Ascension : Grotto News - Thought For The Week
Submitted by The Islander (Shari Parkhill) 16.10.2008 (Article Archived on 30.10.2008)

This is one of those weeks that I’ve struggling with something to say! Sometimes something comes to me easily; other times it’s tough finding inspiration.

This is one of those weeks that I’ve struggling with something to say!  Sometimes something comes to me easily; other times it’s tough finding inspiration.  This island is always inspiring, and I love walking around it, or diving in the waters that surround it, but sometimes it’s hard to put those feelings into words.

A couple of days ago I got into a conversation with a friend regarding religion, the Bible, and general beliefs.  I admit to being a bit of a confused Christian.  When asked about my beliefs with regards to creation, I have to admit to being a scientific person as well, so I believe in evolution.  However, I am also of the belief that along the way, God’s hand has been involved.  I am intensely spiritual, and have a hard time believing that anything as wonderful as our Earth didn’t have a higher power at work during its creation.

This goes with our lives.  I believe that they are the greatest gift from God.  Anyone who has a child knows this.  What greater gift can we be blessed with than this precious bit of person that we have made, or taken into our lives if they’ve been chosen?  What a gift, and a responsibility.

All of God’s gifts are wonderful, precious, and somewhat daunting.  He imbues in us as humans the capacity to be happy, thoughtful, content, caring and giving people.  Unfortunately every gift He gives us can be turned into not a gift, but a form of greed.  It is up to us to decide what we are going to do with the gifts given to us.   Do we pass them on, or try to selfishly gather them all to us?

So many people spend their lives, these precious lives given to us by God, wallowing in misery, self-pity, discontent and unhappiness.  Everyone experiences hard times and unhappy events; that’s what being a part of this world and life is, but what we do with our lives is up to us.  We can get through the bad times, and enjoy the good.  We can appreciate the gifts and blessings in our lives as they come, or we can feel sorry for ourselves.  We can be happy with what we have, or we can be unhappy because we don’t have more. 

We can always see someone who we think has more than us.  So many times this pertains to material things, which, although we all like to have the comforts of life, are not really gifts from above.  The gifts we have been given by God rest in the ability to be content and happy, and to pass on our faith in the form of helping and caring to those less fortunate than us.  Just like we can always see someone with more than us, we don’t have to look very far to find someone with much less. 

Helping others is something God expects of us.  However, so many of us are so absorbed with our own quests, our own greed, or our own unhappiness, that we forget this duty.  God gave us free will, and the ability to do what we want with our lives.  We can be positive and content, or negative and miserable.  We all know people like this, people so absorbed by what they see are injustices to them that they forget their own responsibility to our faith.  A negative attitude will bring more unhappiness down on the person with it.  Just as kindness will be returned ten fold, so can meanness.  As the old saying goes: “What goes around, comes around”.

So this week, maybe we should examine our lives and decide how we are.  Do we share the love, caring, happiness and kindness that are the gifts given to us from God above, or are we wrapped up in a cloak of unhappiness, and pass this on to others in the form of unkindness, bad attitude or mean acts?  Sometimes when we hold a mirror up to ourselves, we might be surprised at what we see.  Let’s hope we can all look into the mirror and see a kind and sincere smile.  No one is perfect all the times; we all have our days when something gets us down and we might be a little cranky, and say or do a thoughtless word or deed, but let’s hope that ultimately, the balance weighs down on the side of kindness. 

God is watching.  Let’s hope He is also smiling.

May God bless each and every one of us as we do our best with the gifts He has blessed us with.