UpLifts For Life

What you appreciate — appreciates. –Lynne Twist

Kids shouldn’t have to feel the pressure to spend so much to feel good about the way they look. –Stephon Marbury

A goal properly set is halfway reached.  – Zig Ziglar

Everyone needs to be valued. Everyone has the potential to give something back. – Princess Diana

Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.  Dale Carnegie

The state of your life is nothing more than a reflection of your state of mind. - – Wayne Dyer

If we become increasingly humble about how little we know, we may be more eager to search. – Sir John Templeton

You can free yourself from aging by reinterpreting your body and by grasping the link between belief and biology. – Deepak Chopra

The End

The Taoist Philosopher, Lao Tsu, once said:
“The end for the caterpillar is the beginning for the butterfly.”
Throughout our lives, we are faced with several situations in which we have to leave what we once had and venture into something new.

It is very easy to focus on what we are leaving behind, the familiarity, the people and the routines.
However, what is more important is to look at the new opportunity, what it holds and what it promises.

Change is a crucial part of life. We change on every level and our ability to transcend from the old into the new is crucial.

We just need to remember Lao Tsu’s lesson and realize that for each end, a promising opportunity will present itself.

Thoughts From C. S. Lewis

I don’t think it would be too bold to say that more rumors, legends, and traditions have been perpetuated about the Savior of the world than any modern celebrity ever dreamed of. Every conceivable notion has been advanced to explain who He was and what He was. I have lost track how many times His second coming has occurred, according to supermarket tabloids. The more things change, the more things stay the same.

Sometime in the second year of the Savior’s ministry, Jesus and His apostles went off alone. As they went, Jesus asked them, “… Whom do men say that I the Son of Man am?” (Matthew 16:13)

The apostles answered according to the rumors circulating among the people at that time, “… Some say… thou art John the Baptist,” they said, “some, Elias; … others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets.” (Matthew 16:14)

You see, rumor had it among the Jews that Jesus was John the Baptist come back to life after being killed by Herod. Even Herod believed that. Still others believed that Jesus was Elijah the great prophet taken to Heaven without tasting death, whom the scriptures promised would return before the great and dreadful day of the Lord. And still others superstitiously believed that Jesus was Jeremias or another of the prophets reincarnated. It seems that rumors are always more popular than the truth.

Then Jesus asked them, “… But whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” (Matthew 16:15-16)

Peter had received revelation from God, and so must we. Until we do, until we know what Peter knew, Jesus’ identity and importance will always remain a matter of doubt to us and a source of weakness. For a doubting and cynical world, perhaps the great Christian philosopher C. S. Lewis put it best. He said:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: [That is] ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That,” said Lewis, “is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the son of God; or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” (Mere Christianity [New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1952], pp. 40-41) Thought told by Glenn Rawson

Uplifts For Life
by: Gil Howe