August 4 2017 – Click here to listen
Recently I’ve been receiving insults, criticisms and unadulterated hate mail at a near record pace. I’ve been writing Words for the Day for over 17 years now and I’ve heard about every kind of insult imaginable, but it’s still hard to understand why some folks waste so much of their valuable time hating me and hurling vitriol my way.
Why not just unsubscribe?
Sometimes it’s discouraging to hear all this stuff. Unfortunately no person escapes discouragement and I realize that it’s as much a part of our lives as encouragement. Most of the time I just try to take the good with the bad and tell myself that life is comprised of both. Alas it’s difficult not to become pessimistic and down sometimes though, and it is those times that satan enjoys the most.
I heard a story the other day about a baseball game. The score was 14 to nothing. The players on the losing team understandably appeared dejected and somber, except for one player. He was sitting on the bench with a big wide grin on his face. When asked if he wasn’t discouraged, he replied, “Heck no, we haven’t even been to bat yet”.
The one thing that completely amazes me is how quickly life passes us by. I was reminded yesterday by someone that I am old. Sigh . . . I don’t like to hear it, (especially from my friends), but it is true. I’m advancing in age and nowadays the years passing me by seem like months. My hair is turning white, I can’t hear very well or see, and my arthritis makes me hobble in the mornings. I have far fewer days to live than I’ve already lived.
I often reflect on all of the years that it took me to find God and with Him, peace, joy, and love, and I truly regret that I wasted so much of it and wish I had those years to live again.
I’ve had many tough problems to face in my life. Indeed it’s a miracle that I even survived some of it. Sometimes I get tired and discouraged with everything; friends let us down, jobs let us down, the leadership of our country lets us down, and we let ourselves down. Sometimes we’re tempted to quit. Quit on a friendship, a family member, a job, ourselves, our country, our God, even life itself.
Usually better times are right over the next hill and we should realize that quitters will never get there. Winners take the good with the bad and ugly. I do not personally know many people who love to win more than me, but one thing my old age has taught me is that I cannot always win. No one does. Losing is as much a part of life as winning.
If you lose, then do it gracefully with dignity and pride. Learn what you can and go after your next dream. Start enjoying life to its fullest today. Also understand that you can get satisfaction in this life, but not through your own effort. It is obtainable only through a personal relationship with Christ.
Old King Solomon who was the richest and wisest man that the world will ever know tried it all; women, wine, song, great works, power, fame, you name it. Towards the end of his life he became pessimistic as is evident in this verse that he wrote so many hundreds of years ago.
Eccl. 9:11
The race is not to the swift,
Nor the battle to the strong,
Nor bread to the wise,
Nor riches to men of understanding,
But time and chance happen to them all.
For a man does not know his time:
Like fish taken in a cruel net,
Like birds caught in a snare,
So the sons of men are snared in an evil time,
When it falls suddenly upon them.
At the very end he acknowledged that the bottom line is that we should fear God and keep His commandments. The same theme was emphasized later in the New Testament, (below), so the Bible gives us the only solution to the disillusionment of life.
Selah . . .
1 John 5:3
For this is the love of God,
that we keep His commandments.
And His commandments are not burdensome.
For whatever is born of God overcomes the world.
And this is the victory that has overcome the
world – our faith.
Have a great weekend and go to church this Sunday!