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We were a very motley crowd of people who took the bus every day that summer 33 years ago. During the early morning ride from the suburb, we sat drowsily with our collars up to our ears, a cheerless and taciturn bunch.
One of the passengers was a small gray man who took the bus to the center for senior citizens every morning. He walked with a stoop and a sad look on his face when he, with some difficulty, boarded the bus and sat down alone behind the driver. No one ever paid very much attention to him.
Then one July morning he said good morning to the driver and smiled short-sightedly down through the bus before he sat down. The driver nodded guardedly. The rest of us were silent.
We have all heard the story of the person who felt sorry for himself because he had no shoes. He was miserable and very unhappy. He thoughts were on poor me, everyone else had shoes but he did not. But, then he met a man who had no feet, and it changed his attitude to be thankful that he had feet. Not having shoes was no longer an issue!
A Different Way To Face Challenges
If you spend your energy helping someone else, by cheering up someone else, you may give them hope, and, you actually minimize and lighten some of your own burdens. You'll feel a lot better when you share your happiness with someone else. You will find that you may still be faced with an issue but it will not be consuming all of your thoughts.
By helping others, by taking that break from your own problems you may find that a solution will appear in your mind. Sometimes when we take a break we may find that solutions then present themselves. We get so focused on our problem that we actually can't see beyond it. It is like doing a puzzle, all the pieces are there but because we sat and stared at it for so long we can't find that one piece we are looking for. But just getting up and going for a walk and then coming back to the puzzle we end up seeing the missing piece. Sometimes too much focus can actually hinder us from finding the answer.
Down through the tedious ages of time man's heart has been cheered at the thought of the boundless love of God, and in his soul there has often been touched a responsive chord to that wonderful love. So compelling is this love that it is often felt by the most unfortunate and seemingly hopeless of mortals. Some years ago after the patient in a certain room in one of the mental institutions of our land had found release from his pathetic earthly sojourn, and his room was being readied for another unfortunate occupant, the attendants found scrawled on the walls of the room the following profound lines:
"Could we with ink the ocean fill, and were the skies of parchment made; Were every stalk on earth a quill, And every man a scribe by trade: To write the love of God above Would drain the ocean dry, Nor could the scroll contain the whole Though stretched from sky to sky."
In his saner moments this poor, troubled soul had poured out his simple heart of love to his God.
In the ensuing years these lines were often quoted, and many hearts were touched. Early in the twentieth century an additional two stanzas and chorus, with a simple melody, were written by F. M. Lehman, using the foregoing as a cli max in the third stanza. The melody was harmonized by his daughter, Mrs. W. W. Mays. It was nearly twenty years later that the song first "caught fire," and people in all walks of life began singing it.
My seven-month-old nephew Canaan was dying and nobody knew it, including his doctor, who had misdiagnosed his digestive issues. The real issue was Hirschsprung’s disease, one of the leading causes of death for kids like Canaan, who has Down Syndrome.
One afternoon, Canaan became totally listless — to the point of almost looking dead. By the time my brother Caleb and his wife, Rebecca, got Canaan to the emergency room, his body had gone into septic shock. Doctors and nurses scrambled to rescue him as someone quickly ushered Caleb and Rebecca into the waiting area.
Right there in the emergency room, Rebecca did something remarkable: She got down on her knees and said, “God, I’m going to worship You right now. No matter what happens, You’re still holy. You’re still good.”
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