Don't give up giving

When we contemplate on generosity, we might look at the size of the gift or the graciousness of the cause. We might call someone who contributes a modest sum to a charitable cause “generous”. But Jesus measured generosity by a radically new standard -the state of the giver’s heart.  A generous giver experiences the joy of giving. When he gives, it does not feel like it is a burden but a pleasure. A generous giver lives and gives with an eternal perspective. A generous giver knows “It is more blessed to give than to receive”. A generous giver recognizes that ultimately everything belongs to God. A generous giver offers gifts as an act of worship. His driving motivation is love for God and His people.

God measures our gifts with a measure different from that of the world. He is not impressed with large numbers. Rather, he measures according to the giver’s capacity and attitude. Jesus spoke about it directly when he compared the temple gifts of the rich men with the gift of the poor widow’s two mites (Luke 21:1-4). By Jesus’ reckoning, the widow gave more than the others because she gave all she had to live on. Her capacity was exorbitantly little, but her attitude was extravagant. To be biblically generous is to recognize God’s boundless beneficence toward us in Christ, and to give extravagantly in worship to him, relative to what one has. To put it differently, biblical generosity is best gauged by asking not, “How much am I giving to God?” but, “How much am I keeping for myself?”

While the Bible does not spell everything out in as much detail as we might like, it does give us relatively clear instructions as to whom to give. We should give to the poor and needy for God has a special concern for the poor, specifically widows and orphans, the hungry, the thirsty, the sick, the naked and prisoners. We should also give to our enemies for this is especially a mark of Christian generosity. It is the point of Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37) and of the apostle Paul’s instruction in Romans 12:20. Love your enemy as yourself. Hence, we should use every opportunity to show love in word and deed.

It is also possible to give without feeling the pinch. When a family donates a bag of old clothes to the Salvation Army, or when a multi-millionaire gives an impressive-sounding six-figure contribution, they feel no loss because it is in their best interest to discard those things anyway. Strictly speaking, this is not giving at all but "selective disposal". Even in the Old Testament, King David recognized this difference when he insisted, “I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing” (2 Samuel 24:24).

Sacrificial giving is the kind that is done at great personal cost to the giver. But a wealthy person can weather losses with ease. Indeed, for this very reason Jesus says, "How hard it is for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God"(Luke 18:24). Nonetheless, don’t give up for God will give you all the grace you need to give generously to those in need. The important thing is to be sure at every point that it is Christ who received the glory for our acts of giving for it is God who enables our love and generosity. God loves a cheerful giver. He also assures us that those who give generously to the poorest of the poor need not fear destitution for no one can out-gives God. Do not stop giving with a generous and cheerful heart.

 

The silent abuse

“Beaten and abused but what if the bully is your own child? Many parents are living in fear of their children but too ashamed to ask for help… says a leading British charity organization. Why?”

Parent abuse is a silent problem that initiates because people do not often associate abuse as by children towards parents. It is less common and often under reported. Parent abuse is defined as "any act of a child that is intended to cause physical, psychological, emotional, verbal damage to gain power and control over a parent".

Parent abuse can occur in any family and is not associated with socio-economic class, ethnic background or education level etc. Although fathers are also susceptible, mothers are the most frequent victims of parent abuse. One of the reasons is that women are the primary caregivers. They spend more time with their children than fathers and have closer emotional connections to them.

The most common type of parental abuse that goes unpunished, but yet can be the most lethal is verbal and emotional abuses towards their parents. Verbal abuses are described as name calling, yelling, swearing and demoralizing comments. These abuses are often ignored or dismissed. Words hurt and leave scars and usually the parent especially mother make no complaint. The mother just suffers quietly and often in vain. She feels a sense of shame and humiliation so she rarely seeks help and there is usually little or no help available anyway.

The majority of abuse is physical and violent. Physical abuses included slapping, shoving, pushing, kicking, spitting, punching, breaking or throwing things, punching holes in walls or breaking in doors, or the used of any form of weapon. The protection of women against abusive husbands and boyfriends has gained much support through the years but what protections have been given to parents especially mothers that are abused by their children? Not just physically, but emotionally and verbally. Mothers are the main target yet to a mother, it is unthinkable to report the child to the relevant authority.

Psychological abuse are bullying, instilling fear or intimidation while emotional abuses are described as playing malicious mind games, threatening to run away or commit suicide, staying away from home overnight and not telling the parents where he/she are, refusing to do as told, making unrealistic demands, hurting pets or siblings, controlling the running of the household, making parents feel like they are inadequate or crazy, lying, driving them to the corner… to suicide.

Most parents have difficulty accepting that their son or daughter is abusive and may deny that there is a problem. They often feel depressed, anxious, and ashamed that they "didn't do the right thing". Their despair interferes with their ability to regain leadership in their families. In addition, some parents feel it is not advisable to attempt to control the situation it would only enrage her child more as usually the child shows no remorse or guilt but feels justified in the behaviour.

When parents use "gentle" attempts, such as reasoning, to encourage their aggressive child to stop the abuse, they are often ignored or treated with contempt. However, the child reacts even more aggressively if parents use force, and a circle of mutual retaliation evolves. Abused parents experience a variety of emotions such as depression, a sense of failure and loss. While it is easier said than done for parents to build their sense of self-worth and strengthen their ability to cope with the situation, the hard truth is that it is usually more difficult than what one can perceive. As with other forms of family violence, it seems that the abusers victimize the people they see as vulnerable.

Society may be overlooking the most vulnerable victim of child abuses – Parents! It is not only a movie that you watch on television… it happens every day. What a sad, sad world L

Trust when you pray

The greatest problem in prayer is to let go and let God .

It is impossible to determine what the future holds and therefore it is wise to be prepared for the vast unknown that lies ahead. The only effective way of doing it is to develop a practical prayer life... communication with God daily. A prayer life will give you strength in moments of weakness and comfort in times of sorrow. This is not achieved in a fleeting moment of time but if the fruit of sustained time spent in the presence of God.

Personal prayer has many facets. It is a wonderful source of comfort. Once you are aware of the tremendous power of prayer, you will discover that your view of being are being extended. It enables you to remain calm in the midst of life's storms.

There are many people who start to pray when they experience a crisis. The sad fact is that such prayer is usually a last act of despair when all other efforts have failed. Nevertheless, turn to God and call on Him in prayer under all circumstances in life. St Paul said to the Philippians 4:6 "... in everything by prayer and supplication, let your requests be known to God." Regardless of what crisis or need in your life may be, lay your problem confidently before God. He walked the same earthly road that we are walking and He will understand. Trust Him unconditionally and place yourself in His care. Believe in His ability to guide you along the road which He dotted out for you. Obey Him and He will transform your crisis and fear into an opportunity.

Many people maintain that prayer is an instinctive action with man. This may be true but powerful and virile prayer is the result of dedicated discipline and the right attitude towards God. If your intentions are honest, you would not only pray when you feel like it but you will find great joy and happiness in sharing every conceivable emotion and thought with God.

When the sun is shining, share your joy with God, and then when an ominous storm starts building up around you, you will not become panic stricken for you know in your heart that God is then in full control as well. Lay your prayers before Him and than God will give you that which you need according to His wisdom and you will recognise and accept His answers. Be rest assured that He will give you what is best for you. Gratefully accept His will and then experience His perfect peace in your heart.

Dear God, today I want to intercede for my daughter, Amanda that your merciful love will surround her, that your promises always were, still are and will always be that if your children turn to You in their need, You will always hear them and react to their call of distress. "Righteous are You, O Lord, when I plead with You." Jer 12:1. To You O Lord, who answered prayer, I readily want to pray according to Your will and I thank you that Your love enables Amanda to pray in faith, recognises and accepts Your answers. Help her to pray in childlike faith in the glorious assurance that You determine what is best for her and therefore we can say together: May Your will be done. Amen.

God has a plan for us

It is often difficult to understand or accept that God is busy fulfilling His plan in our lives especially when we are going through difficult and taxing times. When Joseph was sold into slavery, when an unscrupulous woman robbed him of his freedom and when his friends forgot about him, it was unlikely that he would see in the hands of God in all those happenings. Nevertheless, when after many years, he looked back upon the road he had travelled, he did see the hands of God in his life.

If we are in deep waters of affliction right now, if we are experiencing problems and sorrow, remember that it might be part of God's tapestry. He determines the pattern of our lives. In our darkest moment, hold on steadfast that God is still in control despite the appearances of the situation. Rather know that God can give purpose and meaning to suffering. Life's darkest moment can be a testimony of God's perfect purpose for our lives.

In our present circumstances, difficult and heart-rending as they might be, hold on to the assurance that God is busy working out His perfect plan for our lives. There is nothing which God cannot complete. It is not God's will for us to be permanently remain in the dark valley of despondency. In His time, He will make all things beautiful and meaningful again.

There are three things which only God knows: the beginning of things, the cause of things and the end of things. I will put my trust and faith in God although He seems so far away at this moment. In time, all things can be a liberating experience for God is bigger than any problem which could ever arise. In the words of Proverbs 3:6 "In all your ways, acknowledge Him and He shall direct your path". Be assured that God is our guarantee for a blessed future. 

A worldly and silent God

If you want to find God, look for Him in the midst of your everyday life. He speaks to you in the ordinary events that touch you each day. If you find that too prosaic, too mundane, you may miss his voice and lose the opportunity to sense His presence.

We will never know the means which God will use to encounter us. World events, television programs, friendships, even misunderstandings and sufferings, God uses all of these to convey His message to us, to tell us about Himself and about us. If our hearts are open, attentive and yet silent, we will hear His voice and His eagerness to speak to us. 

Wrong notes

A famous pianist once said that if he played all the notes right, nobody would notice but if he played just one wrong note, then everybody will take notice. That is human nature. A mistake seems to clamour for attention more the the many things that go along smoothly.

Many people ruin their day by brooding over mistakes. They forget the many things they did that went well and concentrate on the things that went wrong. They lose perspective about their own performance as well as those of others and their pride keeps them from tolerating anything that is imperfect. They are entangle so much in the lack of compassion that they cannot tolerate especially the mistakes of others.

Once we learn from our mistakes, we should concentrate on what went well. That would be a gentle and realistic way to face ourselves, our families and friends.... a way that would enable us to end our day with a feeling of peace and thankfulness.

A little kindness goes a long way

The amount of kindness bears no proportion to the effect of kindness. Generally, people do not look at what you have had to give up in order to do for them what you have done. They see only the kindness. It is not what you do but how you do it that matters.

The least kind action is greater than the greatest wrong. The smallest kindness can lift a heavy weight. It reaches far and travels swiftly. A kind action lasts a long time. The doing of it is only the beginning. Years of estrangement can hardly take the sweetness out of a kind deed.

The more you try to repay kind deeds, the further off you seem from having repaid them. The obligations of gratitude lengthen and deepen so that your life seems to be delightfully committed to a profusion of kind actions.

You cannot pass a day without meeting with opportunities for kind actions. Kind acts are as easy as they are frequent in our lives.When kindness calls for self denial, sacrifice is rewarding. You always gain more than you lose. You gain outwardly but the inward gain is greater. The wonderful effects of a kind deed certainly make you wonder why you do not do more kind deed as one kind action leads to another. A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions. 

Three litttle don'ts (1)Don't speak unkindly of others (2) Don't speak unkindly to anyone (3) Don't act unkindly towards anyone. And three little dos. (1) Do speak kindly to someone at least once a day (2) Do think kindly about someone at least once a day (3) Do act kindly toward someone at least once a day.

I am very grateful to those kind people whom God sends my way during my difficult times and the kindness that they have shown me is forever engraved in my heart. That's the hidden power of kindness... you can never repay it enough.

The meaning of happiness

Am I happy? Is my life a happy one? Am I happy with my family? Am I happy in my job? Am I happy with my church? Am I happy inside my own skin?Are these good questions to ask ourselves? When we face our lives honestly this kind of question about happiness is more likely to bring tears to our eyes than solace to our souls because, no matter how well our lives are going, none of us live perfectly fulfilled lives. There are always unfulfilled dreams, areas of frustration, tensions, deeper hungers that are being stifled. As Karl Rahner so poignantly puts it, we are suffering the torment of the insufficiency of everything attainable as we are learning that here in this life there is no finished symphony.

The question should not be: Am I happy? Rather the questions should be: Is my life meaningful? Is there meaning in my life? Is there meaning in my family? Is there meaning in my job? Is there meaning inside my church? We need to ask the deep questions about our lives in terms of meaning rather than in terms of happiness because, for the most part, we have a false, over-idealized, and unrealistic concept of happiness.

We tend to equate happiness with two things, pleasure and lack of tension. Hence we fantasize that for us to be happy we would need to be in a situation within which we would be free of all the tensions that normally flood into our lives from: pressure, tiredness, physical pain, financial worry, disappointment in our jobs, frustration and every other headache and heartache that can appear. Happiness, as it is superficially conceived of, means perfect health, perfectly fulfilled relationships, a perfect job, no anxiety or tension in life, no disappointments and the time and money to enjoy the good life.

But that isn't what constitutes happiness. Imagine if someone had come up to Jesus as he was dying on the cross and asked him the question: Are you happy up there? His answer would have been unequivocal: "No! And today in particular I am not happy!" However, the perspective is quite different if, while on the cross, Jesus would have been asked this question: "Is there meaning in what you are doing up there?" There can be deep meaning in something even if there isn't happiness in the way we superficially conceive of that.

When we grasp and reflect back on various periods of our lives... from the perspective of where we are today, we see that sometimes certain periods of our lives that were fraught with all kinds of struggles, and within which very little were indeed happy moments. We look back on them now with fondness and warmth. They were meaningful times and our present perspective washes back through time and purges the pain and highlights the joy. Conversely, we can also look back on certain periods of our lives when there may have been pleasure in our lives but that phase of our lives now appears clearly as an unhappy time. We look back at it with a certain heaviness and regret. What seemed like light then seems like a time of darkness now.

C.S. Lewis taught that happiness and unhappiness colour backwards: If our lives end up happy, we realize that we have always been happy even through the trying times... just as, if our lives end up unhappy we realize that we have always been unhappy, even during the pleasurable periods of our lives. Where we end up ultimately, in terms of meaning will determine whether our lives have been happy or unhappy. Many people, including Jesus suffered great pain but lived happy lives. Sadly, the reverse is also true. Happiness has a lot more to do with meaning than with pleasure. In his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, C. S. Lewis tells his readers that his journey to Christianity was not an easy one. But one of the things that ultimately brought him around to Christianity was precisely the realization that meaning trumps our normal conception of happiness. He came to understand that the harshness of God is kinder than the softness of man and God's compulsion is our liberation. Money can't buy happiness... it can only buy pleasure, but, as life itself eventually teaches us, pleasure is not necessarily happiness.

Be happy knowing that is what God meant for us to be.

To live is to die, to die is to live

Let us die with Christ, to live with Christ

We see that death is gain, life is loss. Paul says: For me life is Christ, and death a gain. What does “Christ” mean but to die in the body, and receive the breath of life? Let us then die with Christ, to live with Christ. We should have a daily familiarity with death, a daily desire for death. By this kind of detachment our soul must learn to free itself from the desires of the body. It must soar above earthly lusts to a place where they cannot come near, to hold it fast. It must take on the likeness of death, to avoid the punishment of death.

It was by the death of one man that the world was redeemed. Jesus did not need to die if he did not want to, but he did not look on death as something to be despised, something to be avoided. He could have found no better means to save us than by dying. Thus his death is life for all. We are sealed with the sign of his death. When we pray, we preach his death; when we offer sacrifice, we proclaim his death. His death is victory; his death is a sacred sign. Death was not part of nature; it became part of nature. God did not decree death from the beginning; he prescribed it as a remedy. Human life was condemned because of sin to unremitting labour and unbearable sorrow and so began to experience the burden of wretchedness. There had to be a limit to its evils; death had to restore what life had forfeited. Without the assistance of grace, immortality is more of a burden than a blessing.

The soul has to turn away from the aimless paths of this life, from the defilement of an earthly body; it must reach out to those assemblies in heaven to sing the praises of God.  Great and wonderful are your deeds, Lord God Almighty; just and true are your ways, King of the nations. Who will not revere and glorify your nature? You alone are holy; all nations will come and worship before you. The soul must also desire to witness your nuptials, Jesus, and to see your bride escorted from earthly to heavenly realities, as all rejoice and sing: All flesh will come before you. No longer will the bride be held in subjection to this passing world but will be made one with the spirit.

The Beatitudes

Jesus Christ gave us the eight Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount. He offers us a way of life that promises eternity in the Kingdom of Heaven.

The teachings of Jesus were simple but distinctive and innovative during the time of his life on earth. At the time there were four major groups in the Jewish religion, the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and the Zealots, all of whom presented a different viewpoint to the Jewish people. The Pharisees demanded strict observance of the Mosaic law expressed in the Torah, but also accepted the oral tradition of Jewish customs and rituals. The Sadducees were mainly from the priestly families and strictly accepted the Law of Moses but rejected oral tradition. The Pharisees, unlike the Sadducees, believed in the resurrection of the dead. The monastic Essenes awaited a Messiah that would establish a Kingdom on earth and free the Israelites from oppression. The Zealots were a militant Jewish group who wanted freedom for their homeland, and were centered in Galilee.

The Ten Commandments, given to Moses on Mount Sinai related a series of "Thou shalt not" phrases, evils one must avoid in daily life on earth. In contrast, the message of Jesus is one of humility, charity, and brotherly love. He teaches transformation of the inner person. Jesus presents the Beatitudes in a positive sense, virtues in life which will ultimately lead to reward. Love becomes the motivation for the Christian. All of the Beatitudes have an eschatological meaning. While the Beatitudes provide a way of life that promises salvation, they also provide peace in the midst of our trials and tribulations on this earth. The Beatitudes is the ideal for every Christian life!