Choose to Live a Life that Matters

Ready or not, some day it will all come to an end. There will be no more sunrises, no more minutes, no more hours or days.

All the things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten, will pass to someone else.

Your wealth, your fame and temporal power will shrivel to irrelevance. Your grudges, your  resentments, your frustrations and jealousies will finally disappear.

So, too, your hopes, your ambitions, your plans and to-do lists will expire. The wins and losses that once seemed so important will fade away.

It won't matter where you came from, or on what side of the tracks you lived at the end.

It won't matter whether you were beautiful or brilliant. Even your gender and skin colour will be irrelevant.

So what will matter? How will the value of your days be measured?

What will matter is not what you bought, but what you built.

What will matter is not what you got, but what you gave.

What will matter is not your success, but your significance.

What will matter is not what you learned, but what you taught.

What will matter is every act of integrity, compassion, courage or sacrifice that enriched, empowered or encouraged others to emulate your example.

What will matter is not your competence, but your character.

What will matter is not how many people you knew, but how many will feel a lasting loss when you are gone.

What will matter is not your memories, but the memories that live in those who loved you.

What will matter is how long you will be remembered, by whom and for what.

Living a life that matters doesn't happen by accident.

It is not a matter of circumstance but of choice.

Choose to live a life that matters.

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Shake It Off And Step Up !

There was a farmer who owned an old mule. The mule fell into the farmer’s dry well. The farmer heard the mule ‘braying’.

After carefully assessing the situation, the farmer sympathized with the mule, but decided that neither the mule nor the well was worth the trouble of saving. Instead, he called his neighbours together and told them what had happened and asked them to help haul dirt to bury the old mule in the well and put him out of his misery.

Initially, the old mule was hysterical! But as the farmer and his neighbours continued shoveling the dirt which hit his back every time. A thought struck him. It suddenly dawned on him that every time a shovel load of dirt landed on his back, HE SHOULD SHAKE IT OFF AND STEP UP!

This he did, blow after blow. “shake it off & step up..shake it off and step up!” He repeated to encourage himself.

No matter how painful the blows, or distressing the situation seemed, the old mule fought “panic” and just kept right on SHAKING IT OFF AND STEPPING UP!

You are right! It wasn’t long before the old mule, battered and exhausted, stepped triumphantly over the wall of that well!

What seemed like it would bury him, actually blessed him. All because of the manner in which he handled his adversity. Hey, that is life!

If we face our problems and respond to them positively and refuse to give in to panic, bitterness, or self-pity, the adversities that come along to bury us usually, have within them the potential to benefit and bless us!

Remember that forgiveness-faith- prayer-praise and hope all are excellent ways to “shake it off & step up” out of the wells in which we find ourselves!

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Feeling Free and Relaxed is a Choice!

By Adi Shankaracharya!

Adi was teaching his students how to empty and free their mind. He was walking through the market place with his disciples and they saw a man dragging a cow by a rope.

Sankara told the man to wait and asked his disciples to surround them.

“I am going to teach you something” and he continued..

“Tell me who is bound to whom? Is the cow bound to this man or the man is bound to the cow?"

The disciples said without hesitation “Of course the cow is bound to the man! The man is the master. He is holding the rope. The cow has to follow him wherever he goes. The man is the master and the cow is the slave.”

“Now watch this”, said Sankara and he took out a pair of scissors from his bag and cut the rope.

The cow ran away from the master and the man ran after his cow. “Look, what is happening”, said Sankara.

Do you see who the Master is? The cow is not at all interested in this man. The cow in fact, is trying to escape from this man.

This is the case with our MIND. Like the cow, all the non-sense that we carry inside is not interested in us. WE ARE INTERESTED IN IT, we are keeping it together somehow or the other. We are going crazy, trying to keep it all together under our control.

The moment we lose interest in all the garbage filled in our head and the moment we understand the futility of it, it will start to disappear. Like the cow, it will escape and disappear.

Feeling Free and Relaxed is a Choice!

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Christians and Pastors are put to the test

A Preacher from out-of-town accepted a call to a Church in England & after his arrival he took a bus for that particular church where he was supposed to preach. When he sat down, he discovered that the driver had accidentally given him 50 pence extra change. He thought to himself, "You would better give this money back. It would be wrong to keep it."

Then he thought, "Oh, forget it, it is only 50 pence, who would worry about this little amount ? Anyway, the bus company gets too much fare; they will never miss it. Accept it as a 'gift from God' & keep quiet."

When his stop came, he paused momentarily at the door & then handed the 50 pence to the driver saying "Here, you gave me extra change."

The driver replied with a smile, "Aren't you the new preacher in town?" "Yes" he replied.

"Well, I have been thinking a lot lately about going somewhere to worship. I just wanted to see what would you do if I give you extra change. I'll see you at Church this Sunday."

When the preacher stepped off the bus, he literally grabbed the nearest light pole, held on and said "Oh God, I almost sold your Son for 50 pence."

"Our lives are the only Bible some people will ever read. This is a scary example of how much people watch us as Christians and Pastors, and will put us to the test. Always be on guard and remember-we carry the name of Christ on our shoulders when we call ourselves 'Christians and Pastors'.

Keep watch on your thoughts; they become words.

Keep watch your words; they become actions.

Keep watch on your actions; they become habits.

Keep watch on your habits; they become character.

And keep watch on your character; it becomes your destiny.

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The Secret of Success!

A young man asked Socrates the secret to success. Socrates told the young man to meet him near the river the next morning. They met. Socrates asked the young man to walk with him towards the river. When the water got up to their neck, Socrates took the young man by surprise and ducked him into the water. The boy struggled to get out but Socrates was strong and kept him there until the boy started turning blue. Socrates pulled his head out of the water and the first thing the young man did was to gasp and take a deep breath of air. Socrates asked, 'What did you want the most when you were there?" The boy replied, "Air." Socrates said, "That is the secret to success. When you want success as badly as you wanted the air, then you will get it." There is no other secret.

Moral:-A burning desire is the starting point of all accomplishment. Just like a small fire cannot give much heat, a weak desire cannot produce great results.The  motivation to succeed comes from the burning desire to achieve a purpose.

One Sunday morning, a wealthy man sat in his balcony enjoying sunshine and his coffee when a little ant caught his eye which was going from one side to the other side of the balcony carrying a big leaf several times more than its size. The man watched it for more than an hour. He saw that the ant faced many impediments during its journey, paused, took a diversion and then continued towards destination. At one point the tiny creature came across a crack in the floor. It paused...  for a little while, analyzed and then laid the huge leaf over the crack, walked over the leaf, picked the leaf on the other side then continued its journey.The man was captivated by the cleverness of the ant, one of God’s tiniest creatures. The incident left the man in awe and forced him to contemplate over the miracle of Creation. It showed the greatness of the Creator. In front of his eyes there was this tiny creature of God, lacking in size yet equipped with a brain to analyze, contemplate, reason, explore, discover and overcome. Along with all these capabilities, the man also noticed that this tiny creature shared some human shortcomings.The man saw about an hour later the creature had reached its destination – a tiny hole in the floor which was entrance to its underground dwelling. And it was at this point that the ant’s shortcoming that it shared with the man was revealed. How could the ant carry into the tiny hole the large leaf that it had managed to carefully bring to the destination? It simply couldn’t!So the tiny creature, after all the painstaking and hard work and exercising great skills, overcoming all the difficulties along the way, just left behind the large leaf and went home empty-handed.The ant had not thought about the end before it began its challenging journey and in the end the large leaf was nothing more than a burden to it. The creature had no option, but to leave it behind to reach its destination. The man learned a great lesson that day.

Isn’t that the truth about our lives? We worry about our family, we worry about our job, we worry about how to earn more money, we worry about where we should live – 5 bedroom or 6 bedroom house, what kind of vehicle to buy – a Mercedes or BMW or a Porsche, what kind of dresses to wear, all sorts of things, only to abandon all these things when we reach our destination – The Grave. We don’t realize in our life’s journey that these are just burdens that we are carrying with utmost care and fear of losing them, only to find that at the end they are useless and we can’t take them with us.

THERE HAS TO BE CONTENTMENT AT SOME LEVEL IN LIFE. NOTHING EXCEPT THE NAME OF THE LORD SHALL GO ALONG TO THE FINAL DESTINATION

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