A lesson for living

I found an old pile of Reader´s Digests from the year of the Ark´s landing and found this article which I felt to be very fitting for me at this time and thought it might be an encouragement to you. ...... enjoy!!


Condensed from PLUS: The magazine of Positive Thinking by Ronald Reagan
(Found in Readers Digest Magazine May edition 1990)

"Everything happens for the best," my mother said whenever I faced disappointment.

"If you carry on, one day something good will happen. And you´ll realize that it wouldn´t have happened if not for that previous disappointment."

Mother was right, as I discovered after graduation from college in 1932. I had decided to try for a job in radio, then work my way up to sports announcer. I hitchhiked to Chicago and knocked on the door of every station and got turned down every time.

In one studio, a kind lady told me that big stations couldn´t risk hiring an inexperienced person. "Go out in the sticks and find a small station that´ll give you a chance."

I thumbed home to Dixon, Ill. While there were no radio-announcing jobs in Dixon, my father said that in a sports department they were looking for a local athelte to manage it. Since Dixon was where I had played high-school football, I applied. The job sounded just right for me. But I wasn´t hired.

My disappointement must have shown. "Everything happens for the best," Mom reminded me. Dad offered me the car to drive 70 miles to the Tri-Cities. I tried WOC RAdio in Davenport, Iowa. The program director, a wonderful Scotsman , told me they had already hired an announcer.

As I left his office, my frustration boiled over. I asked aloud, "How can a fellow get to be a sports announcer if he can´t get a job in a radio station?"

I was waiting for the elevator when I heard the director calling, "What was that you said about sports? Do you know anything about football?" Then he stood me before a microphone and asked me to broadcast an imaginary game.

The preceding autumn, my team had won a game in the last 20 seconds with a 65 yard run. I did a 15 min buildup to that play, and the director told me I would be broadcasting Saturday´s game!!!!

On my way home, as I thought of my mother´s words: "If you carry on, one day something good will happen - something that wouldn´t have happened if not for that previous disappointment."

Am I lost?

THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD

When the road is long and the scenery doesn´t change,often one can become consumed by a sinking sensation that the road is not going anywhere.

If you have ever made a journey that took you hours across a monotonously, repetitive landscape, there comes a point in that journey where it´s easy to begin to doubt you are actually going anywhere... or that you will EVER arrive!

This usually happens after enduring miles upon miles of long road and unending fields. Along with the boredom you begin to wonder... you begin to doubt..... Is this really the right road? How long is this going to take?

I guess I feel like I´m at that point in my journey of this thing we call life. Things are starting to appear the same around me and I find myself on an interminable, straight stretch in the same direction and doubt if I am actually going anywhere at all.

Doubt is healthy. It tests one's convictions.

In an article entitled "The Long Straight Stretch," written by Joni Ereckson Tada, she says the following:

"Someone once said that the challenge of living is to develope a long obedience in the same direction. When it's demanded, we can rise on occasion and be patient... as long as there are limits. But we balk when patience is required over a long haul. We don´t much like endurance.

Right now you may be in the middle of a long stretch of the same old routine. There are miles behind you and miles to go. You don´t hear any cheers or applause. The days run together-so do the weeks. Your commitment to keep putting one foot in front of the other is starting to falter.

Take a moment and look at the fruit:

Perseverance.
Determination.
Fortitude.
Patience.

Your life is not a boring stretch of highway. It´s a straight line to heaven. And just look at the fields ripening along the way. Look at the tenacity and endurance. Look a the grains of righteousness. You´ll have quite a crop at harvest... so don´t give up!"



These words encouraged me so much this morning on my long and winding road. Even though it feels like I´m getting nowhere... God is doing something, producing something in me. Hey, whoever likes to learn patience? I don´t see anyone ever standing in the "patience" cue, eagerly waiting their lessons!! Let alone the perseverance cue......

Our "instant" society doesn´t place much value on these things does it? Why am I all to eager to bypass these lessons ? Even though I am struggling right now with a feeling of being lost on my long road, I want to believe that God is putting some valuable treasure inside my clay pot!

"Let us not become weary in doing good,
for at the proper time
we will reap a harvest
if we do not give up."
Gal 6:9

Study Crazy

No student knows his subject:
the most he knows is where and how to find out the things he does not know.

Woodrow T. Wilson (1856-1924) Twenty-eighth President of the USA.

This weeks has been a difficult week of studying, and I have found myself lost in the world of the verterbraes, spinal cords, traffic accidents with paralasis, Parkinsons, Brain clots, Multiple Sclerosis, ALS..... I was up to my eyeballs in medical terms and had the sensation that the words were swimming across the pages, and swirling about in my head and I wasn´t grasping the half!! It´s a tremendously scary and frustrating experience. Am I alone in this phenomenon?

The very act of conscious learning
requires the willingness to suffer
an injury to one's self-esteem.
That is why young children,
before they are aware of their
own self-importance, learn so easily.

~Thomas SAS

So according to "Thomas" I guess I am not alone ....what I am suffering is an injury to my self esteem... kinda of like what you feel when you are in a room of people speaking a different language and you smile sheepishly, somehow acknowledging a conversation you understand absolutely nothing about, all the while feeling as conspicuous as an illiterate person attending a book fair. (Been there...done that!!!)

We learn more by looking for the answer to a question
and not finding it
than we do from learning the answer itself.
~Lloyd Alexander

Man, does this guy Lloyd know what he is talking about!... I have found out more looking up things in Spanish and English dictionaries and on google than in all my text books! But it all takes time and you cant rush through it.

Just like knowing God.... we have moments when we feel overwhelmed by who He is, moments when we feel the "ah ha" and understand, and moments when we think we know what we are doing and want to rush through all the lessons!

Like studying and learning something new, it takes time and God says :

Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:

Philippians 1:6 KJV

P.S.

A single conversation with a wise man
is better than ten years of study.
~Chinese Proverb

Anybody want to have a conversation with me about the aged and Dependants? It will take months off my studying!!!!!Ha!! Ha!