What Life is About

Life isn't about keeping score. It's not about how many friends you have. Or how many people call you. Or how accepted or unaccepted you are. Not about if you have plans this weekend. Or if you're alone. It isn't about who you're dating, who you used to date, how many people you've dated, or if you haven't been with anyone at all. It isn't about who you have kissed. It's not about sex. It isn't about who your family is or how much money they have. Or what kind of car you drive. Or where you're sent to school.

It's not about how beautiful or ugly you are. Or what clothes you wear, what shoes you have on, or what kind of music you listen to. It's not about if your hair is blonde, red, black, brown, or green. Or if your skin is too light or too dark.

It's not about what grades you get, how smart you are, how smart everyone else thinks you are, or how smart standardized tests say you are. Or if this teacher likes you, or if this guy/girl likes you. Or what clubs you're in, or how good you are at "your" sport. It's not about representing your whole being on a piece of paper and seeing who will "accept the written you."

But life is about who you love and who you hurt. It's about who you make happy or unhappy purposefully. It's about keeping or betraying trust. It's about friendship, used as sanctity, or as a weapon. It's about what you say and mean, maybe hurtful, maybe heartening. About starting rumors and contributing to petty gossip. It's about what judgments you pass and why. And who your judgments are spread to.

It's about who you've ignored with full control and intention. It's about jealousy, fear, pain, ignorance, and revenge. It's about carrying inner hate and love, letting it grow and spreading it.

But most of all, it's about using your life to touch or poison other people's hearts in such a way that could never have occurred alone. Only you choose the way these hearts are affected and those choices are what life is all about.   Author Unknown

On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the Sabbath, they were watching him closely…

 

When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. “When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, ‘Give this person your place,’ and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place.

 

But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you.  For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” He said also to the one who had invited him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid.  But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

Luke 14:1, 7-14

Make a new friend, remember an old friend, BE a friend!

 

Make it a GREAT day!

 

 



Happy Birthday, Dad!



Today is my dad's eighty-third birthday. Just imagine the changes in the world he has witnessed over those eighty-three years!  The Roaring Twenties came to a screeching halt with the Crash of '29.  In a family of two parents and eleven children, Dad being number eight, those first years of his life could not have been easy...but were any of them?  I remember my grandmother telling me that she always worried that my dad didn't get enough of her attention.  She said he never complained, but that was what added to the worry.  Others were not afraid to make their wants and desires known, loud and clear.  Dad was content to follow along with the others and make himself known by being just like them.

Everyone helped on their farm.  Many times I've heard the stories of the work that they all did to make a family that large work.  The chores in the cold and walking to school across the fields,  making certain that anyone who might need something in the little church across the road was taken care of and digging the graves for the funerals at the cemetary.  It took all of them to make it all happen. 

But there was fun too.  The stories about the escapades he and his brother got into keep us laughing around the dining room table, even today.  How fortunate he was to have someone so close in age and kinship!  How necessary in a group so large!

What did this beginning mean for the man I call dad?  It meant he learned the value of your labors...you earn what you get...nothing is handed to you.  It meant he learned that we are here to serve others, not to be served.  It meant he learned that family is first, last and middle, nothing comes before it.  Well, I'm wrong.  It meant that he learned that only God comes before family, and if God is first the rest will all work out.  And he taught his children those values.

I guess you can see that I think my dad's just about the best guy in the whole world!  I'm so fortunate!  You see, over my lifetime I've seen so many friends and acquaintances that didn't have a dad to set the standard, to show them the ropes, to love them.  So many fathers walk away from their responsibilities because they just can't be bothered.  I work with young people and families.  I see it every day.  And every day it makes me so grateful for my dad! Yes, he is stubborn (thanks for passing that on) and at eighty-three opinionated (he's earned that right) but, as for me, when I grow up, I want to be just like my dad!

Happy Birthday, Dad!  I love you!

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

Romans 8:28 

My Father's Angels



I wasn't paying attention at the time to the good example my father set. He wasn't consciously "setting a good example" -- he was just living life according to his values.

It was the 1950s in a small Middle Georgia farm town. Our family owned a clothing store in the middle of the main business block downtown. Six days a week, 8am until 6pm (9pm on Saturday), my father presided over his business. And sometimes an angel would come to our store.

I didn't recognize those visitors as angels. Neither did my mother, who accepted my father's decisions but referred to Daddy's angels as "bums". She was concerned that they painted hobo marks to guide others to my father. My father was, and still is, an extremely kind man. He bought them lunch.

I guess Daddy knew Mama's opinion and took precautions in case any individual "angel" might actually be an alcoholic. He would have a friendly, encouraging conversation with the person, who was shabby and obviously down on his luck.

Then Daddy would walk him across the street to the Coffee Cup Cafe and pay for him to eat the daily special, a hearty meal. Depending on how the conversation was going, Daddy would sometimes sit and have lunch with him.

Another variation on this theme was sometimes Daddy would bring the man to our house to do yard work to earn a bus ticket. Mama would feed him a good home cooked meal but would serve it to him in the kitchen or on the back steps.

Daddy explained his theory of angels to his children this way: "It's Biblical. Sometimes God sends an angel among men unawares, to test us. How we behave toward the least of his children is how we treat Him."

I remember chuckling at my "naive" father's actions later when I got more grown and more savvy. I laughed that he got it backwards about who the angel was.

Now that I am middle-aged, I'm proud to say that I realize how blessed I am to have such a wise and good man, Joseph Van Johnson, as my father and my teacher.

I am also doubly blessed to be meeting angels now myself. More than once I have recognized God Himself staring back at me from the face of a homeless mentally ill person. I understand now that my father was respecting the spirit of God that is within each of us.
by Kay Johnson McCrary

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

John 14:6

We Are the Champions!

We Are the Champions of the World!

by Queen

I've paid my dues -
Time after time -
I've done my sentence
But committed no crime -
And bad mistakes
I've made a few
I've had my share of sand kicked in my face -
But I've come through

We are the champions - my friends
And we'll keep on fighting - till the end -
We are the champions -
We are the champions
No time for losers
'Cause we are the champions - of the world -

I've taken my bows
And my curtain calls -
You brought me fame and fortune and everything that goes with it -
I thank you all -

But it's been no bed of roses
No pleasure cruise -
I consider it a challenge before the whole human race -
And I ain't gonna lose -

We are the champions - my friends
And we'll keep on fighting - till the end -
We are the champions -
We are the champions
No time for losers
'Cause we are the champions - of the world -

The theme of this song is that the band singing it has won something...big. In the song it is fame and fortune. It is played at all kinds of sporting events and in celebrations of all kinds by and for people who are celebrating victory over something or someone.  I like the song.  I've been singing it since it was first distributed ???? years ago.  I happened to hear it on the way home this morning from a meeting that I had and it's been playing through my head ever since.

But I wonder how many of us have really listened to the lyrics?  It's really a fairly short song, as songs go, and it dawns on me that there is more to the song than just the 'winning' part.  The song begins with a focus on how they became winners..."I've paid my dues-Time after time - I've done my sentence, But committed no crime - And bad mistakes I've made a few- I've had my share of sand kicked in my face - But I've come through."

I've been considering, lately, whether or not we're teaching our young people the value of paying their dues, making bad mistakes and learning from them, and even having my share of sand kicked in my face.  It's the next line that I think I like the best...But I've come through.  At this middle portion of my life, I have come to appreciate, not necessarily the battles (who really wants those), but the coming through part.  The Bible says we will be tested "I will put this third into the fire, and refine them as one refines silver, and test them as gold is tested." (Zechariah 13:9).  I don't like the fire, but coming through the fire and knowing that I've passed that test certainly makes me feel better about myself.  I believe that creates our self-worth or self-esteem.

I'm afraid, in our efforts to love and care for our children, we've not allowed them to face the fires of their lives.  We've shielded and protected them.  We wanted their lives to be better than ours, not to have to work as hard as we did, and we've kept them from some valuable life lessons in the process.  It's when they've worked their way through the fire-the test-and come out the other side that we all can then celebrate and sing "We are the champions."  But notice the rest of the chorus...  "And we'll keep on fighting - till the end - We are the champions - We are the champions, No time for losers- 'Cause we are the champions - of the world."

Certainly, I appreciate the "we'll keep on fighting till the end," but the "No time for losers" brings me up short.   We are all losers at various points in our lives, aren't we?  Isn't this another valuable lesson for us all to learn?  Someone mentioned to me the other day that she was concerned that all of the children in a baseball tournament had received trophies.  She said that she understood the point was that everyone had come out and tried their best and they were rewarded for their effort, but her question was, "When do the kids learn how to lose?"  I thought this was a very good question.

Every one of us, at what will probably be many points in our lives, will lose and we need to learn how to do that just as much, if not more than, how to win.  Winning is fun; the celebration of the victory is easy.  It's the losing that requires us to reach down inside and become something better than we were before.  It's back to that dues and mistakes piece again.   Children and adults learn best when put to the test and given the opportunity to "sink or swim" as my dad used to say. 



Perhaps one thing has nothing to do with the other, but I believe it's worth considering.  This one life we are given is full of tests and trials.  It's not the tests that are important, it's how we handle the test while we're taking it and what we do with the lesson when we're done that is important.  I hope that we are giving our children the opportunity to take these tests and to succeed or fail all by themselves.  Our job isn't to protect them from the test but to show them how to take the test and what to do with the results.  There will be successes and we will "take our bows" and "curtain calls", but there will also be failures and it's in the failures that we can teach them yet again. 

Here's to all the "champions of the world"...and to the losers.  We've got plenty of time for both!