Trick or Treat!

Happy Halloween to everyone!

To Right A Wrong

Every wrong doing is a barrier separating us from God. To move closer to Him, the barrier must be removed. Restitution (described in the dictionary as “any act of restoring . . . of giving an equivalent for loss or damage”) is one way of accomplishing this. It is not easy, but if you work at it, you’ll find the rewards are great.

First, read the story of Zacchaeus (Luke 19) and not how he decided that before he could become a follower of Jesus he had to make restitution for his past dishonesty: “And if I have taken anything from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold.” Then review the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20). Make your prayer something like this: “Lord, I have done many wrong things in my life. Help me to see now which ones I can rectify. Show me how to go about this so that in a small way it will ease the hurt of mankind and glorify You.”

Second, make a list of the wrongs you want to right and submit it prayerfully to God. Remember this is a private matter between you and God. Do not let anyone else see this list. Overzealousness in confessing sins is wrong if it involves someone else and hurts is or her reputation.

Third, write down after each wrong the action you feel guided to take. A letter of apology; or, if there seems no way to pay a person back, send an equivalent sum to a church or charity. Restoring a bad relationship is thorny; one way is to seek the other person out and personally admit your mistake. Go further and accept responsibility for things that happened which you feel were not your fault. If your effort is rejected, don’t feel hurt. You tried. Te wounds may take time to heal. Try again later.

Restitution is a good way to deal wit an overgrown ego. It also strengthen one’s faith and makes it harder to beackslide. The worker who returned the equipment he had sneaked out of his company found his will to resist temptations stronger. The more so because he acknowledged his guilt to is boss and fellow workers. Restitution always const something—money, pride, position—but the alternative is worse, and inner discontent.

Righting a wrong smooths your way to God agan!

Source: “ Daily Guidepost ”

Let Your Little Light Shine (2 of 2)

The clues to our “accelerating universe” may just be in the thorough investigation of nearby galaxies, supernovas, and neutron stars down to the minute quark-gluon plasmas and neutrinos. As new technologies are developed to allow scientist to probe deeper into space, new challenges emerge. The new findings may contest the existing theories that have been the bulwark of the physical world and its many phenomena. But still, scientist build upon these little findings to search the skies for even more clues.

Life is like that—a continuing quest for illumination. We sometimes feel that we know so much. Other times, we feel that what we recently learned and discovered have actually unearthed another puzzle, an answer leading to another question. Even so, our little discoveries and experiments help enrich us to become a better person. We can actually use our “little lessons” to encourage others overcome their own challenges.

If travelers and explorers seek for the lighthouse nearby or the brightest stars to guide their path, the “little lessons” to encourage others overcome their own challenges.

If travelers and explorers seek for the lighthouse nearby or the brightest stars to guide their path, the little “lights” that researchers leave behind become the “guiding lights” for new explorations.

When others wallow in shadows, your “little light” may just be the flicker of hope that others need for them to prod on with life. Aren’t you going to let your little light shine and warm others?

And at times when life becomes gloomy, instead of bowing down in grief, try looking up—a beacon of light may just be shining somewhere. – Bato Balani

Let Your Little Light Shine (1 of 2)

Good morning everyone. I use to remember when I was still small, I love to play with my friends and we love to light a candle. We want to light it so that we will have a good light so that we can play well.

“One candle lights one candle, two candles light four . . . And where they shine, there is no darkness anymore.”

When we were little children, we would wish upon the first star we see at dust. We couldn’t help but get awed as tiny flickers in the infinite sky started to inhabit the cloudless dark space above us. As we grew older, we learned more about the celestial bodies residing in the universe—the Sun, the Moon, the planets, and the stars—yet the mysteries of the cosmos continue to baffle us ever to this day.

Even the experts called cosmologists are puzzled not only by the hugeness of the universe but also by the information that may just be lurking in the dark, or even lighted, areas of the immense outer space.

For many years, scientists believe that after the Big Bang, the universe will collapse with a “big crunch” due to the pull of gravity. It’s like pulling a rubber band in all directions, and the rubber band snaps back when the limit has been reached.

Recent scientific fingers, however, suggest that contrary to earlier belief—that the expansion of the universe slows down before it finally collapses—the universe is in fact expanding at a faster rate. In their quest for answers, scientists focused their attention to the stars and their environs.

The Up Side

Good morning friends. Here are some good words to some people. I want to share it with you. It’s a nice thing.

“A friend of mine, Olga, has developed her own personal definition of success. She says that ‘Success is when you are happy to go to work in the morning and happy to come back in the evening, and you are very welcome and liked in both places.’” –Scott W. Ventrella, from his book Me, Inc: How to Master the Business of Being You

“It is impossible to hold a grudge and have peace of mind at the same time. It would be like trying to have day and night exist in the same moment.” – Lee L. Jampolsky, Ph.D., author of Smile for No Good Reason

“If you always tell the truth, you do not need a good memory.” – Submitted by Guideposts reader Gwendolyn Wilson, of Laurel, Mississippi

“Happiness: something to do, somebody to love, something to look forward to.” – Adair Lara, in her new book, The Bigger the Sign, the Worse the Garage Sale

“Wake up every morning expecting blessings from God and you will not be able to count them by the end of the day.” – submitted by Guideposts reader Cynthia Scott, of Medon Tennessee

Source: Guideposts

A Sense of Wonder

You wonder. How is it possible to put a billion transistors into a slice of silicon thinner than a candy wrapper and smaller than a ten-centavo coin? You wonder how it can perform trillions of calculation per second. Your mind wanders into the factory as you try to imagine the machines that made this possible.

Well, because people share your sense of wonder, microchips of this magnitude and power are a reality today.

You wonder. Is color real? Is the blue I see the same blue that my friend sees? Do colors tell me something about the things around me? You wonder about the rainbow and the how light dances on the water during an exceptionally clear day.

Well, because others that came before you have wondered as much, the science of spectroscopy was born. Now the study of heavenly bodies becomes more precise and the healing of human bodies is made easier.

You wonder. Is there is anything other than gas, liquid or solid that exists in the universe? Now you know that plasma is the fourth state of matter and that it is the state of most matter in interstellar space.

Finally you wonder, like so many great minds have before you, whether the atom is really the basic building block of matter. This sense of wonder has led scientists to build complex and expensive machines to dissect the very essence of matter. That’s how they discovered quarks.

Children are often called “makulit” because they ask a lot of questions. They want to know so many things about the world around them. “Bakit kaya” is often heard springing from their mouths. A discovery is often punctuated by gleeful exclamations of “kaya pala!”

The sad thing is that m any of us lose this sense of wonder as we grow older. We take things for granted or we simply lose the will to wonder. A lucky few, however, never lose this and keep it well into their old age. Wondering and thinking are pleasurable daily activities that make them happy and alive.

A sense of wonder is worth keeping and enriching. It’s a treasure that can never be taken away from us. It is a bright flame that will throw a ray of light on dark paths and alleys. With a healthy sense of wonder we will never lose our way. - Bato Balani

The Right Place

I couldn’t turn my mind off. I lay in bed, exhausted from another day of work as I was alone since my parents died. Have to attend all chores at home before going to office. Life was too hectic! I’m always busy with my work. I barely had time for myself. And even less for God. In fact I hadn’t attend church mass regularly for a long time. That’s what I need, I decided. A church. But where? I said a prayer for guidance.

Suddenly a face came to mind of a happy elderly lady. I knew her for a long time. She couldn’t have weighed more than 100 pounds, but she had a giant spirit. We’d share a cup of coffee or she gave me a chicken soup as she is having her food store when I wasn’t well. She was always telling me about the church where she attended. At the slip of my mind I can’t remember her name. But I remember the church—Sta. Mesa Catholic Church. I’ll look it up. I got out of bed and padded downstairs. The church was only 15 minute walk from my home. But was it the right one for me?

The next Sunday I attended for the ten o’clock service. The church was huge! There seems to be more than 500 hundred people there. I hurried in so that I can sit in the front but it was already taken. So I got a sit from the corner center of the church. Things were a little more flashy than I was used to. Then the priest got up and asked us to greet our neighbors. I sat there nervously, not sure what should I do. all of a sudden this church idea didn’t seem like such a god thing. A man sitting in front of me turned around and smiled. The man asked, “What brings you here today?” I told him about the person I knew. “You probably don’t know her,” I said. She was quite older than me and a little fat. But I couldn’t remember her name.

“Was it Lourdes Esguerra?” he asked.

I looked at him, surprised. “Yes,” I said.

“You know,” he said, “she’s the reason why I’m here too. She encouraged me to follow my passion for ministry. I’m one of the priest at this church now.”

Yes, I was in the right place after all.

Keep it Big

Good morning everyone. I read one good article. Each and every one of us wants a fuller prayer life. We always wanted to be connected to God, as He will be our strength in all the trials in life that we will have.

Whether or not we mean to, most of us have a habit of making God smaller than he really is. “Everyone approaches God with a set of preconceptions gleaned from many sources,” say Yancey. “Church, Sunday school lessons, stray comments by believers and skeptics alike.” Such images aren’t necessarily a bad thing. After all without mental images of some kind, it would be impossible to think about God at all. But we need to remember that the God who we clothe in these images is in truth much bigger than we can actually imagine. When we’re not shrinking God down, we’re often busy doing just the opposite, shrinking ourselves down, pretending that God is too big and too important to hear us. Who am I to bother God with my problem? we ask. God doesn’t have time to listen to me.

Wrong. When we pray, we are entering God’s time—eternity. And eternity is very different from time as we ordinarily experience it. rather than picture God as a busy switchboard operator juggling incoming requests, we should thing of him as a deeply relaxed and sympathetic listener, a power who can absorb all of our thoughts and prayers and needs. As Jewell writes: “To enter God’s time is to accept that he is always available. He’s not hiding way off in the future. God is available now.” And as Yancey puts it, “The common question, ‘How can God listen to millions of prayers at once?’ betrays an inability to think outside time. God’s infinite greatness, which we would expect to diminish us, actually makes possible the very closeness that we desire. A God unbound by our rules of time has, quite literally, all the time in the worlds for each one of us. – Ptolemy Tompkins