A rich man arrives home. To update himself of events occurring while he was away he asked his driver. The driver speaks of one thing that came from a whole run of incidences. The man’s dog had been killed. He had it for 14 years and was very fond of it. On asking how, he was told by his £3,000 000 prize stallion that trampled the dog while escaping from the stable. Asking why it should escape from the stable which was 13th Century and a listed building, he was told that the chimney of the house fell on it destroying the stable. Asking how the chimney fell, he was told that the fire had burned the house down. Asking how the fire started he was told, by a cigarette catching on a blanket. Asking who’s cigarette, he was told the children were smoking, one was dead the other was in hospital. Finally he asked who gave them the cigarette. The answer was, you gave them. You gave them permission, you encouraged them. You said it was alright, that it was accepted. They were lead by your example.
The initial seed of sin was that the man set the example saying that it was right and good. His mistake caused much pain and loss for himself and others. So easily we can blame others for our mistakes when we need to take responsibility for ourselves and our own mistakes.
You load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them.
Luke 11:46
It’s said that family life is falling apart. That communication between children and parents has become difficult and maybe more, has been lost. Again it’s said that there’s a need to teach parents how to be parents that they need to go to some sort of counselling to make them better parents. Again the blame for failing families are put at the feet of the parents rather than that recognition that the expectations of those in Government, in law and in society itself have become so great that it’s crushed and caused family life to be lost sometimes impossible to meet. There is so much expectations put on people to be doing, rather than doing those things that really matter.
“Discipline” within the family has become a bad word. Many people are scared to discipline for fear of how easy it has become to break the law or even be imprisoned. Instead of law supporting discipline it crushes it, and then they wonder why children have no respect today. Obviously the effects of the restriction has moved into our schools, where they too struggle not only with a lack of respect but also they have to be continuously meeting targets and keeping records rather than doing the job in a fulfilling way for the children, but also for themselves.
Here at this point I would just like to add something sent around by email quite awhile ago, but saying much the same, and I now pass on. It reads……
Billy Graham's daughter was being interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her "How could God let something like this happen?" And Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response.
She said "I believe that God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman that He is, I believe that He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to Give us His blessing and His protection if we demand that He leave us alone?"
I know there's been a lot of an email going around in regards to September 11th, but this really makes you think. If you don't have time, at least skim through it, but the bottom line is something to think about.... In light of recent events...terrorists attack, school shootings, etc.
Let's see, I think it started when Madeline Murray O'Hare (she was murdered, her body was found recently) complained she didn't want any prayer in our schools, and we said OK.
Then, someone said you better not read the Bible in school... the Bible that says thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbour as yourself. And we said, OK.
Then, Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn't spank our children when they misbehave because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock's son committed suicide) and we said, an expert should know what he's talking about so we said OK.
Then, someone said teachers and principals better not discipline our children when they misbehave. And the school administrators said no faculty member in this school better touch a student when they misbehave because we don't want any bad publicity, and we surely don't want to be sued (There's big difference between disciplining and touching, beating, smacking, humiliating, kicking, etc.) And we said, OK.
Then someone said, let's let our daughters have abortions if they want, and they won't even have to tell their parents. And we said, OK.
Then some wise school board member said, since boys will be boys and they're going to do it anyway, let's give our sons all the fun they desire, and we won't have to tell their parents they got them at school. And we said, OK.
Then some of our top elected officials said it doesn't matter what we do in private as long as we do our jobs. And agreeing with them, we said it doesn't matter to me what anyone, including the President, does in private as long as I have a job and the economy is good.
And then someone said let's print magazines with pictures of nude women and call it wholesome, down-to-earth appreciation for the beauty of the female body. And we said, OK.
And then someone else took that appreciation a step further and published pictures of nude children and then stepped further still by making them available on the Internet. And we said OK; they're entitled to their free speech.
And then the entertainment industry said, let's make TV shows and movies that promote profanity, violence, and illicit sex. And let's record music that encourages rape, drugs, murder, suicide, and satanic themes. And we said it's just entertainment, it has no adverse effect, and nobody takes it seriously anyway, so go right ahead.
Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves. Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with "WE REAP WHAT WE SOW."
"Dear God, Why didn't you save the little girl killed in her classroom? " Sincerely, Concerned Student...
AND THE REPLY "Dear Concerned Student, I am not allowed in schools".
Sincerely, God.
Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to hell.
Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says.
Funny how everyone wants to go to heaven provided they do not have to believe, think, say, or do anything the Bible says.
Funny how someone can say "I believe in God" but still follow Satan who, by the way, also "believes" in God.
Funny how we are quick to judge but not to be judged.
Funny how you can send a thousand 'jokes' through e-mail and they spread like wildfire, but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing.
Funny how the lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene pass freely through cyberspace, but the public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.
Funny how someone can be so fired up for Christ on Sunday, but be an invisible Christian the rest of the week.
Are you laughing? (Powerful and True isn’t it?)
It’s right that everyone should take responsibility for their own lives, their own decisions, and their own mistakes. That means everyone, including surely children as well, for if you withhold them responsibility for their actions you are helping them to grow up believing in a “no blame society” and that they have a right to do anything for it’s never their fault for they are only children. Although their lives need to be directed by adults they have the responsibility to accept or go against what is asked, and if they choose to go against they should be allowed that responsibility, and accept the consequences of their actions.
It has been made so easy to divorce, giving an environment of “I’m not getting my way, so I’m giving up, and I’ll take as much as I can.” The children suffer because the selfishness of the parent or parents, denying the children what they want and need just so they get what they want. The children grow up seeing how easy it is to give up, having to make the best of something they had no choice in.
For so long women have fought for equal rights to men. Suddenly it can appear that women want equal rights when it comes to work and yet within the family and especially within a family breaking-up it appears that women have more rights than the man. If divorce happens and where children are involved so often it is the wife who keeps the children and her security and the husband loses everything, with the feeling of having no rights at all, sometimes being left only with a enormous payment leaving their bank account each month to remember a marriage they didn’t give up on, but gave up on them. It appears that whether the husband was in the wrong or not it is the wife with more rights to a continued life than the husband who’s life is put on hold having to survive on very little, with a future of rejection, loneliness without his loved ones and sometimes never being able to do nothing more than survive. Again men get placed in the stereotyping of others. Suddenly all men are selfish, uncaring and abusive and yet women today can quite easily be that way but is ignored by those in authority for the fear that by taking the man’s position they are appearing to be prejudice against women, but in fairness ending up being prejudice against the man.
Sitting on a bus and you can hear the voices of certain people, not because you want to but because there are some people who like everyone to know their feelings. One was a young student, a girl full of herself and yet behind that exterior an interior crying out to be accepted, loved and needed. Yet again men coming under attack, where the girl had been let down by someone, within that having been bullied while at school, a sense of her attitude having been brought down to that, I want to be noticed, but her loudness just irritates people rather than draws them close. Her loudness meant to promote confidence in herself but really promotes an insecure life, needing, but not really knowing how.
Today women are devalued by men, and men are devalued by women. One fights for their rights generally at the cost of the other. You can see programs on the television. A women presenter talking to a man, who being a father is asking for his rights as a father with his children. There begins what seems to be a discrediting of the father’s aim because of a minority group and their approach to the situation. Rather than giving an unbiased view of both sides of an argument it seems the whole blame appears to be on one side. The value of both men and women has been knocked that it can be hard to see the true benefits of our existence together. There is a minority, both men and women who go after what they want no matter what, and it is this minority that places us all in the position of being stereotyped.
Once more there is the need to remember that there are those who abuse others in life, there are men and there are women who selfishly go after what they want, quite often being at the cost of others around them and at all cost being right or wrong, good or bad, whatever suits their need, but at the same time should we stereotype people? Once more there is a need to be able to say that if the husband walks out on the marriage then it is needed and right that he pays for his decision and takes responsibility within the consequences of his act, but also the same for the wife. Should it be that the wife gets all and the children when it has been they themselves that left and walked away possibly into another affair or giving up only because they stopped loving? Why is it that generally the husband still loses out?
Even in the life of work which we all have to partake in, the pressure is put upon all, expectations far too great to be doing with very little reward. Many people do jobs that are considered unskilled occupations, so the wage is rock bottom, but if those people didn’t do them then this country would fall apart. You will always need people to do those jobs which no one else would do, yet the professionals look down on it, so taking the less fortunate and the weak for granted, not seeing that those people deserve just as much as everyone else. Yes, there are people who take advantage of the system and they don’t really want to work, but there are many caught in the trap of those who selfishly go after wealth at all costs, generally at the cost of the less well off. In the end there are people at both ends of life who will abuse the system and we can all fall into being stereotyped. But in the end it’s the weak that lose. There are certain actions taken that cover up the real need, even adding to the problem, rather than seeing the issue as it really is with a need for everyone, individually, to stop being self-centred and to start considering others as people who have just as much to give, having worth and deserve as much as everyone else.
To counter-act the shortfall in pensions. It is said that people do not save and should be forced. That taxes should go up, or that the retirement age should become 70 years. All these options do is put more pressure on the people who haven’t got. Many people can’t save, can’t afford a home, can’t afford cars, and can’t afford holidays. Their wages are so little that it’s just enough to survive. You take out of what little they have then even survival becomes impossible. For them working till they drop is the only choice, which surely in itself is like slave labour?
You might be unfortunate to be getting old. You have worked for the past 30 years, proving your skills and perseverance in a job and yet if you’re unfortunate to lose your job you become within the unsaid thing “You’re too old.” Every reason would be given as to why you are not suitable for a job because to say you are too old is prejudice and not allowed yet behind it that is the reality of their decision. Your skills, your reliability, your proven commitment to work meaning nothing, almost having to start again, but of course even that comes down to, you’re too old. To cap it all the Government suggests that we work until we are 70 years of age. You can give your best years to working and yet it means nothing. Your abilities, your skills, your training and capabilities all devalued because of age, to prove that the work place has gone that direction can never be proven but it is strange how everyone knows it happens.
Now a days it’s hard to plan for your future because gone are the days when you could have the security of a job. It’s a very rash thing to go and give yourself a mortgage for a house, or a loan for a car, whatever, because many people today no longer have a job that you can say that you will be in 5 years time, some even as low as one months time, most jobs being under a short term contract, especially in the area of Agency Work. There you are paid much of the time the minimum wage and a lot less than a full-time worker for sometimes what is a very qualified job, only to be dismissed at the end of a contract. The only good thing that comes out of agency work is that you can gain experience in areas of work, but the bad thing is that you can become trapped within the need for work and the little there is, what there is generally are lowly, unskilled jobs that pay nothing but ask a lot. You’re left yet again struggling not only in survival mode but with no hope for a decent future; whether it’s a pension, a mortgage, a car, even a holiday like many others take for granted, they remain only dreams for you are unable to save in any way.
If as such people need to save for their pension then give the less well off a chance to save as well, by giving them an equal chance as everyone else. Why expect people who already have to work all hours to survive, now to work till they drop because they have no hope for retirement, their pension will not cover or, more so, they have never been able to afford a pension on their low salary? Why expect something that most people would not do themselves?
Even out of work can become difficult. The moment you are jobless the pressure then is to find a job. Till you do many need to enter the Benefit State. As if the pressure isn’t bad enough it is added to by the attitude that the only real aim is to get you off the unemployment list as quickly as possible, meeting targets. How can a life be lowered to just a target? It appears more important that you come off the list so once more those in charge can stand up and say, “look what we have achieved, getting the unemployment figure down.” In that you find it at the cost of the person who probably came under so much pressure through the expectations of others, took up the first job possible, not necessarily the best job suitable for them, and even not actually giving them the standard of life they deserve just like everyone else.
There are opportunities in work experience, which can be beneficial but also it can be misused and just as demoralising. You can work really well, doing a great job, the employers being quite impressed and yet still end up with nothing. All you have left is the feeling of being used, but yet again, feeling your best, even that isn’t good enough, a carrot just out of reach.
Even with the need for re-training in a new skill, or looking at a new career move, the support is not there for the less well off, which in itself keeps the person looking towards the unskilled sector. To learn new careers you need to be able to go back to college or university, (of course there are Apprenticeships, but they don’t seem to be around much these days, and as well as that for those who are too old, no one wants to give you one or is prepared to give one) within that you need to be able to pay the high costs. It’s said, “You can always take out a loan.” Amongst the great debt problem in this country people are advised to take out loans, immediately putting them in debt for thousands of pounds with no means of paying it back. Now wonder the country has a debt problem. Young adults are growing up starting there working lives in debt and those less well off remain in debts that strangle leaving, like everyone else who are not well off, in survival mode.
Whether we have a high powered job or a so called but necessary unskilled job, whether we are rich or poor, whether we are young or old, whether we are a man or a women we all deserve the same chances, and should be able to receive the same concern in the same situations that we all find ourselves in. If we are wrong then we should expect the consequences of our actions, if we are the one not in the wrong we shouldn’t have to pay for others mistakes, others wrong, others decisions. There needs to be a fresh concern for each other, and to move away from our self-centred lives and ambitions into consideration of others acknowledging that all have a right to have the best in life.
Once more I am reminded of God’s love and how different His love is to ours, as to why I place at the end of this, God’s Selfless Love, to follow and hopefully all would move in, in their consideration of others.
Unfortunately today God and the bible are not recognised by many people, yet the answers to life’s problems can be sorted if only people would turn to Him. Many of the scriptures quoted are towards His people and how we should act towards each other, but are these not attitudes that we all should look to take on board? In the last scripture it speaks of being united with Christ. As hard as it seems God is alive and He has given us a way to know Him. Scripture reads, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16) Surely no one can deny the morals and attitudes in the Bible are what love is. Whether it’s our family, towards our partners in marriage, our children, our schools, even our workplaces, and I must say even the church, these would be much happier places if we ALL show some self-less love in our lives, considering others as we would each want to be considered.
If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus.
Philippians 2:1-5
Finally; brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me – put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.
Philippians 4:4-9
