“Excuses are the tools with which persons with no purpose in view build for themselves great monuments of nothing.”

~ Steven Grayhm ~

In the  creation account God created Adam and Eve perfectly and placed them in a perfect environment.

They began with perfection but choices determined who and what they would become.

This is an important reminder that from the very beginning God created mankind for responsibility with free will.

Do not underestimate the significance of your choices. Our daily choices are unto life or unto death.

Today’s choices create tomorrow’s reality

I call Heaven and Earth to witness against you today:
I place before you Life and Death, Blessing and Curse.
Choose life so that you and your children will live.
And love God, your God, listening obediently to him,
firmly embracing him.
Duet 30:19

Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. Psalm 51:7

As a counselor I have the privilege of listening to people as they share their lives with me.

The interesting thing about our human nature is that when our reality is just too painful or shameful we lie to ourselves and create a pseudo reality.

The problem is the longer we believe that lie the more detached we become from who we are. Maybe that is why James said:

Confess your sins (Junk)  to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be whole. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man is very powerful.  James 5:17

If you have made mistakes, there is always another chance for you.

You may have a fresh start any moment you choose.

This thing we call “failure” is not the falling down, but the staying down.
Mary Pickford

The Lord’s loyal kindness never ceases; His compassion never ends.
They are fresh every morning;  Your faithfulness is abundant!
Lamentations 3:22

“Because I am a part of the Big Picture, I do matter and substantially so.
Because I am only a part, however, I am rightly situated off to stage right—and happily so. What freedom there is in such truth!

We are inherently important and included, yet not burdened with manufacturing or sustaining that private importance.
Our dignity is given by God, and we are freed from ourselves!”
― Richard Rohr

You made my whole being; you formed me in my mother’s body.
I praise you because you made me in an amazing and wonderful way.
What you have done is wonderful. I know this very well.

You saw my bones being formed as I took shape in my mother’s body.
When I was put together there, you saw my body as it was formed.
All the days planned for me were written in your book before I was one day old.

God, your thoughts are precious to me! They are so many.
If I could count them, they would be more than all the grains of sand.
When I wake up, I am still with you. Psalms 139:13-18

You can tell the size of your God by looking at the size of your worry list.

The longer your list, the smaller your God.

Last week I felt a little overwhelmed with all that needed to get done.
I am not great at multitasking so I compensate by only doing one thing and worry about all the other things that have yet to be done.

My head was in a real fog for days. I walked into the building where I work and joined a couple of friends who had  come to pray.

I didn’t pray out loud I just listened to the other guys pray. Slowly my mind moved from my little world to God’s unfailing faithfulness.

It was like my heart took a deep breath and relaxed for the first time in days.

You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, all whose thoughts are fixed on you! Trust in the LORD forever, for the LORD, the LORD, is the Rock eternal. Isaiah 26:3,4

Have you ever surprised yourself with how calm you are in a frustrating situation.

Calmness is really a fruit of the spirit. it is an outward display of a heart that is trusting in God more than circumstances.

The antidote to frustration is a calm faith, not in your own cleverness, or in hard toil, but in God’s guidance.

Then through prayer we release the power and wisdom of  God into a situation. – Norman Vincent Peale

Lean not on your own understanding but trust in the Lord Proverbs 3:5

As children of God we have the capacity to live with hearts liberated to love and experience God’s joy and peace and holiness.
In this way we can (at some level) experience the Garden of Eden daily.

Sometimes it’s like the Garden of Eden is all around us but we are in a cage.
We have capacity for joy and peace but cannot experience it because we are caged by our fears and sinfulness.

C.S. Lewis said, “The enemy will not see you vanish into God’s company without an effort to reclaim you”.

“Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.” Leo F. Buscaglia

Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.
Ephesians 4:23

Unselfish acts are the real miracles out of which all the reported miracles grow.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~

Maybe that is why Jesus said “and whoever wants to be first among you must be the slave of everyone else. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Mark 10: 44, 45

Joy is  the echo of God’s life in us

Abbot Coumba Marmion