbians. One of my lesbian friends I knew from the time that I was in my last year of school. Thus we have a friendship of over five years and it is still continuing. It was only when I was almost finish with my High School finals, that I suspected that she might be a lesbian.( I would soon enough find out that she was actually a lesbian)

The other friend I got to know through the friend I mentioned in the previous paragraph. I did, however saw her a lot of times before I was actually introduced to her, seeing that on several accounts, she was the waitress of my table in my favorite coffee shop. She and my other friend have been engaged since July of last year.

If you have not realized it by now, the battle I found myself in surrounds my two friends. Will I, like the most of the churchgoers take in the stand of rejection towards my two friends, because they are lesbians, and according to the Bible, homosexuality is an appalling sin, or will I hate the sin of homosexuality, but I will love the sinner.

Did Jesus, Himself go and gather with the people which the religious leaders of that time, rejected as ‘sinners’.

To come back to my story, I ask God to give a clear answer, what I must do. I pray to God for an answer, but God was silent to my request, or so I thought …

The next morning, my friend Chris, gave his departing sermon in church, before leaving for Port Shepstone, where he has been called to minister in the local Dutch Reformed Church.

His sermon was on the whole story surrounding the Pharisee and the tax-collector in the temple and how that the Pharisee prayed and thanked God that he is not like the tax-collector, whilst the tax-collector had a more simple request, that God will have mercy on him.

The point Chris wanted to bring across, is that all of us is sinners and fall short of God’s glory and that we can be only saved by God’s grace alone. And he left us with a straight-forward challenge: To accept God’s Saving Grace through Jesus Christ, and loving other people in the same way Jesus loved both the “sinners” and the “sinless”(Pharisees) of that time.

I also gained something from that sermon, God answer my question; I have struggled with during the previous 24 hours. I made the decision to accept my lesbian friends for who they are, and not throw away a friendship, because of the opinion o the church. I will love Lelanie and Haylee with the same compassion and love, Jesus had for the sinner of that day, and still have till this very day, and even beyond this moment in time.

After saying al of this, I decided to get out of the closet and declare that some of my friends are gay or lesbian, and I will not reject them, even if the church does not think likewise. I will love them as Jesus instructed me to do. Jesus gave the command “LOVE ONE ANOTHER!”

Happiness is ...

{All of these quotes comes from the back of brown sugar sachets, that is served with the coffee, at my favorite coffee shop. Their peppermint Crisp Tart is also a favorite with me}

There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy

Robert Louis Stevenson

Happiness is not a goal, it is a by-product.

Elenor Roosevelt

Remember, that happiness is a way to travel, not a destination

Roy Goodman

Happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have

Hyman Judah Schactel

Happiness is perfume, you can't pour it on somebody else, without getting a view drops on yourself.

James van der Zee

Hope in a hopeles world

Friday 19 October 2007 around about 22:00 local time.

For now I am going to unhook myself from the laptop’s power chord, and just time, whatever comes to mind, until I am reminded by the laptop of the battery.

At this moment in time I am feeling the emotion of euphoria, sweeping over me like a giant wave. The Springboks are facing the English roses in the World Cup Final Match (which they will win), but on quite the opposite pole I feel a certain degree of uncertainty.

There are so many things going on in the world at this moment in time, no wonder we have people with chronic stress-related diseases. The people of South Africa fear for their lives, because of crimes. People are dying in neighboring Zimbabwe, because of poverty. The freedom of people in Myanmar (Burma) is in an imbalance due to the rule of the Militant Junta.

I know, by this time, you are considering, going to the next best available website. But just read on for a little while. I believe with all my heart that the next couple of sentences, paragraphs, are just what God wanted to tell you this week.

Saturday, October 20, 2007 around 06:30 AM

After I’ve typed the full stop of the last sentence, I went asleep. So I am going to carry on, where I have left off.

This past week, I was searching for an envelope in the side table of my mother’s bed. And I came across a book that I borrowed her, quite a while back, called “And Jesus Wept”. So I though to myself, “what is the significance of me finding this book at that time”, a question left unanswered for two days or so.

Later the week, I went back to the side table to retrieve the book. I turned the book around and this is what the back covered read: “A marriage ends in up in divorce, a terrorist-attack kills thousands, A mother of four killed in a vehicle-accident. What did Jesus do when this happened? He Wept. When Jesus sees our pain, and sees our heart ache, he weeps with us …”

The profound thing here is this: Most people ask the question “why?” when something terribly goes wrong. They asked it with 9/11, they asked it with the Tsunami in Thailand in December 2004, and they are still asking it today. Let me rephrase the previous sentence: We asked it with 9/11, we asked it with the Tsunami in Thailand in December 2004, and we are still asking it today.

Have we totally forgotten that God, our Father in heaven, may also have felt the pain and the suffering? You know the One that created man in His image? Do you think it was easy for him to flood the planet in the days of Noah? Do you think it was easy for Him to see His Son die on a cross?

The point I am trying to make here is this, God is still at work in the lives of people around the world every day, it does not matter which religious background they follow, just because they, we are His creation, image-bearers of the Creator, and covered with His fingerprints. God wants to lift us out of a state of hopelessness, and give us in abundance. He wants the Believers to go out with their brokenness and bring healing to other broken-hearted people. He wants to use YOU, with YOUR brokenness, hurt to bring healing, to give others HOPE of everlasting life!

Coffee-Shop thought

Man can try as hard as he can to build a human being, but still fail, because he can't give his creation GOD-breath!

Inspiration for the week

"Allow the children to come to Me – do not forbid them – for to such belongs the kingdom of God.” This was the rebuking words of Jesus to his disciples, when they try to prevent the children to come to Him.

This past Friday-evening, a couple of our church’s high school youth action, went to visit the newfound satellite home of the Durbanville Children’s Home, which is situated in Kraaifontein.

It turned out to be a wonderful evening for both the children and the high school children of our church. Chris, the proponent(a proponent is a minister of the Word who has not yet been legitimised by the Dutch Reformed Church’s council) at our church, put two snoeks on the coals for us, whilst the rest of us rediscovered out inner child, when we had some fun with the children of the children’s home. For those who are wondering, there are about 9 children staying at the satellite home, between the ages of 4 and 18.

The most profound thing that I’ve realised, while spending time with the children there, is that they have accepted each other as brothers and sisters, no matter what their ages are, or even the colour of their skin. There is a love between the children, which my words cannot describe.

Also, because of what I have experienced at the children’s home on Friday evening, I have a clearer understanding what Jesus meant by his command to us “To love one another as we would love ourselves.” There is more to this command than just loving and caring for your neighbour, for instance the person you sit with, in the church pews, week in and week out.

This command commands us to really go outside our comfort zone, taking the hands of the people out there, and loving and caring for them, just as Jesus would have done. Then ultimately we will be doing the great Commission, to go to all the corners of the earth and to do, everything, Jesus taught us to do.